The Boston Diaries

Thursday, January 03, 2002

Catching up

Happy New Year. Hope this year is better (way better) than last year. We can only hope.

Still been sick, but I'm getting a bit better (yea, right—cough cough sniff). I've also been working on updating a site I took technical editorship (read: I add new entries by hand) of a year ago or so.

And Spring and I reorganized The Computer Room today. We had talked about doing this for a month or so because frankly, the space was getting tight and the desks currently employed are for the most part, hard to move, heavy and falling apart (the desk Spring was using practically fell apart when she finally moved her computer system off it). Our first thought was to use hollow core doors with cinder blocks for legs (and some extra storage space for small items) and initial pricing at Home Depot (last month) was about $50 per desk for the required materials. At the last minute (last week I think) we switched plans and decided to get fold-out tables at Costco which were about $50 a piece.

Rob and I took his car to Costco and ended up with three tables (two 73″ × 26″ and one 48″ × 24″) which would fit perfectly in The Computer Room.

Then Spring and I cleaned The Computer Room of almost all items, vaccuumed, then put the new tables in and reset everything back up. It's much better in here, although I'm a bit sad that I had to take the IBM PCjr and Amiga 500 offline (and if you know me, you probably had to read that twice—yes, I took both computers offline, although I might still set the Amiga back up). Somethings just had to go for space reasons. I'll get the pictures up later (I had borrowed Rob's camera and I need him to get them off).

Another Anniversary

Today is also the one year anniversary of Spring and I meeting in person.

Funny how I remember these things …

Friday, January 04, 2002

Oscars cancelled!

“This has been an embarrassing year for all of us and I think it's best if we just forget that it ever happened,” AMPAS executive director Bruce Davis said at a press conference. “I mean, when two of the five Best Picture nominees are `Lord of the Rings' and `Harry Potter,' and the other three are animated films, I think we as a community have to admit we have a problem.

“Could you come up with even one Best Actor nominee this year?” Davis added, disgustedly. “We were so frustrated that we were thinking of relaxing the rules to include Osama bin Laden's Al-Jazeera videos, but ultimately decided against it.”

Via InstaPundit, Predictions, Schmedictions!

I also liked the prediction of French strikers going on strike. While these aren't real predictions, I wouldn't mind them actually happening—they're quite amusing.

Saturday, January 05, 2002

You won't here this on the radio

Spring did a search for Singaporean music and found Shueh-li Ong, an Austrailian born artist who apparently did an album of Singaporean influenced music. It's quite good.

Of course, you'll never hear this on American pop radio. Noooooo … the RIAA can't let that happen.

Cookies!

Fudgie No-Bakes

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar
½ cup cocoa
½ cup milk
3 cups oatmeal
½ cup peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla
waxed paper
2 teaspoons

Boil sugar, cocoa and milk for one minute.
Add oatmeal, peanut butter and vanilla.
Stir until all are combined.
Drop by teaspoons onto waxed paper.
Let sit at least 30 minutes.
Eat and enjoy!

Over the holidays, Spring took care of our friend Lorie's dog (since they couldn't get a kennel in time). For payment, Lorie gave us a basket of goodies to make a nice meal, including the recipe and ingredients for “Fudgie No-Bakes.”

The recipe is straight forward enough and since I like to make cookies, I took it upon my self to make them. Almost immediately there seemed to be a problem. The first instruction is:

1. Boil sugar, cocoa and milk for one minute.

We had no milk. Lorie gave us all the ingredients (on the assumption that we had no cooking supplies, which is a fair assumption) except for the milk. Spring ran out and returned shortly with milk. Then there seemed to be another problem. Again, with the first instruction:

1. Boil sugar, cocoa and milk for one minute.

But you have to look at the amounts:

2 cups sugar
½ cup cocoa
½ cup milk

That's a lot of sugar to disolve in ½ a cup of milk, much less boil it. Spring suggested that I heat the milk first, then add the sugar and cocoa. That worked surprisingly well and in a few minutes I had a nice chocolately sauce. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I then encountered the next problem:

2. Add oatmeal, peanut butter and vanilla.
3. Stir until all are combined.

That, by the way, is three cups of oatmeal, which soaked up all the sauce and started to crumble before my eyes. Spring then suggested a spash of milk to moisten it up and that did the trick.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Sunday, January 06, 2002

The New Computer Room

So, here are finally the pictures from the reorganization of the Computer Room that I promised.

We start with the before pictures. At the entrance you are immediately innundated with clutter. On the floor is a Mac Classic, an IBM terminal and a DEC VT320 terminal. Looking through the doors (it's a set of double doors leading into the Computer Room) I'm even amazed that we functioned in here. The desk across has an Amiga 500 on the left and an IBM PCjr on the right, but they're buried. That yellow thing on the desk is a Nerf gun.

Looking into the far corner of the room, you see even more stuff. Stuff. Lots of stuff. On the desk shown is a huge 21″ monitor for an HP/Apollo 425t, of which I have two of them on the bottom of the stack of computers you see sitting under the desk (the top three units are a VAXStation 3100, a DEC Storage expansion and a MicroVAX 3100). The smaller screen to the right of the 21″ monitor is another DEC VT320 terminal.

This was my work area. Not nearly as bad as Spring's workarea. The desk was barely large enough to hold her computer so she was forced to use a TV tray for the keyboard (it's a black IBM PS/2 keyboard with built-in mouse—way cool). My computers are actually underneath this desk so she had very little leg room.

You can see the rat's nest of wires that were under Spring's desk. It took us quite a bit to untangle this mess, and get rid of the desks on this side of the room. And now you can finally see the Amiga 500 and IBM PCjr.

We moved all the stuff to the living room for temporary storage. Yes, there was quite a bit of stuff in there.

In this shot you can see the HP/Apollo 425ts and VAXen clearly, along with the Sun 3/80 on the floor. The desk here (it's actually a drafting table) is still in excellent shape and is staying in the room. And the vaccuum is the one Rob bought to handle the flooding crisis on Christmas Eve.

Ahhhh! Room! (the clock looking thing in that last shot is indeed a time clock that works (curtesy of the ISP I worked for, and it's sitting next to a manual typerwriter I learned to type on. Above them you can see a PC in a brass case from IBM.)

The desks were replaced with fold-out tables. Here you can see what will become Spring's new workarea. The stack of computers was later moved to the corner and my new work area. The smaller fold-out table is for the printer and scanner. Spring has set up her area, and you can see I've set up my computers under the drafting table. My work area is now uncluttered and I can even hook up the DEC VT320 terminal to my workstation. I even managed to find a place for my webcam.

I've still yet to figure out what I'm going to do with the Amiga 500.

Monday, January 07, 2002

“… you just wouldn't get it.”

I finally finished updating the DaveWorld Journal Site with the new layout and new entries.

I'm glad that's over.

Now off to bed.

Walking on a beautiful day like today

Nice day out—think dark clouds hanging low in the sky; the wind kicking it up a bit. I love days like this and I wanted to walk somewhere. Since there is nothing to drink in the house. I figured I'd walk to the local mini-mart and get some Coke. Hmmm … I gave the rest of my cash to Spring so she could get lunch, since she starts her new job today. Okay, so that's out.

I know, I can check the mail. Nope. Can't do that either—Spring has my keys since she borrowed my car.

Sigh.

I ended up taking out the garbage.

Watch, I can hear you …

Spring's watch (which she forgot to wear today) is going off again. She can't remember how to turn the alarm off, but she can set it. So now it's set to go off at 6:00 pm every day.

Problem is, I don't know how to shut the thing off, so I'm here hitting random buttons hoping to shut it up.

Tuesday, January 08, 2002

Happy Birthday

So in celebration of today, Spring starts singing:

“Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Thank goodness you're not the messiah …
Otherwise you'd die this year.”

Ha ha ha. Yea.

Then, I get a card from my best friend Hoade that has the Top Ten Party Games for the Chronologically Challenged:

10. Bobbing for Dentures
9. Guess My Prescription
8. Musical Walkers
7. Strip Bingo (aka “Scare the Neighbor's Dog”)
6. Twenty Incoherent Questions
5. Whack the Piñata Teenager
4. Who Passed the Gas?
3. Pin the Enema on the Donkey
2. Spin the Prune Juice

And the Number One Party Game …

1. Who Can Stay Up Past 9:30?

Gee … I feel so loved …

But in defense, both Spring and Hoade are rocketing towards their birthdays (next month) … heh heh heh …

The Real secrets they don't want you to know …

So I get the following spam today:

Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 20:06:09 +0800
To: lhrghufhky@neo2.neotraffix.com (that ain't me)
Reply-To: supertime@neo2.neotraffix.com
Subject: Secrets you aren't supposed to know!

Wealthy people and banks have been using these programs for decades to make 5, 10 or even 20 times more on their investments than the average investor.

Find out what they don't want you to know.

We have and we are willing to teach you! You can do this part-time, full time or big time.

We will supply you with EVERYTHING you need to make unlimited profits in this phenomenal market. We have taught thousands of individuals, just like yourself, how to tap into this phenomenal income stream. Many of our clients have QUIT THEIR JOBS and now work only for themselves!

If, and only if, you are ready to learn, motivated, and ready to invest in yourself, simply visit our site and find out more!

VISIT OUR SITE TODAY http://neo2.neotraffix.com/govseccert/

**************************************

To be removed from future mailings, click below, and send mailto:nomoreplease@neo2.neotraffix.com?subject=autoremove Please allow 72 hours for removal.

Okay, so occasionally I'll check out a spam, and using Lynx (no way am I going to even attempt looking at this site with IE) I view the site. To my surprise it's readable and it seems that the Big Secret is … Tax Liens! To learn even more, send some money to us and we'll send you this book yada yada yada.

Well, I think, if it's such a good idea, why sell the information on doing it? Why not keep it quiet and keep making money? Or, if you are feeling altruistic, give the information away.

Off to Google to research this. Of the few pages I read, I think I get the idea behind this: the owners of the property become late in paying taxes on said property, the local government (county or state) will then aution off the tax debt. The action is based on the interest rate, which starts at the highest rate the local government can charge for late taxes (one example was 14%) and then goes down. When you win the auction, you pay off the tax debt right there, and then get to collect the payments from the owners at the interest rate you won the auction at (that, at least, is one method—there are several more but they're variants on that).

But the big payoff is when the property owners default on the taxes—if that happens, you then own the property! Real estate, pennies on the dollars! Hype hype hype.

The idea seems solid, and the information you get is usually listings of when and where the auctions are being held, as well as some advice, but I did find this on Google which I doubt will make any of those books:

Infomercial makers and Internet hucksters are promoting investing in unpaid property tax bills as the latest road to wealth. Purportedly, buying so-called tax-lien certificates yields fat interest checks or even ownership of the distressed property.

What could be wrong with that?

For one, it doesn't work in California.

There's no money to be made buying tax liens

I just love Google.

Wednesday, January 09, 2002

Must be a compression of the facts

Yesterday on Slashdot, they had a blurb about Zeosync's claim of a compression scheme that supersedes Claude Shannon's work.

I only mention it here because an associate of mine (who will remain nameless unless otherwise told) not only knows the company, but the company my associate works for has been contracted to actually implement the algorithm, which I've been told is so convoluted that even the scientists at Zeosync are struggling to comprehend. I find that rather amusing (not so my associate, who, being the head programmer, has to most likely write the code).

I've also been told it's not a constant 100:1 compression ratio, but that's the best case you can expect to see.

“… oh, and my fan unit is marginal so I've taken the liberty of ordering a new one … ”

Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe estimates that more than 99% of the world's computer capacity is wasted. He points out that modern microprocessors, such as Intel Corp.'s Itanium, engage in speculative execution—in which some values are computed or retrieved before they are needed—while doing other work. He says that principle should be moved to higher levels, to the operating system and to application software.

“What's done at the hardware level is really minuscule compared to what could be done,” says Metcalfe, a partner at Polaris Venture Partners in Waltham, Mass. “This is a very old, deep idea that needs to be pursued much further than it has.” He calls the idea “anticiparallelism.”

Anticiparallelism

Well yes, most computers spend 99% of their time waiting for something to act upon, usually the much slower and totally unpredictable user. It's an intriguing idea, but I'm not giving much hope over the software end of things—programmers are already adding too many features not really used or needed, or are incorrectly assuming which areas of the code need improvement (optimization) and wasting time there. What programmers think the users want are rarely the things the users want, who come up with their own ideas of what they want (gasp!).

But hardware is another story.

Several years ago I worked at a company that wrote a package that ran on a large number of platforms, from desktop units to mainframes and in a backroom they had a Stratus mainframe they were loaned to test their software on. One day a fan unit shows up at the office for the Stratus computer. No one there had any idea who might have ordered the unit and when Stratus was called, the office was informed that the computer had ordered the fan unit, as the one currently installed was going marginal and needed replacement.

Now I find that cool! Okay, so I would want my computer to ask permission before buying itself more memory (especially if it's going to be using my bank card!) but still, that's a good use of anticiparallelism. Having it fetch every article from Slashdot is not. Especially if it retrieves comments at a level of -1.

It's sooooo geeky it's cool!

This is sooooo geeky, it's cool! I want one! I have no idea where I'd put the thing, but man … Wow!

Thursday, January 10, 2002

A sick puppy

I got email from an ex-cow-orker today, JM. She still works at The Company for the same boss I did when I worked there. I didn't mention it here, but I was fired for basically taking time off (three weeks) for a pretty bad case of bronchitus. My ex-boss, upon my return said: “I had pnemonia for six weeks and I didn't take any time off!” I though he was an idiot then, but what JM told me, he's even more of an idiot that I thought. Or certifiable.

It seems that a few weeks ago, my ex-boss had a cardiac cath operation to remove five (5!) blockages from his heart and there he was, back to work two days later.

In-bloody-sane.

And I'm not even British!>

I'm just wondering if you have to be at Death's door to get sick time. That is just … words are failing me.

Friday, January 11, 2002

“Irony is hard, let's go shopping!”

A few weeks ago, I hacked the messages on our ATM: there are a bunch of places where you can change the messages it prints at the top of the screen, and the text it scrolls through while you're waiting for it to dispense its money. We've gotten complaints already!

Some Guy: What's up with the Unamerican shit on the ATM?

Devin: Unamerican?

Some Guy: Yeah, it says “SURPRISE SURPRISE, THE GOVERNMENT LIES!”

Devin: Uh… they do.

Some Guy: Yeah, but you're not supposed to say things like that! Especially not now!

Devin: Isn't that kind of the point of this country? That you're allowed to say whatever you believe?

So now I made some random chump actually think about it. My work here is done.

We got another complaint about the ATM as well: this other guy seemed very confused. “The ATM says `DESTROY CAPITALISM'—but then it charged me a service fee!” Irony is hard, let's go shopping!

Your Love Gives Me Such a Thrill, But Your Love Don't Pay My Bills

It's hard not to admire Jamie. He pretty much does what he pleases and doesn't suffer fools gladly. I'm catching up on his trials on setting up and now running the DNA Lounge, a club in San Fransico.

If only there were more people like him in the world.

Saturday, January 12, 2002

Bill Gates is dead.

I'm finding this site amusing and chilling at the same time. And yes, there is nothing so strange as this, a film on the conspiracy on the assination of William Henry Gates, III on December 2^nd, 1999 (consequently, two days before my first entry in this journal) or the Citizens for Truth who are looking into this.

Given the way these sites (and others it looks like) are constructed, you would almost think William Henry Gates, III was assasinated. Who ever is doing this has quite a bit of time on their hands for a rather strange hobby.

Tuesday, January 15, 2002

fycrdthsy2cnwrktzeosync

My associate just wrote in again about ZeoSync and their claims for exceeding Claud Shannon's theoretical limits for compression. I'm keeping the identity of the associate secret mostly for protection if this does fall out as a hoax, but anyway, my associate writes (and I have permission to quote this):

I am still undecided on how valid their claims are. They seem to have toned them down a little. Typical academics.

Slashdot is still battering the shit out of them, but I highly suspect that but I could be wrong. I'm not enough of a data compression [expert] to say one way or the other.

Their algorithm certainly is interesting, it's just too damn slow to implement if you ask me—and I'm talking silicon here, not software.

Amusing. It may just have to wait until quantum computing becomes a reality before the algorithm can probably be implemented in any reasonable amount of time. And that is pure conjecture on my part.

I also find it iteresting that one of the scientists mentioned, Borko Furht (who's page was last modifed on Wednesday, January 2^nd, 2002) that he hasn't even mentioned working at or for ZeoSync. I would think that something this revolutionary would be worthy of mention.

Hmmmmmmm …

Wednesday, January 16, 2002

“Rise up! Your employer is stealing your life!”

It was during the years of office work that I caught on: I got two weeks' paid vacation per year. A year has 52 weeks. Even a comparatively unskilled, uneducated worker like me, who couldn't (still can't) do fractions or long division—even I had enough math to figure that two goes into 52 … how many times? Twenty-sic. [sic] Meaning it would take me 26 years on the job to accumulate one year for myself. And I could only have that in 26 pieces, so it wouldn't even feel like a year. In other words, no time was truly mine. My boss merely allowed me an illusion of freedom, a little space in which to catch my breath, in between the 50 weeks that I lived that he owned. My employer uses 26 years of my life for every year I get to keep. And what do I get in return for this enormous thing I am giving? What do I get in return for my life?

A paycheck that's as skimpy as they can get away with. If I'm lucky, some health insurance. (If I'm really lucky, the employer's definition of “health” will include my teeth and my eyes—maybe even my mind.) And, in a truly enlightened workplace, just enough pension or “profit-sharing” to keep me sweet but not enough to make life different. And that's it.

Amen! Now, only if my ex-boss would get this message. Or perhaps not—he may want to work himself to death serving his corporate masters. Nothing like dying at work to show dedication, eh?

Thursday, January 17, 2002

And now for something completely different … and I mean different

I'm looking at the ingredients for some prepackaged prepared food item (I'm not saying what) when this idea hit me: Is this for human consumption, or pet consumption?

I'm told you this was something completely different.

So, here are the ingredients:

INGREDIENTS: Ground wheat, corn gluten meal, wheat flour, ground yellow corn, water, sugar, glycerin, meat, hydrogenated starch hydrolysate, soybean meal, bacon fat preserved with BHA salt, sorbic acid (a preservative), artificial smoke flavor, calcium propionate (a preservative), glyceryl monostearate, phosphoric acid, choline chloride, added color (Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 1, Yellow 6).

So … human food? Or pet food? And what is it?

Notes on a browser history mechanism

In my usual wanderings of the web, I came across an article on Xanadu (the article is long, but informative). For some reason as I'm reading, I'm thinking about the way current web browsers implement their history mechanism and just how bad it is—it's linear, which is the antithesis of hypertext.

Sure, a browser like Mozilla or Internet Explorer will keep track of all pages viewed, but the actual history mechanism, used by the ubiquitious “BACK” button, is horrid. Start the browser, browse five pages, A, B, C, D, E and then go back two to C, then view X. There's no real easy way to get back to pages D and E without knowing what pages they were, and if you weren't paying enough attention to where they were, you could spend the next hour or so trying to find them in the global history list. So I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to do a graphical representation of your browsing session?

The history session would start when you launch the browser and hit your first page.

[In the illustrations, text presented in a light yellow box is similar to the Tool Tips you'll see under Internet Explorer or Mozilla when you place the mouse over a link or image. If the text is in a light blue box, it's just a comment relating to the node it's near.]

As you browse pages, new nodes are added, in a linear list building downward:

The current node is marked (currently, with a large black dot) and the arrows point to the page you visited. Notice how they all point downwards from the first page (at the top) to the current page (at the bottom). The “BACK” button takes you to the previous node:

Or you can select a node to go back to with the mouse:

Hitting the “FORWARD” button will take you forward one page:

Okay, nothing too out of the ordinary and so far pretty straightforward. But, going back to the middle node there:

It's only when you start to follow a new path do things start changing. The old path you followed will swing out of the way, and the current path you are following will then continue on downward.

Which leads to another convention I'm using: the vertical path is always the current path, and the one that the “BACK” and “FORWARD” buttons on the browser will follow. Go back twice from the current node (labeled http://www.cse.fau.edu/~borko/resume.html) and then forward twice, and you'll end right back up to the same node. And, if you go back and follow a different path:

the previous paths with swing around, and the current path will start building downward again.

The current path doesn't have to always build downward. The current path could be color coded so the paths don't have to swing around when you take a fork. Another variation could be the current node is always in the center. Other refinements could be pages on a path that are on the same site could be grouped some way (background color?) such that you could collapse all pages on that site to a single node (to reduce clutter).

There are also some problems this method presents (that I'll leave as an exercise for the reader) but I think I would like to see some browser implement this as a history mechanism.

Friday, January 18, 2002

1000 blank white cards

Via my dog wants to be on the radio comes this rather fasinating game called 1000 blank white cards. The rules? Well, short of drawing the cards yourself (well, you and the other players) there aren't really any other rules, other than play proceeds clockwise, unless otherwise noted. Something like Nomic with cards, only less rules.

I remember years ago in college (“Uh oh, there he goes again, reminiscencing again!”) my friend Bill and I are in one of the library study rooms trying to kill time between classes (we had a couple of hours). There was a blackboard in this particular study room and fortunately we actually had chalk on us! (And no, we weren't TAs—I think we had the chalk for use playing pool where we would chalk up part of our hand to help the cue stick slide but I digress). What I don't recall is if we actually had a checker board on us, or drew one but at any rate, somehow we had a checker board and pieces. We started to play a game of checkers, but to make it more interesting, after each move, we would add a new rule to further complicate the game.

The only one I remember is “Kings [in checkers, which we were playing] now move like Queens [like in Chess, which we weren't playing].” We both laughed ourselves silly over that one, but I guess you had to be there at the time to get the full effect. I also remember winning the game since I was able to contrive a set of rules that forced Bill to forgoe a turn, thus loosing the game.

Anyway, it seems that 1000 blank white cards is a similar game—similar in that “we make up the rules as we go along.” And those can be real fun if you have the right mix of people.

The Very Expensive Dog … only it's a cat.

Unlike last time, I was awaken to the sound of someone pounding on the door. Rob had answered it by the time I got out there, and on thought of what happened, I should have just let him answer the door.

“Is Paula Conner around?” asked the postal carrier.

“She is no longer living,” said Rob. Long story short—Mom died a few years ago and I've been rather lax about updating everything that was in her name. Already, this isn't sounding good.

“Oh,” said the postal carrier, looking a bit lost at the news.

“I'm here,” I said, surprising Rob a bit. “I can sign for it.”

“I have a certified letter. If you can sigh here,” the postal carrier said, handing me a pen and a form to sign. “And here.” More signage. “Thank you.”

“This doesn't look good,” I said, opening the certified letter.

“It almost never is,” said Rob.

January 16, 2002

Ms. Paula Conner
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

RE: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION, XXXX

Dear Ms. Conner:

It has been brought to my attention that there is a dog being kept in your apartment.

This is a violation of the Rules & Regulations of the Documents of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.

You will be subject to a $100.00 per day fine (maximum $1,000.00), unless you get rid of the dog upon your receipt of this notification.

Govern yourself accordingly.

Very truly yours,

[signature]

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Property Manager
For the Board of Directors

XXXXX

Cc: Board of Directors

They have got to be kidding!

First off, this is a condo not an apartment (unless they pulled a fast one over on my Mom and we don't even own this volume of space, which, truth be told, given the number of rules and regulations around here, I doubt I can even do anything with it but I'm digressing here). Second, we have a cat, not a dog.

And $100.00 per day?

And of course I get it on a Friday so they'll be out of the office and I won't get a hold of them until Monday so by then I'll owe about $300 to $400 in fines.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!

So I dig out the RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION, XXXX and check:

Pets belonging to Unit Owners who have signed a pet permission agreement and which have been approved by the Association will be allowed within the Condominuim Property subject to the following restrictions:

No animal other than household, domestic animals (dogs, cats, small birds) shall be permitted upon the Condominium Property at any time.

No animal may be kept, bred or maintained for any commercial purpose.

No animal weighing in excess of twenty (20) pounds may be brought or kept upon the Condominium Property.

Each animal brought or kept upon the Condominium Property shall be at all times under the control of the Owner.

Each Owner shall promptly remove and properly dispose of all waste matter deposited by his animal upon the Condominium Property.

No animal shall be allowed to constitute a nuisance.

No pet which dies or is disposed of may be replaced. It is the intent of this rule that there be no pets permitted on the Condominium Property which were not initially approved by the Developer.

“Looks like they got you,” said Rob.

“I don't know about that,” I said.

“I think so,” said Rob. “It's pretty clear to me.”

“But I don't have a dog. We have a cat,” I said. “Perhaps I should call back and say we have no dog here.”

“That will only buy you a few days.”

“Your probably right. I'll call and see if I can straiten this out.” I looked over the rules and regulations a bit more, and found this:

Before XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION, XXXX, may levy any fine as provided in its documents, the party against whom the fine is sought to be levied shall be afforded an opprotunity for hearing after reasonable notice of not less than fourteen (14) days and said notice shall include:

A statement of the date time and place of the hearing.

A statement of the provisions of the declaration, association by-laws, or association rules and regulations which have allegedly been violated; and

A short and plain statement of the matters asserted by the association.

The party against whom the fine may be levied shall have an opportunity to respond, to present evidence, and to provide written and oral argument on all issues involved and shall have an opportunity at the hearing to review, challenge and respond to any material considered by the association.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!

They broke their own XXXXXXX rule! I had no notification of this what-so-ever!

I called the representative who sent the letter. The representative wasn't in, but I left a message, stating that I had no dog, but I did have a cat, and that they were in violation of Rule 28 by not sending me notification and what's up with that. Oh, and there's this Mercedes in a guest parking spot that hasn't moved, is covered (which I thought was a no-no) and it has had a flat tire for months. So it has to be towed.

I feel bad about doing that, even given all the grief I've had over vehicles, but I felt that if they were coming down on me, then I'm sure as Hell going to start going down on other flagrant violations of the Rules and Regulations around here.

Oh God! Am I turning into a Condo Commando?

Say it ain't so!

So, who are the Condo Commandos?

So I head out to get the license plate number of the Mercedes that's been sitting out in the parking lot for weeks now. I figure that if the Condo Commandos are going to make my life a living Hell, then I'm going to make a lot of people's lives a living Hell. If they didn't like Spring's van then I'll get nasty myself.

I start attempting to raise the car cover when a group of people nearby ask what I'm doing. So I tell them. I am then informed that they are responsible for the car and go into length about their situation.

A slight digression. When I was working the night shift, I would occaionally get home to see a nice looking, if seriously old, gentleman laboriously making laps around the parking lot with a walker. I always found that inspiring; here is someone that obviously has trouble walking taking the time and effort to remain active. Heartwarming, you know?

And now here I was, calling in his car! He could barely drive, but he could not change the tire, and the Condo Commandos were after his car as well. He has until the end of this month to get the car in order or else it'll be towed!

I then told the small group why I was out there and they found it incredible! They wanted to know who spied on me and turned me in! A cat of all things!

We also talked a bit about Spring's van, and while a few of them admitted that they felt it was an eyesore, they never called in and complained about it. Heck, they found it amazing that a covered car in a guest spot is apparently illegal.

Bloody Condo Commandos!

Saturday, January 19, 2002

“Yes Virginia, it snowed in South Florida.”

Of course, it was 25 years ago today that it happened. I wasn't down here for this (I moved down here in August of 1979) but my friend Hoade was down here, being a native and all. Of course, he was sick that day and never did see it.

Today, 25 years later it's in the low 80s and of course we're running the A/C here …

Sunday, January 20, 2002

First Impressions … in Lego

Ever since I did some concept images of the Samurai Administrator using Lego Bricks and Toys, I've been interested in possibly doing a comic strip using the figures. A quick web search revealed that quite a few people have done Lego animations but as far as I can tell, only one strip has been done in Lego, and then only for a week.

You'd think that if people have time to recreate New York City with Lego bricks, that someone would do a comic strip.

None that I could find.

So, I decided to do one myself. Not that I plan on doing this on a regular basis—well, not until I possibly get a larger cast than I current have (about six people, two of which are in convenience store garb, one cop, two regular people and one samurai administrator).

As it was, it took me several hours to do.

Monday, January 21, 2002

Mounting fines

So I called the head Condo Commando again in reference to the certified letter I received on Friday about having a dog (which we don't—we have a cat).

And again, I left a message. Why do I get a feeling I won't get a return call until the 29^th?

Enough! Enough already! We get the message!

As if the certified letter I recieved telling me to get rid of my non-existant dog was bad enough, today in my mail I received a copy of that letter, plus another copy of a certified letter I've yet to actually sign for!

Enough already!

Tuesday, January 22, 2002

Depressing phone call #1

So I call the person responsible for the latest certified letter and the prognosis isn't good. Each person needs to fill out an application and pay a $100 processing fee. Oh, and during the interim period while the Condo Association is considering whether to aprove the applicant or not, the person apply cannot live here.

Well, they can, provided I get a letter from the Condo Association saying it's okay for them to stay here during the approval process.

Yea, right. Like that will happen.

Okay, I suppose it could be tried, but given the force the Condo Commandos have swooped down here at Condo Conner and none of us are really that thrilled with staying here much longer.

Condo Commandos: 1
Residents: 0

Depressing Call #2: more mounting fines

And then I called the head Condo Commando yet again in reference to the first certified letter I received about having a dog (which we don't—we have a cat).

And again, I left a message. Why do I get a feeling I won't get a return call until the 29^th?

Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions

But most new communities seek to pre-empt any such adaptivity by repressive, fiercely enforced “convenants, conditions, and restrictions.” These are the dread “CC & Rs” that homeowners' associations use to control such details as what colors you may paint your house, what pets (and in some cases what children) you may keep, how your lawn will look, your roof, your fence, your driveway (no campers, trucks, or car repair), your backyard (no drying laundry or unstacked firewood).¹⁷ Any neighbor might report you. What if you ignore or defy such rulings? The homeowners' association can take your house or send you to jail. Joel Garreau points out that these organizations have all the powers of government—the ability to tax, to legislate, and to police—without the usual restrictions of democratic representation or being answerable to the US Constitution….

What makes homeowners' associations so viciously conservative? Market value is determined not by how well a house works, but how it looks in the context of its neighborhood—“curb appeal,” as it's called. Vast effort has gone into making the development look nice to a carefully calculated market segment, and that must not be undermined. When you sell your nice house (Americans move every eight years, on average), do you want the prospective buyer to see someone repairing their car or putting out laundry to dry next door? Suppose they've got a metal roof instead of tile, or a nonstandard dormer sticking out? Well, if they can't, you can't. This degree of institutionalization of real estate value over use value is odious enough as an invation of privacy, but it also prevents buildings from exercising their unique talent for getting better with time.

¹⁷ The CC & Rs of Irvine, California, state that they are “for the purpose of uniformly enhancing and protecting the value, attractiveness and desirability of the Properties.” An excerpt gives the flavor:

“Section 7.04. Parking and Vehicular Restrictions. None of the following (collectively `Prohibited Vehicles') shall be parked, stored or kept on any street (public or private) within tne Residential Area: any commercial type vehicle (including, but not limited to, any dump truck, cement mixer truck, oil or gas truck or delivery truck); any recreational vehicle (including, but limited to, any camper unit, house/car or motor home); any bus, trailer, trailer coach, camp trailer, boat, aircraft or mobile home; any vehicle not in operating condition or any other similar vehicle; any vehicle with a width in excess of eighty-four (84) inches; any trash dumpster; or any vehicle or equipment, mobile or otherwise, deemed to be a nuisance by the Board. No Prohibited Vehicle shall be parked, stored or kept on any Lot or Common Area except wholly within an enclosed garage, and then only if the garage door is capable of being fully closed. Prohibited Vehicles shall not be allowed in any driveway or other exposed parking areas, or any street (public or private) within the Residential Areas, except for the purpose of loading, unloading, making deliveries, or emergency repairs…. Garages or other parking areas within the Residential Area shall be used only for parking authorized vehicles, and shall not be used for storage, living, recreational, business or other purposes.”

I added those italics. I had to.

–Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn

My first reaction is, Gee, I don't know anyone who uses their garage for vehicles! Everyone I know uses them for storage (good thing they don't live in Irvine, CA).

This is what happens when people take their homes to be an investment instead of a living area. Heaven forbid anything cause the value of the home to lower! Good Lord, I'm surprised anyone is allowed to live in such places, because, you know, living means use, and with use comes wear, and with wear comes tear and anything not in mint condition lowers in values (or isn't as high as mint).

Hey! I see a whole new financial arena opening up here! Homes you can't live in! What an investment! The homes are always spotless, pristine. Their value should skyrocket through the roof! How can anyone pass up such a deal! All the drudgery and downsides of owning a home (mowing the lawn, fixing leaks) with none of the upside! But think, the value won't decrease!

little pink houses

The old Levittowns are now interesting to look at; people have made additions to their houses and planted their grounds with variety and imagination. Unlike these older subdivisions, Irvine has deed restrictions that forbid people from customizing their places with so much as a skylight…. Owners of expensive homes in Irvine commonly volunteer stories of not realizing they had pulled into the driveway of the wrong house until their garage-door opener failed to work.

–Joel Garreau, Edge City

The cultural historian Paul Groth says the critics were dead wrong about the Levittowns: “They've survived beautifully. People are proud about adapting them. The original cheap materials wore out, as predicted, and people were happy to put in new materials.”

The garage-door experience has been turned into a tool. You drive down your street of identical houses with the garage door opener pressed on. The house with its garage door opening is yours.

–Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn, commenting on the quote by Joel Garreau above.

There are quite a few of those Irvinette communities here in South Florida and everytime I see them, I think—Camazotz. It's the sameness of all the dwellings that scare me the most and yes, it can be quite difficult to tell them apart they're so cookie cutter in look.

And then I think back to my paternal grandparent's house (in Royal Oak, MI, just north of Detroit). They had a plain white Cape Cod style home but the other homes on their block: the firehouse red one a few doors down, or the green one on the corner. The two huge multistory homes across the street. The white house with deep red trim. All of them different. All of them with character. All of them with basements (but I digress—you really can't have basements here in South Florida).

My next house there will be no association of any kind. I want to paint my house pink if I wish to.

Wednesday, January 23, 2002

Mounting Fines III

“Is the head Condo Commando in the office?” I asked.

“I haven't seen the head Condo Commando here in the office today, but sometimes he sneaks in the back door. Let me transfer you.”

“Okay.”>

[insert S/X here—“The Girl from Impanema”]

“You have reached the voice mail box for the head Condo Commando. Please leave your name and message.”

Sigh.

Dream of the Future

Walking back from the bank (and store to pick up some sugar) I was thinking about the recent events here at Condo Conner and about how difficult it would be for me to give up this place.

I'm too sentimental at times I think.

The Condo Commandos aside, the place is nice. It's a good location; the neighborhood is quiet and the place is comfortable. And I've lived here since 1988 when my Mom bought the place.

I think it may be more that my Mom bought the place than anything else.

Did I mention I may be too sentimental at times?

I have a hard time seeing myself living anywhere else, but then again, I've always been that way, although of all the times I have moved (perhaps ten times in my life) I've only moved voluntarily once—in August of 1992 to Boca Raton to live with some friends while at collage (only to move back here in late 1993 but that's a story for another time). And in all that time, I really could only see myself moving to a few locations.

First is a small Cape Cod house in Royal Oak, MI where my paternal grandparents lived. Sure, it's small, with old style (two pronged) electrical outlets and only recently has a touch tone phone been installed (early 90s) but it's comfortable. I know that house. And the neighborhood. I can picture myself driving off the 11 Mile exit from I-75, going north along the surface drive to Gardinia, hanging a left and turning onto the appropriate side street, then a block and a half to pull into the driveway. I even had half a mind to re-errect the old bell in the front yard (my grandparents had a cast iron bell, maybe twenty to thirty pounds, mounted on a pole in the front yard and used it to summon the kids home for dinner. It was still up as late as 1978 until some punk kids knocked it down for the nth time, and then it languished in the garage ever since). “Yea, turn down that street, then go a block and a half and look for the house with the bell out front. That's where I live.”

But it's no longer in the family. The grandparents are no longer around, and the family sold the house.

Sigh.

Second is anywhere in Brevard, NC, where I lived as a small kid. It had that small town charm with a real Main Street with two story buildings with shops along the ground, apartments above and beautiful scenery. Seasons that change and Halloween felt like Halloween. It's a great place to grow up as a kid, but I can see where it would start to really suck for high school students, or people without kids. The closest thing to a night life would be Asheville, about half an hour away to the north.

And it wasn't quite the same when I visited the place in 1988 (nine years after moving away). The drug store I used to buy comics at was a Hallmark store. More fast food restaurants in the area (I remember the first McDonald's in Brevard was built in 1977) and it seemed … more crowded.

You can't go home again.

Sigh.

I'm too sentimental at times I think.

“The only constant in life is change.”

Time to move on methinks.

Raising Ukeleles

So what was it that got me all maudlin on the walk home? Weeds and dead leaves.

Weeds. And no, that that kind of weed. The kind that most people hate to find in their yard. Native flowers, that type. Specifically, the smell.

I'm four years old and we're living somewhere in Royal Oak. Out back of our townhome is an embankment with a train track running atop. It's spring, maybe summer, and us kids are playing on the embankment and track, waiting for the trains to come so we could watch them thunder by. I remember this only because of the smell of flowering weeds covering the embankment. That smell always brings me back to that place, that time.

Dead leaves. Not so many down here, but you can find them. And the sight and smell of those take me back to Brevard.

Autumn. Past the explostion of color in late September/early October to late October/early November, when the leaves have turned all brown and dried and carpet the ground. The rustling crunching noise as you walk. Piles of brown dried leaves to jump into, signalling the oncoming of Halloween in the county seat of Translyvania County (no joke!). Running with friends from house to house collecting sweets and gorging yourself sick by the next day.

I'm looking over the letters I've received over the past few days, growing sad at having to leave yet another place.

“You can never go home again.”

The weight of history is threatening to engulf me. It is time to move on.

I must.

If only it weren't so painful.

“Okay Shermy, set the wayback machine … ”

Consider the hardware: a computer system with close to 400 parallel processors, 100 terabytes of disk space, hundreds of gigs of RAM, all for under a half-million dollars. As you'll read in this in interview, the folks at the Archive have turned clusters of PCs into a single parallel computer running the biggest database in existence—and wrote their own operating system, P2, which allows programmers with no expertise in parallel systems to program the system.

Via Flutterby How The Wayback Machine Works

I find this stuff facinating. Google runs off 8,000 servers, this site has 100 terabytes of storage, and my friend Kelly works at a place that processes gigs of log files every day.

He said that before he optimized the processing, it sometimes took about 30 hours to process one day's worth of logs. Now, it can finish (for a real busy day) in under 22 hours. He works for a really busy site and I found the inner workings quite interesting.

Is this a case of a server working around a browser bug that is working around a server bug?

Mark is writing an embedable webserver and asked me to look into a rather odd problem he's having. I looked into it, and yes, it's an odd problem.

He's testing the redirection code, so if you give a URL like:

http://www.example.net/news

and news is a directory, then it will redirect you to:

http://www.example.net/news/index.html

So far so good. Only to ease testing, he's running the server on non-reserved TCP port, so the URL:

http://www.example.net:8080/news

is then redirected to

http://www.example.net:8080/news/index.html

And therein lies the odd problem.

Netscape 4.07 and Lynx 2.8.1pre.9 under Linux (okay, RedHat 5.2, my current home platform), when given the new location, goes to

http://www.example.net:8080:8080/news/index.html

Which seems to be okay when you connect directly to the webserver, but gives a web proxy (like squid) fits. IE 5.0.whatever fails entirely. Mozilla 0.9.2.1 under Linux works fine and seems to get the URL processing correct, but Mozilla 0.9.5 under the Macintosh fails much like IE does.

But here's the real kicker: They all work fine when Apache sends the redirect with a port number.

We can't figure it out. As far as we can tell, the server response is the same between Apache and Mark's server, only the server name is different (okay, the HTML page sent with the 30x response is a bit different too, but not my much).

Very odd.

Thursday, January 24, 2002

Whirlwind

9:00 am: Rob and I leave Condo Conner for Find-a-Home, a free (to us) service to locating places to rent.

12:00 pm: Rob and I have already filled out the applications to live in an apartment and are heading for lunch.

I wasn't really expecting this to happen quite so fast, but there you go.

It started yesturday when Rob sent me a few listings for rentable homes in Boca and I started calling the numbers. The first one I called was to a company called Find-a-Home located in Pompano Beach just a few miles away. The person who answered said they have hundreds of listings and the service (for us) is free to use. So Rob and I decided to try them out and look at a few places, and on Saturday, go back with Spring when she's not working.

We left the house around 9:00 am to make sure we have plenty of time to see a few places. We arrive and are immediately met by Lori, a frazzled mom-type who is always chattering away. She hands us a questionaire to fill out while she's answering the phone for a few minutes.

Over the next hour she pretty much grills us on what we are looking for—pressing for details all the way. Which city? How much? Do you care if it's a townhome? And in between, Rob and I kept adding details—no association. No gated communities. No restrictions on vehicles (at which point, we had to digress and tell her about Rob's hearse).

After all this, she tells us she has a rental community in mind; two story townhomes with private fenced in yards, many trees around located in Boca Raton. She's describing the unit (which is a 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom unit) as I realize I know what apartments she's talking about—the same units that our friend JeffK lives in, located in South Boca Raton.

That is indeed the place. It sounds agreeable to both Rob and I and all three of us drive out to look at the unit. There we met The Rental Manager (who's name I forgot, so she'll be referred to as TRM), an overly friendly woman who was good friends with Lori. Rob and I were then taken to the model, which sold us immediately. Nice construction, decent layout (although the kitchen is a bit small, but comes with microwave, and the downstairs bedroom isn't much larger than a walk in closet), huge master bedroom; master bath has a Roman tub with jacuzzi implements, and the second bedroom (with private bathroom) that is fairly sizable. A porch spans between the two bedrooms and overlooks the fenced in yard. The mirrored stairwell won't be in the unit we're taking.

And they have nooooo problem with Rob's hearse.

And so we found ourselves back in the rental office filling out paper work for background checks, employment checks, etc., etc. The sureal part was Rob listing me as his current landlord (“No Rob, I am not evicting you.”). Moving in will be fairly cheap and fairly soon if we're accepted—February 5^th.

The only hurdle will be passing the checks. If that goes, and we do move in, then I'll work on getting Condo Conner rented out.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Rob and I found ourselves having to run a few errands after getting home from our morning running around. On the way out to the car Rob spotted a set of keys lying in one of the reserved parking spots. I think I know who they might belong to, but don't know for sure, nor do I remember which unit they live in. So we decided to let them be.

Upon returning back, we see a car parked in the spot and I wondered out loud of the owners of the car found the keys. Rob said they more likely parked on the keys, and yes, he was right. The keys were still lying on the ground, almost crushed by the front left tire.

I picked up the keys, intending to put them under the whiper blade but Rob said that was an inventation to having the car stolen. I didn't want that, nor did I want to leave the keys on the ground. The car key on the chain matched the model car in the space, and I figured a good test to see if this was the correct owner was to use the key to open the car and leave the keys on the seat and lock the car back up, since the owner obviously had a second set of keys.

I took a quick glance around, inserted the key into the door. Unlock and open the do—

WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP! ALERT! ALERT! DANGER! DANGER!

—or alarm is going off toss keys on seat slam door shut walk away like someone trying to walk away nonchalantly but failing miserably as Rob is attempting to remain upright laughing so hard and Spring coming out asking us what we did.

Friday, January 25, 2002

A preemptive callback

In a surprise move today, the head Condo Commando called me this morning. He excused himself for not getting back sooner by saying he was on sick leave, and that they weren't going to fine us. “Read the letter more carefully,” he said.

I scanned the letter. “ 'You will be subject …',” I said.

“That's a far cry from being fined,” he said. “So, do you have a dog?”

“No. I have a cat.”

“Pets aren't allowed here.”

“There are other people with cats,” I said. “Quite a few places.”

“Well, give me their names and addresses and I'll send them letters too.”

“I don't wish that! Besides, we have an indoor cat. It never goes outside. It's never been outside.”

“Well, the Vice President of the Board complained …” Aha! That's who turned us in! “… so I'll get back with him about it.” The call ended there.

I did not mention the other problem we're having. I figure since the head Condo Commando didn't mention it, he doesn't know and I suspect they may have gotten us confused with another unit, with a dog and unauthorized occupants.

A very rare request

I got an email today from someone looking for a tutorial or resources on writing a metasearch engine. I got the email because I've written three of them over the past six years or so.

I told the person that I know of no tutorials or references about writing metasearch engines since when I started, there were about two in existance that I knew of and that to me, it was pretty straightforward what you need to do in order to write a metasearch engine: you get query (using CGI most likely), reformat the queries for each engine you support and make the request like a browser would (which means you need to support HTTP and CGI from the client side) and then process the pages you get back (so you need to parse HTML) and display output like any CGI script can.

Easy.

Okay, maybe not that easy as there are some nagging details you only find out about by doing an actual implementation (like certain IIS servers will send out two complete header sections, or that IIS doesn't follow the HTTP redirect specification at all, and what exactly are you supposed to do if you get a redirect on a POST?) but if you take it piece by piece it's not that overwhelming.

Or is it just me?

A lesson learned

Don't used shredded cheese when making a grilled cheese sandwich.

That is all.

Saturday, January 26, 2002

Too much, too little, probably just enough

I was talking to Hoade today and one of the topics was my weblog/on-line journal here. He said he and his wife tend to get glassy eyeied (eyed? eye-ed? eyied?) when reading the more technical entries.

“Does anyone actually understand what he's saying?” I think is the direct quite from his wife.

Meanwhile, Mark recently observed that I'm writing fewer and fewer technical articles.

Guess I'm doing something right.

Monday, January 28, 2002

“But first you must jump through this flaming hoop … ”

I noticed that I need to update the nameservers on my Internic record and seeing how I'm still with Network Solutions, um … make that Verisign the old method of updating my records (via email like I used to do) doesn't work for this domain (although it still works for older domains that still have SC47 listed as a contact) because I was “upgraded” to the new “easier” method of updating information.

“Yea … right. No, I believe you!”

Things are somewhat of a mess here in Condo Conner (due to the recent reorganization of the Computer Room, and the possible impending move out of Condo Conner) so I have no idea were my new account information is. No problem, the web site has a link to let people recover that information.

Good news? I get my account number.

Bad news? No password.

I go to the page requested, and I have to answer a “security” question correctly before they'll cough up my password. Security question? I thought. I don't remember what question I need to answer. There are four or five possible questions. I pick the most likely one, and nope. That isn't it. Another one. Nope. How about this one? Nope. And what about this one? Nope, and oh, by the way, your account is now locked. Please call Customer Service. Have a nice day.

It's about this time that I want to say

MAY YOU BURN IN HELL!

Me? Bitter? Nah.

So I call Customer Support. “We're ignoring customers as fast as we can. Please hold until we can ignore you too.”

Death metal version of “Girl from Impanema” played on.

“Um … um … may I … ah … help you?” Finally.

So I explained the situation. I was then told that I would be emailed a form that I would then fill out and fax back. “I don't have a fax machine,” I said. “Is there any other way this can be done?”

“Um … ah … no … um … not really,” was the reply. So I need to fill out the form that is sent to me via email …

“What format is that in?”

“Ah … um … it's um … Microsoft Word.”

“I'm sorry, I can't use that.”

“Um … ”

“I'm a Unix shop here, and I don't have Microsoft Windows.”

“Well … um … ah … you need to fax us a letter saying what you … um … need done and um … photo ID …”

“Excuse me? A photo ID?”

“Yes, ah … with the address um … listed … here.”

“And hypothetically speaking, if this is business related?”

“Um … yes … what?”

“What if this is a business account? My photo ID is not going to have my work address on it.” Well, given the way corporations are taking over, that might not be too far off, but I digress.

“Then … ah … um … you … need to fax … us a … um … letter on … company letterhead.”

“Thank you.”

MAY YOU ROT IN THE HOTTEST RING OF HELL NETSOL!

Ahem.

The tech however, did email me a text copy of the form I need to fax back. How nice.

Tuesday, January 29, 2002

Dances With the Last of the Texas Chainsaw Alien X-Men in the Iron Mask le Miserables

Spring, George (my friend from Boston visiting friends down here for a few weeks) and I went to see Brotherhood of the Wolf (aka “Le Pacte de loups”). While not a great film, or even a good film, it was okay, if somewhat confused as to what it wanted to be. Political thriller? Supernatural horror? Pyschological horror? Hong Kong action? Historical drama?

Most likely all of the above.

What we have is 1765 France where some supernatural creature (which most people in the movie think is a wolf) is going around eating women and children. The King sends a naturalist (and his friend, a Mohawk named Mani) to investigate. After an unsuccessful hunt, the King sends in a veteran who kills an unusually large wolf and forces the naturalist to fake the body to make it look more imposing than it is—thus making it seem like the creature has been caught when it hasn't.

It also seems that from that point onward, the seeds to revolution are growing and our heroes get plopped right into the middle of yet even more attacks by the creature.

See it for the babes. Don't see it for the CGI.

All bananas, all the time

So I get this email:

Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 19:52:19 -0800
To: <webmaster@conman.org>
From: Brianna XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Subject: Link Exchange Request

I just added a link to http://boston.conman.org on my site.

You can find it here:
http://www.bananasite.com/links/bananaat-large.html

I would be very grateful if you added a link to http://www.bananasite.com

I prefer a simple text link, but I also have several banners and sample text links at:
http://www.bananasite.com/links/addlink.html

Let me know if you would like any changes in your listing (category, description, etc) even if you decide not to link back.

Thanks,
Brianna

Well.

She found the pages where I talked about banana spiders on a trip I took through Northern Florida while ghost hunting a year and a half ago. I suppose I should write her back with a link to here so she can effectively catagorize all my banana entries.

Hectoring Googlewhacks

Spring sent me a link describing googlewhacking, where you take two words, type them into Google and see if you can get a single result.

Oh, and the two words have to be real words.

My first attempt was a winner. Now, if I state what my first attempt was, it will still show a single result until this page is indexed, then it will no longer be googlewhackable material. But just so you know that when I did this, it was a googlewhack:

hectoring kumquat

Other ones I came up with that were winners: hectoring scalawag and hectoring tangerines. My attempt at apocalyptic waldo not only turned up 725 results, but a page even mentions an Apocalyptic Waldo!

The stuff you find on the web these days.

Wednesday, January 30, 2002

The MPAA is really going to love this idea …

I'd love to hear a commentary track by someone who hates a movie, ripping it to shreds. Or a track by an expert who disagrees with the facts in a film. Or a track by someone with a moral or philosophical argument to make. Or even a Wayne's World style track from dudes down in the basement who think The Mummy Returns is way cool.

Via E V H E A D, You, too, Can be a DVD Movie Critic

It could be said that Pink Floyd did this to the Wizard of Oz (but that is still unsubstantiated) so the technique is actually quite old, and Roger Ebert has some excellent ideas for commentary. I can just see Mark, Kelly, Rob and I doing commentary for movies like WarGames (“Cool!”), Hackers (“What a piece of dung!” “But it has Angelina Jolie's breasts!”), Swordfish (“What a load of crap!” “But it has Halle Berry's breasts!”) or even The Net (“What a horrible film!” “And it doesn't even have Sandra Bullock's breasts in it!”).

Thursday, January 31, 2002

Um … not really.

In this plastic crazy economy of ours, I pretty much had to use plastic to pay for the DSL connection to Condo Conner. Technically, it's a check card, not a credit card, but as it has that Visa logo on it, it works about the same, only I can't get myself in debt.

Now, I lost the card and had it replaced. So it's no real surprise that I got a letter from my DSL provider that they experienced a distrubance in the ~~Force~~ economic flow, as it were (never mind that I've yet to actually see them debit my card, but I'll have to pour over my bank statements a bit more to see what exactly might be going on). They provided an 800 number I can call, stating “our customer service represenatives are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

Okay, to me that means I can call at 2:00 am Eastern and get this straightened out.

So I call at 2:00 am Eastern to get this straightened out.

“ … and press two for your broadband service.”

Beep.

“For issues with broadband, please call 1-800-XXXXXXXX. Thank you for calling XXXXXXX.”

Excuse me? This isn't a small company by any means. This is a huge company. Can't they afford to automatically forward my call? Couldn't they have printed the correct 800 number to call? What, are they trying to turn everyone in the U.S. into phone operators?

So I call the new number.

“ … and for billing issues press four—”

Beep.

“Our billing office is currently closed and there are no represenatives able to take your call right now. Please call back during normal business hours of … ”

Um, guys? Customer service represenatives? Available 24/7? Remember? Hello? Hello?

Alligator Alley

I drove George to Naples which is on the west coast of Florida, so she could visit her parents. It's not a bad drive, about 85 miles, of which 78 are along Alligator Alley. Now it's I-75 and four lanes wide, but when I moved down here in 1979 it was a two lane road with a high death rate on it (78 miles with no exits and a huge truck doing 50 in front of you the tempation to pass is all too great … do you see where this is going?). It still has its share of accidents but they're not nearly as bad. And there are actually two exits now between the endpoints. Woo hoo!

The drive over took a little over an hour (Speed limit on Alligator Alley: 70 mph) so it wasn't that bad (it takes an hour to go from West Palm Beach to Miami and both are considered local towns here in South Florida). And dispite the please from George's parents, I could not stay for dinner as I had to drive back across the state to pick up Spring from work.

Threads

Condo Commandos: They've been quiet since I called about unathorized occupants and the Head Condo Commando called back so it looks like the recent maelstrom has blown over for now. I think it also helped that I cleaned up the back porch.
the Mercedes: It's been towed! Or at least moved somewhere else.
the Impending Move: We still waiting to see if we've been approved for the townhome. They are waiting for confirmation that Rob and I are employed. Rob has it easy—he's employed! The rental office is just waiting for his company to fax back the information that Rob actually works there. I don't have it so easy; being self-employed it's a bit harder to say “Yes, I'm employed.” They want proof which means tax returns and various W-2 and 1099 forms and what not. On the plus side, if Rob is deened to make enough then it's not so important that I actually prove I make a minimum amount of income per year.
Network Solutions: I have yet to print out the form and fax it back to them with photo ID. Seeing how I'm going to have to rent a fax as it where to do this, and money is a bit tight with the current housing situation this might take a few more days to get resolved.
Web server/browser bugs: It turns out both Mark and I need to read the HTTP specification a bit closer. When a browser sends the Host: header, it also sends the port number if the port isn't the standard HTTP port, which Mark didn't realize. So when he was sending the redirect, he was adding on the port number, which was already included in the host portion. Bug fixed.

Friday, February 01, 2002

Computers … maps … computers … maps …

Oh no! There's an International Map Fair this weekend! Noooooo!

Spring and I are mappaphiles and the both of us would love to go to this, but unfortunately, we already have plans to go to the Miami HAMFest this weekend, which is something my friends and I do every year.

Sigh.

Saturday, February 02, 2002

Groundhog day

Yup, it's that time of year again, when Ashcroft pops out of his hole and if he sees his shadow we'll have six more weeks of terrorism.

More cheese than ham

We should have gone to the International Map Fair instead. If anything, this year's Miami HAMFest was smaller and less thrilling than last year and that's saying something!

Outside the world of PCs, there were very few Macs for sale (one, a Mac laptop, didn't work) and a Sun SPARCStation 2 (but for $100, no thank you). Even worse, we only saw two (2!) PS/2 keyboards, and only one for sale seperately from a computer and even then, it had key caps missing (Mark picked that one up).

The only interesting things I picked up this year were a slide ruler and a 24-hour analog clock for the Computer Room.

Overall, a very disappointing year

Sunday, February 03, 2002

Happy Birthday II

Fortunately, today I get to sing the song to Spring.

The Royal Tenenbaums

Spring and I decided to see The Royal Tenenbaums tonight. What an odd film. I had a hard time figuring out when exactly the film was supposed to take place—it seemed that the entire span of 17 years took place in the 70s, with only a few nodding glances towards the 80s (Ben Stiller's Nike sweat suits, or “Rock the Casbar” by the Clash in another scene).

The movie centered around Royal Tanenbaum and his attempts go get back into the life of his estranged family (they put the fun in disfunctional). His kids were child prodigies who as adults have problems coping with life and head back to their parents' home.

We found it entertaining, although I have to wonder how the film was being marketed since during the movie, we saw several people get up and leave the theater; about half remained for the entire film. Granted, the theater wasn't that packed to begin with, but still …

Monday, February 04, 2002

We're moving! (on my god)

We got the call! We were finally approved for the townhome.

I'm of mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, the Condo Commandos are making life more interesting than it needs to be, and there have been plenty of times I've looked around Condo Conner and thought, this place is getting a bit run down. I need a new place. On the other hand, I was half hoping we wouldn't get approved and we could stay here. It's comfortable, it's on a good location, the neighborhood (aside from the Condo Commandos) is nice and and for me, to sell this place just seems so wrong, as it belong to my Mom.

But we got the place.

Tomarrow: hand cramps as we sign all sorts of paper work.

Playing with TeX

To keep myself preoccupied, I spent way too many hours trying to get TeX to output a document in a very particular format.

My current ongoing project now involves generating a vast number of pages (around 1,400 or so) of summary information (one of the reports being summaried itself was nearly 400 pages in length). The amount of summary data per report is small enough that with a small enough font (around 7pt it seems like) we can fit four summaries per page, thus keeping the page count down to around 1,400 pages (there are a lot of reports). Each summary has a particular layout so I thought it should be relatively easy to get TeX to generate the output.

Eight hours later I realize that I don't know enough TeX to even begin to start this project. For instance, one example of getting two column output is:

\let\lr=L \newbox\leftcolumn
\output={\if L\lr
    \global\setbox\leftcolumn=\columnbox \global\let\lr=R
  \else \doubleformat \global\let\lr=L\fi
  \ifnum\outputpentalty>-20000 \else\dosupereject\fi}
\def\doubleformat{\shipout\vbox\{\makeheadline
    \fullline{\box\leftcolumn\hfil\columnbox}
    \makefootline}
  \advancepageno}
\def\columnbox{\leftline{\pagebody}}

Provided you set \hsize to the width you want a column (\hsize being the horizontal width you are pumping text into). Oh, and don't forget to change \makeheadline and \makefootline to expand across the entire page instead of using the current setting of \hsize.

I shouldn't really fault for TeX for this. It really is quite powerful, but the learning curve is somewhat (okay, overwhelmingly) steep. For basic jobs it's not that hard, and there are even preprogrammed macros to do academic papers (like LaTeX). But the example TeX code is very dense reading.

I'll have to play around with this more later.

Tuesday, February 05, 2002

Signing our lives away

Rob and I head over to the rental community to sign some twenty-two pages of rental agreements. The process is simple—they hand Rob the page and explain what this page is for. Rob scans it, then signs and dates it. He then hands it to me, I scan, sign and date it and place it to one side.

Page after page. Twenty-two pages. Listen, scan, sign, date, hand, scan, sign, date, place. The only real pause is Rob making sure he can park his hearse in the parking lot. Unlike the last time he asked, it was decided that he could park it in the rental office parking lot (which is across the street from our building, so it's not that far). Rob was satisfied with that, and we continued with signing.

We then did a tour of the actual unit, filling out “Move-in Inventory & Condition Form” (which we have three days to finish and turn in) and discussing ideas of where to set up the new Computer Room (I prefer a room dedicated for this, Spring wants to set it up in a more public area of the house. Rob doesn't care where it is).

I'm still overwhelmed at how fast things are moving.

Grinding away

So once again I threw myself into work trying not too hard to think about the impending move. I informed my contact that what I attempted didn't work, so the format was simplified—all I had to do was generate one summary per page, and he'll take care of formatting it four per page using a traditional word processor. Then it was a matter of formatting the output like he wanted, and making adjustments as I found shortcomings in certain reasonable assumptions I had made. Nothing horrible, or very difficult.

Pretty mindless, actually.

And as you might be picking up, I'm still a bit freaked about moving.

Tick-tock

It's taking some time to get used to the clock I purchased at the Miami HAMFest. It's a 24-hour analog clock so when it says 6:00 pm (okay, it really reads 1800) it looks like it's 9:00 pm (okay, 2100). It's still a very cool clock, with the current day (Tuesday), date (5) and a third smaller 12-hour clock (with hour hand only) that can be set for another time zone (currently set for Sweden).

Wednesday, February 06, 2002

Fly the terror-filled skies

Luggage collected. Exodus. Migration from Gate B27 to B10. Another search (number five; J-E wondered if he could qualify for “Frequently Searched” miles). They examined the bags and told Mr. Moseler to open a wrapped present for a Moseler sibling in Milwaukee. It was a gift of marzipan candy that to the airport authorities—who had never heard of marzipan the same way they had never heard of a Palm Pilot—looked suspiciously like brightly colored C-4 explosive with sugar ribbons on top. Mr. Moseler was asked–we're not kidding—to take a bite out of each offending morsel right there on the spot, to prove that the stuff wouldn't blow his molars to Kingdom Come (like, if it did, they wanted to see him burst like a flaming pinata right there in the check-in line). He courageously refused, and they miraculously let him board without further incident. The new plane finally left at 10:30 a.m., two-and-a-half hours late, that is, if you disregard the twenty-or-so hours that they were already late.

The Moselers finally got to Milwaukee and had ten minutes to spend with their family.

Via InstaPundit.Com, John-Erik's Airborne Adventure

So let me get this straight—Bush signs an emergency bill giving the airline industry millions of dollars to keep them solvent in the wake of September 11^th and service actually gets worse?

I've even heard they no longer serve food on flights anymore. Not that the food was anything to write home about, nor very satisfying as a meal, but what's the excuse? Afraid of a terrorist using a spork to take over the plane?

Oops, I think I should shut up now.

Programming contest

I see that Google is having a programming contest to see who can program a neat (and scalable) feature into their search engine. The introductory download is a bit steep at 54M, but hey, it might be something interesting to look into.

Facility in the Middle of Nowhere

When we moved here, we asked Lou what our address was. He said it was simple: “Mr. And Mrs. Planetmort, Facility in the Middle of Nowhere, CA 91023.” In fact, since we are our own zip code, you could actually address mail to me “Planetmort, 91023,” and I'd get it. (I know; I've tried it.)

Middle of Nowhere, 91023

It does seem to exist, according to MapQuest, and it's near or on, Mount Wilson in California.

What a cool name for a place to live. Heck, it sounds like a cool place to live, where you can basically make up any form of address. Hmmm, I wonder if a postcard were addressed to “Sean Conner, 33066-2408,” would it get to me?

Probably not.

But I think I have a name for our new place: Facility in the Middle of Nowhere. Has a nice ring to it.

Now, about that link …

Now, about that link to MapQuest …

You may not realize it, but that thing is four hundred and seven characters long. Four hundred and seven! A bit silly if you ask me …

Be home, get home

It's funny the things that we worry about.

Most of my friends would have anxiety attacks over the threat of losing their job. Me? Not really. Been there, done that, still have the corporate golf shirts. Hey, I even lost my car and I didn't break a sweat.

But here it is, almost two years to the day I wrote this:

I've already lost a car and my job. What's next? My home? I'm not worried at all. Even if I do loose my home, it'll be less stuff I have to worry about. It's not like I'm actually going to loose my home. I'm not. It's just that over the years, I've learned not to worry about things. I have my health. I have my family. I have my friends. All else is icing.

So it's quite ironic to have found myself having a nervous breakdown over the impending move. It was quite bad. Very bad. Break down into uncontrollable sobbing bad. Fortunately, Spring was there to comfort me and help me through this anxiety attack.

I still can't quite pin down why I feel this way. As I wrote to my friend Hoade: “Yes, I've studied Buddhist thought and that I should let go of this place but it's proving harder than I thought and it's not entirely because I'm too sentimental; I'm too sentimental being completely overwhelmed in a situation that is fast turning into what looks like a money sink. So there you go.” The sentimental bit—I've lived here since August of 1988 (except for a period of time between August 1992 and October 1993 when I lived in Boca Raton, then moved back) and the place was once owned by my Mom, and I inherited this place when she died in early 1994. To give something up she worked for so hard for is not an easy thing for me.

The money sink bit has to do with a lot of repairs that have to be made. Individually they all quite small but it's just the number of them that is overwhelming. At least to me. Then there's the time it takes to get this place fixed enough to rent or sell (I'm leaning towards renting), during which time we have to pay for two places.

Spring did assure me that there are always options and that things will work out. Heh. A lesson I forgot somewhere in the past two years.

Thursday, February 07, 2002

Edgework

You can skip .NET or XML-RPC or any of the other alphabet soup technologies being touted as the next best thing on the web—the real innovative stuff is at the edge. Here, for instance, or try Shredder 1.0, a site that shreds other web pages to form art, or linguasso (my personal favorite), which creates random works of art out of text.

And then there is the work jwz has done, like the WebCollage, with its everchanging image of links.

All else is icing

I read in Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn that the average American buys a new house every eight years. Eight years. My paternal grandparents have lived in their house for … oh … fourty years or so. I have two aunts that have lived in their homes for over twenty years. I've lived here in Condo Conner for close to 14 years (well, a bit less since I spent a year and a half in Boca but my Mom lived here at the time so it's been in the family).

To think that had Mom gotten a fifteen year mortgage, it would have been paid off in a year, and my living expenses (sans utilities) would have fallen to $200/month!

But as I look around, except for Kelly (who still lives in the house he grew up in, but is moving to his new home once it's finished Real Soon Now, oddly enough), I don't have a single friend that has lived in any one place for 14 years, much less eight years (since I inherited the place from Mom) in any one place.

Then I do the math, and I realized that I have moved, on average, once every three years. Now, by age five I was averaging once per year, and by age ten, it was almost averaging once every two years. My family moved a lot when I was younger.

It wasn't until I started visiting my paternal grandparents every summer did I get a feeling for a permanent home—some place that would always be there, no matter where we (my immediate family) lived. It was home away from home (and that probably did more to turn me off traveling than anything since September 11^th since I associate visiting friends and family than I do places, but that's another story). It was stability in an ever changing world (and believe me, moving to South Florida showed me just how changing the world could be). It's a rock from which the universe revolves around. And now, Condo Conner has become that rock (since my paternal grandparents house is no longer in the family) and now I have to find a new rock from which my universe will revolve around. A new point of stability.

Yes. I'm moving. As I have said, I have my health. I have my family. I have my friends. All else is icing.

Secret code in Bible tells the future!

In packing, I found a copy of the Weekly World News with a headline (in what seems to be a 100pt font) screaming: SECRET CODE IN HOLY BIBLE TELLS THE FUTURE!

Lucky for us, this is from July 1^st, 1997! The article says that a secret code has predicted the stock market crash of 1929, the Vietnam War, the AIDS epidemic and the first moon landing and then goes on with predictions for the future.

Shall we see how accurate they were?

Early 1998—A world leader will go insane and release a dealy nerve gas on his own people—killing more than 30 million people and nearly wiping out the entire country.

Late 1998—A sudden and complete breakdown of the ozone layer will allow too much sunlight to pass through our atmosphere and cause millions worldwide to go blind.

1999—A comet will pass so close to Earth that temperatures will hit 140 degrees in some countries. Millions will die. The even will cause panic among millions more who will think the world is about to end.

1999—Somewhere in America or Europe, a strange storm will bring a torrent of healing rain. Any ill or injured person who is touched by the drops will be cured. Even cancer patients will get well. After three days and nights, the rain will stop as suddenly as it started.

2007—All the countries of the world…

Um … eight year skip there. And nothing at all about events in the past year or so, which are some pretty significant events. Oh wait a second, that's right, these were predictions of another time line and not of this one.

Okay, I feel better now.

Friday, February 08, 2002

A little over a day

On a lark, I decided to do a search on “Facility in the Middle of Nowhere” to see what else goes by that name. Imagine my surprise at being the number one link out of 46,700 pages. Funnier still, the page I linked to isn't even in the top 200 results.

I find that amazing. A domain that's been around a year longer than mine and yet I'm the one being spider. Fancy that.

Saturday, February 09, 2002

One hundred books on the shelf, one hundred books …

It's moving day.

See you later …

THERE IS NO DOG!

I answered the knock at the door expecting Kurt, who said he'd come over and help with the move (and a large truck). Instead, there was a postal carrier with a going away present from the Condo Commandos: yet another certified letter.

My expectations were reference to the unauthorized occupants living here, but no! Instead, the Vice President is insisting that we have a dog here and that if we don't get rid of it immediately, I'll be responsible for enriching the coffers of their lawyers.

EXCUSE ME?

I have to wonder who the Vice President thinks they saw walking a dog. The letter is (again) addressed to my Mom, who is no longer living. And as far as I know, neither me, nor Rob nor Spring own or have walked a dog recently.

Or it could be another manifestation of the passive-aggressive nature of the Condo Commandos in their seemingly ongoing campaign of harassement, if indeed that is what is going on.

Highlights of a moving experience

The move went fairly smooth. We didn't get everything out of Condo Conner (for instance, the Computer Room is still set up and functioning) but we got most of the furniture (two pieces didn't make it—a shelf unit and a large dresser that were in Rob's room) and everything left can be transported using the current vehicles we have.

Highlights of the move: the ceiling fan on the porch of Condo Conner being hit by Shane's head and almost killing Rob. Rob caught the fan and was holding it up until someone (me) got a chair and disconnected it from the electrical system. One more thing to fix up here.

Shane duck-walking the Comfy Chair (which he put on his back) into the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere.

“Did you put all those IBM manuals in here? This box is almost impossible to move!”

“Paul just picked it up and carried it out here.”

“I'm not here to think; I'm just hired muscle.”

Maneuvering the bookshelf out the Computer Room. To get it out, it needed to be on its side, only it was too tall to simply tip over on its side. So it ended up being tipped nearly on its back, then twisted to be on its side.

Fortunately, a passing time traveller opened up a doorway into a convenient wall that gave us the needed space to finish out the odd twists we needed to get the shelf out of the door.

I'm moving a matress from the master bedroom to the other bedroom and decide to use the balcony since it's a straight shot between the two rooms instead of apptempting to navigate the hallway. I start to move when the matress hits the screen. I stop. Rob, on the other side, thinks I'm having trouble and walks towards me, only to smack into the screen door himself.

Moving said bookshelf to the second floor of the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere. This time we couldn't count on a time traveller opening up a doorway on the landing in the stairs, so we found it easier to lift the unit straight up to the balcony on the second floor, and heave it over the railing and into the room.

Flipping some other, smaller bookshelves and mattresses up over the second story balcony railing and into the respective rooms.

Conversations with Kurt while riding in his truck between places. It was unnerving to learn just how easy it could be to introduce biological agents into the water supply.

Spring and I concerned that George (who is in South Florida visiting friends and family) would show up at Condo Conner and find no one there (not even the dog).

More packing, and unpacking for us for the next week or so.

Sigh.

Thanks

I would like to thank Gus, JeffC, Kim, Kurt, Lorie, Paul, Russ, Sarah and Shane for helping us with the move. If I left anyone out, please accept my apologies, write me so I can add you to this list.

Sunday, February 10, 2002

“I want to own nothing, but control everything.”

I'm back at Condo Conner, updating the journal here (since we don't have connectivity at the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere yet) and I read the latest certified letter to Spring (since she hasn't actually had a chance to see it yet). She then mentioned that in each letter, it refered to an “apartment” and not a “condominium.”

I went back and checked, and while it wasn't all three letters, it was listed as an apartment on the two letters about the non-existant dog we have here.

I'm beginning to see what might be happening here.

Last year a very vocal minority of owners here tried to get the Board to pass a regulation outlawing the renting of properties. There was a return volley by the opposition and the resulting vote reaffirmed that the owners could still rent their properties.

We (Spring, Rob and I) think that there may be a new board in place, due to the increase in Condo Commando activity.

I'm beginning to suspect that the Vice President of the Board is a member of the anti-renting faction and for units that are suspected as being rented are under more scrutiny than units who's owners live in them. The result: slowly drive out renters and owners who rent.

Or that this is, in fact, a clear sign that while we (in the collective, condo-owners-all-over sense) may think we own property (or more acurately, a volume of space) what with the mortgages and various association fees, we are in fact, nothing more than glorified renters who paid for the priviledge of living here (in fact, I'm beginning to think that the whole concept of private ownership is outmoded, since the insanely rich don't even own stuff—they either lease it, or “own” it through trusts or foundations that they in fact control. Heck, in some states when you buy property, unless you get the “mineral rights” (for an appreciable larger amount of money) you only own the “surface” of the land—and that's if you can actually buy mineral rights).

By the way, the title to this entry is a quote from John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

Monday, February 11, 2002

Can you apply RICO laws to associations?

On the way back to the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere, Spring and I stop off at the local Wal★Mart Superstore to pick up a shower curtain for the master bath (the master bath in Condo Conner is a shower stall). We enter the store and run into Mark, Gerald and a couple Gerald knew.

Turns out Gerald's friend is moving out of her condo because of the association there and if anything, makes our condo association look like it has a laissez-faire attitude.

I think she lives in one of those high-rise condo buildings since otherwise some of this doesn't make sense (not that it makes sense to begin with). One of the rules: you can't bring anything into the building past 4:30 pm. Tools, groceries, anything you don't normally carry on you is verboten. She got into trouble trying to bring home a toolbox someone borrowed. It was past 4:30 (something like 4:35) and nope. Couldn't bring the toolbox inside the building. Leave it outside, in the car, whatever. It's not going in the building.

She took it in anyway and got fined $250.00 for the priviledge of keeping her toolbox. $150 fine for bringing in items past 4:30 pm. Another $100 for making a public spectacle.

She she's moving.

To move, she has to pay $250.00 plus $25/hour to move out. That's not the price of the movers; that's the price she has to pay to the association to move. You know, moving is so unsightly, what with all the furniture and boxes and stuff. But for her money, she gets someone to monitor the move and make sure nothing goes amiss (and believe me, if something does, I'm sure they'll bill her plenty for it).

To me, that sounds like racketeering and should be prosecuted under the RICO laws. But these type of things take money, and the association has more money than any one person under the association, since any costs will be past on to the association members. Sigh.

But I find it incredible that anyone would live under such idiocy. Paying money to move out? Oh, and it's the same cost to move in too (although when she moved in, it only cost $100.00 flat rate). Sad to say, but it is in her best interest not to mention that fee until after she sells the unit. I don't know of anyone that would voluntarily pay such a fee.

Extortion, I tell you! Extortion!

For the N^th time, THERE IS NO DOG!

I call the head Condo Commando about the non-existant dog that they think we have and like last time I called him, he again, was out of the office.

If I do get served, you can bet I'm going to raise holy Hell. This is harassement, pure and simple.

Themable websites

I found this to be quite cool—a website where you can select between themes. It's the same page being sent down, except the style sheets are different depending upon what you select. In theory, I can write my own style sheet for this site and have it displayed like I want it, but support would have to be in the browser to let the user override the stylesheets a site uses.

Wednesday, February 13, 2002

Here, we do permalinks right.

Dave Winer is critisizing Cam about not having “permalinks.” First off, what right does Dave Winer have saying how Cam should or shouldn't run his website? Second, about those “permalinks” you have Dave … what purpose does a 33 character anchor have in making a permanent link? The permanent link I'm referencing here is:

http://scriptingnews.userland.com/backissues/2002/02/12#le4674e474d473132a28becd906a93d74

Meanwhile, here at The Boston Diaries, the permament link for this entry is:

http://boston.conman.org/2002/2/13.1

With the added bonus of not shoving you to some random spot in a much longer page. If you're going to bother doing “permalinks” at least make them short and intelligable.

He just doesn't get it

In addition to Dave Winer complaining about permalinks on CamWorld, Dave also complains about the design of CamWorld. This is funny, given that Dave's software still uses HTML tables for rendering. From reading, it seems that it's quite difficult to design your own templates for his software, in case you want to use something other than HTML tables (like, oh, CSS) and Dave just doesn't get why anyone would want to use anything other than tables for layout, which is funny because he's been pushing for this really funky way to do RPC when the old ways (oh, like CGI) work just as well (*cough* *cough*).

I guess he can't see the trees for the forest in the way.

Thursday, February 14, 2002

Oh, is it that holiday again?

Happy Valentine's Day ... Straight from the Heart!

Sorry for the inconvenience …

I finally got the head Condo Commando on the phone today, about our non-existant dog.

“Oh yea,” he said. “I was about to call you about that.” Uh huh … I thought. No, really. I believe you. “It turns out the Vice President of the Association made a mistake and had the wrong information. So don't worry about it.”

That's it? It was all a mistake? “Uh, okay,” I said, in shock. I got off the phone.

We moved, because of a mistake?

I am without speech …

Connectivity

Meanwhile, back at the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere, the Cable Company came out to install the cable modem (and cable TV while they were at it). Since our current firewall was still at Condo Conner, the cable modem was attached to Rob's computer.

Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but this is a cable modem and they usually lock onto the MAC address of the network card they hook up to. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

But for now, we have connectivity at the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere.

Oh, and cable TV. With about five zillion channels, including TechTV, which Spring is thrilled over.

Friday, February 15, 2002

O'dark-thirty

It's o'dark-thirty. I'm sitting outside in the court yard of the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere, sipping an ice cold Coca-Cola and typing away on my laptop.

I think I can get used to this.

It'll be even better once Rob starts playing around with wireless access here. Of course we'll be running IP-SEC, given the recent advances in mapping wireless networks.

“I've got those cable MAC blues … ”

I finally got the firewall from Condo Conner moved to the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere, and just as I had feared, our cable connection wasn't passing traffic to it since the network card in the firewall had a different MAC address.

I know that it is possible to change the MAC address on a NIC but not having done it before I had to do some research. I found out that under Unix, it's easily done with one command:

ifconfig interface hw ether MAC address

Spring and I had to leave to meet some friends, but I gave the information to Rob for him to play around with it. The idea was to change the MAC address on the firewall interface to match the NIC in Rob's machine, and then change the MAC address on Rob's machine, or swap out the NIC.

Upon returning home, Rob had some success with it. He was able to set the MAC address on the firewall to match his computer and get traffic through, but with a 60% packet loss. Looking into the problem it turned out to be that the cable modem was set for 100Base-T while the NIC in the firewall is a 10Base-T interface. The fix for that was to power cycle the cable modem and allow it to sync at 10Mbs instead of 100Mbs.

But Rob didn't want to play around with changing MAC addresses—he wanted to get the cable modem to use the firewall's MAC address. He had attempted to call the cable provider but the technician he got did not understand what Rob wanted. We'll be using his box for the gateway for the time being.

Saturday, February 16, 2002

Technical spying is more like it

Rob calls Tech Support in an attempt to solve our problem. He gets nowhere fast and stays nowhere for quite some time. It seems that the tech support rep he talked to had no idea what he was asking for. No resolution.

My friend Gerald, who has four years experience with cable modems from our provider, informed us that the best way to get in contact with Tech Support for our problem is with some software you download and run to chat online with them.

Of course it's Windows only.

And about a 20MB download.

For a proprietary IRC program most likely.

So I download the chat client and attempt to install it. It grinds away installing then attempts to run and errors out.

Nice, I thought. I then noticed that it started a background process that looks to be a webserver. Under Windows 98. This is not looking good.

I then relaunch the application. This time it seems to be working and I click on the “Connect with Tech Support” button. The system then grinds away for a bit. Then I'm presented with a window with all this information about my system—memory, disk size, what's running, etc. and the program is asking me if I want to send this information in to our provider.

Ah, no thank you!

Only the two choices I had were “Okay” (which would send the information) and “Cancel” (no! I want to connect! I don't want you sending this information!”). With no other option, I press “Cancel.” I'm also suspecting this software wouldn't run through our firewall, taking a look at the network ports its listening on.

I uninstall the crap. Still no resolution.

Sunday, February 17, 2002

The Plug-in Society

Spring and I were talking about moving. Okay, so we are still in the throes of a move so it's not a conversation about moving from were we just moved. No, we were talking about moving in general and why it seems that so many people we know just up and move to a new location, usually far away from where they currently are.

Me, I'm having trouble moving less than five miles away, and here I have friends that have moved cross country, some more than once! Then there's the paternal side of my family—I have three aunts (Dad's sisters) that all live within two miles of the home they grew up in, and the youngest sister lived in the same house with her husband and two kids for fifteen years, so staying in one place seems to run in the family as it were.

Spring seems to think that most people (of our age, maybe a bit older) are of a “plug-in society,” which is a concept from John Brunner's book The Shockwave Rider (which incidently, is considered the first book in the cyberpunk genre of Science Fiction). Our culture is so homogenized that one can pick up and move from Seattle, Washington to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and not feel out of place. Even though Seattle and Ft. Lauderdale are over three thousand miles apart, they are very similar—similar stores, similar restaurants, similar weather.

Okay, so we don't have a billionaire software mogul living here in Lower Sheol, but we do have a billionaire garbage mogul with a taste in baseball teams and video store outlets in the form of Wayne Huizinga.

Okay, so maybe there is no difference there either.

It might very well be that since there is no difference between Seattle or Ft. Lauderdale or Los Angeles or Boston then does it really matter where one lives? Or perhaps it could be the perception that life would be better in New York or South Bend or Houston so why not give it a try since the three or four years we've been here has shown this city to be just another homogenized suburban sprawl or rural backwater town or faceless urban monster of a city. Or perhaps given the relative ease with which we can move gives rise to the “plug-in society.”

Or all the above.

Connectivity II

Since Rob called last time, this time it was my turn to listen to light jazz over the phone.

I call. I'm informed that for quality assurance this call might be monitored. I'm also informed that I'll be listening to the light jazz for twenty minutes while Technical Support busily ignores my call. So I wait.

Maybe fifteen minutes later I get Tech Rep #1. After getting the appropriate contact information Tech Rep #1 finally asks what the problem is.

“Yes, I just bought a new network card for my computer,” I said. “I think you setup is storing the MAC address of the old network card so I need for you to remove it and let me renew the DHCP lease with the new network card.”

“Okay, could you please repeat that again?”

Fifteen minutes and a dozen repeats of what I want done later, he gives me a case number and informs me that I'll be passed up the Tech Food Chain to Tech Rep #2. A few minutes of light jazz later, Tech Rep #2 picks up the phone. “What is your case number?”

I give Tech Rep #2 the case number and repeat the request. Twice. Then Tech Rep #2 has me rattle off the old MAC address. At this point, I'm pretending to be Rob, since his name is on the account, and I'm yelling at Rob to rattle off MAC addresses since the computers in question are in his room, and the phone is in my room. If Tech Rep #2 clued in to what was happening, Tech Rep #2 didn't say anything, which is a Good Thing. Then I have to rattle off the new MAC address. Reset the cable modem, grab a new IP address using DHCP and we're good to go.

Unfortunately, I think this means I'll be making the tech support calls from now on.

Monday, February 18, 2002

Persnicketty cameras

Burnett, 54, now has four of these plastic beauties—and he doubtless will buy more of them. Depending on modifications, made by seemingly obsessed Holgaholics offering them on the Internet, these cameras can go for as much as—you ready for this?—$30.95. (The regular price for a pristine, virginal, light-leaking Holga, is more like fifteen bucks.)

Consider that, when the average gun of your average photojournalist—say a Nikon D1—runs close to five grand, a plastic toy that I once mistook for a squirt gun can hold its own against it.

Via Squirrel Bait, Dr. Burnett's Magic Box

For a leaky, cheap knock off Chinese camera with a plastic lens and a fixed shutter rate, the pictures running with the above article are wonderful. Makes me almost wish I had one of these cameras. Then again, I do have a rather persnicketty digital camera that is probably just as difficult to use as the Holga.

Tuesday, February 19, 2002

She's a psychic! She should have seen this comming!

Via my dog wants to be on the radio, comes news that Miss Cleo of the late night psychic hotline infomercials fame, is being served as Broward County (where I ~~live~~ used to live) is going after her and the company she represents for fraud.

Nooooooooooo! Not Miss Cleo! Not the icon of cheesy late night psychic hotline informercials! First Dion Warrick fades from the scene. Then Kenny Kingston disappears! Now Miss Cleo? What will this do for the cheesy late night psychic hotline informercial scene? And does this mean we'll only get to date her in jail?

Oh the humanity!

Make money replying to email?

Last time I looked into making money with my website, the hot idea was text ads; small, unobtrusive advertising using text only. Nice idea, but I haven't heard much since November.

Now, via InstaPundit.com, comes An Entirely Serious Proposal Regarding Blogging, Payment, and E-Mail whereby a person running a weblog makes money by responding to email!

Nice, if you get tons of email. While I've received some email related to entries here (thanks! Sorry I haven't responded), I haven't been innundated with so many entries as to drown me. I don't think I've had enough to drown a hampster.

Ah well …

Everything's fine. Nothing to see. Move along.

The world—including even the previously sanguine Japanese—is now catching on to the fact that Japan's 12-year slump has deteriorated into a full-blown crisis, threatening a wild global ride. Falloffs in various indicators in the world's second-largest economy resemble the plunge of such countries as the U.S. into the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Via InstaPundit.Com, The Panic Spreads

If it's one thing that just plain defies common sense, it's economics. I consider inflation bad, as I can buy less stuff with my money. Yet economists like inflation. It's good for you, unless it's hyperinflation—then it's bad. But regular old inflation, that's good. I don't see the problem with deflation, as the money I have saved is now worth more, but to economists? Bad! Not good! Evil!

But I'm looking at it as a guy that doesn't buy stuff. Well, non-essential stuff anyway. The rich? They don't save money. Nope. They make money by making it move through the economy. They buy big stuff like real estate and then sell it back after inflation has driven up the price of stuff. When most of your liquid assets are not in a monetary liquid form then of course deflation is bad—your stuff is now worth less. And because the rich don't save money like we mere mortals do, deflation hits the rich rather harder than it does us. [actually, the super rich don't even buy stuff outright, they hand the money over to a foundation or trust they control (and take a nice write off on their personal taxes—heck, they may even make negative amounts of money that way and have the government owe them!) which then mortgages or leases the stuff the super rich desire, so the foundation or trust (which may or may not pay taxes—I'm not entirely sure of the law in this case) can then write it off as operating expenses. Any excess money is then invested and the rate of return on such actually covers the operating expenses generating a profit, which is usually handed back to the super rich as income (more operating expenses of course) or squirreled away in some offshore bank account hiding it from Uncle Sam. The money is always moving, never accumulating and most of it probably isn't in any monetary liquid form, which is why deflation is usually considered a Bad Thing.]

So now Japan is facing an economic crisis and economists here are all nervous because if Japan collapses economincally, it could affect us here. Economists are all worked up because Japan has a near zero interest rate and people over there are still saving! How dare them! They should be spending spending spending! Build up that debt! Grease those economic wheels!

Let's face it—no one really understands how the economy works anyway, and most of it appears to work off perception anyway so perhaps we should force all economists to say the economy is good no worry here and maybe once for a change get the rich folks to actually work for a living.

Just a thought.

Wednesday, February 20, 2002

All because I unplugged a network cable from a running Windows box.

I had a few entries on the laptop computer that I wanted to transfer. Not having an extra network cable I decided to use the one in my Windows box.

That was my mistake!

I unplugged the network cable while the machine was still running. Now, I've done this before and never had a problem. But the major difference between here and now over there and before is that I was unplugging Unix workstations and not a Windows workstation.

I didn't realize I had a big problem until after I plugged the network cable back into the Windows box. I had a small problem in that I couldn't get the laptop onto the network, but that I attributed to a bad PCMCIA adaptor cable. That was bad enough.

The five hours of getting the Windows box working was horrible.

At first, the Windows box (named KILLJOY) wasn't responding to the network. Okay, I thought, Windows can't deal with the network suddenly disappearing on it. Reboot time. Only it wouldn't shut down. It wouldn't even respond to the Vulcan nerve pinch. Sigh. Power off. Reboot.

“RAM Error! NMI happened on block F000. Press F1 to ignore NMI F2 to reboot,” said the computer. Well, as much as a computer can say by printing stuff to the screen.

I said some pretty nasty things towards the computer and Bill Gates' lineage. Power down and reboot. Same error. Power down, open case, reseat everything, swap the two memory sims. Close case. Power up. Same error. More swearing at Bill Gates. Talk things over with Rob. Take out network card. No error. Still more swearing. I had fried the network card.

In my sixteens years of poking about computers I've never once fried anything. I've plugged in serial cables, monitor cables, keyboard cables, printer cables, what have you, into live systems and never had a problem even though you are told, “Never plug a cable into a live system!” I've never had a modem fried and I live in a state that is the number one state for deaths by lightening strikes.

I go to pick up Spring from work and in talking with one of the NT admins over there, learned that when something like that happens, just reboot Windows a bunch of times and the problem will be fixed.

We get home and I get back to work on the Windows box. Put the network card back in, power up. No error. This is good. Only it doesn't see the network. This is bad. I check the settings. Okay, I see the network driver and the IP stack listed twice. I delete the spurious entries and of course Windows has to reboot.

Upon rebooting, it finds the network card and wants to install it. Only I can't find the drivers for it, nor can I find the Windows 98 CD-ROM. At this point, I'm thinking to myself, People actually want Windows XP where they don't get a CD-ROM in case something happens? I tell Windows to skip files it most likely already has installed. And again I find the double interfaces and IP stacks.

I think I went through the same thing twice more (and believe me, it gets worse) before clueing in. I delete all things network related and reboot. Scramble through an attempted install of the drivers (okay, this file is here … this file is here … this file … I don't know where that file is so we'll skip it … this file is here … ) and finally I have one network interface and one IP stack. Configure those, and reboot and finally I'm back on the air.

Only with no sound.

By this time Spring is slowing inching away from me, with a look of concern on her face as I'm swearing up and down, wishing vile and evil things to happen to William Henry Gates, III. I never swear unless I'm really upset at something.

Windows doesn't see the sound card. It doesn't show up on the system devices list. I then try to add hardware. Windows still doesn't see it. I tell it “You have a sound card! It's a such-n-such.” It dutifully tells me it wants the drivers disk.

Of course I can't find that either. Remember, we just moved so things are still a bit crazy around here. I do the same trick I did with the network card, point Windows to where the drivers have already been installed so it can copy over the files in place.

And of course I reboot.

And of course it still doesn't work.

But I have net access! I find current drivers for my sound card, and install those. And reboot. And it still doesn't work because Windows just can't seem to find the sound card.

Power down unplug all cables open case remove sound card plug in cables power up shut down unplug all cables insert sound card plug in cables power up Windows finally sees new hardware install drivers reboot and …

It works.

All because I unplugged a network cable from a running Windows box.

Thursday, February 21, 2002

Bad Hair Day

I drove to Jupiter today to meet a client. For all that happened to me, it would have been better had I driven to the planet Jupiter instead.

Leaving the house I was already in precarious mood—I had just told Spring something she suspected about her job but didn't want to hear and for that I was feeling a bit bummed out as I left to meet the client (who happens to be a friend of mine). I'm even more bummed out when I find that I have no map of Palm Beach County in the car. I have one of Dade County (Miami). I have one of Broward County. But my Palm Beach County map must still be at Condo Conner (since I obviously didn't return the map from the last time I scanned it). But the directions were simple enough that I thought I could do without.

Now Jupiter is an hours drive north but since it was still the early afternoon I expected the traffic along I-95 to be rather smooth sailing.

About five miles up, I-95 turned into a parking lot. As I was inching my way over to get off I was seriously thinking about heading back home and from there, calling my client and cancelling. Other than computers not working as they should, traffic is the one thing that angers me the fastest.

I managed to get off at the next available exit (Atlantic Avenue for those of you who might know the area) headed east. My thought was to take this to the next major north/south road and take that for a while, but as I drove east the neighborhoods turned more towards the economically challenged and I figured I'd be better taking a north/south road further west.

Having made my U-turn, going back under I-95 (and seeing more people pour onto the north bound parking lot) I finally found another north/south road to take (Congress Blvd for those that care). I drove along this for quite a few miles, trying to route around whatever damage was blocking up I-95.

By the time I eventually returned back to I-95 the traffic northbound was flowing freely again thankfully, but the detour meant I was already going to be about half an hour late. Thankfully, the client (my friend) would be understanding.

Now, I need to get off at a particular exit (Indiantown Road). It's not an area I'm familiar with so I have to pay close attention. As I'm driving, I see two signs: “Indiantown Road: 2” and “Jupiter: Next 2 exits.” About two miles down the road I see: “Exit 59A: Jupiter” and “Exit 59B: Okachobee.” Nothing at all about Indiantown Road.

Of course, once I pass those two exits, I get this rather bad feeling. Sure enough, about another mile down the road I see: “Welcome to Martin County!” Indiantown Road, and Jupiter, the town the road runs through, are in Palm Beach County, not Martin County.

Bad enough.

But at this part of I-95, the exits are significally far apart. “Next Exit: You did fill up the tank, right?” apart. I've had this feeling before and it's not pleasant. So now I find myself headed towards Ft. Pierce, another hour north. I should have turned around when I had the chance, I think to myself.

Ten miles later, I get a chance to make a U-turn at Hobe Sound, Florida. Ten miles later I'm getting off at the exit I should have.

So I'm an hour late to my meeting, but hey, no problem; these things happen. So I'm there to help my client (and friend) with his website.

Only my client forgot that I don't do Windows.

And he's running IIS under Windows 2000 and using Windows XP for a workstation.

And he doesn't have administrative rights to his router.

So there's not a whole lot I can do.

But we do have a nice lunch and discuss some of the things he's working on, and I do help him a bit with the layout of his network, and he does pay me for at least making the trip so it isn't a total loss.

So we're done by 5:00 pm.

5:00 pm.

And at a minimum, I have an hour's drive home.

Under good conditions.

Like 1:00 am.

Not 5:00 pm.

It looks like the best bet would be to take the Florida Turnpike home.

I look in my wallet: a lone dollar bill is sitting there.

My client gives me a handfull of change to cover the tolls. And fortunately, Indiantown Road has a exit on the Turnpike. And this far north, I-95 and the Turnpike are very close to each other.

I say goodbye to my client, and head west.

By the time I notice that I'm on the southbound exit to I-95 it's too late—I can't get over. So I find myself heading south on I-95 at 5:10 pm.

I have no map of Palm Beach County. Which means I don't know where the next exit to the Turnpike is. I figure I'm screwed anyway, so I'll take I-95 until it turns into a parking lot and take it from there.

I'm still north of West Palm Beach when I-95 turns into a parking lot. I take the next exit which is some random numbered street, and head west. My thought is to go as west as possible, maybe out to US-441 where the traffic shouldn't be that great, and take that south.

But as I cross a north/south road I'm only vaugly familiar with (Haverhill Road) and continue west, I realize that US-441 doesn't actually make it this far north—it turns west a few miles south of me somewhere. Another problem: the road turns rather rural and I'm the only person travelling west at this point. All the traffic I see is headed back east. Great, I thought. I'm going to end up at Lake Okeechobee at this rate. Lake Okeechobee being that large lake in the middle of Florida you see on maps. That large lake in the middle of Florida you see is also one hour west of where I'm at.

And it doesn't look like there's anyplace to turn around any time soon. So I keep going. Resigned to my fate of ending up at Lake Okeechobee.

Only I don't get to Lake Okeechobee. The road turns north (into Jog Road, which is odd, because it doesn't turn south, even though in Boca Raton this far west there is a Jog Road) and leads straight into a garbage processing plant.

I'm saved!

I turn around, head back east and at the first north/south road (Haverhill Road) I turn south.

And hit stop and go traffic.

This continues until I find a road that's far enough south that I know US-441 hits, and turn west again (Forest Hill Blvd), and finally hit US-441 about an hour and a half after I left Jupiter.

I'm headed through Green Acres (which is not the place I want to be) and marvelling at all the contruction on US-441 and on both sides. Commercial properties, planned communities, apartment blocks, road construction. And it's not just Green Acres—it's all along US-441 as I'm headed south back towards Boca Raton. It's rather disquieting actually. I remember, perhaps ten years ago, maybe as much as fifteen, that US-441 along here was very rural. Drive half an hour to an hour north of the Broward/Palm Beach County line and you're driving along farming country. Now it's all in the hands of developers.

By the time I got home (two hours after I left Jupiter) I was all bent out of shape. Way out of shape.

… What I saw was the majority of property owned not by humans but by corporations. Sure, I saw homes, but the majority were in “communities” like Coral Applebay or Banyan Creeks or Mons Olympus (“if you have to ask, you can't afford it”) where nominally you own the home but more likely than not you own a volume of space and property values uberalles prevails. You are paying for the priviledge of essentially renting.

Then there were the apartments I saw—endless runs of apartment buildings between Jupiter and Boca Raton. And Century Village, the paragon of Condo Commandos. What must it be like to buy a place there where most residents leave in hand carved pine boxes priced at $20,000?

I finally snapped I think. I got stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on I-95 at 1:30 in the afternoon! Last I heard (and this was probably a good five years ago now) there were 5,000 people moving to Florida either daily or weekly and today it felt as if all 5,000 hit South Florida. Insane.

I found myself driving on 441 south. I seem to remember years ago that 441 was a two lane road in rural South Florida by the time you hit Palm Beach County but today I found it under heavy construction from Forest Hill (just south of West Palm Beach) southward. Housing communitities, apartments and commercial properties where sprouting along both sides of the road under the hands of speculatively greedy developers no doubt.

I want nothing better than to get the hell out of here.

Only I don't know where to get the hell to….

I want the flying cars, damnit! I want the 20 hour work weeks. I want giant wheel shaped space stations! I want a Gernsbackian future! Is that asking too much? Especially in the light of barely drivable cars, 80 hour work weeks (“and you'll like it too, god damn you!”), small soda-can shaped space station (note! singular!) and a Gibsonian future looming over all of us.

From email I sent to Hoade.

I'm feeling better now …

“Next exit: you did fill up the tank, right?”

This must have happened in 1990, 1991 thereabouts. The huge interchange between I-75, I-595 and the Sawgrass Expressway was still under construction, or finished enough to be used for traffic. I was riding with Bill to a friend's house in central Broward County and now we were headed home at around one in the morning. I suggested we take I-595 west and pick up the Sawgrass Expressway north; Bill lived only a mile or so from a Sawgrass exit, so we would get home rather quickly.

Or so we thought.

Since the massive interchange was still being finished, the exit we needed wasn't well marked and we sailed right past it. We also sailed right past US-27 without notice. About fifteen minutes and we had yet to find the exit which should have been maybe five, ten minutes away. Bill was getting nervous too—thoughts of being eaten by grues or even canibalistic humanoid underground dwellers attacking us.

The next exit came up and we made a decision—to take whatever road that was north. We drive off the Sawgrass only to find a short segment of a north/south road that goes underneath the expressway. We're rather surprised by this, so we end up on the onramp where we see a sign: “Next exit: 87 miles.”

We stopped the car.

No matter that we're on the onramp of an expressway.

We stare at the sign. “Next exit: 87 miles.”

We look at each other.

Bill throws the car into reverse and we drive backwards down the onramp, go underneath the expressway, and get back on going east.

Profitability trumps legality

Twenty years ago, writing about antitrust crimes in the Michigan Law Review, Easterbrook and Fischel, then both professors at the University of Chicago, wrote that managers not only may, but should, violate the rules when it is profitable to do so. And it is clear that they believed that this rule should apply beyond just antitrust.

In a nutshell, this is the Chicago School view of corporate law that has taken hold over the past 20 years.

Via InstaPundit.Com, Rotten to the Core

So, this explains crap like Microsoft and Enron and the RIAA and the MPAA over the past twenty years.

That's the bad news.

The good news?

According to the article, there is a rise of law professors from outside the Chicago School who are questioning this, and saying that corporations should actually follow the law! The horror!

Friday, February 22, 2002

Help these days …

tower, my colocated server, wasn't responding. Sure, it responded to pings, but not to any higher level protocol. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. I didn't want to drive all the way down to Davie to reboot my server—not after yesterday and not at 4:00 in the morning.

So I call down there and tell them which server to reboot. Now, one of my friends (who is also a client) graciously allowed me to colocate my system with his since he's not using all his allocated bandwidth, and what bandwidth I use isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to what he uses (obligatory commercial plug: Live monarch butterflies!), so I stressed to the technician there to reboot the smaller server, the one sitting on top of the larger, rack mounted one.

Of course they reboot the wrong machine.

Sigh.

Another call down there. This time they hit the right server.

Now, my colocated server is a 486, so it's not the fastest thing in the world. And it does take quite a while for it to check the 17G drive when it doesn't shut down cleanly.

Half an hour later, it's back up and everything is fine.

Until the technician reboots my machine.

Fortunately, it's a clean shutdown, but why the second reboot? Especially when I didn't ask for it.

Sheesh!

Saturday, February 23, 2002

That old time relgion

I recently asked Barrett what he has learned about religious change in his decades of working on the encyclopedia. “The main thing we've discovered,” he said, “is that there is enormous religious change going on across the world, all the time. It's massive, it's complex, and it's continual. We have identified nine thousand and nine hundred distinct and separate religions in the world, increasing by two or three new religions every day. What this means is that new religious movements are not just a curiosity, which is what people in the older denominations usually think they are. They are a very serious subject.”

Via InstaPundit.Com, Oh, Gods!

A very long, but very interesting, article on religion in our modern world.

Me? I find it fascinating that people feel compelled to believe in something; there's a compulsion towards a spirituality that we humans seem to crave. Spring, for instance, found a comfort in the rituals and ceremonies of Judaism even though she cares not one whit for the politics of Israel. My best friend Hoade has become a Budhist. Even my Dad follows some Eastern thought (and plays golf religiously but that's another thing … I think) and he's about as cynical as you can get.

A Deadhead is gonna save the world

That's just it: We don't know. We've reached a point where the media are so owned by the large corporations and they live in this tight loop where practically all they can convey is what is already believed. I believe that mass media exists to confirm the hallucinations of the masses. If you want to get a story through that doesn't sync up with the dominant belief system, it's just not going to happen. So who the hell knows what else is going on out there?

Via Slashdot, Trouble ahead, trouble behind

An interview with Grateful Dead lyricist (and now String Cheese Incident lyricist) John Perry Barlow, where he echos some of my sentiments towards large corporations.

I also liked the following quote:

The Grateful Dead invented viral marketing without really meaning to…We gave our music away. At the time, we did it because we felt there was no way to stop Deadheads from taping it, and besides, we weren't in it for the money, because we weren't making any. But those tapes became the androgen of our success. They spread that virus all over the damn place, and by the time we died, we were the largest-grossing entertainment act in the business because of performances, but not exclusively.

Put that in your bong and smoke it, RIAA.

Tuesday, February 26, 2002

The town that Walt built

EPCOT will be an experimental city that would incorporate the best ideas of industry, government, and academia worldwide, a city that caters to the people as a service function. It will be a planned, controlled community, a showcase for American industry and research, schools, cultural and educational opportunities. In EPCOT there will be no slum areas because we won't let them develop. There will be no landowners and therefore no voting control. People will rent houses instead of buying them, and at modest rentals. There will be no retirees; everyone must be employed. One of the requirements is that people live in EPCOT must keep it alive.

Walt Disney's original plans for EPCOT

It's scary to me that Walt Disney's vision of living is actually comming true in this day and age. While his actual vision wasn't implemented, most of it has, in fact, come around to being true. And not just in Celebration, Florida. Now, I thought this condo association was tough—it's nothing compared to what Walt Disney wanted:

Because EPCOT, like Disneyland, was to be open to paying visitors, however, Disney intended to regulate the lives of the city's residents almost as thoroughly as the climate in the dome. Representative local government was ruled out. No residents were to be permanent. Pets would be forbidden, dress codes would be enforced, and residents would be expelled for unbecoming conduct ranging from drunkenness to unmarried cohabitation.

Disney is showing us the future all right: The future of government. They already have their own currency, their own cruise line and islands and they even have passports (although they're not quite like passports as the U. S. Government issues, they're still called passports).

I wonder if one can seek political asylum at Disney? Perhaps if you work for Six Flags you could swing it.

Reading through the site, I'm awed at the vision, yet repelled by the control Disney wanted over the people living there; this is worse than any condo association I've ever heard of. Everyone must be employed? By whom? I'm guessing Disney (or the city, but is there any difference?) What about artists? Free lancers? The idle rich?

That's one hellacious company town to me.

Clean streets? Low crime rate?

I think I'll take my chances on the outside.

Utopic distopia

I'm intrigued by the work of Paolo Soleri, a big proponent of arcology. An arcology is generally a huge building that can house an entire community of 20,000 or more and includes work and living space. A city in a box, if you will. I also have an interest in Buckminster Fuller, who has also done work in large scale construction for housing communities.

Yet the planned communities by Walt Disney scares me. And yet, is there any real difference between the work of all three? All three center their ideas around “planned communities,” where everything is executed to a script set down by these visionary geniuses—yet in my experience (and well documented by Stewart Brand in How Buildings Learn) the more detailed the planning, the less flexible the result will be. Frank Lloyd Wright's homes are static and unlivable (they leak water like you wouldn't believe). As art, they're genius. As homes—they're failures.

As are utopias. If they worked, there'd be more of them around.

My Dad lives in Palm Springs, California and each time I visit him, the town is exactly the same, only completely different. The physical structures remain static—that's because Palm Springs has legislated development in Palm Springs to such a degree that nothing can change physically. Yet stores come and go and come and go and come and go because Palm Springs can't grow! The city government wants to plan the look and feel of Palm Springs and by doing so, is strangling it of all possible life.

Then again, the unrestricted growth of South Florida is alarming me and that is anything but controlled (well, for the meaning of controlled as I'm using it right now).

There has to be some happy medium in here somewhere.

Wednesday, February 27, 2002

For Lorie

My friend Lorie is a fan of Blue's Clues so when I found the Official (Post-Blue's Clues) Steve Burns Web Site I knew I just had to send it to her.

He's not a half-bad musician either.

Friday, March 01, 2002

More about Star Wars than you'd care to read

I love the fact that Lucas still hasn't been crystal clear about the whole Darth Sidious/Palpatine issue. Nor has he made it evident how such a powerful Sith master could deal face-to-face with the greatest Jedi of the day without being detected. I think there are still twists to come here …

Via Robot Wisdom, Ain't It Cool News—The Jedi

There are spoilers in that article about the upcoming Star Wars film: Attack of the Clones so reader beware. And if the spoilers are true, then expect a movie as good as The Empire Strikes Back (which I consider to be the high point of the original trilogy).

Now, George Lucas is paying for all this, so he gets to call the shots, but that still hasn't stopped my friend Hoade and I from playing arm chair quarterbacks and spending days (much to the dismay of his Significant Other) going over what George should have done.

And guess what? You are now the latest to be subjected to these mad ramblings. No spoilers here—just a bunch of über fans telling George how it should have gone down.

Our divergent history starts with the last act of The Empire Strikes Back. whining boy Luke rushes off to save his friends and as he leaves, Yoda and the ghostly figure of Ben “Obi-Wan” Kenobi talk amongst themselves. Yoda makes mention of a mysterious “other one” that can restore the Jedi order should Luke fall to the Dark Side.

Next, cut to the climatic scene when Darth Vader cuts off Luke's hand and gives the revelation of 1980: “Luke, I am your father!” To which Luke really starts whining and in a fit of disbelief jumps off the platform and plummets to the bowels of Cloud City to the shock of the entire Star Wars fan base.

Whoa!

And we believed it! That's the amazing part.

Here's Darth Vader. The first time we see him in Star Wars he walks over, picks up one of the Rebel Scum™ and chokes him to death. Next scene, he's choking an officer on his own side (it's not made clear if it's a superior officer or one of equal rank, but still, that is not a nice thing to do, even if Lord Vader finds his lack of faith … disturbing). He kills Ben “Obi-Wan” Kenobi (although this is open to interpretation). You do not cross this guy. Throughout The Empire Strikes Back he's promoting Captains as fast as he's killing them for failure of duty. He has a direct line to the Emperor! You do not want to work for this guy either.

He also wears black. In our Western culture this, along with everything else he's done, makes him The Bad Guy. They lie. They cheat. They play underhanded.

So why would we believe him when he says “Luke, I am your father!”? What? You mean Ol' Ben lied? Hold on a second … the supposed Good Guy lies, and the supposed Bad Guy tells the truth?

It is with this that Hoade and I start our divergent histories with George “Forgive me Howard the Duck!” Lucas.

The first two movies stay the same. Well, almost. Strike the “Star Wars: A New Hope” Special Edition. It didn't happen. Nope. Not at all. Han Solo is a cynical bastard that will shoot first to save his own skin (come on, Greedo missing from point blank?). Okay, so the first two movies stay the same.

The Return of the Jedi is something completely different. And I'm not even sure if all of this can be done in a single film—it'll have to be some very tight plotting for sure.

Darth Vader is lying. Of course, he's The Bad Guy. But Luke is conflicted over this—is Darth Vader really his father? Knowledge and revenge seeking, he goes after Darth Vader and we get that wonderful fight scene (which, really, was the only good part of “Return of the Jedi”) with the Emperor edging him on. Luke (like it was prophesied in one of the films) does kill the Emperor and in doing so, falls to the Dark Side. Circle complete [S/X—Emperor laughing].

Meanwhile, this mysterious other mentioned towards the end of “The Empire Strikes Back?” Who better than Han “Give me a blaster over this Force mumbo-jumbo” Solo? Who would of thunk it? The cynic turns believer (even if it might take a bit of the Jedi Mind Trick™ to help him along) and puts an end to the rather short rule of Darth Vader and Kid in the last reel (and for pity's sake, there are no Ewoks).

Okay, so there the slight problem of Han being frozen and in the hands of Jabba the Hutt, but we can leave it to Lando and Chewbacca to get him back (no, I don't believe that Leia would be allowed to go on that mission—she's just too important for the Rebellion for that (although she did look quite nice in that slave outfit, but still, that's no excuse) and Luke is busy hunting down and falling to the Dark Side to help). Minor plot point but still, it has to be worked out.

Okay, maybe it's not as upbeat as it could have been, but Campbellian heros aren't perfect and they do die eventually so it would still fit the mold. And it makes for a more dramatic story without Ewoks.

Flying cars

I want the flying cars, damnit! I want the 20 hour work weeks. I want giant wheel shaped space stations! I want a Gernsbackian future! Is that asking too much? Especially in the light of barely drivable cars, 80 hour work weeks (“and you'll like it too, god damn you!”), small soda-can shaped space station (note! singular!) and a Gibsonian future looming over all of us.

From email I sent to Hoade

Well, I guess flying cars do currently exist (and the M400 is sweet! I want one). So I guess all that's left are the 20 hour work weeks and the giant wheel shaped space stations.

Fat Mouse is in the House

FATMOUSE TAKES UMBRAGE AT THE SIGHT OF YOUR SMALL TORSO AND WEAK FLACCID LIMBS. FATMOUSE IS NEVER FOOLED BY IMITATORS.

FATMOUSE IS COMING FOR YOU!

Postcards from

PostcardsFrom is a labor of love. It has to be—they gave up their jobs for it. It's a cool site—they make their own postcards from each state in the U.S. I think they could do well actually selling the postcards.

Saturday, March 02, 2002

“Get thee from our city … ”

Even though the Mayor of Inglis, Florida banned Satan from entering the town, I seriously have doubts as to the power the Mayor has over such supernatual beings. Sure, you might have the major ingresses covered by such proclamations (according to legend, vampires cannot enter one's home unless explicitely invited) but does that cover city limits in their entirety? What about areas not covered by roads?

And given that Satan supposedly lives below, shouldn't she have buried the proclamations? Okay, so maybe it's a metaphorical below so that might not work. But still, the whole notion is rather silly. It's the Mayor for crying out loud—here in the States, we have this bit in the Constitution separating Church and State.

Now, had the head of the local church done that …

Sunday, March 03, 2002

We don't need no education

So Martin [the father] threw himself into it the way he had thrown himself into glassblowing, silversmithing, puzzlemaking, and filmmaking, among various other pursuits. He fired the nanny and came up with a plan: They would live on $5,000 a year. They would travel by bus, support themselves with craft shows and the proceeds of the “Erik & Dad Puzzle Co.,” and attempt to feed themselves on a budget of $1 per meal per person (a goal Martin admits sheepishly now they did not always achieve). Martin would work as little as possible.
The father's educational theory went like this: Apart from one hour of home schooling a day, the child should pursue his own interests. They spent a few weeks at a commune in Tennessee, a year in Providence, six months in Chicago. During a three-year stint in Miami Beach, he sat Erik down with a neighbor to see if he was interested in learning Chinese; the language instruction went nowhere, but the neighbor had a computer.

Via Robot Wisdom, Road scholar finds home at MIT

Not only is Erik 20 years old and an assistant professor at MIT but his speciality is in computational origami (and the link there is an article about Erik solving the problem of why maps are so hard to fold) which isn't your everyday ordinary discipline.

I do notice though, that parents that have an interest in their childrens' education often produce intelligent children, reguardless of formal education (as this shows).

Monday, March 04, 2002

Progresso, Florida

I find old maps interesting. For instance, South Florida here used to be one entire county—Dade with some lovely sounding towns that are for the most part, no longer around. The upper portion of Dade (from 1895) there to the left shows such places as Hillsboro (now just a street in Northern Broward), Hypoluxo (now a street in Palm Beach County), Jewell (which no longer exists as a town or a street as far as I know) and Progresso (which became Wilton Manors).

I found these old maps at the Color Landform Atlas of the United States, which has more modern maps of the United States. I suppose the webmaster put these scans of an 1985 road atlas on the site, just because. I probably would have—they're very beautiful.

Office space

New space, new Computer Room. At Condo Conner, the Computer Room was a separate room in which I (and later Spring) stuffed all my (our) computers in. That was in 1994. Prior to that I had the home computers sharing my bedroom, and for now, it looks like the Computer Room at the Facility in the Middle of Nohwere is also the master bedroom as well.

Such is life.

The last work office I actually liked the most was my FAU office I had in the Math Department while I was a Computer Science undergrad working for a professor and graduate student from Complex Systems and Brain Sciences. Yes, quite the interdisciplinary work experience there and I had pretty much an entire office to myself (officially, I shared it with two graduate students who were almost never there). Black board, shelves of reference material, a fold out bed and a couple of computers all to myself. My only complaint, and it isn't much of one: no window, so it was easy to loose oneself in time.

I spent a good four years working out of that office, ostensibly part time (and at one tremendious rate for an undergrad) and loving nearly every minute of it. Ask me what I did though, and I couldn't tell you—heck, I didn't fully understand what I was working on there, just that it involved some heavy math and some light visualization work (one project took over a year to compute, and three days to transfer the images to video tape).

I don't think I will ever have an office quite like that again.

Droogish owl

Having just checked the Computer Science and Engineering Department of FAU for my previous entry and I see that they are still using that Clockwork Orange Owl mascot.

There must be a milk bar on campus somewhere …

Tuesday, March 05, 2002

For Sale: Nuclear Bombs and other Atomic Ordnance

I had wanted a picture of the U.S. $20 bill. I wanted to scan one (just for the picture of Andrew Jackson; why I wanted that will have to wait) but since neither Spring nor I had one, I decided to look for one on the Internet, so I figured the best place to start would be the U.S. Treasury.

Instead I come across the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service Public Sales Listing and imagine my surprise when I see a page selling Nuclear Ordnance Equipment. Just like that. Nuclear Ordnance Equipment. Nestled between Weapons and Accessories and Fire Control Equipment.

Um …

So I check three items marked under Nuclear Ordnance Equipment and fortunately it didn't seem like anything was available. Of course, now my IP address is associated with checking for the existance of Nuclear Ordnance Equipment so I guess I can expect a visit by some serious men in business suits and dark glasses …

That's not Andrew Jackson, that's Jeff Conaway

Here's why I wanted Andrew Jackson's picture from the U. S. $20 bill. When the bills were first introduced, besides thinking they don't look like real money, I felt that the image of Andrew Jackson looks like that of actor Jeff Conaway, known for playing Bobby Wheeler on Taxi and Zach Allan on Babylon 5.

When I bring this up, most people are like “Who?” and I'm going “Jeff Conaway … you know … the dude from Taxi,” and all the time I'm getting blank stares from people, or the scrunched up face of concentration as they try to remember this semi-familiar name from a TV show from 20 years ago.

But now I have proof! Photographic proof no less!

And for the record, Jeff Conaway has a Kevin Bacon number of two.

Wednesday, March 06, 2002

More on Text Ads

Looks like Kuro5hin is now doing text ads since their relationship with OSDN has ended and the response has been good. We'll see if text ads are the way to go, but until my readership goes waaaaay up there it's not cost effective for me to do this.

Thursday, March 07, 2002

A message to a spammer

Spam is pretty much a constant now but for some reason this particular piece of spam got on my nerves:

From
none@conman.org

Reply-To
none@conman.org

To
sean@conman.org

Subject
none

Sender
none@conman.org

Date
Thu, 7 Mar 2002 22:29:42 -0500

——you are recieving this message because you responded to a posted advertisement. if you are recieving this and did not respond to an advertisement please send an e-mail to m0neyhungry_19@yahoo.com to be REMOVED———
Dear Friend,
I am looking for 10 people that are willing to dedicate 5-15 hours a week. I will personally be there, every step of the way, to assist you on your journey, whether your goals include more free time, more money in your pocket, or just overall happiness, I would like to help you.

Blah blah blah. It goes on and I'm not going to waste space here sending out this person's message of wealth and happiness. So a little bit of searching, and I find Spam Laws, a site that has all the current anti-spam legislation currently enacted or being worked on. Quite a nice site and it allowed me to send the following back to the spammer:

To whom it may concern:
I did not wish to receive this information, nor have I responded to a posted advertisement from this address. I wish to advise you that you are fortunate in having sent this email from a facility located in Indiana, which has no current laws against unsolicited email, to a facility located in Florida, which has no current laws against unsolicited email that apply in this case. But a majority of the states have enacted laws against unsolicited email that make you liable for criminal prosecution, especially in reguards to forged headers and routing information:

Return-Path
<none>

Received
from yourwebsite.com (XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX[XXXXXXXXXXXXXX]) by conman.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id WAA03767 for <sean@conman.org>; Thu, 7 Mar 2002 22:29:43 -0500

From
none@conman.org

Message-Id
<200203080329.WAA03767@conman.org>

Reply-To
none@conman.org

To
sean@conman.org

Subject
none

Sender
none@conman.org

Date
Thu, 7 Mar 2002 22:29:42 -0500

You have currently forged the email from a user on this system (whether it is a real account or not is irrelevent—this is plainly a forged header) which, had I or you been in Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington or West Virginia you could have faced criminal charges. Furthermore, under California, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, West Virginia or Wisconsin you may face criminal charges for misleading or mislabeling the email on the subject line, as you clearly have done above.
On the other hand, if I can prove that your email message was routed through any network in Iowa you may be liable under Iowa law section 714E.1 subsection 5 but truth be told it may be difficult actually conduct such a case, but it is possible.
I do request that you remove the email address “sean@conman.org” from your list as I do not wish to receive any futher unsolicited email from you.
Thank you for your time and consideration of this matter.
Sean Conner

I can't wait to see the response to this.

Saturday, March 09, 2002

Snippit of conversation overhead while walking out of a supermarket

“ … man that is bad.”

“And they haven't even found the body yet after two days of looking.”

“Jeeze ‥ ”

Sunday, March 10, 2002

It ain't five stars unless it's open 24 hours

Fortunately, I awoke in time to catch my roommate Rob and friends Shane and Kim going to lunch (or dinner, depending upon your viewpoint). We ended up eating at the Boca-Glades Gourmet Diner, just up the street (well, two miles up the street) from the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere. It's easy enough to miss unless you look closely, nestled as it is just next to the Florida Turnpike exit on Glades Road and dispite the name, it isn't a diner (critieria #1: it's not open 24 hours. Bummer. Criteria #2: Rob won't eat at diners).

The inside is upscale, yet the prices are very reasonable and the food—well, it's very good. Everything (including the bread, the hummus dip, the desserts) is home made, and much to Rob's delight, they have a wonderful selection of beers and aren't afraid to serve them for breakfast (he checked—he gets off from work around 8:00 am) nor are they afraid of serving huge it in pint sized glasses either.

And the service was wonderful; we all pretty much fell in love with the waitress—cute, smart and funny. Can't beat that at all.

Down side, like I said—it's not open 24 hours. Sigh.

Tuesday, March 12, 2002

Feeping creaturism

I've spent the past week or so adding a new feature to The Boston Diaries and I'm finally rolling it out—email notification of updates!

A week for a simple feature might seem like overkill, but I did want to do this right and with as little breakage as possible. And it's not quite as straight forward as you may think either.

Design strategy number one: avoid complaints of spam as much as possible. As a result, I added a verification scheme. Upon first submitting an email address, the program displays a page saying the email address has been collected and at the same time, an email has been sent to the email address requesting verification. This is to keep a malicious person from submitting an email address to some unsuspecting person who then starts receiving emails about some oddball site being updated. So simply adding an email address to the end of a list is right out.

To this end, there are two lists maintained—one list of addresses that I am waiting a reply from, and the second one that actually gets sent the notifications of updates.

When the person subscribing replies, the reply email is sent to a program that gets the email address that doing the replying, and looks it up in the pending list, and if so, removes it from the pending list and adds the email to the notification list, and sends an email saying as much.

The program that processes new entries then goes sequentially through the notification list and sends out an email message.

Fairly straightforward, although there are some details I skimped out on (like checks to see if the address is already in one of the lists, unsubscribing, just small details) that's pretty much how it works. The time spent though, was making sure I got all the details (big and small) right. Oh, and making it such that Spring could use it for her journal as well.

Still waiting …

I've yet to hear back from the spammer, which isn't all that surprising; I doubt I'll ever hear from him. Bummer.

In other news, I've received several pieces of spam from what looks to be Microsoft, but is, in fact, yet another piece of viral software attempting to propagate itself across the internet via Microsoft Windows.

Sigh.

“Hunting of the Snark”

What made this hunt so hard? Puzzles like the 192-letter cryptogram, for one thing. As Jean notes, “A cipher of that length should be a snap to break. And this one wouldn't have been bad at all if I'd thought to mention that the hidden message was in Spanish. But I didn't. I also neglected to note that the pairs 'll', 'rr,' and 'ch' stood for single letters, as they do in the Spanish alphabet.” Chalk up some frustrated victims for this ruse, particularly the people on the Spanish House team, who were among the last to figure out the trick.

Via my dog wants to be on the radio, The Great Annual MIT Mystery Hunt

So there we were, Bill, Dave and I, driving along this lone stretch of road looking dilligently for the next clue and not finding it at all. We eventually went back to the previous point in the treasure hunt, and carefully traced the clue back to that same lone stretch of highway. This time we found the clue but were the last team to do so.

It turns out that we had solved the puzzle too quickly and the person handing out the clue didn't arrive in time.

I think we ended up coming in second or third place.

And I never was on a winning scavenger hunt team. Not that we didn't have fun while doing it.

A Gina Gershon Sock Puppet

Sasha McNeal, one of the show's writers and puppeteers, admits that it takes a twisted mind to dream up the idea of performing “Showgirls” with sock puppets, let alone pull it off. But once the idea had been broached, the group couldn't ignore its comedic potential. “I think that as actors we find it amusing because (the movie) is just so bad,” she says. “And you can get away with so much more with sock puppets. If it were just ourselves redoing 'Showgirls,' no one would care.”

Gotta see it to believe it

Showgirls. Sock puppets.

I'm sorry, I just can't wrap my brain around the concept.

Too bad it's only showing in Chicago.

Wednesday, March 13, 2002

An economic lesson on umemployment

Anyway, by some mysterious process, we've arrived at a recession level of unemployment that's lower than the expansion level of five years ago. Pretty neat stuff. Which only leaves us one question:
Where the hell's my job

Via InstaPundit.Com, Megan McArdle on unemployment

Rob and I were talking about unemployment the other day. I had remarked that economists (or business leaders, or both) had said that there is a minimum amount of unemployment that is needed to keep the economy working. At the time, we both theorized that it was the level required to keep those employed in line (the Cynical/Conspriatorial Theory).

The article above (mediumish length, but worth it) goes into detail about how this minimum level of unemployment to sustain our economy comes (or came) about. It's less a conspriacy and more a way companies find the maximum profit given the rules of the game.

Blog commentary

Several weeks ago someone asked if it would be possible for people to leave comments here, a feature that a log of online journals/weblogs have (such as Live Journal). I took it under consideration, and even wrote a long entry about it that I never got around to posting since it was long and rather dry.

In a nutshell, I talked about the problems I had in integrating it into the format I use here—not actual storage problems, but referencing problems. As I have it now, you can select arbitrary portions of my journal (c.f. The Electric King James Bible) I never thought of ways to exclude content from the range. And therein is the crux of the problem—I don't necessarily want to always print the comments for an entry, but it should be easy to view them and, as always, get ranges of comments.

I also have a bias—I hate threaded web discussion boards (the best example of what I dislike: Slashdot. I always read the comments in “flat mode”—all comments visible (and on Slashdot, at a fairly high rating level but that's Slashdot and I'm digressing). I think what I dislike about them is the ping-ponging you ahve to do going down and up the thread chain following comments (Scripting News' commentary system is particularly bad in that reguard). But like I said, that's a bias I have and I don't want to needlessly exclude people's preferences in reading habits if I can avoid it.

But just now, via Blogger (I occasionally get curious as to what the competion is doing), I came across BlgKomm, a commentary system that has a unique feature—“[c]omments appear within your blog, below the posts, with any popups.”

I try it out, and yes, it is rather interesting—the comments are initially hidden until you select a link, then they're flushed out for that post only. Now granted, that's a display issue and not a referening issue, but it still is something for me to think about.

And I still have to figure out the whole reference to comments thing.

Thursday, March 14, 2002

A lesson learned

I set the 12-pack of Coca-Cola on its side on the counter to open it and grab a can. I peeled open the outer flap. Then the inner flap. Then cans started rolling out of the cardboard box, bouncing off the recycle bin and onto the kitchen floor, banging and clanging, some cans threatening to burst.

Lesson learned.

Falling down stairs

After much discussion, Spring and I decided to move two of the smaller shelves back downstairs, freeing up more room in the master bedroom. Rob and I managed to move the units downstairs and I then had the daunting task of moving endless stacks of books downstairs (after spending the energy moving them up stairs in the first place).

Now, before moving the units, I removed what shelves I could, to make it lighter and as they lay on the bed, I had a thought: if I have to carry both books and shelves down the stairs, why not load up each shelf with books? They're paper backs, so it's not like they'll weigh it down an intollerable amount. I mean, the books where on the shelves to begin with.

So I loaded up a shelf with six stacks of paperbacks and carried it down the stairs, feeling much like the chef from Sesame Street who would have a handful of creme pies and start walking down a set of stairs. So there I was, “Six stacks of books,” I said in a loud booming voice as I carried them down the flight of stairs.

Six times I did that, and each time I felt like that chef. Only I managed not to trip and spill any books (or creme pies) on myself.

Saturday, March 16, 2002

A virtual film festival

Via Wil Weaton Dot Net, Spring found the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival and we spent an enjoyable few hours watching the various films and voting for them (and of course, we had to suck up to Wil Wheaton and vote his the highest). Of the ones we did see, the ones I liked the best were:

The Good Things The entry that Wil Wheaton stars in. A poingant tail of a toll booth worker trying to find meaning and direction in his life on the day his ex-girlfriend (and it's never made real clear who dumped whom) is getting married.

The Etiquette Man The ending is weak on this one (yea, right, like that would ever happen) but watching Steve Coulter's The Etiquette Man is just gosh darn swell. Right from a 50s educational film on dating.

Indefinitely A film just as good as The Good Things. I really got into the story of a videographer who falls in love with a bride to be. My only real complaint about this one is just as I'm getting into the whole story it. End. Stop. Fini.

Wait! What about the impending marriage? Does the videographer stop the wedding? Does the bride to be drop her jerk of a fiancé? I want more!

The Parlor Talk about your sureal films. A group of people sitting in a waiting room having the wildest conversations and nobody appears to be who they say they are (a old guy claiming to be a 13 year old girl named Beth?). Spring clues in on the setup before I do, but I did manage to guess the ending.

Tower of Babble This one is high concept—two billion monkeys at two billion typewriters writing the dialog to our lives. We have three completely different stories going on, each with the same sequences of dialog. It works, and yes, the three story lines to intersect at the very end.

Monday, March 18, 2002

The TV Detective/Police Show Theory

Spring and I are eating dinner at the Starlite Diner and the motif is a 50s/early 60s. On the wall next to us is a framed article about James Garner and the TV show Maverick. Seeing that reminded me of a theory I have.

“Did I ever tell you about my TV Detective/Police Show Theory?” I asked Spring.

“Umm … ” said Spring, face scrunching up. “I don't think so.”

“It goes like this: Any television detective or police show will always look like it was filmed in the 70s.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Of course you have your actual 70s detective/police shows like The Rockford Files or Baretta but even such shows as Magnum P.I. or Simon & Simon look like they were made in the 70s.”

“Those were the 80s, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “But to look at them now, it still screams 70s. Much like Hill Street Blues.”

Spring thought for a second. “What about Dragnet?” she asked.

“Um … ” She had me. I had to think fast on my feet. “Okay, make that the Color TV Detective/Police Show Theory.”

“Okay … ”

Tuesday, March 19, 2002

I knew this would pay off some day

Mark has been suggesting that I download and install Mozilla for Windows for some time now. I've never gotten around to doing it but tonight, I check Rob's LiveJournal and he mentions that the Mozilla just released Mozilla 0.9.9 and that it works flawlessly.

Okay, might as well try it.

I must say I'm impressed.

I'm even more impressed that they seem to actually use the <LINK> tags in the page. Oh my … I've been adding those tags to my pages for years (at least from '97 or '98) and now they might actually be useful.

So far, the only browser that I've seen use those tags has been Lynx, the infamous text based browser. Now it seems they've added support for the <LINK> tag in Mozilla.

But while that is nice, Lynx will use all the tags I've defined, while Mozilla seems to only use a subset. But it's a start.

Site Navigation

I just found out that Mozilla supports the <LINK> tag, but to actually enable it, you need to select “View/Show-Hide/Site Navigation Bar” from the main menu. Now maybe more sites will use the <LINK> tags.

Wednesday, March 20, 2002

Well, that was pleasant

My colocation half drops off the face of the earth. I can still ping it; I can traceroute to it, but any higher form of connection (TCP connections for example) just hang.

So the kernel is still running, not the userland stuff.

So I make plans on driving down to Ft. Lauderdale where the colocation facility I use is located. Now, last I heard, you are supposed to call down there to let them know you coming and since it's about midnight when tower (the machine in question) stopped responding, I can understand that. But Spring (who I have to pick up from work at 12:30 am) has a call phone; we can call as we drive down there.

Before I leave, Mark calls. He thinks it's a network problem at the facility. And he does have a point:

64 bytes from 66.33.1.143: icmp_seq=15 ttl=52 time=140.707 ms
64 bytes from 66.33.1.143: icmp_seq=16 ttl=52 time=155.107 ms
64 bytes from 66.33.1.143: icmp_seq=17 ttl=52 time=134.498 ms
64 bytes from 66.33.1.143: icmp_seq=18 ttl=52 time=141.993 ms
64 bytes from 66.33.1.143: icmp_seq=18 ttl=50 time=251.784 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 66.33.1.143: icmp_seq=18 ttl=48 time=362.700 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 66.33.1.143: icmp_seq=18 ttl=46 time=478.254 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 66.33.1.143: icmp_seq=18 ttl=44 time=584.002 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 66.33.1.143: icmp_seq=18 ttl=42 time=705.216 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 66.33.1.143: icmp_seq=18 ttl=40 time=816.821 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 66.33.1.143: icmp_seq=19 ttl=52 time=176.100 ms

And traceroutes also show some anomalies (note: Mark uses OpenBSD and its ping prints double ping packets. The one for Linux (which is what I use) doesn't. But traceroute under both show anomalies). So he does have a point. I call down there and with some minor hassle, get a trouble ticket submitted.

Now, here is where I digress a bit. One of my friends and clients colocates a server down there and since Mark and I do work for him (more in the past, still do stuff for him now) and since he doesn't use all his alloted bandwidth, he allowed us to place tower down there along with his. So it's really his account. Which is why I had a bit of a hassle getting a trouble ticket submitted (Server id? Server password? I have to submit a trouble ticket via the website? What?).

I go pick up Spring, and talk to Rob who works nights there about the problem and we both agreed it sounded more like a downed server than a network problem (although there are network problems). I'm not going through the problem I had last time and want to drive down there and reboot it myself. Spring didn't have a problem with that, although she didn't have her cell phone with her so we couldn't call ahead.

Oh well. We'll deal with getting in when we get there.

Half an hour later, I'm buzzing and knocking on the door. They're asking me questions from inside (which I can barely hear) and I'm shouting answers back to them (which they can barely hear). They finally open the door and let me in.

“You're supposed to fill out an On-Site Request Form on our webpage,” said the technician. “Then it'll be approved within two hours.”

“I wasn't aware of that,” I said. What I was thinking was, Two XXXXXXX hours? My server is down and I have to wait two XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX hours to be approved? What's up with that?

“But you're supposed to fill out an On-Site Request Form and be approved,” said the technician. More bantering between the two of us. “Okay, let me get you a form to fill out.” He goes off. Spring and I sit down and wait.

Where Spring works, colocation customers have 24 hour access to their boxes and they don't have to fill out “On-Site Request Forms.” When I worked for the ISP we had colocation customers with 24 hour access and no “On-Site Request Forms” to fill out.

I can see perhaps calling ahead to inform them you are on the way. I cannot see filling out a form and waiting two hours for approval, especially since we live over half an hour away (by car), even more so because the server is down and a two hour (minimum) outtage is bad.

The technician wanders back in, hands me the forms, and disappears again.

I fill out the forms. I'm not requesting adding or removing equipment (which can only be done between regular business hours by the way)—just checking out a server.

Then we wait.

Wait.

Hold on a sec—no. Wait.

Finally I am allowed back into the server room. Spring stays behind in the lobby, not wanting to further complicate things. The technician leads me through the maze of racks to my server and hooks up a monitor and keyboard (which are on a crash cart) to it. I then get to work.

Yup. Run-a-way process sucking up all memory and not even a Ctrl-Alt-Del will bring this Linux system down (I'm able to check memory usage with Shift-ScrollLock and processes with Ctrl-ScrollLock). Power cycle. I thought I could skip the rather expensive fsck of the 17G harddrive by booting into single user mode, but alas, I was wrong (I had wanted to remove any possibility of the offending program from running). I debate about waiting around for it to finish (about half an hour) but decide against that. I manage to reboot it, this time normally and leave.

Now, what I should have done is told one of the technicians there to let the system run because it takes about 30-40 minutes for it to check the disk. But there were no technicians around and I had my fill of the place for the night.

Spring and I leave. On the way home we stop and get a bite to eat. It's almost 4:00 am we're back home and tower still isn't back up. What the …

I check the trouble ticket—as per their policy, the machine wasn't responding to any of their monitoring software so of course they rebooted it. Aarhglghlghahhhhhhhhhhhalg! The time of the last comment was about 3:40 am so tower should be nearly finished rebooting. I starting pinging and as soon as I get a response I start logging in and removing the ofending program and check the system out.

Now, I had rebooted the machine twice. They ended up rebooting it four times.

Sigh.

My guess is that they're used to customers who don't manage their own servers and leave that stuff up to them. Not bad in and of itself but it certainly isn't what I expect and having to deal with their rules is a bit grating, but I really can't beat the price right now.

The Offending Program

So, what was the ofending program?

Glad you asked (whince).

It turned out to be mod_blog, the program that runs this very site.

A friend of mine (who for now wishes to remain anonymous) is interested in blogging and I said I would set him up with my system. So I create a site for him, copy over my existing template, modify the configuration for him, etc., etc. I then send in (via email) the first post to see if things work.

Well, that's where things didn't work.

The post itself was accepted and stored correctly.

Small digression: The Boston Diaries is primarily dynamic. You type in something like http://boston.conman.org/2002/3/4 and that page is generated on the fly. I change the template, the effect takes place immediately. However, the main page, the one you get by going to http://boston.conman.org/ is not dyamic—it's actually a static page recreated whenever a new entry is posted. It doesn't have to be, but I figure that since this page is probably going to be loaded most often I might as well cache a static copy to keep the system load down.

So, part of the process of accepting and storing an entry is the generation of the main page. Normally, it works fine. But not in this case.

Another small digression: the configuration file for mod_blog needs the starting date of the blog. There are cases where I need this information and instead of wasting a lot of time going backwards from now finding the first entry, again, it's cached information.

I had thought that I may have made a mistake in the starting date. No, I got the starting date correct. What I didn't get correct was handling the situation when a blog is actually started.

When writing the software, I had already been keeping entries. In fact, I think I had a month or so worth of entries when I started the code two years ago. And I was so focused on getting the URL processing correct, that I neglected to test some border cases. And I never got around to testing those cases since they didn't affect me.

Until now.

Oops.

Problems I found:

Not handling the case when there are no entries.
Not handling the case when there are fewer than X days worth of entries (where X is the number of days to display on the main page).
Not handling the case when there are fewer than 15 entries (note—not the same thing as having 15 days worth of entries, and this is for the RSS file).
And one or two cases of not checking to see if you've past the first entry or most current entry.

Cases I should have handled (and tested for!) but neglected.

I do need to really go through the code and clean it up.

The problem I had was that I'm a bit too close to the code. I'm working towards a specific goal (new method of document storage retrieval and reference) and as such, the software is experimental and the problems I'm focusing on meant I missed some reliability details elsewhere, since hey, it works in my case.

And while some people have probably grabbed the software I doubt many, if any, are actually using the software since I'm not getting any feedback on the code itself. Okay, you do have to hunt around to find the link to the source code but it has been downloaded. And I'm sure it being written in C makes it all that much more popular.

But little did I expect software I wrote to crash a Unix server. The last time I saw userland software (an application) crash a Unix server was … oh … eight years ago I think.

C and Perl

I spent some time yesturday playing with Grey Matter, which seems to be one of the more popular blogging software packages out there. I downloaded it, partly out of curiosity and partly for a project I'm working on (and yes, I'm scoping out the competition).

Now, I can see why Grey Matter is popular: it installs very easily (I had it running in a few minutes), is template driven (so the output can look exactly like you want it to) and … it's in Perl.

Which means—if the web server allows CGI, you can run Grey Matter. There is no compiling. Just stick it in, make sure the location of Perl in the scripts is correct, and go.

I think that reason alone, is why Perl is pretty much used everywhere on the World Wide Web.

Now, my software that runs this site is in C. One, I can't stand Perl. Never had. And thankfully, I've never had to maintain Perl code either. Two, tower (the server that runs this site) is a 486. A 33MHz 486. By today's standards the machine shouldn't be running, much less running a website. You can't even give 486 based machines away, which is sad, since they work. This site is proof. But anyway, this machine is slow, and running a blog written in Perl would be torture indeed.

Like Grey Matter. I'm doing my testing of it on a 120MHz machine and Grey Matter is SSS-LLL-OOO-WWW. Not quite painfully slow (painfully slow would be running it on tower) but too slow to be used by more than a few people on my local box here.

Crashing Unix

Eight years ago. I get into my office and I notice that pineal, the SGI box I use, has crashed. Hard. The kernel crashed.

For a Unix system, that's bad.

Not knowing what happened, I bring the box back up and go about my business.

A few days later, it's crashed again.

This time though, I have a slight clue as to what might be going on. I had noticed one of the users of the box doing some odd things. Normally, I wouldn't care (seeing how this user was odd to begin with) but I couldn't help thinking that the odd thing this user was doing might have caused the machine to crash.

I, suspecting what happened, bring the box back up and go about my business.

A few days later, it's crashed again.

I bring it back up, get the odd user in question, and asked him to do what he was doing just prior to the crash, exactly.

I watch as the machine crashes.

Now, I still don't know why it crashed, but at least I knew what caused it to crash. It seems that the user in question logged in and ran a program called screen. screen is a program that allows you to have multiple command lines via a single login session (like a single terminal) and it would keep the session alive if you disconnected (heck, I used that program myself for those two reasons). Then, he would log into IRC and have his IRC client log a channel to a file. He would then disconnect, leaving the IRC client running (because of screen) and logging a channel to a file. Doing both of those things would cause the system to crash.

Odd. Then again, he was an odd user.

So I basically banned the use of IRC on my box. He was the only user who used IRC and he had access to other systems with it, so it wasn't that big of a loss.

But it's odd the programs that can crash a Unix server.

Oh great …

As if things weren't bad enough I just found I lost my checkbook.

Interesting how I found something is lost. Funny how the English language works.

So now it's off to scour the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere to see if I can find a checkbook that I just found was lost.

My head hurts.

Chequing back

I finally found my checkbook. Earlier I found I lost it. Now I found what I found I lost.

And my head doesn't hurt as much.

Friday, March 22, 2002

Limiting corporate power

All have a provision similar to that of Maine's section 716: “The directors and officers of a corporation shall exercise their powers and discharge their duties with a view to the interest of the corporation and of the shareholders.”

These laws make it the legal duty of corporate directors and executives to maximize profits for shareholders.

Robert Hinkley would add a simple amendment: “… but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, the public safety, the communities in which the corporation operates, or the dignity of employees.”

Via RobotWisdom, A Corporate Lawyer Speaks Out

Interesting concept. The customers of a public company are not the ones that buy their product. No, the true customers are the shareholders, and if the shareholders feel the public company they hold stock in is not fullfilling their fudicial duties to increase shareholder value, then that public corporation can face a series of very expensive lawsuits against it.

This, plus numerous other articles I've read over the past few weeks makes me think that a large corporate backlash (on a global scale) is forming. Will anything happen of it? I don't know—the Luddites didn't stop the Industrial Revolution, and the Inquisition certainly didn't stop the powershift away from the Catholic Church.

I do know that we are still in the process of a major power shift from nationalism to corporatism and that it won't be over any time soon (the shift from religious to nationalism took several centuries to resolve. The beginnings of the corporate shift didn't start until the religious to nationalism shift was well underway (I'm placing the start of the corporatism shift around the 1600s with the formation of the British East India Company) so I don't expect to see the next shift (away from corporatism) any time soon.

One thing to look out for though: who builds the tallest buildings?

We may be forced to watch advertising

WASHINGTON, DC—In a closely watched proceeding, DC District Court Judge Natalia Wimbley ruled Friday in favor of claims by a coalition of media companies to rights to the 'attention' of consumers. “This ruling is crucial to the continued vitality of American art and culture,” explains RIAA President-elect Richard Mound. “Recognition of attention rights goes a long way to guaranteeing that artists and musicians will have access to sustainable revenue streams.”

Via Techdirt, Court Protects `Attention Rights' of Media Companies

Not really; this is a future prediction of what may come to pass (the newsitem is dated October 8, 2006). Scarily enough, it seems reasonable, given recent trends.

Saturday, March 23, 2002

How does one say em-tee-vee in Arabic anyway?

I wander downstairs to find Spring channel surfing. I sit down next to her as she's flipping through channels when she stops on i-channel.

“Oh, cool!” she says. They're playing Arabic music videos in a countdown type program (we caught the program at #15 in what I think was a top 20 countdown) and I was amazed. I was expecting any women in the videos to be at least wearing some form of headcovering, but no. In the fifteen videos we watched, all of them had women with no head covering (okay, there were one or two where the women wore some form of traditional head covering, but only for a part of the video). I found that amazing.

I also found the women quite hot but again, these are music videos—the women are supposed to be hot (or cute, which they were as well).

I'm not saying that all the videos were good. Not at all—some were quite bad I felt, but it was still interesting to watch them as some of them had rather jarring cross-cultural moments to them; an Arabic pop song segues into American rap (with obligatory African-American), another one segues from traditional Arabic dance (with women fully hidden behind form fitting outfits) into American country with boots, jeans and cowboy hats (including the women).

Fascinating.

Turn down the sound on most of them, and you would think you were watching videos from VH-1, or maybe from Spain, at least Europe.

Rise of the Corporate State

One of my readers, Marcus Livius Drusus, sent in his comments on the START OF CORPORATISM:

The British East India Company (charted on Dec. 31, 1600, you hit that part exactly right) was the first of the proto-corporations that were organized to expedite the great trading and exploration voyages.
(Parenthetical note, this was only made possible, or it might be better to say useful or desirable, by the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588—prior to that the Spanish and the Portugese had a deathgrip on the spice trade.)
Prior to this new type of organization, with the creation of a fictitious persona, the corporation, any investor would have been personally liable for any losses of the venture, to the entire extent of his personal assets.
The release from personal liability afforded made it much more easy to organize and finance these extremely risky operations.
Now, with that out of the way, I will take a bit of an issue with your placement of the date of transition from nationalism to corporatism, for the following reasons:
First, if one would like to argue this date marked the first appearance of limited liability fictive entities, that would be incorrect. The early Middle Ages saw the first of these, in the form of towns, universities and religious orders. Later, the principle included guilds. This was established in English common law by the 14th century.
The other way to argue this would be to mention that this saw the first application of the concept to private enterprise and for profit entities, that is technically correct. However, charters for these enterprises were for purposes only seen by the granting government as in it's national(istic) interests. They were private tools of public policy.
It was not until after the onery American colonists revolted after 1776 was there support for enterprises unrelated to the direct public interest. (Alexander Hamilton was an early champion of the idea) Still by 1800, well over 95% of all the corporations chartered in the States were for purposes of thngs like building and operating bridges, roads, canals, and other public service tasks.
Finally, in 1811, New York enacted legislation that enabled corporations to be charted with nothing much more than a statement of the intended purposes of the business. Many of the other states took until the 1850's to do so. England did in 1825, and the other European countries followed soon after.
So, based on this, I would argue that the first part of the 19^th century is the earliest time that can be considered the birth of an independent corporation. If I were forced to pick the point at which the transition to a corporate state began, I would argue that it happened immediately after the Civil War. The urgencies of the war required consolidation of the railroads, setting the stage for the first real national super-corporations with the wealth and power to influence politicians, and therefore public policy, an exact reversal of the status of the British East India Company.

If we go along those thoughts then, perhaps the start of the corporate state can be traced back to May 10^th, 1886 with Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company where corporations could be considered a “fictional person” under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Sunday, March 24, 2002

It can happen in the print world too!

If someone has not already done so, allow me to posit Scalzi's Law of Online Communication: Anything bad you ever write about someone online will get back to them sooner or later. People who don't believe this law are by all means invited to prove me wrong. Note that this invitation comes with the explicit warning that if you write me something that says “I called my mom/dad/co-worker/whatever a hideous gasbag on my Web site five years ago and s/he doesn't know,” I'll merely forward the note to them with my compliments—Scalzi's Law works because a) people can't not tell other people about their online exploits and b) other people can't not tell about your online exploits, either. If you don't want people to know what you really think about them, don't put it online. Ever. Really, it's just that simple.

John Scalzi: Whatever for February 27, 2002

I don't have much to add to that, other than it can happen in the print world as well. Surprisingly so.

I learned this the hard way.

It was 1987. I had just started a humor column for the college newspaper and I had just written a screed against my high school English teachers (no, it's not online and for good reason. Heck, the editor should have axed that column but it still ran. It wasn't until a semester or two later did I get an editor who actually edited and told me a few of my columns were not fit to print and for that I'm thankful).

Of all my columns I wrote (and I wrote the column for three years) that was the only one to get back to my high school. And boy did I hear about it. I felt bad then; I still felt bad ten years later at my high school reunion (and felt relieved that none of the teachers I wrote about showed up) and I still feel bad about it now, but the paper itself is long gone and I doubt if you can even dig up back copies at the library so that particular piece of journalism is long dead and buried.

Monday, March 25, 2002

Ludicrous Applications of Technology in the Pursuit of Food

Ring.

I answer the phone. “Hello?”

“Hey, Sean. This is Rob,” said my roommate. “What did you have in mind for dinner?”

“Are you calling from your room?”

“Yes,” he said. “It just seemed easier to call you on the cell phone.”

Mind you, he's sill about twenty feet away from me at the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere.

Tuesday, March 26, 2002

Random blathering on blogs

One of the things I noticed about Grey Matter was it's slowness, and while part of that may be due to Perl, it might also have to do with the number of pages it has to rebuild, according to Karl Martino of of Paradox1x.

Now, mod_blog also recreates some files whenever a new entry is made, but it's not quite as bad as Grey Matter or Moveable Type from what I understand. Three files are created—the first is the main page and that is for speed reasons, as that page is most likely to be loaded. It doesn't have to be made—it could be generated dynamically when requested (in fact, that's how I was doing it originally). The second file is the RSS file, and while it too could be generated dynamically, again for speed reasons I build a pre-cached version if you will. The third file is a recent addition and it's the Mozilla/Netscape Sidebar page and again, like the other two, could be generated dynamically, but for speed reasons …

Now the posting speed is another issue. Having used the Grey Matter interface, yes, that is a bit slow to respond since there is a lot of file building going on. Radio appears to respond faster, but that's because it spawns a background task to do the file rebuilding; it doesn't pause the interface until it's done. mod_blog, on the other hand, is different. The email interface responds quickly, since the email client will batch it up for sending, then the server will batch it up for sending and finally it'll arrive and be processed, so via email, the process seems instantaneous, although it may take a minute or two for everything to be processed.

The web interface is fast—less than a minute and that includes the three files being created, plus sending notification to Weblogs.com and sending the email notification (granted, there are only a few people signed up for that right now, but if it becomes an issue I can spawn a background task to send the email).

This on a 33 MHz 486 (and yes, the software is in C but what processing is done, it might be a tad slower in Perl—not entirely sure).

Archiving—that's a non-issue with mod_blog. The whole site here is dynamic (well, except for three pre-generated pages) and the concept of building archive pages just doesn't apply. Granted, I have control over the server so I can do that, but not everyone has such access. Different tools for different needs.

Wednesday, March 27, 2002

“… and now, a word from our sponsor … ”

I read The Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth years ago and found it a bit over the top. It's the future and advertising dominates the average person's life. Everything is advertising. Even using Calgon in your bath wouldn't take you away from the advertising. So shut up and drink your Pepsi.

A bit later (but still a few years ago) I sat down and watched Network, a film about an over the top news program. In 1976 it must have seemed the top, but in the mid-90s? It's hard to top Jeraldo Rivera (although Rick Sanchez, a former local talking head could give Jeraldo a run for his money) these days, and Network seems rather tame.

So this comes as no surprise:

Acclaim Entertainment said yesterday that it would pay relatives of the recently bereaved in return for placing small billboards on headstones, and that the offer might “particularly interest poorer families.”

Via Flutterby, Game publicity pan raises grave concerns

I'm just waiting for the day when advertising becomes mandated by law.

Oh, by the way, this post brought to you by the letter “X” and by the number “13.”

Thursday, March 28, 2002

A Google Bombing variant?

Spring has been looking for a program that will scan the webserver log files for pages served up by search engines—obstensibly for Disturbing Search Requests. She hasn't found any, so today I quickly wrote one up for her.

The odd thing I noticed though, as I watched her use the program on her site and my site and my blog is that my blog has way more search requests than hers does.

In fact, going over the three largest sites on this server (www.springdew.com, www.conman.org and boston.conman.org) that my blog/online journal here averages about twice the search requests as the other sites. I think that has something to do with the way this site works. Google (just to pick a search engine) will have indexed the same entry about five times—once on main page, once for day, once for the month, once for the year (don't want to bog down the server needlessly for that example) and once for itself.

I'm not sure how much that affects the final ranking of a particular page since they're all intrasite links but it does have to skew the results somehow. Somehow it feels like I'm Google Bombing my own site with my own site.

The 1812 Overture, on 11, as sung by squirrels.

I am not a morning person. I also tend to be a rather heavy sleeper. Mix these two things together and you have one person that is hard to wake up at times.

Lord knows my Dad has tried. He's tried John Phillips Sousa. He's tried Richard Wagner. He's even tried the 1812 Overture at eleven and that still failed to wake me up (what did work, however, was the Frozen Wash Cloth to the Face Method, and the Dump Me in Snow Method but those are not as effective as they were since he now lives in Palm Springs, California).

Spring found this out as she was trying to wake me up. She found some rather unconventional music in an attempt to wake me up. She finally shook me awake and I found the rather unconventional music more amusing than annoying or loud (give it a listen—the squirrel could use some money).

There is one type of music that I find so truely annoying that it would wake me up rather quickly, but of course I'm not going to mention what that is.

Friday, March 29, 2002

Your tax dollars at work

I don't even know where to begin with this.

Kentucky, a land locked state for those of you who might be geographically challenged, is … well … just … just read for yourself. I'm speechless.

Saturday, March 30, 2002

A lesson in usability

One of my readers reported a usability problem with my site: he couldn't see one of the links since I was using a rather dark blue to denote unvisited links and he couldn't see distinguish it from the black text (and I suppose, he had turned off underlining on links).

He also said that the typical color for unvisited links should be red, or some other visually outstanding color, to draw attention to them for the reader. My original idea was to have the visually outstanding color for links visited since you, the reader, found the link worthy of visiting.

But, given the visual problems mentioned above, I decided to switch the two colors so now unvisited links will be inviting you to click on them in red, while those tired, old, visited links will now be in blue.

Now, while I'm talking about linking colors, I'm not sure how many of you may have noticed, but the brightness of the links is an indication of how “far” the link is—the brighter it is, the “closer” it is serverwise. That is, the brightest links are to links to other entries in my journal here, while the dimmest links are completely external to my site.

Of course, you can only see it if your browser supports style sheets. And speaking of style sheets … I was expecting to have to fix about a dozen pages to fix the color aspects of the links, but for some reason it slipped my mind that I'm using a style sheet and that all that information about link color is stored in one location so it only took me like fifteen seconds to fix every page here (or rather, on The Boston Diaries—my main home page doesn't use style sheets, so there, I have to fix about a hundred pages).

Score another point for style sheets.

Sunday, March 31, 2002

Make money the Herbalife way

… Then I called the next three numbers.

They all had the SAME message. It was a woman's voice, and she started the message with a distinctive “Ya know”. In the upcoming days of phone number investigation, I heard this message dozens of times. The next one was a wrong number, the sixth number was the “ya know” message. The seventh number had a different message, but it had some aspects of the first message, “20-year industry leader” and “tap into mail-order”. This message, too, was an effort to send me a 14-page booklet.

Well. I was stunned. These signs were all over town, in scores of different designs, and they were all the work of one company. A super-secret Fortune 500 company that never put it's name of it's ugly ever-present signs.

Via CamWorld, Work from Home, unwelcome Herbalife Signs

Cam's “amateur Internet sleuthing” comment notwithstanding, this is an excellent piece of journalistic reporting. I've seen the signs here in Lower Sheol as well and have been mildly curious to look into these “work from home” businesses. But the cynincal side of me (or rather, my cynical side channeling my Dad's cynical side) goes: “If you can make tons of money working from home, why promote competition?”

A similar question pops up whenever I see an infomercial hawking money making schemes (“Buy New York City with other people's money!”)—“If you can make money doing that, why tell other people?” It seems to me that there are three reasons why anyone would do this:

The person found a good way of making money and wishes to help other people realize their goals in life by making tons of money (and if so, then why are they selling it as opposed to just giving the information away? (assuming they made enough money to satisfy themselves)).
There's more money to be made in telling people how to make money using [insert system being sold here] than in actually using [insert system being sold here].
There's no money to be made in telling or using [insert system being sold here] but the person selling it trying to get as much return as possible in getting out of the system.

If you want, here's a way to make tons of money that I'll give away

FREE!

There are a few simple steps.

Get a nice computer system set up for graphics work.
Get a nice scanner.
Get a nice color printer.
Scan in paper money of the type you would like to make.
Print said scans on similar type of paper the money normally comes on.
Live it up like there's no tomorrow until the proper authorities come and arrest your conterfeiting heinie.

Okay, I never said it was a good or legal way to make money (this is satire and is information that should not be used—repeat—this is satire and you should not follow this advice).

Monday, April 01, 2002

This is no joke …

Yes, it's official.

We (we being Spring and I) have Boston Diaries Coffee Mugs for sale.

No joke.

Even if it is April 1^st.

I think this is a new search engine

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., March 25 /PRNewswire/—So what does one kid [sic] frustration over his disappointing fate with online Search Engines get you? The answer is a new place for web owners to list their sites. On Friday, March 22, Mach Find, Inc. announced the launch of its brand new Search Engine Company called, “Mach Find” (www.MachFind.com).

PRNewswire press release that was forwarded to me via email

I'm not really sure what to make of this. Curious, I went to MachFind only to find it doesn't find anything at all. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. As in, “we don't actually have anything in our database yet.”

Now, Dennis Williams, II has an interesting take on the search engine—you submit a URL and it becomes part of the database immediately. Google? AltaVista? Yahoo? You submit a URL and they'll “get back to you” with their spiders (software that crawls a website for indexing).

But, there's a catch. It's $2 per URL submission. Not per site, per URL! That, I think, is a bad move on his part; more and more sites are dynamically generated and the concept of a “page” is well … not very well defined anymore. Heck, the Electric King James Bible has over fifteen million pages yet they're not exactly static pages. And if I were to submit The Boston Diaries I'm not sure exactly what keywords I would be submitting it under (well, perhaps the ones I have in the <META> tags but that's a rather limited view of what goes on in here). Two dollars per site, I can see that; two dollars per page?

Mach Find operates under a premise and understanding that while the internet continues to grow, through filling up with more websites, it is only the truly innovative net locations that cause it to expand. This expanse has limitless potential, and we certainly want to be a part of it.
It is our belief that rather than bottle up this beautiful potential of technology and growth within the confines of a company, sometimes the higher success and profit lies in sharing it. Mach Find feels that no individual who is interested in the basic knowledge and understanding of technology that he has committed himself to be a client of, should be denied access to it.

Mach Find Growing Technology

Well, right now the search engine is quite useless as there's nothing there to search. I tried several terms, including “Mach Find” and “Dennis Williams, II,” and nothing. Is it too much to ask to seed the database with sites? Or for a period of time, let URL submission be free to help populate the database? Something? Anything? It's definitely in that “Catch-22” stage—it's not worth me spending the two bucks to submit a URL because no one is going to use the engine because there are no search results that I can see, and as a user, I'm not going to use the search engine because there are no search results.

No one is exactly going to flock to your search engine for either searching or submissions, I hate to say.

But I do see they are hiring. Perhaps I can get one of those five positions left on the Creative Team of Experts. Looks like they might need the help.

Packing packing packing

Packed some more of the kitchen at Condo Conner tonight. Yes, we're still moving. Comes from a forced move I think.

And I'm finding all sorts of odd items that haven't been touched in at least eight years (and quite possibly, fourteen), mostly in little used cabinets, or on the top shelves. I found, for instance, that I actually do own an electric juicer—the type that can juice vegitables (“Oooh!” said Spring when I told her, “I can now make carrot-orange juice!” Um … yum?) in addition to fruits. I also own a couple of bottle pourers—they fit into the neck of the bottle much like a cork, but have a metal flute out the top with which you can pour the contents out of (you see them on liquor bottles in bars).

I also found some metal devices that looked like handles but it took me several minutes to figure out how they work. And indeed, they are handles, for CorningWare cooking dishes. They look like mutant bottle openers, one end flares out and has a flap of metal underneath. It looks like it could fit around the tabs that stick out the sides of CorningWare, but the flap is too close to the top to permit a fit. But … the other end of the device can do a quarter turn, and when turned, the flap is lowered enough to slip over the tabs that stick out the sides of the CorningWare. You then turn the other end back into place, and it locks the handle.

I don't think I ever remember seeing those handles when Mom and I moved into the place fourteen years ago. But I did find lots of CorningWare. And a CorningWare hotplate. Guess Mom was a CorningWare type of person.

I also found out that the plastic trays that all the TupperWare was stored were actually screw-in drawers! I never knew that.

I also found out I have more stuff than I thought I did.

Tuesday, April 02, 2002

Lassie, he ain't

The front door to the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere is locked.

I grab for my keys only to find some pocket lint.

Great, I think. I got locked out. Fortunately, I see our cat, Spodie, through the window that runs along side the door.

“Spodie!” I yell. “Spodie! Get Spring and tell her I'm locked out!”

Spodie is looking at me indifferently. Typical cat.

“Spodie! Help! I'm locked out! Get help!”

Spodie then looks around, trying his hardest to ignore me.

“Spodie! Get Spring! I've fallen into the well! Get help! Hey! Wait! Don't go there! Wait!”

At this point I start pounding on the door. Eventually, Spring shows up.

“Spring! Help! I'm locked out!”

Spring, much like her owner, Spodie, is looking at me indifferently …

Thursday, April 04, 2002

Creative team of experts

Like I said a few days ago, MachFind is hiring and has five (5) open positions for their Creative Team of Experts.

So, I just applied.

Hey, you never know … and as Jerry Pournelle says, “I do this so you don't have to … ”

Friday, April 05, 2002

“That's it?”

Spring and I are coming home from the Starlite Diner in Ft. Lauderdale when we get caught at a rail road crossing.

“You really wanted to run that, didn't you?” asks Spring.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“There's a good chance that the train will come to a full and complete stop right here,” I said. “Well, maybe not here but I have been caught a few streets north by trains stopping at rail road crossings and then you're stuck for twenty or so minutes until it starts up again. And do you know how long it takes a mile long train to get started?”

“So? It's the perfect time to have a party,” she said. “You crank the radio, get out and boogie.”

“Boogie?”

“Boogie,” she said. “You know, dance. Have a party.”

“Boogie?”

“Boogie. There was one time I got stuck in traffic, so I cranked up the radio, and started handing out soda,” she said. She used to work for a soda distributor in New Jersey.

“Wow … so you wrote the soda off as an expense?”

“It was free samples anyway.”

“Ah,” I said. The rail road crossing had been clanging for some time now and finally I heard the bellowing of a train horn. Off in the distance I could just make out the dark shape of a train engine coming into view.

And then the train engine crossed our view.

Not a train mind you.

Just the train engine. Rolling down the tracks, past the rail road crossing and continuing down the line.

“That's it?” I said. I was dumbfounded. Spring starts laughing and I'm left gaping at a train that wasn't a train going by. “We waited all that time, for a train engine?”

“At least it didn't stop,” said Spring.

Playing nice together …

I've been working on a project the past week or so and one of the components has me attempting to compile a version of Apache with mod_ssl, mod_perl and mod_php (in this case, PHP4). It certainly has been an educational experience.

I found out the hard way that one of the modules (I think it was mod_ssl, although I can't confirm it) reran the configuration script for Apache, resettting it to use the default Apache file locations and not the locations I configured it for (I'm building a test version of Apache and I'm doing it as a regular user so I don't destroy the working configuration on the computer I'm doing this on).

Hack hack hack, I decide to install everything by hand and avoid the Apache Configuration Interface that seems to be causing the problem. Hack hack hack and I finally get an executable to build.

It seems to work, except that mod_info isn't working. It comes with Apache but normally isn't enabled. I had thought I enabled it, but apparently not. I check the configuration file (the one used to build Apache, not to start it running) and it seems to be using the one for the Apache Configuration Interface, so I problably ended up with a server that only has mod_ssl.

Okay, start over.

I'm getting farther. This time I'm getting problems compiling mod_php. It can't find certain include files. I add the appropriate locations to the configuration file and it's still not working. It doesn't look like it likes being added by hand. Guess I'll have to use the Apache Configuration Interface to add mod_php.

Now, why Apache has two different configuration files, one used only if you use the Apache Configuration Interface, and one used only if you don't use the Apache Configuration Interface at all, is beyond me. Okay, I can work around that, but more annoying is that whenever you run the configuration script, it will rewrite the configuration file over. So if you, say, forget to enable mod_info and you rerun the configuration script to enable it, you'll get an Apache with mod_info enabled and any other module that is optional, gone.

Now, there's a separate script you can run that will avoid this problem, but do any of the module installation scripts (for say, mod_ssl or mod_perl) use this, or even mention it? Nay, I say. Nay!

Okay, start over yet again.

So now it's down to figuring out which third party modules run the configuration script and which ones don't, and make sure to install them in the right order, and double check that my preferred file locations aren't overwritten. mod_ssl gets installed first, even though it wants to be last to make sure any authentication goes through it. Then mod_php and finally mod_perl.

Fun fun fun.

Success at 4.7 Megabytes

Success!

Server Version: Apache/1.3.24 (Unix) mod_perl/1.26 PHP/4.1.2 mod_fastcgi/2.2.12 mod_ssl/2.8.8 OpenSSL/0.9.6c

Basically, install mod_ssl first, with the file locations you want for Apache specified using the configuration script configure. Then, using config.status, add the other modules (like mod_perl or mod_php) and forget about adding them to the configuration file by hand.

[Don't assume this is actually usable advice. This is so I don't forget what to do. Your milage may vary.]

Sunday, April 07, 2002

Abysmally Irritating

The phone rang.

I picked it up. “Hello?”

“This movie SUCKED!” It was Mark. He had just finished watching AI, the Stanley Kubrick as finished by Steven Spielberg “Down, not across” feel good film of 2001. “We wasted FOUR bucks on this piece of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!”

“Um … Mark … ”

“And it's ALL YOUR FAULT! You said this film was good but depressing.”

“It was! I found it horribly depressing, but it was a well done film. There was a reason I didn't come over and watch it again.”

“It's still your fault!”

“Didn't you listen to Spring?”

“It sucked XXXXXXXXXX,” said Gerald. I could hear him yelling over the phone.

“Gee, I'm sorry guys,” I said. “I thought I warned you.”

“It's still your fault!”

“I'll make it up to you. How about we watch The Talented Mr. Ripley on my dime? … Hello? … Hello? … ” He hung up.

Monday, April 08, 2002

There goes the neighborhood

Same night, but it's now 3:00am. The music is back and with authority. It wakes us up again and this time I'm ready to kill somebody. Instead, I call the police. The funny thing is that when the police officer arrives, JD8 can't hear the officer knocking on the door. By now, my wife and I are glued to the window hoping to see some police brutality (yeah it's bad). The officer proceeds to walk around the house shining his flashlight into the windows hoping to get a glimpse of what's happening inside.
As the officer is walking back towards the front of the house, JD8 opens the door and sees the police car. He panics and slams the door shut. The officer sees the light shining on the front lawn and runs to the front door. The officer starts pounding on the door, and shouting. After about thirty seconds, the door opens and the cop goes inside the house. We can hear the officer screaming for them to turn the music off. Sweet!

Via email from JeffK, Redneck Neighbor

I'm not really sure what to make of this. On the one hand, I can understand where this guy is coming from—parties at 2:00 am, lawn mowing at midnight, lawn fires that could threaten his home. On the other hand, I can understand where the redneck neighbor is coming from—it's his home and darn it! He can do what he wants and the home owner's association be damned. It's a tough call, that's for sure.

Tuesday, April 09, 2002

A lesson in usability, part II

Mark had written in just after I made changes in the look of the site and said that the red I was using for unvisited links looked horrible.

Yes, it was rather garish but I wasn't sure what to use for colors. So tonight (okay, this morning really) I played around with the color scheme a bit (with the help of Spring) and I think I got a scheme that isn't quite as bad. The unvisited links are still light enough that they should be easy to see (even if the browser doesn't add the underlining like my one reader reported) and the color is a bit more subdued than the

BRIGHT RED

I was using for links (or rather, various shades of pure red) so Mark should be pleased.

You should also notice that the sidebox to the left is a bit smaller than it used to be—I bumped the font size down a bit to shrink the box up, to better fit the space.

I'm really liking style sheets.

Still no word

Still no word back on my application for the Creative Team Expert at MachFind.

Then again, there still doesn't seem to be anything searchable at MachFind either …

The Ins and Outs of Calculating Weblog Traffic

The buzz in Bloggerton is about numbers. The number of readers a blog has and it's not an easy number to calculate. Over the past few months I've been measuring myself against Sean Tevis, a fellow South Florida blogger (whom I actually met in real life once). For a while we were pretty much at parity, but then over the past month or so he's taken off. As he states (as of today) he is getting 4,000 visits and 10,000 page views per month.

And I'm wondering just how he's calculating that.

So here we go. Raw counts for The Boston Diaries: January 2002: 14,297 requests. February 2002: 8,035 requests and March 2002: 7,860 requests. Yes, there's a rather big drop there between January and February, but that can be accounted for—5,870 requests in January were from easily identifiable search engine robots (4,726 just from one alone). If we rerun the count for just the popular browsers (basically, any agent reporting itself as Mozilla, of which Netscape, Mozilla, Opera and IE—yes, that does skip Lynx, but the number of hits via Lynx (that aren't me) is miniscule for purposes of the rough estimates I'm doing here) and only pages (or files) that were successfully served up, we get: January 2002: 5,880 requests. February 2002: 6,089 requests. And March 2002: 5,292 (ouch).

Now, I'm generating this by going over the raw logs with a custom program I wrote that allows one to filter out fields (to make it easier to grep through). Those last figures, for instance, were done with:

escanlog -status 200 -agent boston.conman.org | grep Mozilla | wc -l

escanlog is the program I wrote, and I instructed it to only print out records that successfully completed (-status 200) and only print out the user agent field (-agent) on the log file in question (boston.conman.org). grep and wc -l are standard Unix programs to search for patterns and count characters (or lines, in this invocation).

But those figures are again, misleading. They include images, requests for the RSS file, the CSS file; extraneous stuff that don't really constitute an actual page view. Going over the logs again, this time only taking into account pages (most likely) viewed by humans we get: January 2002: 1,805. February 2002: 2,090. March 2002: 1,538 (ow! But it's still an improvement over December 2001 at 1,090).

Oh wait, one more variable to control for: those counts include those I've done. Remove those, and the results are: December 2001 (since I included it above): 1,009. January 2002: 1,673 (well, Rob and Spring are also being excluded—yea, that's why I had over 100 visits from myself). February 2002: 1,909. March 2002: 1,328 (oooh).

Now, I can pretty much guarantee that those figures up there represent unique visits. A more interesting question to answer would be the number of repeat (or regular) visits. This is tougher since most ISPs dish out dynamic IP addresses whenever someone reconnects but I don't think it's impossible to get a ball park figure, taking the previous results, pulling out the unique IP addresses and sorting, I see for January 2002 (cutting off after 5 unique visits per address):


    197 65.116.145.137
     92 208.55.254.110
     63 211.101.236.143
     45 63.173.190.16
     30 64.129.118.129
     30 24.52.32.105
     20 211.101.236.79
     19 24.4.252.167
     15 208.60.8.130
     11 65.58.147.103
     11 164.77.128.210
     10 64.131.172.241
      9 66.157.2.122
      8 207.49.213.174
      7 65.2.207.3
      6 65.207.131.180
      6 64.39.15.82
      6 12.39.254.108
      5 64.30.224.30
      5 63.251.87.214
      5 212.250.100.122
      5 209.214.129.196
      5 208.1.105.145
      5 204.89.226.65
      5 196.41.28.43
      5 130.74.211.63

And so on. Easily a dozen repeat readers, but there are probably more. One way would be to generate the number of visits per block of IP addresses (most users would fall into a range of addresses, usually along a classical C block and by doing that, I get:


    197 65.116.145
     92 208.55.254
     83 211.101.236
     45 63.173.190
     30 64.129.118
     30 24.52.32
     21 64.12.96
     21 24.4.252
     18 208.60.8
     11 65.58.147
     11 208.1.105
     11 196.41.28
     11 164.77.128
     10 64.131.172
     10 152.163.189
      9 66.157.2
      9 216.10.44
      8 65.207.131
      8 212.250.100
      8 207.49.213
      8 205.188.209
      8 205.188.208
      7 65.2.207
      7 195.163.203
      6 64.39.15
      6 12.39.254
      5 64.30.224
      5 63.251.87
      5 24.51.202
      5 209.214.129
      5 204.89.226
      5 130.74.211
      5 129.74.252

Hmmm … not much difference really. Rerunning for last month (March) I get:


     86 208.55.254
     56 65.214.36
     22 64.131.172
     21 12.164.38
     20 218.45.21
     20 211.101.236
     19 66.176.111
     17 207.200.84
     17 129.74.186
     16 66.27.11
     16 151.203.23
     14 64.12.96
     12 64.129.118
     12 216.76.209
     11 196.41.28
     10 66.27.63
     10 64.30.224
     10 64.231.69
     10 194.222.60
      9 64.152.245
      9 24.51.200
      9 205.188.209
      8 64.90.36
      8 152.163.188
      7 64.158.38
      7 208.60.8
      6 205.188.208
      6 199.44.53
      6 199.174.3
      6 199.174.0
      6 195.163.203
      6 194.82.103
      5 64.34.18
      5 64.210.248
      5 24.71.223
      5 24.52.32
      5 207.158.192
      5 207.114.208
      5 204.89.226
      5 151.100.29
      5 128.242.197
      5 12.225.219

Oh, lets call it two dozen repeat readers and be done with it.

This is an interesting topic, and I would still like to know how Sean Tevis calculates his stats.

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

Diners of a lost South Florida

Looking at these diners I can't but think of the ones I used to go to as a kid here in South Florida. The one we used to go to often was Wags, the one located on US 441 in Margate. They had a distinctive architecture—a series of trapezoidal columns ran across the front of the building. Each Wags had this.

Unfortunately, the one in Margate is no more—it's been torn down and replaced with a modern drug store. The one in Coral Springs is now a Dennys and the one in Boca Raton is now the Boca Diner (and the only reason I know that is because it still has the trapezoidal columns across the front of the building).

The other diner I remember from childhood in South Florida is Sambo's, and it didn't last that long into the 80s (unlike Wags, which lasted until the late 80s/very early 90s depending upon the location). The one near my grandparents, also on US 441, in Tamarac is no more. Even the building is gone.

“And how does this work again?”

So I decide to actually check out the links to the various cities I linked to. Why? Oh, depressed at the lost South Florida of my youth for one thing. Idle curiousity for another.

So I check out the website for Margate. I find the link to the proposed elementary school boundaries and my first thought is Oh my … the main graphic looks like it was faxed and then badly colorized before being posted. And I still can't quite figure out the new boundaries for Coconut Creek Elementary (my old elementary school). But I can tell (I think) from the badly faxed image that were I to start school now, living in the place I did 22 years ago, I (and my friend Hoade) would be attending “O” Elementary School.

Interesting.

Then I hit the bottom of the page. And I quote …

“If you do not have access to the internet, you may phone the Student Choice/ School Boundaries Department, at 954-XXX-XXXX.”

Um … if I don't have what?

Mind you, that isn't part of the rather faxish looking graphic either.

And then I notice the actual title on the page. Go on … I'll wait …

CHLORINE PURGE NOTICE

CHLORINE PURGE NOTICE?

I am so glad not to be in the school system anymore …

A bit more on weblog traffic

I heard back from Sean Tevis about how he got his webstats. Seems he uses a service called Site Meter that allows one to track page loads. He added some JavaScript and images they gave him to his pages. I'm guessing that he does not have access to the log files from his hosting provider.

I have to remember that not everyone has access to such information. Heck, Spring didn't until I started hosting her site.

Now, whether you can get meaningful statistics out of using Site Meter is another matter, and one that Sean brought up in his email. So there you go.

Monday, April 15, 2002

It's not death, so it must be taxes

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.

Don't ask me what I want it for
If you don't want to pay some more
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman

George Harrison, “Taxman” from Revolver, 1966
The Beatles

Yes, it's that time of year again in the United States, when millions of people spend today filling out variations on the 1040 form as required by the IRS.

Years ago I used to have it done by H&R Block but that changed around '97 or '98 when one of the accountants at the company I worked at did my taxes for me. “Sean,” she said to me, “do you mean to tell me that you've never deducted your mortgage interest payments?” I think she felt sorry for me so we went over my taxes.

The following year (since I wasn't working there anymore) I did them by hand. The dreaded 1040, with schedules.

It's not all that bad, just very tedious and some years, quite confusing (one year, to continue filling out the 1040, you needed the result from Schedule D. Unfortunately, the way Schedule D (Capital Gains and Losses) was written, you needed to finish the 1040. Oops) but over all, I find it more tedious than confusing.

And like most Americans, I tend to procrastinate the filling out of the dreaded 1040. Like this year (I just now finished. Sigh). This year is not that bad—only 1040 and Schedules A (Itemized Deductions) and B (Interest and Ordinary Dividends). There have been years that I've had to fill out Schedules A-D (Schedule C is Profit or Loss From Business—freelancers get hit with this) plus Schedule SE (Self Employment Tax—where you get to pay 7.5% for Social Security as an employee, and an additional 7.5% for Social Security as an employer). So I'm filling out this year's taxes when I have to calculate Schedule A and I see “Medical and Dental Expenses.”

Ooooh! Ooooh! I had medical expenses! Emergency room and everything! So I spent the next hour looking for receipts. I knew I had them, but ever since the move I don't know where anything is anymore. I found a missing check book, my map of West Palm Beach County and pieces of my 2000 tax return. Digging deeper into some boxes I finally found the receipts only to find out that they didn't exceed a minimum amount.

Grrrrrrr.

But I was able to take off the home mortgage interest and property taxes for a nice tidy sum to take off my gross income, which certainly helped things. All in all, I over paid my taxes so I do get a refund which is very nice (there were years I owed taxes. That's not fun).

Move over Ozzy and Harriette, it's time for Ozzy and and Sharon

MTV shacked up with the Osbournes for six months, with the now-familiar intention of capturing the experiences of “real people” in their natural habitat. The table-turning difference here is that the Osbournes are not the tedious “real people” of the televised variety. They—or their paterfamilias, anyway—are already famous. And if the series makes one thing abundantly clear, it's that after 30 years, being famous is a job like any other—a job that requires dressing up in “Moulin Rouge” drag and fellating a banana, but a job nonetheless. (And one with its own pitfalls. “Darling,” Ozzy patiently explains to Kelly when she complains about his failing hearing, “you have not been standing in front of a billion decibels for 30 years. Just write me a note.”)
… When English neighbors keep the Osbournes up at all hours playing techno music and singing “My Girl” with acoustic guitar accompaniment, Ozzy finds himself thinking longingly of his old neighbor, Pat Boone. Sharon misses him, too. “He was just the best person ever to live next door to. You don't realize it until you get the neighbor from hell.”

Via Robot Wisdom, Herman Numster, rock god

No wonder this show is popular. How often do you get such a disconnect between a bat head biting rock star and a father telling his daughter not to consume drugs, and they're the same person? Or that he preferred Pat Boone as a neighbor? (they must have had a good relationship—what else explains Pat's Heavy Metal album?)

“Don't bother calling us; we're the Phone Company.”

I'm finally cancelling the phone server to Condo Conner. It's easy enough—you call up The Phone Company and cancel the account, yada yada. Only I don't have the phone number to call.

It's printed on nearly every page of the phone bill, but I don't have a phone bill currently to look at. No problem. I'm sitting here, in front of a computer currently hooked to the Internet. I'll just go to BellSouth (and it's an easy URL to remember: bellsouth.com).

Ah look! There it is!

Now, find a phone number you can call. Go ahead. Try. Their search page is oh so helpful. They're the phone company—expecting them to have, say, oh, a phone number on their site is asking too much I suppose.

Guess I have to see if we have any phone books in the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere.

Mindless link propagation of wacked conspiracy theories involving JFK, Elvis and Nixon.

At long last the truth behind the greatest criminal conspiracy of the twentieth century (and there's been a lot of them, folks) can be told. A shocking and scandalous exposé of KGB machinations, Cold War Mata Haries, hunka hunka burning hate, adulterous hanky-panky, and the events of that tragic day in Dallas.

ELVIS KILLED KENNEDY

You know, this could explain why Nixon met with Elvis. The cover story of Elvis wanting to be federal agent in the War on Drugs is a bit thin, considering Elvis died of a drug overdose (that is, if you believe that story … ).

Interesting indeed …

Tuesday, April 16, 2002

Through passages darkly

I came across serveral sites that document abandoned places in the United States—mostly industrial locations or institutions no longer used or long forgotten by previous owners, and the brave (or foolhardy) souls that now examine and document such places.

It brought me back many years to FAU, which has an interesting history—it used to be an airport back in the sixties (in the image linked to, the old runway system is in blue (which are now used as a main road and parking lots—one rather loooooong parking lot) and the current Boca Raton Commercial Airport (which is an active airport) is in green). In the 60s it was converted to a graduate level university and in 1984, it opened up to undergraduates. I started there in 1987 (and thus utterly dating myself, but this is good, as the Statues of Limitations have now run out) and several years into my tenured undergrad career, some friends and I went spelunking into the FAU Tunnel System.

Now, this being Florida you would think that being only a few feet above sea level there wouldn't be a tunnel system, but lo, there was. Next to the Biology building was a set of stairs leading down to some double doors, with just enough of a gap to let a large screw driver in to pop the door open. So one night, about four or five of us grabbed some flashlights, a large screw driver, and proceeded to decend into the depths of FAU.

The tunnel system connects all the buildings on campus (or at least we theorized—we didn't actually explore the entire system). We entered near the Biology building (the red dot on the linked map) and proceeded south (down, like on all maps). Along the tunnels were large water pipes (about half of which were hot to the touch) and smaller ones carrying electric, phone and network connections. When we came to the first T-interection, we turned left (east) which would lead us to the Administration building. Halfway down the tunnel we came across some large disks set in the floor, with some pipes sticking straight out. We were pretty sure they were presure plates connected to pumps, should the tunnel system flood. We carefully avoided stepping on the disks but three quarters the way down one of us stumbled and triggered one of the pumps, which cause a rather large ruckess. We turned, and admist shouts of “Run away! Run away!” fled back down towards the main north/south tunnel.

We turned south again, and kept heading south, past the other left tunnel towards Administration (we wanted to avoid the plates). We found evidance of prior spelunkers in the graffiti lining the walls (one definitely dated to 1976). The going was not that bad until we hit the southern junction, which proved quite difficult to navigate as we had to climb over and under some large pipes. We ended up heading to the left (west) towards the University Center.

Now, at the time we weren't all that sure where we were so at the next manhole cover we found (above us) we stole a peek. On the map, the lavender dot shows where we popped up and at the time, we could see the on-campus Police Station. Not good. We ducked down and got the manhole cover mostly back into place and we kept heading west.

As we progressed towards the University Center it was clear that we were hitting one of the oldest sections of the tunnel system—it was getting dirtier and smaller so that by the time we reached the end we were all doubled over and nearly dying from the heat.

We turned back east, climbed over and under at the intersection and kept going east and ended up inside the electrical room of the Humanities Building. Not much left at that end of the tunnel system we headed back, bypassed the entrance near the Biology building and again headed east towards the Computer Science and Engineering building (where we all hung out, being Computer Science majors). We could tell this was recent construction by the large size and relatively cleanliness of this part of the system. There was some debate about contining on towards the end of this particular section but since we had already spend several hours down in the tunnels it was decided that we should exit the system, head home and get some rest.

“X” marks the spot

One other thing about FAU being an old airport—when ever a runway is decommissioned, large Xs are painted on the runway to signify a no longer used runway.

This part of the runway is now a parking lot (albeit a long narrow parking lot). I would tend to drive out to one of the large Xs and park my car on it. Silly perhaps, but hey, why not?

Friday, April 19, 2002

Finally, I hear back

After fifteen (15) days, I finally hear back from MachFind about their job postiion for a member of their Creative Team of Experts.

I have to reply with details about my past experience in “Online Marketing/Business” as well as any “CREATIVE WORK” that may be relevent to their business (which now seems to be returning no results for any search term save for sex, and even then, only one (1) result, which doesn't work). Now, the “CREATIVE WORK” aspect is easy—I've written a couple of meta search engines in my time and made some some extentions to the current Robots Exclusion Protocol.

But marketing?

“I don't have any experience with marketing,” I said to Spring. “What do I tell these guys, that I wasn't allowed to talk to customers?”

“That's called focus feedback,” she said. “Because you are focusing who is doing the feedback and it's not going to be you.”

”Oh.”

Okay, so there's that. And, seeing how Google loves my site (heck, for a day or so, I was the number one result for “MachFind,” but no longer alas) I can probably help them with their <META> tags for better placement there. So I think I can muddle through this, but I'm going to take my time with my reply.

After all, they took fifteen days. I can probably take a day or two.

Saturday, April 20, 2002

A sales lead

I met with a handy man today to go over Condo Conner and get an estimate of what he'll charge to fix the numerous things that need fixing before I can consider selling the place. As we were going through the place, we heard a voice call out. It took us several moments to pin point the voice, which was coming from just outside the porch.

A couple had wandered up and were looking for the owner of the condo. I walked up and introduced myself. They asked if I had placed the condo up for sale yet.

“No, not yet,” I said. “I'm still in the process of getting everything out,” I said, motioning to some of the items still left, “and getting it into a saleable condition before putting it on the market.”

“Oh, so you are selling it?” said the wife.

“Yes.”

“Because a friend of ours that also lives here is interested in buying it.”

“Really?”

“Yes, and he'll be willing to buy it as is and fix it up himself.”

Woo hoo! I thought. Yes! This will be over soon!

“So, can we have your phone number so we can give it to our friend?”

“Um … ” I still don't know the new phone number for The Facility in the Middle of Nowhere. “I don't know the new phone number yet. Do you have email?”

“Yes.”

Woo hoo! “Okay,” I said. “Here's my email address … ”

A sales lead, part II

Got an email from the neighbors with the sales lead for Condo Conner. Woo hoo! Send a reply back to them with the phone number to the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere. Hopefully I'll get a call soon.

Now this is interesting

When I came across RFC-2782, which proposes some extentions to DNS I said the heck with it and added the experimental records to my zone files for conman.org.

The idea itself is interesting. For instance, the MX record allows one to specify several hosts in a priority scheme that can handle SMTP traffic on TCP port 25. The experiemental records proposed in RFC-2782, SRV extends that to any service on any port. So for instance, the setup I have for my own domain using MX records:

conman.org.	IN	MX	10 tower.conman.org.
		IN	MX	20 ophelia.kill9.org.

Can also be specified using the SRV records as:

_smtp._tcp.conman.org.	IN	SRV	10 0 25 tower.conman.org.
			IN	SRV	20 0 25 ophelia.kill9.org.

The first field is a priority field that works the same was as the MX priority field. The second field is a weight field, which allows one to choose the order among hosts at the same priority level. The third field is I think the most interesting one—the port number. The MX record always defaults to TCP port 25, but with the SRV record type, you can specify other ports! And any service can be specified. So you could do something like:

_http._tcp.example.com.	IN	SRV	10 1 80   www1.example.com.
			IN	SRV	10 1 80   www2.example.com.
			IN	SRV	10 1 80   www3.example.com.
			IN	SRV	10 1 80   www4.example.com.
			IN	SRV	10 2 80   www5.example.com.
			IN	SRV	10 2 80   www6.example.com.
			IN	SRV	20 1 8080 backup1.example.com.
			IN	SRV	20 1 8080 backup2.example.com.
			IN	SRV	30 1 8008 backup3.example.com.
			IN	SRV	30 1 1234 backup4.example.com.

So that you can spread the load around to several webservers (of which www5 and www6 are not to be hit as hard), and if none of the default ones are running, hit the backup servers where the webserver is running on a non-standard port.

Of course software that makes DNS quiries has to be rewritten to take advantage of this, so it will be some time before this is in common use.

Now, the real interesting part is the company that is actively using this—Microsoft!

Spring and I were visiting Russ, a friend who runs a web hosting company out of his house and uses mostly Microsoft servers. He was complaining about running DNS under Windows 2000 as it uses all these wierd records. When he started describing them I knew exactly what records he was talking about and I think Microsoft is using them as a form of resource discovery.

And as I found out later, Kerberos authentication services use SRV records as well.

Sunday, April 21, 2002

A lesson to the RIAA

(“Sell-through” refers to the percentage of copies shipped which are actually sold, as opposed to being returned to the publisher.)
As of today, according to Baen Books—a year and a half after being available for free online to anyone who wants it, no restrictions and no questions asked—Mother of Demons has sold about 18,500 copies and now has a sell-through of 65%.
I would like someone to explain to me how almost doubling the sales and improving the sell-through by 11% has caused me, as an author, any harm?

Via RobotWisdom, Free the Books!

Good, solid evidance that making a book (or perhaps, by extention, a song perhaps? hint hint) available freely, in electronic format, does not hurt sales and may actually increase sales. It still is easier to read a hard copy-dead tree version of a book in the bathroom (aka “reading room”) and not everyone likes reading for extended periods of time on the computer (me? I'm used to it).

Technically, it's easy. Socialpolitically it's not quite so.

Rob and I had a discussion about the implementation of a mail feature at The Company (where he works). There was a suggestion made for a feature where customers can specify the size limit of email they receive. He felt that adding such a feature would stress the system even more but upon hearing how the email system is set up, felt that adding such a feature is only a few lines of code, if you put it in the right place.

Admid technical discussion (“The program already makes a database call, so adding one field to the SELECT statement for the maximum size of the email is easy, and it's a one line call to get the size of the email, and another line to do the comparrison …” “Yea, but how much overhead will that add? There are thousands of emails per hour.” “You are already making a database query so adding one more field isn't that much, and the two or three lines of code overhead to check the size of the email and making the comparrison is still small.” “You expect the development department to get it right … ”) it came out that overall, most (if not all) customers don't want to specify the size limit of individual emails.

Rob then went on to describe how one customer tried to send herself a two gigabyte file from work to home because she needed to work on this very important project. Never mind that she was on a 56Kbps dialup and it would take … days! … to download the message, she was livid that The Company would delete her email! How dare they!

And then there was the customer that ended up with a mailbox filled to 80 gigabytes! And how dare The Company for deleting that email! (“Sir, it would be faster for you to come here, hand over a few large harddrives for us to copy your email to,” I joked to Rob. “We don't have 80 gigabytes to store his email on,” said Rob.)

So in the light that most, if not all, customers wouldn't date limit the size of their email, then yes, I can see how it would not be cost effective for The Company to implement said feature. They get enough complaints about email already—they don't need people calling up and bitching that they're not getting their email because The Company is purposely limiting it.

Breaking the sound barrier

Rob noticed Spodie, Spring's cat (and our owner), sleeping in a little (if ever) used bathroom sink.

“Spodie sleeps in the sink?”

“Yes,” I said. “I've seem him do it quite often.”

“What would happen if I turned on the water?”

“Then you would see a cat breaking the sound barrier.”

“So it's best not to be in his way then?”

“Yea.”

Tuesday, April 23, 2002

Requiem

Now playing: Mozart's “Requiem”

It seems a bit silly and I don't really know how to approach this, but Major Shortwave Beadhead died this morning at approximately 4:00 am.

Around a quarter to four this morning I went downstairs to find Spring cuddling one very sick looking hamster. Normally, Major Shortwave Beadhead doesn't like being held at all and will squirt out of your hands at the first chance he (she? We don't really know) gets. But not this morning.

He was having trouble breathing and would occasionally move his head in such a way as to give the impression of a cough. Whatever he came down with hit him rather suddenly. I closed the air conditioning vent, thinking that maybe he was going into hibernation mode but Spring said his breathing was spradic and watery sounding.

I broke out the phone book and found a vet with a 24-hour emergency room. Spring called and found that while we could come in, it would cost $70 for the visit, and that they really don't treat hamsters at all. Spring was asked how old Major Shortwave Beadhead was and well, to tell the truth, we don't know. Hamsters only live two, maybe three years and he might simply be dying of old age.

I then took the phone and called some more vets and I found out is that there really is only one emergency pet hospital room that most vets refer to after business hours. So there wasn't much we could do for poor Major Shortwave Bedhead.

A few minutes passed and it became apparent that Major Shortwave Beadhead had slipped this mortal coil and was now sleeping the infinite sleep.

Spring put him back in his cage, and this morning buried him in the garden. Even though he didn't like humans much (he had a much better rappaport with Spodie the cat) he will be missed.

Thursday, April 25, 2002

Keeping silent about the tigers

It's nice to know that I don't have to disclose the two tigers stalking around my condo.

“… about those tigers … ”

Just after I wrote about not having to disclosing tigers I get a call from my potential sales lead.

That's the good news. The bad news? He's now in New York and won't be back until November. Worse? He left the day after I got the lead!

Sigh.

He is still interested though, so I told him I'd take pictures of the place and send them. He already knows the area …

Wednesday, May 01, 2002

Melancholy molasses coasting beneath the eye of God

I've been in a rather off mood lately. Not exactly depressed, but not really wanting to do anything either. Just existing really.

I came across a picture of Earth as taken at night and it has me both in awe and depressed at the same time. Awe at the level of civilization we've achieved. Here we are! A thousand points of light spread across the face of the earth as we've changed the long dark night into day (or at least twilight). And yet, depressed, for the very same reason. No longer can we see the thousand points of light spreading across the sky. The stars have fallen among us (and according to NORAD, tons of space debris are now poised to rain down upon us as well) such that just by light alone, you can make out the continents upon which we live. I'm also sad that stellar objects like the Hourglass Nebula may no longer be visible from the ground (and when I first saw the high resolution image of that, I immediately thought of Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven's Mote in God's Eye).

I think though, that I've finally snapped out of whatever mood I've been in. And you've been warned—I've got quite a bit of backlog of entries to write, and some of them are quite technical in nature.

TCP Half-close mode and how it affects webserving

Over the past few days, Mark and I have been going over partial closures of a TCP connection, since under certain circumstances, you have to do that if you are writing a webserver, such as the one Mark is writing.


   When a client or server wishes to time-out it SHOULD issue a graceful
   close on the transport connection. Clients and servers SHOULD both
   constantly watch for the other side of the transport close, and
   respond to it as appropriate. If a client or server does not detect
   the other side's close promptly it could cause unnecessary resource
   drain on the network.

§ 8.1.4 of RFC-2616

So far so good. But …


/*
 * More machine-dependent networking gooo... on some systems,
 * you've got to be *really* sure that all the packets are acknowledged
 * before closing the connection, since the client will not be able
 * to see the last response if their TCP buffer is flushed by a RST
 * packet from us, which is what the server's TCP stack will send
 * if it receives any request data after closing the connection.
 *
 * In an ideal world, this function would be accomplished by simply
 * setting the socket option SO_LINGER and handling it within the
 * server's TCP stack while the process continues on to the next request.
 * Unfortunately, it seems that most (if not all) operating systems
 * block the server process on close() when SO_LINGER is used.
 * For those that don't, see USE_SO_LINGER below.  For the rest,
 * we have created a home-brew lingering_close.
 *
 * Many operating systems tend to block, puke, or otherwise mishandle
 * calls to shutdown only half of the connection.  You should define
 * NO_LINGCLOSE in ap_config.h if such is the case for your system.
 */

Comment from http_main.c in the Apache source code.

And then …

Some users have observed no FIN_WAIT_2 problems with Apache 1.1.x, but with 1.2b enough connections build up in the FIN_WAIT_2 state to crash their server. The most likely source for additional FIN_WAIT_2 states is a function called lingering_close() which was added between 1.1 and 1.2. This function is necessary for the proper handling of persistent connections and any request which includes content in the message body (e.g., PUTs and POSTs). What it does is read any data sent by the client for a certain time after the server closes the connection. The exact reasons for doing this are somewhat complicated, but involve what happens if the client is making a request at the same time the server sends a response and closes the connection. Without lingering, the client might be forced to reset its TCP input buffer before it has a chance to read the server's response, and thus understand why the connection has closed. See the appendix for more details.

The code in lingering_close() appears to cause problems for a number of factors, including the change in traffic patterns that it causes. The code has been thoroughly reviewed and we are not aware of any bugs in it. It is possible that there is some problem in the BSD TCP stack, aside from the lack of a timeout for the FIN_WAIT_2 state, exposed by the lingering_close code that causes the observed problems.

Connections in FIN_WAIT_2 and Apache

And the whole purpose of lingering_close() is to handle TCP half-closes when you can't use the SO_LINGER option when creating the socket!

So Mark and I go back and forth a few times and I finally send Mark the following:

Okay, looking over Stevens (UNIX Network Programming [1990], TCP/IP Illustrated Volume 1 [1994], TCP/IP Illustrated Volume 2 [1995]) and the Apache source code, here's what is going on.

The TCP/IP stack itself (under UNIX, this happens in the kernel) is responsible for sending out the various packet types of SYN, ACK, FIN, RST, etc. in response to what is done in user code. Ideally, for the server code, you would do (using the Berkeley sockets API since that's all the reference I have right now, and ignoring errors, which would only cloud the issue at hand):
memset(&sin,0,sizeof(sin));
sin.sin_family      = AF_INET;
sin.sin_addr.s_addr = INADDR_ANY;       
sin.sin_port        = htons(port);      /* usually 80 for HTTP */

mastersock = socket(AF_INET,SOCK_STREAM,0);
one        = 1;
setsockopt(mastersock,SOL_SOCKET,SO_REUSEADDR,&one,sizeof(one));
bind(mastersock,(struct sockaddr *)&sin,sizeof(sin))

while(...)
{
  struct linger lingeropt;
  size_t        length;
  int           sock;
  int           opt;

  listen(mastersock,5);
        
  length = sizeof(sin);
  sock   = accept(sock,(struct sockaddr *)&sin,&length);

  opt                = 1;
  lingeropt.l_onoff  = 1;
  lingeropt.l_linger = SOME_TIME_OUT_IN_SECS;

  setsockopt(sock,IPPROTO_TCP,TCP_NODELAY,&opt,sizeof(opt));
  setsockopt(sock,SOL_SOCKET,SO_LINGER,&li,sizeof(struct linger));

  /*---------------------------------------------------
  ; assuming HTTP/1.1, keep handling requests until
  ; a non-200 response it required, or the client
  ; sends a Connection: close or closes its side of the
  ; connection.  When that happens, we can just close
  ; our side and everything is taken care of.
  ;----------------------------------------------------*/
	
  close(sock);
}
There are two problems with this though that Apache attempts to deal with; 1) close() blocks if SO_LINGER is specified (not all TCP/IP stacks do this, just most it seems) and 2) TCP/IP stacks that have no timeout value in the FIN_WAIT_2 state (which means sockets may be consumed if the FIN_WAIT_2 states don't clear).

Apache handles #2 by:
if ( TCP/IP stack has no timeout in FIN_WAIT_2 state) 
     && ( client is a known client that can't handle persistent
                  connections properly)
then
	downgrade to HTTP/1.0.
end
(Apache will also downgrade to HTTP/1.0 for other browsers because they can't handle persistent connections properly anyway, and Apache will prevent them from crashing themselves, but I'm digressing here … )

Now, Apache handles #1 by rolling its own lingering close in userspace by writing any data it needs to the client, calling shutdown(sock,SHUT_WR), setting timeouts (alarm(), timeout struct in select(), etc) and reading any pending data from the client before issuing the close() (and it never calls setsockopt(SO_LINGER) in this case). The reason Apache does this is because it needs to continue processing after the close() and having close() block will affect the response time of Apache—that, and it seems some TCP/IP stacks can't handle SO_LINGER anyway and may crash (or seriously affect the throughput).

So, if you don't mind close() blocking (on a socket with SO_LINGER) and the TCP/IP stack won't puke or mishandle the socket, then the best bet would be to use SO_LINGER. Otherwise, you will have to do what Apache does and do something like:
write(sock,pendingdata,sizeof(pendingdata));
shutdown(sock,SHUT_WR);
alarm(SOME_TIME_OUT_IN_SECS);
        
FD_ZERO(&fdlist);

do
{
  FD_SET(sock,&fdlist);
  tv.tv_sec  = SOME_SMALLER_TIME_OUT_IN_SECS;
  tv.tv_usec = 0;
  rc         = select(FD_SETSIZE,&fdlist,NULL,NULL,&tv);
} while ((rc > 0) && (read(sock,dummybuf,sizeof(dummybuf)) > 0));

close(sock);
alarm(0);
(Apache has SOME_TIME_OUT_IN_SECS equal to 30 and SOME_SMALLER_TIME_OUT_IN_SECS as 2).

And in going over the Apache code more carefully, it does seem that Apache will use its own version of a lingering close for Linux. Heck, I can't see an OS that Apache supports that it actively uses SO_LINGER (and I'm checking the latest version of 1.3).

I'm not sure how you want to handle this, since the shutdown() call can close down either the read half, the write half (which is what the webserver needs to do in the case above) or both halves. The code you have for HttpdSocket::Shutdown() should probably do somethine close to what I have above if you aren't using SO_LINGER, and if you are using SO_LINGER, then all it has to do is call close().

That seems to have cleared up most of the misunderstandings we've been having and now we're down to figuring out some minor details, as the architecture Mark has chosen for his webserver make the possible blocking on close() not that much of an issue and that more modern TCP/IP stacks probably implement SO_LINGER correctly (or at least to the degree that it doesn't puke or mishandle the option).

Indexing weblogs

I see that Nick Denton is launching a new venture that seems to be centered around marketing and weblog indexing; specifically, thoughts about weblog indexing.

I've talked about this a bit, but if a dedicated search engine wants to successfully scan a weblog there are a few ways to go about it.

One, grab the RSS file for the weblog and index the links from that. That will allow you to populate the search engine with the permanent links for the entries. Another thing it will allow you to do is properly index the appropriate entries. Google does a good job of indexing pages, but a rather poor one of indexing individual entries of a weblog, since it generally views pages as one entity and not as a possible collection of entities. So that if I mention say, “hot dogs” on the first of the month, “wet papertowels” on the fifteenth and “ugly gargoyles at Notre Dame” on the last day of the month, someone looking for “hot wet gargoyles” at Google is going to find the page that archives that month.

Which is probably not what I, nor the searcher in question, want.

Well, unless I'm looking for disturbing search request material, but I digress.

Even if the permanent links point to a portion of a page, the link would be something like

http://www.example.net/200204-index.html#31415926

Which points to a part of the page at

http://www.example.net/200204-index.html

And somewhere on that page is an anchor tag with the ID of “31415926” which is most likely at the top of the entry in question. From there you index until you hit the next named anchor tag that matches another entry in the RSS file.

And if you hit a site like mine, the RSS file will have links that bring up individual pages for each entry.

Now, you might still have to contend with a weblog that doesn't have an Rich Site Summary file, but then, you could just fall back to indexing between named anchor points anyway and use heuristics to figure out what may be the permanent links to index under.

I'm sure that people looking for “hot wet gargoyles” will thank you.

And finally, I reply back

And after twelve days, I finally reply back to MachFind's response to my initial query on becoming a member of their Creative Team of Experts.

I hope I gave them what they wanted.

A clarification on an interesting point

A friend of mine wrote in, having read what I wrote about DNS and asked for some clarifications. And yes, rereading what I wrote, I should probably pass on what I wrote back.

If someone typed this into their web browser:
http://www.example.com
… would they be redirected to:
http://www1.example.com:8080
????
I've never seen this work so I'm curious if that's how this is resolved by the nameserver.

It doesn't quite work that way. Normally, given a URL
http://www.example.com/
a browser would extract out the host portion, and do a DNS A record lookup:
ip = dns_resolve(host,A_RR);
and if a port wasn't specified, use port 80 as a default:
connection = net_connection(ip,TCP,80);
Using the SRV record (which, to my knowledge, isn't used by any web browser that I know of currently), the code would look something like (for now, ignoring the priority codes and multiple servers issues):
srvinfo    = dns_resolve("_http._tcp" + host,SRV_RR);
ip         = dns_resolve(srvinfo.host,A_RR);
connection = net_connection(ip,TCP,servinfo.port);

	
It's handled completely at the DNS level and no HTTP redirect is sent at all. Unfortuately, nothing much (except for some Microsoft products, and Kerberos installations oddly enough) use the SRV records, which means …

PS: I have 2 never-used-domains (XXXXXXXXXXXX and XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX) that I'd like to point to my home unix box. Unfortunately, XXXXXXXX blocks all port 80 traffic … I'm on the hunt for a free dynamic DNS provider that will handle port forwarding or give me the ability to edit the DNS records manually … with the end result being that I want all traffic for these two domains to reach my home machine.

You can't use them for this. Sorry.
You can add the records if you want (I have) but don't expect anything to use them anytime soon.

Thursday, May 02, 2002

The One Pounce Rule

I knew I was in trouble the moment my feet left the earth.

I was close. So very close to catching him. I had rounded the corner of the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere in persuit when something happened; the ground dropped out from beneath me, my foot forgot to hit the ground and started flying, something happened and I found my self bereft of ground support.

Things got worse when my face bounced off the ground. Normally people see stars when such a thing happens, but oddly enough, it looked more like lightening before things went black.

Fortunately, I did not go unconscious.

“Oh honey!” said Spring. “What happened? Did you get run over?”

My glasses didn't fit quite right on my face. My eyebrow was bleeding. I had dirt up my nose and down my mouth. My normally khaki pants were well on their way to being black. “No,” I said. “Spodie is outside.” Mr. Spodie O'Dodie being her cat who had slipped his bonds of the outside court yard and was free on the other side of the wall.

“Oh dear,” said Spring. She came over to hug me, dirt and all. “What did you do?”

“I found Spodie outside and I tried catching him. Bastard took off and I was chasing him around the building.”

“You've never lived with cats before. I can tell.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Have you heard of the One Pounce Rule?” she said.

“One Pounce Rule?”

“Yes. If on the first pounce you don't catch the cat, you might as well give up chasing it.”

“One Pounce Rule.”

“Yes.”

“Now I know.”

Fortunately, my glasses are metal, not plastic and that's probably the only thing that kept them from breaking entirely. I was able to work them more or less back into shape and they seem fine.

Friday, May 03, 2002

Grouch

He didn't show up.

I finally picked and hired a handyman to fix and repair the little things that needed attention in Condo Conner—stuff like replacing missing toilet paper holders, patch small holes, caulking, rehanging the ceiling fan.

Oh, and one rather large hole in the ceiling when the internal A/C was replaced.

Just lots of little things I'd probably never get around to, nor do I have the tools to do a good job.

So I arrive at Condo Conner at 10:00 am, which for me is early.

Darned early. Like 3:00 am for anyone else early.

And he doesn't show.

After an hour I leave.

He better have a darned good excuse for not showing up. For I am quick to anger when tired.

Grrrrrrrrrrr …

“Break out them scisors, Martha … ”

Via Spring comes your harddrive!

Well, only if you are using Microsoft IE. It doesn't seem to work under Netscape or Mozilla.

But really, it's an old old scam. Heck, I did something similar years ago at FAU when I started playing around with the web. If you're a Windows user, here's a copy of your machine's configuration. For you Unix people, how about I snag your password file. Sorry Mac people, I don't have access to a Mac to know where to grab vital system information so for now you're safe.

At least from me.

Actually, I don't have copies of your files. Those are your copies. Honest. It's just that I instructed your browser to pull up the file from your computer. I don't have a copy.

Now, this came about because of the scare tactics that Evidence Eliminator are using to drum up sales from gullible people (“gullible,” by the way, doesn't appear in the dictionary).

Ha ha.

Sorry about that.

Anyway, they have a page, http://www.evidence-eliminator.com/go.shtml, which they use to scare gullible people with. Reload it a few times. It is rather amusing. And the information they have on you is information that any site has on you. I have on you.

Better break out those scissors and cut the network connection.

Sheesh.

The Little Boy Who Stuck His Finger Into The Electrical Outlet

One day his rabbit “Stuffy” chewed through the lamp cord in the living room and was immediately electrocuted. This, naturally, made the little boy curious about electricity. He asked his parents to explain and they got out the book and told him all about it. They also told him how dangerous it could be and never to touch the outlets.

Via Spring, The Little Boy Who Stuck His Finger Into The Electrical Outlet

A charming little story about a boy who learned the hard way not to play with electricity.

It also seems that Spring is enamored (spelled that way because I'm an American—otherwise there'd be an extra “u” in there somewhere) with the site.

Uhg … sushi for breakfast

Spring signed up with PublixDirect, a service of Publix (which is a chain of supermarkets in Florida and Georgia) whereby you select the groceries you want from the website, pay by credit card and Publix will then deliver the groceries to your doorstep.

The site apparently is set up quite nicely—allowing you to select items you normally buy to make a form of pre-canned shopping list. You can then check items off that list, as well as add other items not on the list, and see what items are for sale. According to Spring, it's very smooth and the site works well. You then see a schedule of when they'll be delivering in the area and you can pick one of several listed times.

She set up a delivery for today between 3:00 to 4:00 pm and sure enough, during that hour, the delivery was made, so it seems to work on that end as well.

And Spring is happy because she was able to get sushi delivered and is eating it for breakfast. Breakfast.

Uhg.

Saturday, May 04, 2002

Software from the side of the road

I spent about half an hour or so upgrading the mailing list software I use. Spring has a few issues with it—namely that she can't filter the email that it sends to her. I don't see what the actual problem is, since I do add several headers to each outgoing email (such as “List-Name:” which I added support for sometime in 2000) but her client (Microsoft's ~~Lookout~~ Outlook) can't sort on arbitrary headers. So she's been on my case to fix “that mailing list software I found on the side of the road” as she puts it.

Yes, the software is quite old. In checking I started using it back in 1995 (and even then it was a few years old) with version 1.0.0 (a search I just did revealed that version 1.2.0 was available in September of 1993 but I've yet to actually find a copy of the source code) with a few very minor modifications (that I've made) since.

But by the same token, the software is simple and I think there was only one real bug in the code which I fixed early on (what it was I don't remember—the comments only indicate I fixed something) and I haven't really had any problems since I started using it.

But I went ahead and played with it today. I added some code to add a tag to the subject line for easy filtering, which should make Spring (and some other users) happy.

Sunday, May 05, 2002

Slow motion wreck

75% of all car accidents happen within five miles of home.
And 95% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

It depends upon what your definition of home is.

Considering I have yet to sell Condo Conner, I guess technically it could still be considered home.

And I was less than 100 yards away.

As you drive along 35^th Street to Condo Conner (it's hardly a street—more like an extended parking lot) there's a section where it opens up and you can continue straight or bear to the right; the street more or less opens up into a parking lot with an island in the middle. I tend to bear right as it's a bit quicker than going around the island to the reserved parking spot for Condo Conner.

Along the right side of this curve are a series of parking spots so you end up driving quite close to the back sides of cars. We just cleared an SUV when Spring screamed. As a passenger she tends to do that when she feels an imminent collision between my car (Lake Lumina) and another object, moving or stationary it doesn't matter. And when she screams in fear of an imminent collision between my car (Lake Lumina) and another object, moving or stationary it doesn't matter, I immediately slam on the breaks to stop the car and spend the next minute or so wondering what Spring is screaming about (since obviously I didn't see an immiment collision between my car (Lake Lumina) and another object, moving or stationary it doesn't matter). I'm not blaming Spring for this reaction by the way; I would probably scream too durring an immiment collision between my car (Lake Lumina) and another object, moving or stationary it doesn't matter.

“That car almost backed up into us,” said Spring. I'm looking around trying to figure out what's happening. “Oh no,” she said. “I think he's going to hit us.” I'm still floundering like a beached flounder.

Crunch.

Scream.

Sigh.

The man was still oblivious to a large Chevy Lumina behind him and had continued backing out.

The passenger back door has a large dent. The Accident Investigator issued no citations, as he deemed no one at fault due to the SUV being in both our light of sights.

Sigh.

The Oppressive Condo Commando Regime

Life is funny. Live fourteen years in a home and I barely know any neighbors. Move out, and I keep running into them (quite literally in some cases).

While waiting for the Accident Investigator to show up, two of my ex-neighbors came driving up and asking how I'm doing and what's going on (and one ex-neighbor had already moved out of her condo; what she was doing back there I don't know). And the gentleman I ran into not only knew of me, but had known my Mom and Grandma when they both lived there.

And it turns out he too is sick of the Condo Commandos and if he had the choice, would sell his unit and leave.

When senior citizens start complaining about the Condo Commandos, you just know it's got to be bad.

Monday, May 06, 2002

Grouch update

I finally got in contact with the handyman I hired to fix Condo Conner up. He apologized for missing the appointment for last Friday and ask if I was still interested.

I am.

He said great, when would be a good time. This Friday. And he would even take off a bit of the bill for the inconvience.

Cool.

This time I'll make sure to call him the day before to remind him.

Jonesing for connectivity

Network … out …

Need …
… net…work

badly

fear …
… uncertainty …

doubt

… jonesing …

gimme network!

NOW!

Sweet nectar of life

Much better.

Network is back up and running.

Aaaaaaaaaaah.

Why no, I'm not addicted.

Why do you ask?

Blatant crass commercial message and a link

Well, Ken (a friend of mine from FAU) was kind enough to send me (via snailmail no less!) his company's newsletter (and when I mean his company, he's part owner of it). So I'll return the favor and point to his company's website where you too, can get small business advice [gee, it takes a network outtage to get us to check snailmail. And no, I'm still not adicted].

Tuesday, May 07, 2002

Vans in black, a bank, the State of Virginia and too much imagination

I drove by the bank to hit the ATM and when I parked, I noticed something very strange. In the next row of parking were three vans, two SUVs, a BMW and a utility trailer. In and of itself, that's not so strange. Strange was the fact they were all jet black. Stranger, the licence plates were all from Virginia and scariest of all—the license plates were sequential! They all started with SCSI and ended with a four digit number.

Six vehicles, across class, identical. Jet black. Sequential license plates from Virginia.

I quickly scanned the skies for any black helicopters, and not seeing any, made my way towards the ATM, where I saw yet another black BMW, Virginia license plates, in sequence with the others. I also saw a black Saturn, again from Virginia.

Totally spooked, I quickly made my withdrawl and headed back towards my car. It was then I noticed yet another oddity …

Most of the cars in the parking lot were from Virginia.

Now granted, Florida is a well known tourist destination spot for people from around the United States—heck, I've seen the license plates from every state except Hawaii. But never, in my twenty-two years down here have I seen a parking lot filled with cars from the same state!

Well, a state other than Florida that is.

I got in my car, and peeled out of the parking lot. On the other side of the utility trailer, I saw a name: Specialty Computers And Systems, Inc.

From Virginia.

Cabling? Tech Support?

Yea. Right. I believe you.

This might be bigger than the whole white vans conspiracy …

Wednesday, May 08, 2002

Looks like I won't be a part of their team

Amazing. Only seven days to hear back from MachFind about being part of their Creative Team of Experts and I'm afraid it isn't good news for me:

To
“Sean Conner” <sean@conman.org>

Subject
RE: Creative Team of Experts position

Date
Wed, 8 May 2002 09:43:37 -0500

Hello,
Our company is currently in the process of gaining acquisition, and as a result we must be a delay on available positions until the change is complete.
Thanks for your interest.
Mach Find

Ah well. I wish them luck on their gaining acquisition.

An Ad-Hoc Trip to Xanadu

As I've said before, all the innovation on the web is happening at the edge. The latest to come from The Edge? Linkbacks.

It's not even a new idea really. Since about 1994 nearly every webbrowser (and certainly all webbrowsers that I know of today) sends a refering link along with the webpage request. You click on the link above, and your browser, in addition to telling the server at www.disenchanted.com that it wants the page /dis/linkback.html it will tell it that it got the link from http://boston.conman.org/2002/5/8.1 (well, most likely from http://boston.conman.org/ until this entry scolls off the front page but that's beside the point) and I've come across sites that use such refering links to generate links back to the previous page.

But what Disenchanted is doing is taking these refering links and linking back to them on the page being linked to in real time (well, subject to certain conditions so it's near real time) and making the those visible on the linked to page. So now that I linked to http://www.disenchanted.com/dis/linkback.html there will be (as soon as two or more people visit that page through this page) a link on that page to this page.

What all these links back and forth will do is hard to say, especially to something like Google. One effect may be a smoothing out of Google bombing. No hard reasons for that; just a gut feeling. Another effect may be to change the shape of the web if enough sites start linking back (although this might take a few years as the technology catches on). There might be effects we can't even predict (who would have predicted the web would look like a bowtie when it first started?).

And while some may question what Disenchanted is doing, I think it's great; I'm approaching Xanadu from the tumblers aspect while Disenchanted is going about it from the two-way linking aspect (although Ted Nelson might not agree with our approaches). That still leaves the problem of transclusion to solve.

Thursday, May 09, 2002

Visualizing search results

Ken sent me this link to the Kart00 Metasearch engine. It uses Flash to an almost pathological extreme, but you can choose the HTML interface (and be careful—once you choose, there doesn't seem to be a way to change short of removing any cookies you have for their domain).

It is an interesting concept and I think I know what they're doing. When you do a search (and yes, the Flash interface is nicer; the HTML interface crashed Mozilla 0.9.9 in an endless series of message boxes) the result is a graph of the results. The size of a node (search result) is apparently directly proportional to the relevance of the search, and the connections between the nodes (the edges) are similar terms between the two pages.

For instance, I did a search for “sean spc conner” and the two largest results (one for www.classiccmp.org and www.conman.org) are linked by the terms “captain” and “napalm” (wonder why?). You can also remove terms from a list on the side.

All in all, it is an interesting view into search results and the ability to remove terms is quite nice (and can give dramatic changes—for instance, I removed the terms “captain” and “napalm” and the resulting graph was completely different with no one node dominating and the big result from the last search, www.conman.org isolated and not connected to any other node).

More vans in black, a bank, the State of Virginia and still too much imagination

Drove by the bank again today and they're still there, although there were noticably fewer cars from Virginia in the parking lot.

I think they know I'm on to them.

Does that mean they're on to me now?

And to tell you the truth, I haven't seen any unmarked white vans in a while …

Telling time

I've gotten so used to the 24-hour analog clock that normal 12-hour analog clocks look wrong to me. I had thought the clock on my computer was wrong (since I have a window open that displays an analog 12-hour clock for the time) that it took me a several minutes of tinkering to realize that it wasn't six hours behind.

Sigh.

Friday, May 10, 2002

Clue

I'm reading the Cluetrain Manifesto and much like The Dilbert Principle everything in there seems pretty much common sense, which is something that companies seem to lack.

And as I sat there today, in Condo Conner, waiting for the handyman to show up, again and pondering that perhaps, just perhaps, someone else needs a cluetrain.

Clued in

Contact, finally! The handyman finally called, apologized for missing me again. He then said he'll go to Condo Conner on Monday and call me from there and wait for me to show up.

That sounds like a nice change from going there and waiting for him to show up …

Monday, May 13, 2002

Never did like Mondays

I feel like I'm coming down with a cold (how? I work from home). The handyman calls me in the morning telling me that he's going to show up at Condo Conner in another hour so don't go there yet!

Okay.

This is good. I get to sleep some more; hopefully to head off this cold. I promptly go back to sleep and wait for his second call.

The second call comes. I get up, dressed and nearly kill myself going down the stairs. Nothing that massive doses of Morphine and being in traction for six months can't cure.

Show up at Condo Conner to meet the handyman. We go over what he's to do; he knocks off a few bucks for missing the last two appointments and I leave him be for the next few days making repairs.

So now it's home to suck down OJ, vitamins and sleep.

Tuesday, May 14, 2002

Public Relations

I explained my proposal to Lisa H. Morrice, 44, a PR agent from California: I will write glowingly about her client's pillows if she will tell me something really humiliating about herself that I will also print.
(A colleague of mine had been skeptical of this gambit: PR folks may be desperate, he reasoned, but they have their dignity.)
Just how glowingly, Lisa wondered.
Very, I said.
“My husband dumped me for a younger woman,” she said.
At this moment, I gave my doubting colleague a cheerful thumbs up.

Via my dog wants to be on the radio, Below the Beltway

I'm still reading the Cluetrain Manifesto and they don't really care for public relations in that book. And I found it very amusing that PR people would stoop so low to get publicity for their clients. At least Alicia Levine (the last PR flack interviewed in the above article) got a standing ovation for her humilitating moment in life.

Do What I Mean

Here's what's going to happen: in a few months, you'll be able to build a blog, or more precisely, a dynamic web site, with content largely selected for you by a search robot that understands what you like, who you like, and where the stuff you like is found. You'll edit a selection of stories found and presented to you by your search robot, and you'll comment if you please on the stuff you decide to include in your own Daily Dish.

Via Microcontent News, Is Instapundit over?

And in unrelated news, in a few months, you'll be able to specify the type of program you want and have it programmed for you by computer, ready to go and bug free.

Of course, researchers are undaunted by 40 years of setbacks in reaching a self-programming computer. “We're very close,” said one researcher who asked to remain unnamed due to concerns of a plot to kill his group by rogue programmers looking to keep their jobs. When asked if said group of rogue programmers have been keeping them from reaching success for the past 40 years, the researcher said no. “It's not that they've kept us from making progress, but that we just can't quite get the computer to do what we mean … ”

In other news, another 40 year project is nearing completion. “Another six months,” said an anonymous programmer with the group, “and we'll finally have a universal, democratic hypertext library that will blow the World Wide Web away.”

Wednesday, May 15, 2002

Is there no synonym?

Spring and I were discussion names for a project I'm working on, looking up terms in a thesaurus when we hit upon a remarkable fact: there is no synonym for ink!

There's ink … and then there's … you know … ink.

Arg!

Feeling Groovy

I'm feeling much better now. I suppose this means I better check up on Condo Conner.

Educational Meltdown

My eyes have seen the glory
of the burning of the school.
We have tortured every teacher,
we have broken every rule;
we plan to hang the principal
this very afternoon.
The school is burning on.

A popular tune in school when I was a student, that now would get me arrested if sung today at school.

I didn't care for school as a kid (nor of college, but that's another story). I knew that the U.S. educational system is bad (when plumbing is more prestigious than teaching, that's bad) but I had no idea that it is currently in meltdown mode.

Let's see, there's a 13 year old facing up to eight years for shooting a spitwad (link via Flutterby). And there's the boy suspended for writing an essay he was assigned (link via Flutterby). Then there's the girl who was suspended for drawing a picture of a teacher with arrows through his head (link via Flutterby, and I shudder to think what would have happened to Hoade with some of the pictures he's drawn).

And least you think I'm cribbing all my links on this subject from Flutterby here are a few from Disenchanted: one about underwear inspections going too far (yes I'm serious—underwear inspections at a public high school) and graduates who can't attend graduation unless they're planning on attending college (or entering the millitary, or continuing on to a trade school).

Inbloodysane.

Friday, May 17, 2002

The Obligatory Episode 2 Post

Unlike in May 1999, when I saw Star Wars: The Phantom Menace three times on opening day (it just worked out that I had a chance to see it three times) I did not see Star Wars: Attack of the Clones on opening day. After the introduction of Jar-Jar Binks, I wasn't about to see the next installment on opening day.

So I (actually, Spring, Rob (who did see it at 12:15 am opening day and went to see it again) and I, so make that a “we”) ended up seeing it the day after.

The dialog sucked. There was very little chemistry between Padmé (Natalie Portman) and Anakin (Hayden Christensen); their love story bogged the movie down. I found watching Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) in the rain (what rain!) more exciting than the cold and ham-fisted romance the kids were going through (and that's saying something since Natalie Portman is hot, especially in the white form fitting (ahem) body suit where it was plainly evident the set was a bit chilly). Even the scenery was more lively than their courtship.

Oh! The scenery! It was the scenery of “The Phatom Menace” that kept me there for two additional showings and it's only gotten better. Coruscant (the capital planet of the Republic) is a beautiful planet filled with Gernbackian visions of the future. Naboo, Tatooine, heck, all the planets are beautifully rendered; Industrial Light and Magic (the special effects division of Lucasfilm) could make a killing doing travelogues.

Sometimes, Anakin, I think you'll be the death of me.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, to Anakin Skywalker.

And the action sequences. The chase through Coruscant (with elements from Blade Runner and The Fifth Element that either George Lucas stole or paid homage to) was phenomenal; Jedi Knights are either very brave or very stupid (Obi-Wan Kenobi leaping through a … oh … call it the 200^th floor window … to catch an assasin droid, or Anakin Skywalker leaping out of a flying car (“I hate it when he does that,” says Obi-Wan) and falling … oh … call it 2,000 feet … to catch an assasin as she tries to fly get away). Or the sequence where Obi-Wan Kenobi attempts to capture Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison) as a maelstrom rages around them (what rain!).

And finally! We get to see True Jedi's in their prime fighting! And not just two or three—scores of Jedi Knights fighting. We get to see Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson—“Hand me my lightsabre—it's the one with 'bad motherfucker' written on it.”) fighting! We get to see Yoda get down with his bad self and get dirty in a lightsabre duel that proves why he is the master. And unlike Darth Maul (“The most underutilized character in TPM), the apprentice Sith Lord to Darth Sidious in this film will be around for the next one (woo hoo!).

Darth Vader is the good guy …

STAR WARS RETURNS today with its fifth installment, “Attack of the Clones.” There will be talk of the Force and the Dark Side and the epic morality of George Lucas's series. But the truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good.
It's a difficult leap to make—embracing Darth Vader and the Emperor over the plucky and attractive Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia—but a careful examination of the facts, sorted apart from Lucas's off-the-shelf moral cues, makes a quite convincing case.

Via my dog wants to be on the radio, The Case for The Empire

Given this article, and some scenes from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (one where two Jedi Knights take custody of a small child and leave his enslaved mother because “that's not our job” and another one where said two Jedi Knights gang up on one Sith Lord) that yes, a convincing case could be made that the Empire was an attempt to keep the Republic together.

Sunday, May 19, 2002

“… and you'll still get paid, but you don't have to show up for work.”

Shuttering Ferndale's Intalco plant would save the BPA about $600 million—money the BPA would have spent to buy overpriced energy on the free market in order to honor its contract allotment and price for Intalco. As part of this money-saving deal, BPA offered to pay most Intalco employees not to work for those two years.

Via Flutterby, Remember the Lesbian Prom King?

Two years of pay.

And you don't even have to show up at the plant.

Sign me up.

Continued in the article, the people of Ferndale were worried that the plant would not open again after two years. A valid concern yes, but if I were faced with such a prospect (two years of sitting at home and getting paid to do so) I think I would take the opportunity presented and run with it.

Two years. Possibly start a new business. Or go to the library or local community school and pick up new skills that might serve me if the plant doesn't open again. Or heck, you have two years to find another job. Are people that defined by their jobs?

Perceptions of ownership

Continuing in missing the big picture for the small details is this quote I found in a rather long article (via CamWorld) about beating Microsoft:

… its war with Microsoft. AOL (owned by the parent company of this magazine) …

Page two of Beating Bill

Funny, I thought AOL owned Time/Warner, not the other way around. Now, it might be that the reporter is ignorant of who owns who, but I wonder if this isn't the feeling around Time/Warner—they bought AOL and not the other way around.

Or is it that AOL is owned by AOL Time/Warner, which also owns Business 2.0? Or could it be that no one knows who owns who but does it really matter anyway?

I think I'm getting a headache.

Monday, May 20, 2002

What's the point?

Spring and I caught Showgirls on VH1. We watched it anyway, despite my saying “What's the point?”

“Showgirls” isn't that good of a film, and it's not bad enough to actually MST3K it. About the only reason to watch the film is to see lots of gratuitous nudity (Gina Gershon! Nude! Woo hoo!). But it was showing on VH1, not known for being a premium channel like HBO, and seeing how the film itself is rated NC-17 (for nudity and erotic sexuality throughout) then really, what's the point?

Whole scenes were cut out, and when they couldn't cut the scenes with total nudity, they added bikinis (rather badly done ones at that) to hide the fact the cast was nude (it looked more like a marker was applied directly to the film) and of course, they changed dialog, Gosh Darn it.

While watching it, Spring kept asking me, “How could you do this with sock puppets?”

Wednesday, May 22, 2002

Notes from the passenger seat of a Caddilac

“So wheres we going?” said the driver, a black man in his 50s perhaps, maybe a bit older. It was hard to tell.

“Turn right here. I live on Boca Rio and 8^th,” I said. I was curious as to how he would drive the car—his right leg didn't seem to be in any shape for driving.

“You'se going to have to tell me how to get there,” he said, making the turn, left foot switching between break and gas. “I'm from Hollywood.”

“Hollywood? That's some commute.”

“Yes it is,” he said. “I've worked for the owner now for seventeen years. Used to work at the shop in Hollywood. Lived not mo' than five minutes away.” Right leg crammed up against the center hump in the car, left foot managing the pedals.

“Turn left here,” I said.

He did. “I was three of us; me, the owner and his brother.” He leaned over to me. “You'se know about black sheep in the family, right?”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of my own family, with its fair share of gray and black sheep. “Turn right; that's 8^th.”

Turn navigated. “It was the brother. Ruined the shop he did.”

“Oh that's horrible.”

“Yup. So the owner, he tells me, ‘Arty,’ he says, ‘Arty, don't worry about nothin'. I got ya covered,’ And so I work for him here.”

“Nice boss,” I said.

“Yup. The other fellers, my manager, they may give me shit, but not the owner. Turn at the light?”

“No, continue straight,” I said.

“But they shouldn't give me shit, I work for the owner! Seventeen years I've worked for him. Ain't never given me shit.” We drove in silence for a few moments. “What's happened to yo car?”

“Battery, alternator, serpentine belt, don't know. It's power everything and the electrical system was acting quite funny. Trying to drive it the car just died on me,” I said. “Turn left here.”

“Shit, that happened to me on the way back from Georgia,” he said. “Wife and I went up to Georgia, and on the way back the car died on us.”

“Turn right here,” I said. “Then left. I'm at the back.”

“In the middle of nowhere and the car done died on me.” He then stopped, pulled a map out and started looking. He then mentioned a place. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Sorry, can't say I've heard of the place.” He mentions another place. This time it's one of the exits on the Florida Turnpike. “Yes, I've heard of that.”

“That's where the car done died. Right on the Turnpike. Towtruck comes out, drives me half an hour back north, and I have to pay for two damn vehicles!”

“Jesus!”

“Amen!”

“Yea, I lost a car in Georgia a few years ago.”

“No kiddin'?”

“Nope. Transmission seized up tight. Wouldn't even move in neutral.”

“Good Lord. Did you go back for it?”

“Nope. Would have cost two thousand to get it fixed, so I opted to get a used car instead.”

“Shit!”

“Thank you for the ride,” I said. “It was very nice to meet you.”

“You know when you car will be ready?”

“Most likely tomarrow,” I said. “I guess I'll see you then.” I got out of the car.

“Okay. Nice talkin' with you.”

“Thanks again,” I said and closed the door. He drove off.

You know, I should check these things …

It's not that the mechanics I dropped the car off with were bad or anything, but I still had this nagging voice in the back of my head that soemthing was wrong and I should have had the car towed to the dealership.

I check, and lo, what do I find?

That I had not the 36,000 mile/36 month warranty (which would put the car just outside the warranty period), but instead a 60,000 mile/72 month warranty, of which is still in effect.

Boy, am I stupid.

So it's call up the mechanic and good, they haven't started yet, so I can have the car towed to the dealership. The dealership can accept the car and AAA can tow the car, again, no problem, and I don't have to be there since it's from a repair center to a repair center. So I'm set.

Boy, am I stupid.

Or loosing my memory.

Thursday, May 23, 2002

The Return of Lake Lumina

Earlier in the day the dealership called to say my car was ready. I informed them that I needed to be picked up and they said they would call back when a driver was available. I was getting worried when five o'clock was rolling around and they hadn't called back yet. I asked Rob if he would take me if they didn't call by say, a quarter past five.

He agreed, only to have the dealership call almost immediately afterwards for directions to the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere. Half an hour later I was sitting in the curtesy van, listening to the driver talk about the lack of quality workmanship in today's world.

Lake Lumina was ready and although it was a bit more than I was expecting (since they did quite a bit of work to bring it back up to spec) the major problem didn't cost me anything since it was still covered by the warranty.

Disney's annexation of Atlantis

I was invited over to JeffK's house (he lives just around the corner from the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere) to watch a movie. Mark, Kelly and ChrisS were there and we all voted for the film we wanted to view; a nearly unanimous vote for the Disney film Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

It's a decent film; perhaps not worth seeing in the theater but good enough for rental though. I was a bit surprised at just how violent the film was (for a Disney animation—enough to get a PG). The style of animation is a bit different than your standard Disney animated style—it's more influenced by Japanese animation (anime) than classical Disney style but not so anime as to be distracting; although I did find the mixing of compter and traditional animation to be a bit distracting in some instances (it was better realized in Beaty and the Beast).

We were all disappointed though, in the quality of the DVD—it took us fifteen minutes of fiddling around to get it to play correctly. We didn't know if it was poor quality from being handled so much (as a rental) or just poor quality in manufacturing.

Friday, May 31, 2002

Google The Boston Diaries

Okay, so the search function isn't implemented, or is broken entirely I decided to sigh up for Google's free search engine. Spring signed up for the service and I decided to give it a try.

The hard part was integrating the search field over to the left into the site. Google requires the use of their logo, which I have nothing against but the only background colors they provide are white, grey and black and not the shade of blue I use. Another irksome quirk: while you can brand the output Google expects you to have a banner image to use. I don't. I wish they had the option to specify a text based banner but hey, it's a free service; I shouldn't complain all that much.

Saturday, June 01, 2002

A Day at the Zoo

Eight o'clock in the morning and I'm wondering just why I agreed to this. Spring was wondering the same thing as we struggled to get up and head out with Rob to his trial, as Rob had asked me to be an expert witness (about email) on his behalf.

Rob belongs to the Adrian Empire, a medieval recreation society (somewhat like the SCA) that he's belonged to for the past few years. Rob uses it as stress release; beating up people with swords is apparently very good for stress release and recently Rob became a squire to Sir Trakx.

Sir Trakx has belonged to the Adrian Empire for a dozen years and founded the South Florida chapter (Kingdom of York), helped draft the Imperial Laws (which superceed kingdom law), is currently the Imperial Queen's Champion and has more titles than you can swing a sword at. A very well respected knight in the Adrian Empire, respected except by the current King of York; they have an adversarial relationship.

So it was six or seven months ago when the King, in response to anonymously posting to the Adrian Empire mailing list, sent out an email saying that he could track down any anonymous email sent to the list. Of course, that was taken as a challenge by someone on the list and within a day or two, someone had forged an email from the King to the list and the King suspected Rob as being the perpetrator of the forged email.

The evidance is scant—one bounced email (back to the King) with Rob's email address in the To: line (it was apparently sent as a test some 40 minutes prior to the actual forged email and unfortunately for the perpetrator, it bounced and since it “came” from the King, he received the bounce). The email itself either came from an open relay somewhere in France or an ISP in Boston. And that's it.

So that's how I found myself sitting in court (actually, a conference room at a public library) surrounded by people in Medieval period garb (lots of velvet, ornate jewelry and headbands, tight dresses emphasizing cleavage) taking part in a highly technical case involving forged email.

Quite surreal.

To make matters worse, the King was both plaintiff and judge in the trial and it was obvious that he was openly antagonistic towards Sir Trakx and using Rob as a means to get to him. The whole opening sequence of the trial was a pissing match between the King and Sir Trakx (with the result of Sir Trakx having more charges placed against him by the King).

Over the next hour a highly technical trial went on, trying to explain how SMTP works, with RFC-2821 and RFC-2822, various emails, forged and not, submitted as evidance (silly, yes I know). Sir Trakx tried to call me up as a technical witness but when I failed to produce sufficient certifications proclaiming my credentials (this is a game from crying out loud! In a trial that is setting precedance for the Adrian Empire no less!) he refused to allow my testimony. Of course the King had his credentials as a computer forensic expert on hand (a cheesy looking paper certificate).

In the end, Rob was found guilty of complicity in the forged email; there wasn't enough evidance to convict him of having actually done the act, but since his email address appeared in the To: line (and of course, that can't be forged) he obviously knew about it and failed to bring it up to the King. For his “crime” Rob received what is basically nine months of probation—he can't serve in any political office or in court (to which he said “Yipee!”) and he has to act as a server at the next corronation (which he's volunteered for before so it's nothing new to him).

The politics are so fierce precisely because the stakes are so low.

Dr. Arnold J. Mandell

Then, Sir Trakx was put on trial on two counts: failure to address the King with his proper title and for lying to the King about receiving Official Notification of Rob's actions (Sir Trakx maintained he was never officially notified; the King felt otherwise). By this point Sir Trakx didn't really care and basically told the court, in the manner of William Shatner, to “get a life!” Sir Trakx was involved in the Adrian Empire as a hobby and it had since failed to be fun for him anymore.

He was found guilty on both charges (failing to address the King with his proper title, he was definitely guilty) the second charge the King had absolutely no case but had stacked the deck against Sir Trakx with his pick of jury (technically called judges but they acted as a cross between judges and jury). He was banned from the game for six months, and when he returns, will not have be accorded privledges of his rank for another six months.

The kicker is though, that Sir Trakx has the favor of the Imperial Court and can now get them involved in the situation. Also, the laws the King has passed are illegal according to the Imperial Laws (since the local laws cannot superceed Imperial Law, and any local law has to be sent to the Imperial level for approval and the King has failed to do such). I found that rather amusing.

Sunday, June 02, 2002

It's what I get for answering the phone

Since I had no real other plans, I ended up helping a friend move. He had finally closed on his new townhome and was moving for the first time in his life (he still lived with his parents and had managed to save up enough to buy a house). He said I could write about this, but requested anonymity for reasons that will become apparent.

When I arrived with G and K to F's new house, we killed a few minutes walking through the neighborhood (most of which is still under construction). Like most modern developments here in Lower Sheol, the sameness is numbing and scary at the same time; looking down the street you see identical units, with identical plantings and (soon) identical cars and people. Being townhomes, there is nearly no yard to speak of, and it is not pedestrian friendly (very limited sidewalks).

He his Dad and another friend, S, arrived shortly with the U-Haul truck they rented for the move.

I should note that it was now 8:00 pm and this was their first moving trip of the day.

Granted, F (the one moving) only had his room to move but it was still a rather late start.

The truck was unloaded into the garage in about ten minutes, and his Dad drove the truck back to his house for the next load. We spent the next half hour recovering from the taxing exertions before heading back to F's parents' house for the next load.

F had put a down payment on the townhome over a year ago and only in the past week or so has the construction on it finished (and there are still a few details to work out). In the past month it became clear that he would be moving in a few weeks. He knew for the past week he would be closing on the house. Did he pack anything?

No.

Nothing was ready to go.

I can understand if he had less than a week's notice of moving an entire house but no. It's just one room.

And while I may be a pack rat, F has managed to pack an amazing amount of stuff into one room. So much stuff that no one really knew what color carpeting was in his room until we got there and the space formerly taken up by the waterbed was now free. I thought the carpet was blue, G thought it was green; the actual color was gray (the color differences was due to poor lighting and the clutter on the floor). There were still about four or five major pieces of furniture that needed cleaning off, dusted off (it's been years since the room had been properly dusted) and loaded.

And by cleaning off, I mean the removal of stuff. So F spent the time moving stuff off the furniture, and the rest of us carrying it out to be cleaned. F's Dad set up an air compressor and hose to blast the furniture with air to get most of the dust off, then a towel and lots of Pledge to finish the job. To say the furniture was a bit dusty is to say that Saudia Arabia is a bit sandy.

Clouds of dust permeated the air; dust bunnies were scurrying away into the darkness. Masks were handed out to prevent black lung. It was quite bad.

We had arrived at the parents' house around 9:00 pm.

We finally got the furniture (and only the furniture—F still has to pack the stuff up but that can be taken by car) onto the truck by 11:52 pm (and we know that because F was beeped by his work computer saying it had finished generating an important report at that time).

Back to F's new townhome and again, ten minutes to unload the truck.

Monday, June 03, 2002

For Sale: One Holy Land

You want to talk about buying and selling land? You tell me that land which I bought years ago is so valuable to the kids of the old tenants they're willing to send their children out to blow themselves up to get it back, Ill tell you what we have here are what the real-estate trade calls motivated buyers.
What, have the Israelis forgotten how to be Jews? Sell them the god-forsaken land back at a hefty profit, jacking up the price because of all the improvements. If they dont have cash, make them sign sixty-year mortgages, and appoint the Swiss Guards as the collection agents for the loans. Take the profits and retire to Palm Springs.
Sheesh.

The Unholy Lands by J. Neil Schulman

It's either that, or possibly have the UN take control of the Holy Land, or just Jerusalem, since it's apparent that Jews, Muslims and some Christians want it to themselves and can't share, so let's make so that none of them own it and have to answer to some other higher authority, since YHWH (aka God aka Allah) certainly isn't taking charge here.

The Dinner Song of J. H. Marx

Did I tell you we called him Tom?—possibly because that's his name. I, of course, asked him to call me Tom too, but only because I loathe the name Julius.
Yours,
Tom Marx

Today in Literary History

Ah … Groucho Marx. Gotta love the guy. 29 years ago today Groucho Marx and T. S. Eliot met for dinner, as each was a fan of the other's work. The dinner didn't quite go as expected but at least Groucho had a sense of humor about the affair.

A little touched

A brain-damaged hippie has decided to devote all his time and money into pitching a surreal cartoon/live-action musical/Hollywood blockbuster about the powers of peace and love. He has a convoluted plot that involves love babies and sperm and magical lovemaking and the KKK and Vietnam and death and birth and it's all done in this heavily marketable style that is so fucking insane you will never want to go near acid ever again.
HIGHLIGHT: He goes off on a tangent about a new chain of organic vegetarian restaurants called Peace and Love that will stem from the success of the movie and will compete with McDonald's.

Via Flutterby, TOUCHING PEOPLE

I'm not so sure about these touching people, but I will say that the videos on this page are of people that are seriously touched. The funniest I found was the Martin Carlton Stunt Special, where he seriously attempts to leap from the top of one pine tree to another pine tree maybe 50, 100 feet away. He doesn't quite make it. The saddest (or pathetic, depending on how you view it) is of Orson Wells selling champagne near the end of his life (can you say “pissed drunk?”).

Then there's the CEO of Winnebago attempting to make a commercial but comes off more like an extra in a Scarface (oddly enough, Spring and I had a conversation about swearing last night; mainly about how little I do and why. I said that I grew up being taught that swearing was bad and that the adults in my life actually did very little swearing. And if used too much, the words loose their power and when something really bad happens you could be rendered speechless; not having any words powerful enough to express the emotion. Spring said that she had, in fact, found herself speechless on a few occasions—the swear words not being powerful enough for her to express what she was feeling).

Star Wars Geeking

Major geekage.

Rob and I got into a conversation about the Force and light sabers. I don't remember exactly how we ended up on a Star Wars conversation, but we did.

What can I say? We're both geeks.

I remarked that in all the films so far, we haven't really seen light sabers used to their full potential. Almost in The Phantom Menace, with Darth Maul's double-ended light saber, but I felt he didn't use them to full effect; what he should have done was light only one end to fight Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan and when the opportunity presented itself, snap on the other end and sweep across in a surprise attack. Rob said that doing such a maneouver would be very dangerous and very hard to do if the power switch wasn't right there for Maul to ignite the blade. Or even if the switch was turned on at the wrong moment (“Ooops … impaled myself … darn it all!”).

Point conceeded, but hey, we're talking about Force-using warriors here—ones who can use telekinesis to move objects. Who's to say that without the proper training that a light saber can't be turned on using the Force?

Even then, we don't really have an evidence that a Jedi (or Sith Lord) can both wield a light saber in battle and use telekinesis at the same time. In every instance in the various movies, the use of telekinesis is exclusive with direct engagement with the light saber.

But even more creative uses of the light saber have yet to present themselves (in the movies that is). Why not strap the light saber to the arm, and have the on-button in the palm of the hand? As you (the Jedi knight or Sith Lord, take your pick) punch your opponate, hit the switch and instant impalement. Rob said that such a use has been described in the various Star Wars books that take place after Return of the Jedi, but I would like to see more creative use of light sabers in the movies.

The conversation then turned to actual fighting styles. In the book for Attack of the Clones, it mentioned that Count Dooku used a fencing style, where as the rest of the Jedi use a Kendo slashing style sword play. The Kendo style makes sense in the presence of lasers—the sweeping motions are used to deflect the beams but in Jedi-to-Jedi combat (and even in real life, Rob assured me) that unless the skill levels are way out of wack, a fencer will slice to ribbons a person using Kendo; the fencer has tighter control over the weapon and can take advantage of openings that a slashing style presents. And Rob should know, he plays with swords quite often.

Tuesday, June 04, 2002

No more Mozilla navigation bar

It's a shame that Mozilla dropped the navigation bar for the 1.0 release due to speed issues. It's a nice feature that not many browsers support currently and I hate to see it not supported by Mozilla.

Hopefully this is only a temporary feature pull.

Lock out

In the fourteen or so years I lived in Condo Conner I locked myself outside a few times; enough to count on one hand and still have fingers left over.

In the less than six months here at the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere I have now managed to lock myself out three times. What the heck is wrong with me?

It just happened, otherwise I wouldn't be bringing this up. I'm putting laundry in, and Rob comes down stairs and we start chatting. I finish putting in the load and Rob heads outside to smoke a cigarette and I follow him, subconsciously locking the door behind me.

The door closes. “Um, Rob,” I said. “You wouldn't happen to have your keys on you, would you?”

“No. Why?”

“Oh … no particular reason … ”

Fortunately, Rob has a good sense of humor about these things.

Wednesday, June 05, 2002

Getting back at Chinese spammers

The other day I recieved a piece of spam. Nothing spectacular, no jewel cartels, no ex-girlfriends, no marijuana and no pleas for help from timetravellers. Nope, just your ordinary porn spam.

Only it was to my private email address—the one that until now was spam free.

I want to make sure the person that sent this out pays.

So I start tracking headers, and well, it seems to come from China, which means there isn't a whole lot I can do. Or is there? This is what I sent back to the spammer and various upstream providers (including the one in China):

This is unsolicited spam. Please remove me from your list promptly. To the others I have carboned on this message: the user is a spammer and I did not request to receive this email, nor do I wish to receive such email, nor do I want the products advertised herein. A copy of the full email follows.

Thank you.

[headers removed—nothing important here]

Hello I am your Falun Gong instructor.
I am the one you dream About,
I will train you in the ways of Falun Gong, for it is my life,
Love to talk about and any subject.

Falun Gong is my way of life,
Ultimate in exercise.

Yeeeeeeeeaaaahhh
I am ready for you.

It is not yoru looks but your determination that matters most,
With My teaching skills I can make your dream come true…

Hurry up! call me let me instruct for you…………….

TOLL-FREE: 1-877-451-8336

For phone billing: 1-900-993-2582
–
_______________________________________________

Falun Gong being an illegal religion in China. I hope the spammer doesn't mind me changing the message a bit.

The millimeter waves of space

So sweet. Rob lent me his Cisco Airo 340 (a wireless PCMCIA network card) since he's not really using it right now; he was using it at work but they shut down the wireless network there.

I pulled down the latest version of the PCMCIA Linux drivers and started compiling. When loading the Airo module it kept complaining about unresolved symbols. Now, I'm compiling the modules under Linux 2.0 (they compiled fine) but I'm guessing some subtle changes have been made. I found the required symbols (under 2.0.39 they're inline functions), added the include file (<linux/isdnif.h>) to airo.c and that solved that problem.

The next problem: verbosity.

Since my laptop is rather limited in memory, I don't really run much, so any messages the kernel prints gets dumped to the console, and this driver is rather chatty. Annoyingly so. So back to the source code, comment out the messages, and we're good to go.

I had ssh1 installed but since there are issues with it, I decided to go ahead and install OpenSSH (since I already have it compiled for Linux 2.0). That was harder to get working than getting on the network. Regenerated the keys three or four times (on this laptop, that's not a fast operation), installing PAM, playing with configuration files and all it turns out to be is a permission problem on /dev/tty. Sigh. I still have problems with scp (secure copy—I keep getting “protocol error: unexpected <newline>”) but I'll solve that soon enough.

But this wireless network is soooo sweet. The ability to walk anywhere (well, within a few hundred feet) and still be online. So I can now sit out in the courtyard and work, or (like I am now) hanging out with Rob as he sets up a file server for the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere and watching Junkyard Wars and still being online.

But then again, you knew I was a geek to begin with.

Nuke one spammer

I heard back from one of the upstreams on the spam I received: the account has been removed. Score one for me, but I hope that my email address isn't passed on.

Thursday, June 06, 2002

Changing your gender is less risky than changing your Windows userid

Rob is planning on setting up a file server (running Linux) for the Facility int he Middle of Nowhere that needs to support both Unix and Windows. Nothing terribly difficult, and Samba is getting easier to configure with the passing years.

Only problem is that the userid on my Windows system does not match the one on the Unix systems, but it doesn't seem to be that big of an issue—Samba looks like it can map between Windows and Unix userids so nothing has to change on my Windows system.

Only that feature in Samba doesn't seem to be working very well. Or at all. As a test, Rob creates a userid on the Linux file server and I can mount the drive under Windows (or “access the share” in Windows lingo). I would prefer to use the Unix userid under Windows though. Okay, change the userid under Windows.

Something I would think would be simple. It's pretty straightforward under Unix but apparently it's not something to triffle with under Windows. Once you set your userid, that's it. It's carved in stone for all eternity (or until the next time you reinstall Windows to fix some other simple problem like moving the mouse unexpectedly).

No. It's clone the existing userid and under no circumstance should you ever, ever, even think of deleting the orginal userid, or the folders to conserve disk space.

I found that out the hard way.

Saturday, June 08, 2002

Become a McGuyver without leaving your home

While intended for kids, I personally would love to build some of these toys. Motors with just a battery and some wire. A plastic hydrogen bomb (okay, maybe not that, given the recent events in Asia). Or how about the radio out of a few transistors, three pennies, some caps, some resistors, salt, vinegar, crumpled aluminum and a stainless steel bowl (or three)?

Way cool stuff here. This almost makes me wish I had the WWW when I was a kid.

(I found the link via 0xDECAFBAD)

Tuesday, June 11, 2002

For Sale

I've called. Left messages. Sent pictures. But I have yet to actually get in touch with the couple who expressed interest in buying Condo Conner as is. I'm guessing they aren't interested, or the contact information I have isn't correct.

So I'm meeting with a realtor today at Condo Conner. When I get there, I meet up with my upstairs neighbor whom I thought had already sold his place (for the same reason I'm selling mine—Condo Commandos got to him too) and I asked him about this.

He had, although he didn't get what he wanted for the place (3/2, upstairs, which in this case means vaulted ceilings, lake view) and he showed the place to twenty-nine (29!) people before selling it. He also had problems with the Condo Commandos approving the seller and he even went to one of the meetings and called them to task (“What gives you the right to control my finances?”); it wasn't pretty.

This bodes not well.

After waiting a few minutes, I saw a well dressed woman carrying what looked to be file folders walking past the apartment. I figured this was Ms. Koecher, the realtor agent I was meeting and went out to meet her.

It was.

Over the next hour and a half we toured Condo Conner and talked about what I was trying to achieve. Me? I'm trying to get the place sold and I don't mind selling it “as is.” Going over a printout of recent condos sold in the area, it seemed that most have actually sold in two weeks (one sold in eight days) and the cheapest (a 2/2) went for just a bit under $100,000; she felt I could easily get my target price. She also has a handyman that can come in and finish up the work needed.

Leaving, I felt much better about the situation.

Thursday, June 13, 2002

Clarification

I should probably clarify a point from my last entry: I did hire a handy man but he had to attend to a family emergency in Pensylvania for a few weeks so he wasn't able to finish everything. I can settle the outstanding bill with him (or his assistant) and have the realtor send hers over to finish the job.

Now, I'm awashed in paper, going through my files tracking information down (and cleaning out my files) in preparation of selling Condo Conner.

Maybe in another thirty years …

While cleaning out my files I came across some movie promotional buttons from 1992. Specifically, quite a few from Batman Returns and one or two from Alien³. It was (and I guess still is) movie memorabilia and it's been ten years now; hey! They might be worth something!

I check Ebay and see what they may be going for nowadays.

$2.00

Only one Batman Returns button listed, and it's going for $2.00.

I didn't find any listings for the Alien³ buttons on Ebay.

Sigh.

Anyone care to buy a “Penguin for Mayor” button?

The computer that refuses to die

Must be something in the air.

First, my friend Ken sent me the following email:

Wow … I didn't know people even still used Amigas!

http://www.boomerangsworld.de/apccomm/

And then I get a call from Rob saying he's got a line some Amiga stuff (which I had to decline, since I don't have the space for it right now).

Tuesday, June 18, 2002

Updates

While I'm trying to get Mutt compiled (it wants a version of iconv so I have to find a version it likes—compile compile compile, hack hack hack, etc. Why mutt? Rob has been trying to sell me on it for the past year or so, and Spring has found elm rather … lacking and seeing how elm is no longer being maintained and all … ), I might as well make an update here.

Finally got all my stuff out of Condo Conner—nothing like moving furniture in a downpour (Saturday). But it's clean of stuff so it's been vaccum and cleanup time. It is also on the market (woo hoo!) as of yesturday, so hopefully in a week or so I'll have it unloaded.

I was also lucky enough to aquire two Newtons this week (great! Just what I need—more stuff)—a MessagePad 130 and a MessagePad 2100, both in working condition. I have one already, a MessagePad 120 which I thought was non-functioning (well, it would function if plugged into the wall, but wouldn't run off batteries) but I was mistaken (go figure—it now works). So I have three working Newtons.

I'm liking the Newton 2100—it's fast. And the backlit screen is great! I've always liked the Newton; never did warm up to the Palm Pilots with their small size, non-existant handwriting recognition (it uses a simplified writing system call Graffiti—the Newton can read your writing however) and very minimalistic names and dates applications. The Newton (coming originally from Apple) has a much better user interface than the Palm Pilot can ever hope to have.

But alas, Steve Jobs killed the Newton (may he rot in Hell).

On the plus side, the Newtons have retained their value quite a bit (wow! Over $100 for a MessagePad 2100 … not bad considering it's about five years old now).

Updates on the updates

No sooner than I update than I get an update from Ken about Elm ME+, an opdated version of elm with POP and IMAP support.

Might look into that, but mutt is also decended from elm, has all the features that Elm ME+ has and is completely configurable.

Hmmmm … decisions … decisions …

Tuesday, June 25, 2002

Sploits, upgrades and updates

I avoid upgrading, not so much to avoid version fatigue as that what I have works and as the saying goes, “if it ain't broke, don't fix it!”

So it was rather surprising to find myself upgrading two important packages this week. The first being Apache. In looking over the security bulletin, while it wouldn't allow one to get remote access on my particular platform (a 32 bit operating system) it could lead to a denial of service attack so I decided for performance reasons to upgrade (unlike most sysadmins I know, I'm not so paranoid about people gaining access that my systems are unusable but that's a rant for another time).

The Apache upgrade went smoothly.

The other package I needed to upgrade however …

I received word from Mark about an upcoming OpenSSH exploit that will allow remote root access! While I may be relaxed about security, I'm not stupid either.

Reading up on it, no patches are available, but if you run the latest version with a certain option, the bug that allows the exploit is still there, but it can't be exploited.

Okay …

So I download the latest version of OpenSSH, configure, compile and install the code on my development server (I'm not about to install it untested on my colocated box—if I screw up it's a long and painful process to fix). Install and run the new sshd server. Okay, seems to be running. Attempt to log in.

Apparently it accepts incoming network connections, then promptly drops the connection. I can't log in.

Odd …

I check the log files and for every attempt I made to log in, find the following entry:

Jun 25 04:14:56 linus sshd[13062]: fatal: mmap(65536): Invalid argument

The number being fed to mmap(), 65536, is suspicious but given the platform I'm on, shouldn't be invalid. Time to check the source to OpenSSH:

address = mmap(NULL, size, PROT_WRITE|PROT_READ, MAP_ANON|MAP_SHARED, -1, 0);
if (address == MAP_FAILED)
	fatal("mmap(%lu): %s", (u_long)size, strerror(errno));

openssh-3.3p1/monitor_mm.c:88-90

This is the only place in OpenSSH that calls mmap() so I have the right location. And since mmap() is complaining about getting an invalid argument, it's time to determine just which argument mmap() is complaining about.

Now, normally, mmap() is used to map files into memory, but it does have its other uses (such as here, which seems to be allocating a section of memory to be shared with something else). Going through the paramters, the first is the starting address, which here is NULL but that's allowed; it just tells mmap() to use any available address that matches the criteria. The length (65536) should be okay for this platform. The protection of the memory region (PROT_WRITE and PROT_READ) look good, as to the options (a shared, anonymous region of memory). The file to be used (-1) looks odd; the man page doesn't say anything about not specifying a file, but the offset to use in the file (which isn't specified) looks good.

Now, since the man page doesn't mention anything about not specifying a file, now it's time to check the kernel sources to see what Linux might be rejecting.

if (file != NULL) {
	...

} else if ((flags & MAP_TYPE) != MAP_PRIVATE)
	return -EINVAL;

linux-2.0.36/mm/mmap.c:171-198

Here, file is NULL so the else clause kicks in, and well … there you go. OpenSSH is asking for MAP_SHARED but Linux 2.0.36 doesn't support that option. Neither does Linux 2.0.39 (what my colocated server and firewall run).

Linux 2.4 however (at least 2.4.18 which I had immediate access to) does support the usage of mmap() than OpenSSH requires.

But due to a lot of reasons, upgrading my servers from Linux 2.0 to 2.4 is pretty much out of the question (at least for any reasonable amount of time and effort), and taking out the offending code in Linux 2.0 is out, until I can test it and make sure it works, so in the mean time, my only real hope is security through obsolescense.

I recompiled the version of OpenSSH I am using with different compiler options to make an exploit less likely to work, since exploits are quite dependant upon both the architecture and code layout (and operating system, plus maybe kernel versions of said operating system) this should be good enough to keep all but the most dedicated off my systems.

But it was possible …

The other day Rob comes into my room. “I need some help,” he said. “I made a mistake on my Sun box and I'm wondering if you could help me.”

Turns out Rob renamed a critical directory (/usr) and not only were most of the commonly used programs stored under it, but so were all the runtime libraries used by these commands, so nothing would run except for a few statically compiled programs (programs that contained the libraries they needed inside themselves). Nothing but the shell, mount, umount and fdisk were available.

Now, I'm used to recovering with minimal commands but there was no way to rename a file, or change its permissions.

Heck, we were worse off than those in the classical Unix horror story. Had I known SPARC assembly and how to call the kernel for Solaris 7, then yes, we might have had a chance. Create the smallest binary to either create a directory, or to rename a directory, and we'd be set. While it seems hard to create a file without the normal commands one usually uses for such a task, echo is a shell built-in, and using that with redirection and the ability to specify arbitrary octal constants (with the “\nnn” notation supported by the shell) and you have your program.

Okay, so you can't change the permissions on it, so pick some file you no longer need with execute permissions and write over that, then you'll be able to execute the hand-written program to get back into business.

Granted, that's if either of us new SPARC assembly and the executable format.

Since neither of us did, there wasn't much that could be done.

Well, maybe mounting the drives on another Solaris box, but Rob really didn't care all that much since we was planning on reinstalling Solaris on that system anyway.

But it was possible …

Chalk marks the millimeter waves of space …

I've seen several sites now mentioning warchalking and I'm wondering just how long it will be before The Facility in the Middle of Nowhere is marked?

In other news, the other day I noticed that Publix (the local supermarket) now sells sidewalk chalk.

Hmmmm …

Wednesday, June 26, 2002

“The Sky is Falling! Get to a bomb shelter! Although, an umbrella would work just as well … ”

To: [a whole lot of lists]
Subject: Upcoming OpenSSH vulnerability
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 15:00:10 -0600
From: Theo de Raadt <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
There is an upcoming OpenSSH vulnerability that we're working on with ISS. Details will be published early next week.

Upcoming OpenSSH vulnerability

Well, nice to know that “early next week” means “today.” Also nice to know that the couple of hours I yesterday could have been fixed with a simple one line configuration change.

I'm of mixed minds about how this was handled. I do think Theo overplayed his hand in attempting to force one particular way of fixing the problem with priviledge serparation (which is probably a good idea if the operating system in question supports it) but given that an exploit in OpenSSH could cause massive damage, how else can you solve the problem such that the damage is minimized?

Hard questions, and that's why I'm of mixed minds (I would have preferred knowing about the one line configuration change but would have that given the Black Hats enough of a clue to write an exploit?)

Monday, July 01, 2002

Sold! (Tenatively)

The past two and a half weeks that Condo Conner has been up for sale have been interesting. I've resisted writing about it here on the off chance that it may scare off a potential buyer (how ever unlikely that is). But over the weekend I got an incredible offer on the place. I signed my end of the acceptance and the buyer is expected to sign off tomorrow. If so, the closing will be at the end of this month.

Woo hoo!

(l (i (s (p () (i (s () (f (u (n)))))))))

My first exposure to Lisp was in the summer of '86 in an introductory class on artificial intelligence. My impression of the language was that it was mildly interesting but littered with CARs, CDRs and parentheses. Lots of parentheses.

It also doesn't bode well when a typical fragment of Lisp looks like:

(DEFUN VALID-RANGE (LIST)
    (IF (NUMBERP (CAR LIST))
        (LET ((MIN (CAR LIST))   ;gets SETQed below
              (MAX (CAR LIST)))  ;gets SETQed below
             (DO ((ELS (CDR LIST) (CDR ELS)))
                 ((NULL ELS)
                  (LIST MIN MAX))
                 (LET ((CAND (CAR ELS)))
                      (COND ((NOT (NUMBERP CAND))
                             (RETURN 'INVALID))
                             ;; at most one of the next
                             ;; two cases can occur.
                             ((< CAND MIN) (SETQ MIN CAND)) ((> CAND MAX)
                              (SETQ MAX CAND))))))
        'INVALID))

Someone well versed in Lisp would be able to see what that does (much like someone well versed in Perl would be able to tell what $data =~ m/^211\s+\d+\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s/; does—maybe).

But after reading Paul Graham's article about using Lisp for web-based applications and hearing the remark that XML is nothing more than Lisp in drag, I figured it may be time to give Lisp another look.

The two major dialects of Lisp today are Scheme and Common Lisp. Since Scheme is conceptually simpler and cleaner than Common Lisp, I decided to give it a try. The MIT version requires one to already have the MIT version installed before you can install the MIT version (and that's another lovely feature about Lisp—recursion to an infinite degree (or until you run out of memory)).

Off to try Common Lisp.

Oddly enough, the CMUCommon Lisp also requires an installation of CMUCommon Lisp before you can install CMUCommon Lisp.

Lovely.

Fortunately, Gnu (which itself is a recursive ancronym) has both a version of Scheme and Common Lisp that don't require a pre-existing installation to install.

Another thing I've come to realize is that Lisp, much like C++, accreted features over it's current 54 year history so quite a bit of arcana is needed to successfully write programs in it. Then again, the principles underlying Lisp are so simple that, like Forth, one can implement a Lisp system (functioning, if limited) in a few days of work so maybe that's the way I should proceed.

I guess he'll make peeing on hydrants legal …

His official campaign bio describes Percy as a compassionate conservative who takes a hard-line with social parasites, particularly fleas and worms. His past is free of sex scandals, due to “timely neutering.”

Via CamWorld, Dog Runs for Office in Florida

In Cerebus, creator Dave Sim had Cerebus run as Prime Minister against a goat.

It was a very close race.

Now in real life, we have someone running against a dog.

Life is stranger than fiction. Heck, life is getting stranger than satire and that's saying something.

Tuesday, July 02, 2002

They're still there …

Drove by the bank today and guess what? The black vans are still there.

And still no white vans to be seen …

Very suspicious …

Very suspicious indeed …

This is getting annoying

“So, do you want the bad news, or the really bad news?” said Rob. I had just sitten down to each lunch too!

“Um, how about the really bad news?” I said.

“Good thing you're sitting down,” he said. “The DNS resolver libraries everybody uses has an exploit and it affects a lot of systems.”

Rob was notifed of the most recent vulnerability just released and yes, it does affect a lot of systems. So this is what? The third major exploit in a week for Unix?

I'm now off to spend a few hours tracking this down and fixing it …

Metasearch engines

I've worked for C4 before and from time to time I look back and see what they're currently up to.

I find it amusing that they are no longer using their “technology” in metasearching and instead now rely upon Google. I wonder what happened?

The reason I bring this up? I just finished talking with someone interested in my experiences with metasearch engines (who was also interested in my work on the Electric King James Bible and The Boston Diaries) and is interested in hiring me as a programmer.

Woo hoo!

Tuesday, July 09, 2002

Yet another site that doesn't get it

The web site is available from 7.00 a.m. to 11 p.m. ET Monday through Friday and 8.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m. ET Saturday and Sunday

NASD Public Disclosure Program

But you'll only see that when the site is not open.

Some public disclosure program, huh?

I wonder if this book is the cause of that? Or is the NASD so dense as to think the web isn't twenty-four hours?

Wednesday, July 10, 2002

Seattle down under

Ubiquitous South Florida Weather Forcast

Lows in the high 70s, highs in the high 80s. Partly cloudy with a 20% chance of scattered showers. Winds NE at 15 knots; seas 1-3 feet with a light to moderate chop.

If I didn't know any better, I'd swear I was living in Seattle.

Normally, Florida has two seasons, wet and tourist. And during the wet season (what you would normally call “summer” and “fall”) we do get rain. Nearly every day. But, and this is the important part, it's never all day long, being at most half an hour and usually it's partly cloudy all day long.

This year? Grey skies all day long. Rains all day too. Not at all like the typical Florida summer day.

Thursday, July 11, 2002

Pendulum

Think about that. How does Microsoft grow its size? Certainly not by listening to Robert Scoble.
It does it by visiting Boeing, GM, EDS, the U.S. Government, and various other big Fortune 1000 companies and organizations.
Now you know where the pressure for Palladium is coming.

Via Scripting News, Robert Scoble on Palladium

Thirty-five years ago you had large hulking machines cordened off in frigid, windowless rooms maintained by high priests while you logged in from your terminal in your office. One machine may have supported thousands of users so therefore it was easy to maintain control over the system—for there was only one system to maintain.

The computer industry was firmly centralized in those days.

What was your userid? Clickity-click

Twenty-seven years ago the pendulum peaked. over time, people took computing into their own hands and were no longer solely dependant upon the large hulking machines in some back room.

Slowly, over a twenty year period the computer industry shifted from a centralized model to being decentralized, fueled by the likes of Microsoft and Apple.

But that too, has passed. The pendulum has peaked and the computer industry is slowly, inexorably, sliding back towards a centralized model once again.

Only this time it's behind hulking networks cordened off behind firewalls manned by jubilent IT staff giddy with new found power.

Okay, so I exaggerate a bit. But there is a definite trend towards centralization going on in the computer industry, and Microsoft is definitely attempting to ride that wave, but unlike the turnaround they did to suddenly support the Internet, this will require more than just buying a web browser and making their office suit spit out poorly formatted HTML.

Like, oh … security?

In any case, I'm guessing that this trend will be increasing for another ten years or so before the pendulum starts its swing back towards a new decentralized mode, whatever that will be in 2025 …

The methodology of writing hypertext

I'm not happy with the previous post, ~~and I'm not happy with this one either~~ but looking over this now, I'm pretty happy with this entry.

As it usually happens, I compose these great entries in my head with exquisite phrasing yet I have no way of recording these thoughts except in my rather unexquisite memory of mine.

For instance, I had intended to chart two trends in the computer industry; the one dovetailing smoothly into the other yet all I could remember is the decent into centralization. I have no idea what the other trend was or even if I'm just misremembering it.

It also didn't help that I thought of that entry as I was falling alseep yesterday. If this keeps up, I may have to keep a tape recorder on me.

On second thought, my Newton 2100 can record messages. Maybe I should try that.

The other problem I have is methodology.

When I write the entries, I compose them, inserting HTML as I go along, adding <P> tags here and <EM> tags there and when it comes time for links, I stop and locate the link. While most times the actual URL is a simple cut-n-paste operation, I still type

<A CLASS="external" HREF="[then paste URL here]">

by hand. And if I mention someone, say, Spring, I don't type “<shift>-s p r i n g” but

<A CLASS="external" HREF="http://www.springdew.com/">Spring</A>

I spent nearly two years writing software to make posting entries easy and I still type out common stuff like this by hand.

Needless to say, such mucking about stop the thoughts cold. Looking back at past entries the ones I like the best are typically the ones with the fewest links in them. If I have to hit Google for an entry, forget it. That's maybe a minute or two lost right there looking for the right page.

But old habits die hard. I tried, in the previous entry, to write first, then link later, but I'm having to retrain myself. Just like I am for this entry—I've had to stop myself several times to keep me from embedding HTML before I've finished writing, yet I'm still marking the areas that I feel need links (only I hope I remember what I want to link to).

Perhaps if I type something like:

In //official site/Cerebus//, creator //find link/Dave Sim// had //link to character/Cerebus// run as //link to issue/Prime minister// against //link to character/goat//.

I guess he'll make peeing on hydrants legal …

That will let me keep the flow going and provide enough context when I go back over the entry to fill in the links (and make any editorial changes that might arise as you can see if you check the final result). Oh, and remember to change text like

*this*

<EM>this</EM>

Well, off convert this to HTML.

Friday, July 12, 2002

Them darned fancy <HR>s …

I've been following dive into mark's 30 days to a more accessible weblog and so far, everything he's said to do I've pretty much done with this weblog.

Today's entry is about the <HR> tag and how to change the look of them. The method he uses works, but is a bit of a kludge. Mostly because it supports Netscape 4x, which doesn't support CSS to any decent degree.

That's why I've forgone Netscape 4x support entirely. How I do it is the way it's supposed to be done. First off, in the HTML for this page, I hide the style sheet from Netscape 4x:

<SCRIPT>
  @import "/bdstyle.css";
</SCRIPT>

Netscape 4x doesn't suport “@import” so nothing gets included (thankfully, else my style sheet would crash it, hard). The style sheet then has:

HR.next
{
  width:                50px;
  height:               16px;
  border:               none;
  margin-top:           0;
  margin-right:         auto;
  margin-bottom:        0;
  margin-left:          auto;
  padding:              0;
  background-image:     url(hr.gif);
  background-repeat:    no-repeat;
  background-position:  center;
}

Then in the HTML page, to use the image, I do:

<HR CLASS="next">

And I have my fancy <HR>. And it works fine under the current versions of Netscape (6x), Mozilla (from about 0.9.2 on up), Opera and Internet Explorer (although those last two draw a faint grey border around the image).

Saturday, July 13, 2002

A pleasant surprise from Slashdot

I'm working on a project for a client, and I need to see exactly what transpires between a web browser and a web server, since what I've written isn't exactly working correctly.

So towards that end, I've written a program that acts as a very simple web proxy server—all it does is pass the data on to a real web proxy server, but it also dumps everything to disk so I can examine the traffic (it's not enough to look at the pages, I need to see what else is going on in HTTP).

As a test, I went to Slashdot. As expected, the program saved all the sessions, didn't crash and didn't leave any zombie processes. And then going through the saved files when I found out that there's an Easter Egg in the pages Slashdot send out.

You normally can't see this, even if you view the source of the page, since the Easter Eggs aren't part of the page. They're in the header portion of the transfer (not to be confused with the <HEAD> section of an HTML page—there is a difference). For instance, on the HTML pages (and it's only sent with pages that are text) on one page I found:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2002 10:08:51 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_perl/1.25 mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000
X-Fry: That's it! You can only take my money for so long before you take it all and I say enough!
Cache-Control: no-cache
Pragma: no-cache
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 10760

And on another one I found:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 02:11:36 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_perl/1.25 mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000
X-Bender: OK, but I don't want anyone thinking we're robosexuals.
Last-Modified: Mon, 03 Dec 2001 17:55:42 GMT
ETag: "33673f-13e-3c0bbc9e"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 318
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/plain

And yet another one:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2002 10:09:23 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_perl/1.25 mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000
X-Fry: I'm never gonna get used to the thirty-first century. Caffeinated bacon?
Cache-Control: no-cache
Pragma: no-cache
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 18303

It seems to be quotes from Futurama, but I can't be entirely sure, as I've never seen Futurama. But still, it's neat finding stuff like this buried in programs (or websites as the case may be).

Sunday, July 14, 2002

Probability

Every so often, I check out Advogato as an interesting article, column or editorial sometimes shows up. I check out the article about solving Freecell, which leads me to a lecture about writing the software, which, in the middle of it, has a link to Tom Holroyd, who I knew at FAU.

I wonder what the probability of that is?

Tuesday, July 16, 2002

The Ins and Outs of Calculating Browser Usage

I spent the past few hours writing a program to parse the browser string from the web server log files. Why didn't I use an existing web analyizer package? I wanted the browser strings to be rewriten to have correct information, as well as being in a more consistent style. This meant changing it from, say:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90; Q312461)

MSIE/6.0 Windows/98

This also means I can generate decent stats about the popularity of certain browsers on the fly (using the Unix command line, I can pull out the browser string, feed that through the newly written program, then count unique browsers easier). An initial run through last month's log file for my blog:

Browser Statistics for The Boston Diaries
# Hits	Browser/Version	OS/Version
1,228	Googlebot/2.1	-/-
748	MSIE/6.0	WindowsNT/5.1
712	MSIE/6.0	Windows/98
641	MSIE/6.0	WindowsNT/5.0
476	Mercator/2.0	-/-
371	MSIE/5.5	Windows/98
303	MSIE/5.0	Windows/98
302	MSIE/5.5	WindowsNT/5.0
238	-/-	-/-
216	MSIE/5.01	WindowsNT/5.0
137	ia_archiver/-	-/-
113	Syndic8/1.0	-/-
101	NCSA/-	-/-
101	MSIE/5.01	Windows/98
100	MSIE/6.0	WindowsNT/4.0
99	Mozilla/3.01	-/-
89	Gecko/20020529	Linux/i686
88	Gecko/20020523	WindowsNT/5.0
81	MSIE/5.14	Mac_PowerPC/-
79	Mozilla/5.0	-/-
68	SlySearch/1.2	-/-
66	MSIE/5.5	Windows/95
62	MSIE/5.5	WindowsNT/4.0
62	Gecko/20020529	PPC/Mac
61	Openfind/-	-/-
55	MSIE/5.0	Mac_PowerPC/-
49	Indy-Library/-	-/-
48	Gecko/20020510	Linux/i686
42	Mozilla/3.0	-/-
41	sitecheck.internetseer.com/-	-/-
40	Gecko/20020311	WindowsNT/5.1
38	MSIE/5.01	Windows/95
36	bumblebee@relevare.com/-	-/-
33	Gecko/20020530	WindowsNT/5.0
28	bumblebee/1.0	-/-
28	Gecko/20020510	WinNT4.0/-
27	Opera/6.02	Windows/2000
27	MSIE/5.0	WindowsNT/4.0

This gives a decent flavor for what's being used to view my site (out of the 7,943 hits last month, about 16% were from the Google spider) but one of the primary reasons I did this was to see just how many people are still using older browsers like Netscape 4x or Internet Explorer 4x (which would show up as Mozilla/4.x and MSIE/4.x respectively). So, strip out the operating system column, and look at only the major version numbers, we then get:

More Specific Browser Statistics for The Boston Diaries
# Hits	Browser/major Version
2,210	MSIE/6
1,671	MSIE/5
1,228	Googlebot/2
543	Gecko/-
476	Mercator/2
238	-/-
142	Opera/6
141	Mozilla/3
137	ia_archiver/-
134	Mozilla/4
113	Syndic8/1
101	NCSA/-
79	Mozilla/5
68	SlySearch/1
61	Openfind/-
49	Indy-Library/-
45	MSIE/4
41	sitecheck.internetseer.com/-
37	Netscape6/6.2
36	bumblebee@relevare.com/-
28	bumblebee/1
26	linkhype.com/1
26	Netscape/7
24	BlogBot/1
22	Win32/-
22	Konqueror/3.0
20	Frontier/8.0
16	Internet/-
16	Ask-Jeeves/-
15	Mozilla/-
14	Microsoft/-
14	Konqueror/2.2
12	w3m/0.2
12	obidos/bot
12	Mozilla/4.7C-CCK-MCD
11	myownhomeblogindexingservicecrawler/-
11	htdig/3.1
10	Mozilla/3.x

The bad news: 48% of the browsers were Internet Explorer 5x or 6x (although surprisingly enough, I did get five hits from a Mozilla based browser under OS/2). The good news though, is that 58% of the hits were from browsers capable of viewing CSS without crashing. And speaking of horrible browsers that can't support CSS, about 2.5% were running Netscape 4x or IE 4x (they can see the site, only it doesn't look that great).

I also checked the log file for Spring's site (Hi honey!). 53% of her visitors are using Internet Explorer 5 or higher, or Mozilla (or Netscape 6 and higher). Only about 3% are using Netscape 4x or Internet Explorer 4x, which is pretty much on par with my site (the rest are mostly robots or experiemental browsers).

Wednesday, July 17, 2002

Bobby is, I think, a bit too pedantic

New day, new article in 30 days to a more accessible weblog. This time about labeling of form elements. Hey, why not? It's easy enough to do.

So then I decide to use Bobby, a validator that checks the accessibility of a webpage and one of the fussiest (if not the fussiest) accessibility validators I know of. So then it's a process of validate, figure out what Bobby is complaining about, fix, lather, rinse, repeat.

I easily get AA approved (if I make sure not to have duplicate links with the same text, and hack the URL of the results page) but the exhaulted AAA rating (which it uses by default) just wasn't there. Let's see … I explicitely set the forground and background colors for the Google image (previously, I had just set the background color), set the properties for the <FIELDSET> and <LEGEND> tags so they don't disrupt the visual look of the page (yet are still there for those that need it) and added them to both forms on the page, even though the Google one only has one visible field to set (come on! a <FIELDSET> for one entry field? What are you guys smoking?) I even added the <LABEL> tags the way Bobby wants them (explicit labels instead of implicit labels).

No go.

Now what?

Seems that to get the exhaulted AAA rating, I need to add placeholding characters in the text entry fields over there to the left (or way below, depending on how this page is rendered).

Yea, right

Accessibility vs. usability? I'm not entirely sure what the accessibility issues are for filling in bogus or example data for the two fields and it's pretty obvious to me what should go in there but hey, you never know. But in any case, I'm not filling in the fields with bogus or example data as that would violate my æsthetic sensibilities with the page.

Thursday, July 18, 2002

A blogger's HTML

An article about the Dublin Core at CONTENU.nu got me thinking about the problem of indexing weblogs. The major problem is that there is no semantic markup to include meta-information in the body of a webpage. Sure, you can include meta-information in the <HEAD> section, using both <META> and <LINK> tags, and that's fine when the page in question is about a single topic.

But a weblog has several, mostly unrelated entries on a single page, with the rare weblog having several nearly article-length entries on the main page (and by extension, the archive pages). Google indexes these pages as if it were on a single topic and as a result, you get fodder the Disturbing Search Requests.

There are heuristics that can be used to index a weblog page, but it would be nice to have some defined way to mark individual entries, with the ability to include meta-information for each entry. I had intended for my software here to build up the <META> tags (since I do include keywords/classification for each entry I write) and while that may be viable for up to a weeks worth of entries on a page, it starts getting silly for a month, and for a whole year? It's just not practical.

But from the Dublin Core article, I ended up at the W3C site and came across XHTML 1.1, which is still being worked on, but (and this is the exciting part here) this version of XHTML can be extended! (unlike XHTML 1.0, even though the name says it's extensible) It's completely modular so new variants of XHTML (for example, it can be extended to MathML) can be constructed from bits and pieces of existing XHTML modules.

So in the future, it may be possible to extend XHTML to include meta-information in the middle of a page, instead of just in the <HEAD> section (sorry, <head> section—XHTML uses lower case for tags). So instead of having to parse code like:


<h3><a class="local" id="2002/07/16.1" href="/2002/07/16.1">The Ins
and Outs of Calculating Browser Usage</a></h3>

<!-- programming, statistics, web browsers, web log files -->

<p>

I spent the past few ...

<h2><a class="local" id="2002/07/14" href="/2002/07/14">Sunday, July
14, 2002</a></h2>

<h3><a class="local" id="2002/07/14.1" href="/2002/07/14.1">Probability</a></h3>

<p>

...

It can, instead, have an eaiser time with:


<entry>
<head>
<meta name="keywords" content="programming, statistics, 
              web browsers, web log files">
<link rel="permalink" href="/2002/07/16.1">
<link rel="next"      href="/2002/07/17.1">
<link rel="previous"  href="/2002/07/14.1">
</head>
<body>

<p>

I spent the past few ...

</body>
</entry>

<entry>
<head>
<meta name="keywords" content="daily life, web pages, home pages, 
              six degress of separation, Tom Hoylrod">
<link rel="permalink" href="/2002/07/14.1">
<link rel="next"      href="/2002/07/16.1">
<link rel="previous"  href="/2002/07/13.1">
</head>
<body>

...

</body>
</entry>

Tuesday, July 23, 2002

All Hail Arial!

The medium is the message.

–Marshall McLuhan

I'm looking at two copies of The C Programming Language, Second Edition by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie. One (my copy) was printed in 1990 and the other one (Rob's copy) is from 2000. What's interesting are the differences.

Rob's copy looks and feels less elegant.

The content—the actual words themselves—are the same. The page size is the same—layout and page numbers have not changed one bit. But Rob's copy is nearly a third thicker, which may be due to a heavier paper, and the typography is different—less crisp, more bold, somewhat blobbish if you will. It's … well … uglier. Louder.

And that's coloring my perception of the book (well, Rob's copy of the book). Which is a bit odd, because it's the content that should matter, not the medium. But Donald Knuth, one of the more preeminent programmers of our times, took ten years to perfect computerized typography as he was dismayed at the presentation of his content at the hands of the early computerized typographic systems.

But the 2000 printing of The C Programming Language represents the current conventions used in the printing of technical books today (well, not quite—it's not six hundred pages with mind numbing detail about how to use a particular editor or compiler and inane iconic pictures yelling at us to remember this or be wary about that), just as my copy was a snap shot of the conventions about a decade ago.

But the web is different.

Sure, most sites don't bother to update every page when a redesign happens. So, for instance, you can see the evolution of pages at Salon, or the evolution of pages for a personal site. It provides an interesting historical view on the current conventions used on the web (or for the site) at that point in time.

And then there are sites like The Boston Diaries, which are purely dynamic in nature. Play around with the templates some, and every page, going back to the start, has the new look and feel, historical context be damned (you may notice a few pages that don't have the new look—those are (were) statically generated and haven't been integrated with the template engine that primarily drives this site. The design is taken from Caveat Lector: Reader Beware! (without permission I might add) and hastily modified for use in this example). I find this ability both exciting and disturbing. Exciting because it makes changing the look of the site easier. And disturbing because it makes changing the look of the site easier, and I mean that in the most Owellian way.

~~Verdana is the font to use. All Hail Verdana. We have never used Arial.~~ Arial is the font to use. All Hail Arial. We have never used Verdana.

It might seem silly that I'm making such a big deal out of this but I don't think so. You (those reading this) have no way of seeing the original, table driven design. There's no record of the evolution the site went through—no way of charting the progress (or regression for that matter) this site has been through (outside of possible archives at the Wayback Machine). This is the way my site has always looked.

No, really.

So is the medium the message? Does the look of this entry make any difference to the content of this message? And is the way it looked yesterday as important as the way it will look tomorrow?

Thursday, July 25, 2002

Experiments in cooking

“Mmmm, this is delicious,” said Spring. “Is that cinnamon I taste?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think I got a bit too much in there though.” I wasn't entirely satisfied with the results. Spring, however, seemed to like it enough. “Can you taste what else I added?”

Chicken and Orange Rice

An experiment in cooking

Ingredients:

one can Cream of Mushroom
one can Cream of Celery
one can (cup) orange juice
1 ½ cups rice
1 teaspoon tyme
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of cinnamon
several black peppercorns
chicken pieces

Preheat oven to 375°F
Mix all ingredients except chicken in a large bowl (careful with the cinnamon).
Pour ¾ of mixture into a large casserole dish.
Add chicken to casserole dish.
Pour remaining mixture over chicken.
cover casserole dish with lid and place into oven for 1 ½ hours.
Serve and enjoy.

Spring took another taste, and pursed her lips in thought. “No,” she said.

“Orange juice.”

“Get out of here!” She took another bite. “Really? Orange juice?”

“Yup. I'm glad you like the experiment though.”

“When I experiment, it never turns out good,” she said. “What made you mix orange juice and cinnamon?”

“Well, I had a craving for orange, so I thought I'd use orange juice and since cinnamon is used with apples, and an apple is a fruit, and so is an orange, I thought they might go nicely together.”

“But orange juice?”

“Well, I get sometimes get Orange Beef at the Chinese restaurant so it's not unheard of.”

“But in rice?”

“When have you ever gone to a Chinese restaurant and not gotten rice?”

“But they don't put it in the rice,” she said.

“Well … yea,” I said.

“I would have never thought to put cinnamon and orange juice in the rice.”

“I'll have to leave out the cinnamon next time,” I said. I didn't quite like the taste; it wasn't bad mind you, just … a bit … off. It would be something that would have gotten shot down rather quickly on Iron Chef no doubt.

“Well, try less next time,” Spring said. “What happened? Did too much fall out when you added it?”

“Yea, a rather large cloud of cinnamon clumped out.”

“Yes, that happens to me too.” She took a few more bites. “But it is good … ”

Syndicate this!

Rob and I were talking the other day about a feature of LiveJournal—the friend's page. If you have an account on LiveJournal, you can list other users of LiveJournal as “friends” and then read their new entries on your “friends” page. It basically collects the X most recent posts from all your friends (who have to have LiveJournal accounts themselves) and presents them on a single page, only with a style you choose.

I have a LiveJournal account, if only to read the journals of my friends who are hosted there. If you check my friends page, you'll see that I picked a rather conservative style. Yet visit the actual site of any of my friends and you'll see their words in a different style.

Which leads me to yesterday's post about styles, only coming in from a different perspective. This time it's not about historic perspective (although Michelle has changed the default template of her site since I started reading it; I'm not sure when she made the change since I mostly read her through my friends page, which is a different style altogether) but about current presentation through a form of syndication.

Ah, syndication. Most blogging software supports syndication via one of the several flavors of RSS (in order, 0.9, 0.91, 0.92, 1.0, 0.93 or 0.94—yes, that is the correct order and no, I'm not about to get into the why of it right now), an XML based file that contains the interesting bits from a weblog—author, last date updated, and the last few entries. So in theory, it is possible to make a “friends” page reguardless if you have a LiveJournal account or not, and to include more than just friends on LiveJournal.

While I like the “friends page” feature of LiveJournal (as I use it) I'm not so sure how I feel about it though. I only include the links and titles to each of my entries, although I could include the actual entry itself in the RSS file. I didn't though, since I was uneasy with the idea that someone could reformat my content to suit themselves. Which is odd, since browsers will do that anyway (like under Lynx, or Netscape 4x or IE or Mozilla) and I'm much less concerned about that.

For instance, the feed for Marcus' site does contain the entries themselves, so it's possible I could pull that down and format his content to my liking, even though he spent over a month working the style of his website to his liking. I wonder how he would feel knowing someone was reading his stuff if it looked different? Yet a “friends page” is exactly what he wants though (since he was one (out of several) that pestered me to get email notification going for my site). And how would I feel if someone was formatting my stuff differently?

Friday, July 26, 2002

It's open source, so at least I got it working

Yet more exploits against OpenSSH according to Mark so I should upgrade. Thanks to a suggestion from Mark, I was able to get OpenSSH 3.4p1 compiled and running, with privledge separation under Linux 2.0 (technically, 2.0.36 and 2.0.39):

#ifdef HAVE_MMAP_ANON_SHARED
#  ifdef USE_MMAP_DEV_ZERO
	{
	  int fh;

	  fh = open("/dev/zero",O_RDWR);
	  if (fh == -1)
	  	fatal("mmap(`/dev/zero'): %s",strerror(errno));
	
	  address = mmap(NULL,size,PROT_WRITE|PROT_READ,MAP_PRIVATE,fh,0);
	  if (address == MAP_FAILED)
	  	fatal("mmap(%lu,%d): %s",(u_long)size,fh,strerror(errno));
	}
#  else
 	address = mmap(NULL, size, PROT_WRITE|PROT_READ, MAP_ANON|MAP_SHARED,
 	    -1, 0);
 	if (address == MAP_FAILED)
 		fatal("mmap(%lu): %s", (u_long)size, strerror(errno));
#  endif
#else
 	fatal("%s: UsePrivilegeSeparation=yes and Compression=yes not supported",
 	    __func__);
#endif

modified openssh-3.4p1/monitor_mm.c:87-109

I had to define USE_MMAP_DEV_ZERO and BROKEN_FD_PASSING in openssh-3.4p1/config.h to get this working. But working it is, thankfully.

Did the RIAA kill WorldCom?

For example, traffic might have grown faster than it actually did if the recording industry had not put the legal kibosh on Napster. Some say that if it were legal to trade video files a la Napster, it would be so popular that we wouldn't have any overcapacity. In fact, we'd have to install new long-haul capacity. If this is right, the most effective short-term fix to the overcapacity situation would be to reform intellectual property laws to be more consistent with how people want to use the Internet.

Via InstaPundit, CRISIS AND REVOLUTION IN TELECOM (as quoted in Redwood Dragon)

An interesting look at a possible cause of the recent telecommunications problems and why a dumb network is “A Good Thing.”

“It's been tough. I'm unemployed, but I'm coping.”

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone—
Losing your job, quitting school, going broke and moving back home with your mother after living abroad for years would be tough on anyone.
It's even tougher when you're a former military dictator who once had the power to execute opponents at will.

Via InstaPundit, Ex-Dictator Broke, Living With Mom

Reading this makes me feel better about not having a real job. At least I'm not living in my parents' basement, sleeping till noon and wearing nothing but a bathrobe …

Ahem …

Saturday, July 27, 2002

Googletracking

I'm sorry, I just find this stuff interesting.

Marcus wrote in, asking why Google seems to have abandoned his weblog, although I'm not sure if he was asking about referers from Google, or Google actually spidering his site. Hard to say what is going on, and from doing some research on my own server I did come across some rather interesting figures.

Google spidering vs. Google referers for The Boston Diaries
Date of log	Googlebot hits	Google referers	Comments
October 2001	0	0	blog went live 10/22
November 2001	721	26
December 2001	1,421	348
January 2002	579	733
February 2002	341	1,073	something wrong with Googlebot?
March 2002	854	694
April 2002	1,019	649
May 2002	1,073	675
June 2002	1,228	504
July 2002	994	512	incomplete month

While traffic from Google's spider has gone up, actual traffic from their engine has gone down. I'm not sure if they've tweaked their page ranking algorithm to decrease the their sensativity to blogs, or I'm now fighting with a bazillion other weblogs for Google traffic, or now that I've been live for nine months things have settled down and I can expect a similar level of traffic here from now on. But, for contrast, I decided to scan a static (relatively unchanging) website—www.conman.org (for the same time period as my online journal/weblog):

Google spidering vs. Google referers for Conman Laboratories
Date of log	Googlebot hits	Google referers	Comments
October 2001	185	286	blog went live 10/22
November 2001	275	301
December 2001	435	395
January 2002	279	370
February 2002	74	462	something wrong with Googlebot?
March 2002	226	393
April 2002	226	307
May 2002	382	358
June 2002	540	293
July 2002	215	285	incomplete month

You can see here that the level of traffic from Google searches is pretty constant, although the Googlebot seems to go up and down. It is apparent though, that something was up with Googlebot in February as visits from it dropped dramatically for that month (and I'm only saying for those two months—I haven't actually checked any of the other sites I host).

And after all this checking, I still don't have a difinitive answer for Marcus as to why Google has slacked off his site. My own experience is that Google likes conman.org—part of that might be the stableness of the URLs on all parts of conman.org (my personal site, www.conman.org/people/spc/ used to be hosted elsewhere, but when I first moved it to conman.org in October of 98, I placed permanent redirects from the old site to conman.org so the engines at that time immediately found my new site) and there's something to be said for stability. It might also like my online journal/weblog (but Google seems to have an afinity for those in general). I'm not sure what to tell Marcus though.

Sunday, July 28, 2002

Resignation

It was four years ago today that I resigned from my job at Visual Data (who had bought the web design company I worked for a year previously) to start working at Eminet Domain (which I worked at until mid-2000). I just found some draft resignation letters. The first one went:

Tuesday, July 28, 1998
To Whom It May Concern:
Due to the continuing product-aligned reorganization with significant third-wave solutions and the promise of integral new downsizing and nondiscriminatory divisional reshuffling I do hereby give notice that I intend to maximize my unrealized extensive expansion into humanistic revenue-oriented reimbursement into seamless middle-management reassessment and offer to Visual Data my voluntary revenue-oriented solution to the continuing unfulfilled financial promises by releaving you of the ongoing support of my employment at this institution within the coming fortnight.
Signed

Sean Conner
July 28, 1998

The other one I liked much better and actually wanted to use:

Tuesday, July 28, 1998
To Whom It May Concern:
Unappreciated and
with a heavy heart,
I hereby resign.
Signed

Sean Conner
July 28, 1998

but I was told to write something more traditional, but without the buzzwords of the first draft.

Ah well …

Monday, July 29, 2002

A broken 24-hour clock is right only once a day …

I recieved an email from Pete Boardman about the comments I've made about the 24-hour analog clock I have. Apparently, they're more popular than I thought, given that he runs a site dedicated to them.

One of the more intriguing designs was the Cyclos watch, which is a hybrid 12/24 hour watch, where the hour hand grows and shrinks as the time progresses. Some of the other designs are quite beautiful, but alas, if I have to ask how much …

Wednesday, July 31, 2002

Yea, like he would ever allow it …

I had a rather distrubing dream last night, and one of the disturbing elements (if not the most disturbing) was seeing, on television the latest animated series—Disney's Calvin and Hobbes, done the drawing style of Ted Rall with the feel of Tim Burton's Nightmare on Christmas, only not as lighthearted.

Calvin came across as being a whiny brat (well, more so than in the actual comics) and they didn't even get Hobbes' voice nominally close and the whole dark nature of the show (the opening credits had the family moving to a new house and Calvin imagining the house devouring them) didn't at all jibe with the comic and I was sad that Bill Watterson had either sold out, or lost control of his intellectual property.

Good thing is was just a dream …

Thursday, August 01, 2002

She's leaving, on a jet plane …

For the next two weeks I'll be alone with Spodie (Spring's cat). Spring is spending the next thirteen days in Sweden visiting Wlofie.

I'm going to miss her.

I had no problems at all driving to the Miami International Airport. It was under construction and I remarked to Spring that it was under construction the last time I visited the airport (back in '96 or '97). Spring said that some airports are under perpetual construction, like at Denver. Silliness.

Upon entering, we found that parking for British Airways (she has a layover in London) is in the “Dolphin Garage,” the first one we encountered. Spent ten minutes or so driving all the way up to the top to find parking.

It was odd, but there were a rather large number of roped off parking spaces on each level and they all seemed to be on the same side of the garage. Spring theorized that recent Federal guidelines from the FAA may mandate that parked cars have to maintain a minimum distance from the terminals. More silliness.

Finally parked on level six (section 6S). Head down to level three (terminal level). Now what? The map we found on level three didn't list the terminal for British Airways. It didn't list any non-US based carrier. The terminals surrounded the parking garage in a U shaped configuration , starting with A and continuing up through H. Spring suggested starting with termanal E (in the middle) and head towards terminal A (since on the map, terminals F through H listed which carriers they served; A through E were blank, with the exception of D). I instead suggested starting with A, since it was closer to us anyway. Spring concurred. So we walked through parking lot section 3V to the crosswalk to terminal A and wouldn't you know it? British Airways was located right there in terminal A.

The concourses start on level three and there was this long line of people waiting to get through the security checkpoint to their gates. We looked but didn't see the ticket counters. We then took the escalator down to level two where we found all them. While mobbed, the lines for British Airways was very short. In about ten minutes, Spring was at the counter getting her tickets and checking her luggage. We then went back to the escalator.

Where we found a line waiting to go up! An airport employee was at the foot of the escalator next to a sign: “Ticketed customers only past this point.” I could just go outside, across to the garage, back up a leve, then cross over and be on the third level. More silliness. But not wanting to cause a scene or undue stress, Spring and I said our good-byes and I unfortunately had to leave Spring with a nearly three hour wait to board her plane.

Did I mention I'm going to miss her?

The Denver International Airport Underground Conspiracy and Bake-off Sale

In finding links to the previous entry, I came across what may be a conspiracy at the Denver International Airport.

Yea … right …

Friday, August 02, 2002

Delays, delays, delays …

I was supposed to close on Condo Conner on the 31^st of July, only it was delayed by a day because I forgot to include a critical piece of information for the closing (my mortgage account number—sigh). That meant the closing would happen on the 1^st of August, but since I couldn't make it that day it was schedued for today but that was pushed back even futher because the buyer's bank is balking. I was told yesterday that the closing would be early next week, but I found out today that it is most likely to happen late next week (Thursday).

In the mean time, I'll be in the corner doing primal scream therapy …

Monday, August 05, 2002

Yet more lessons for the RIAA

Let's take it from my personal experience. My site (www.janisian.com) gets an average of 75,000 hits a year. Not bad for someone whose last hit record was in 1975. When Napster was running full-tilt, we received about 100 hits a month from people who'd downloaded Society's Child or At Seventeen for free, then decided they wanted more information. Of those 100 people (and these are only the ones who let us know how they'd found the site), 15 bought CDs. Not huge sales, right? No record company is interested in 180 extra sales a year. But … that translates into $2700, which is a lot of money in my book. And that doesn't include the ones who bought the CDs in stores, or who came to my shows.
Or take author Mercedes Lackey, who occupies entire shelves in stores and libraries. As she said herself: “For the past ten years, my three 'Arrows' books, which were published by DAW about 15 years ago, have been generating a nice, steady royalty check per pay-period each. A reasonable amount, for fifteen-year-old books. However … I just got the first half of my DAW royalties … And suddenly, out of nowhere, each Arrows book has paid me three times the normal amount! … And the only change during that pay-period was that I had Eric put the first of my books on the Free Library. There's an increase in all of the books on that statement, actually, and what it looks like is what I'd expect to happen if a steady line of people who'd never read my stuff encountered it on the Free Library—a certain percentage of them liked it, and started to work through my backlist, beginning with the earliest books published. The really interesting thing is, of course, that these aren't Baen books, they're DAW—another publisher—so it's 'name loyalty' rather than “brand loyalty.” I'll tell you what, I'm sold. Free works.” I've found that to be true myself; every time we make a few songs available on my website, sales of all the CDs go up. A lot.
And I don't know about you, but as an artist with an in-print record catalogue that dates back to 1965, I'd be thrilled to see sales on my old catalogue rise.
Now, RIAA and NARAS, as well as most of the entrenched music industry, are arguing that free downloads hurt sales. (More than hurt—they're saying it's destroying the industry.)
Alas, the music industry needs no outside help to destroy itself. We're doing a very adequate job of that on our own, thank you.

Via Aaron Swartz: The Weblog, THE INTERNET DEBACLE—AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW

So it's not only authors who are learning that making their content freely available increases sales. Janis Ian, a recording artist, makes the same argument in this (long, but excellent) article. And like Courtney Love and Steve Albini's screeds against the RIAA, she shows just how screwed over artists are.

Perhaps it's time for most artists (of any media) to follow the footsteps of Dave Sim and refuse to give up control of their own work. The RIAA has screwed you over—best to return the favor.

Priceless

Change in merchandise sales after article posting (previous sales averaged over one year): Up 25%
Change in merchandise sales after beginning free downloads: Up 300%
Emails received: 1268 as of 07-30-02
Number of emails disagreeing with my position: 9
Number of people who reconsidered their disagreement after further discussion: 5

FALLOUT—a follow up to The Internet Debacle

And my addition:

Giving the RIAA the finger: Priceless†

† “Priceless™” is a registered trademark of MasterCard and is used here without permission. Expect this entry to be removed with a few days once their legal department gets wind of this …

Thursday, August 08, 2002

Sold! (Definitely)

How many people does it take to get to the center of a condo sale?

Today's the day.

At 3:30pm I stop off at Condo Conner to figure out which of three keys is the house key. Not readily using that key, I had forgotten which key was the actual key. I was a bit upset that I could only find one potential key as I was supposed to supply two. Then I remembered—one I gave to the handy man and one to the realtor and that's all I had. I didn't have time to make a copy so I was hoping that was okay.

Having found the correct key, I get back into the car and headed over to the realtor office for the closing. I arrive a few minutes late due to traffic (I got stuck at a left-turn light for three cycles). That apparently was no problem as the buyers spent the time signing papers.

I managed to get by with signing my name only half a dozen times, which is weird since I've had to sign my name about a dozen times when getting my car (bought it outright) and about two dozen when getting insurance on the car.

Heh. Go figure.

One hour later (and about a bazillion signatures from the buyers) and I'm out one condo.

I am officially debt free!

No credit card debts. No car payments. No mortgage. No student loans (not that I ever had any). Nothing.

I have achieved the modern American Dream! Debt free living!

Along with one of the largest checks I've ever seen. I actually cleared a bit more than I was expecting, which was very nice.

The final price was only a thousand less than my asking price, and because I paid the ~~extortion~~ association fees last month, I got some of that back so the actual amount paid was only $705.86 below my asking price.

Not bad at all. Although that now means I loose a deduction at tax time.

The entire closing went without incident. Well, okay, there was a small incident but it's still unclear who knocked over the water glass, and fortunately, no documents got wet. But other than that, the closing went without incident.

Oh, and by the way, it took six people to close the condo sale.

An underground map of New York

Map junkie that I am, I came across this New York City subway map (via live from los(t) angeles). I mentioned it to Spring (another map junkie and who is still in Sweden—thank God for the Internet where we can chat all we want for the price of a local call) and she mentioned wanting to get that image as a poster. I suspect we could take it to a photo shop or a print shop and have them print up a copy poster size.

“Hi, I'm Sean … ”

“Hi, Sean!”

“… and I'm a mapaholic.”

Ruins of Detroit

I was born in Detroit and while I wasn't exactly raised there, I did spend many summers there (technically, Royal Oak, a suburb just north of Detroit) so I have somewhat of a softspot for it (although I'm sure that one winter spent there would cure me of that affliction).

But certain events caused a once great city of over two million to decline, leaving much of the city abandoned. And a shame too, since many of the buildings are (or were) beautiful. Or at least something other than steel, glass and concrete.

So in coming across The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit (via life from los(t) angeles) I'm getting this great feeling of nastalgia. Not that I've seen many of the buildings pictured, but enough of them and it's a shame to see them destroyed. I mean, how many apartment buildings do you see with corner based semi-turreted coner balconies?

And okay, I have a fondness for brick buildings. I mean, can you imagine living or working in a building this grand?

Sigh.

Monday, August 12, 2002

A Virtual Tour of Condo Conner

Seeing how Condo Conner has sold, I figure I can now safely link to the Virtual Tour Of Condo Conner.

I had originally done this back in late May so I could show a potential buyer the place (he had expressed interest in buying it “As-Is” so I took pictures of it “As-Is” and oddly enough, I never heard back from him).

I liked the way I did the navigation on the site—I have the condo layout, with markers for where I took each picture and in what direction I was facing when I took them, plug grouping all the shots into their various rooms.

But before linking to it here, I wanted to get the place sold (and let me apologize fo the state Condo Conner appears in). But since it is now sold I can feel better about posting these pictures in a more public location.

Experiments in Hypertext

Typographically speaking, using underlines and changing the color of text for a link is … um … ugly. Functional, yes. Eyecatching, yes. Asthetically pleasing … debatable. And for reading hypertext fiction (fictional stories using hypertext as a medium—and there has to be a better name) it can get downright difficult, depending upon the density of links (I've yet to come across any hypertext fiction that has the density of links that any wiki has; I've also yet to come across any hypertext fiction that has drawn me in, again, unlike most wikis). So I spent some time writing some experimental hypertext to see if I can't come up with some alternative methods for displaying links.

I've also added a new section to my personal site (in something like four years) to contain the various hypertext experiments I've done (so far, two).

If only …

Jerry: (reading from card) So, Todd, you're here to tell your girlfriend something. What is it?
Todd: Well, Jerry, my girlfriend Ursula and I have been going out for three years now. We did everything together. We were really inseparable. But then she discovered post-Marxist political and literary theory, and it's been nothing but fighting ever since.
Jerry: Why is that?
Todd: You see, Jerry, I'm a traditional Cartesian rationalist. I believe that the individual self, the "I" or ego is the foundation of all metaphysics. She, on the other hand, believes that the contemporary self is a socially constructed, multi-faceted subjectivity reflecting the political and economic realities of late capitalist consumerist discourse.
Crowd: Ooooohhhh!

The Jerry Springer Show

I might actually watch Jerry Springer if his shows were like this. If only …

The author robots love

Chances are that you are reading this because you found a reference to this web page from your web server logs. This reference was left by Turnitin.com's web crawling robot, also known as TurnitinBot. This robot collects content from the Internet for the sole purpose of helping educational institutions prevent plagiarism. In particular, we compare student papers against the content we find on the Internet to see if we can find similarities. For more information on this service, please visit www.turnitin.com

TurnitinBot General Information Page

It's a bit sobering to realize I'm getting about a thousand hits per day (so far this month) but that eight to nine hundred of those are various robots out there, indexing my site.

I think I can now understand where someone could get 10,000 page views and 4,000 visits (not to say their counts are wrong—I just think the software they're using may not take into account robots). Last month I got over 13,000 page views but … taking out the robots, I'm left with 2,235 human viewed (for the most part) pages.

I mean, I'm flattered that robots like my site and all that but still …

Tuesday, August 13, 2002

—empty—

This entry is intentionally left blank, except for this text informing you that this entry is intentionally left blank except for this this text, and with the exception of this text which is informing you that this entry is intentionally left blank, this entry is blank.

Except, of course, of this notice.

She's ariving on a jet plane!

Spring is back! Woo hoo!

Unlike her leaving, I did have problems driving down to the Miami International Airport. Her flight on British Airways was scheduled to arrive at 6:05pm, which meant that I was going to bear the brunt of rush hour traffic for some fifty miles.

Pulling onto the freeway at 4:30pm I hit traffic. No noticable reason for the parking lot on I-95. Once past the next exit, it speeded up, until the following exit where traffic came back to a crawl, then resumed, then crawled. Traffic physics at work.

Little over an hour later I arrive, and head towards the parking garage. Delays yet again, but instead of the mysteries of traffic physics, there was a visible reason for the delay—car inspections! I'm still not clear on whether airports are now completely under Federal control or not and if so, then I have serious problems with their trampling of the Fourth Amendment; although if airports are not under Federal control, I would still have problems but the Fourth Amendment only covers what the government can and cannot do—it doesn't cover private property (although a debate could be made about the nature of an airport used by the public).

I'm not even sure what exactly they were looking for though. When it came time for my car to be searched (the cars immediately in front of me had a rather extensive search done) they had me pop the trunk, spent maybe all of five seconds looking, then letting me on my way.

Silliness.

After that, it was about a half hour wait until Spring cleared Customs.

Woo hoo!

Decus et tutamen

Spring came back with quite a pocketfull of change (the currency exchange booth at Miami International Airport would only exchange bills, not coins). On the drive back we talked a bit about foreign currency and the topic of British money came up, of which she had a few coins (a new penny, two pence and two single pound coins).

“I wonder if Queen Elizabeth can use this for identification,” I said, holding up one of the coins. Spring giggled at the thought (“ID?” “Here you go,” the Queen says, handing him a few pounds. “Right then, in you go!”)

I noticed though, that the portrait of the Queen has changed over the years. On the earlier coin (1983) she appears younger, with a smaller crown than the more recent coins (1993). Also, the pound coins feel and look more like tokens than coins to me (they're actually quite thick, about the thickness of two U. S. pennies, and slightly larger in diameter) and for their worth, they're quite small in size (the two pence coin is slightly larger than the U. S. quarter).

Wednesday, August 14, 2002

A lesson from Reality 101—The Bureaucratic Shuffle

I will not go into an anti-corporate rant!

Mainly because I know that's just how they work.

Example 1: Spring took enough days off between August 1^st through August 13^th for her trip to Sweden. Of course during the time she was away, her shift changed and she was of course expected to be back to work the day before she was to come home … possibly.

At the very least, she was expected to show up on the 14^th but because of the way they calculate this particular shift (third, it starts around 11:00pm) they day you go in is not the same day you work. Her department counts the day you work the most hours as the day you work so even though she had the 13^th off, she was still expected to show up on the 13^th to work on the 14^th.

Bloody idiots!

I've done the “get off vacation, head immediately to work. Do not stop at home. Do not get 200 minutes of sleep” thang before and yes, it sucks. But never had I had to do that after a twelve hour international flight (although to be fair, I had been travelling for at least twelve hours if not more but those are stores for another time).

So somehow, Negiyo shifted Spring's work schedule while on vacation and she ends up possibly oweing them a day of work.

Example 2: I call up FPL to cancel service at Condo Conner. I won't go into the rather long sordid tale (part of which is mostly my own stupidity) but in late July I was told that I could expect most of a payment I was making back when I discontinued service, as most of it was a deposit. So I call today to discontinue the service, expecting to get most of the deposit back.

Seems I'll end up owing FPL some money.

Um …

I paid a large sum of money to them, and I still owe them money?

I was then transfered to a billing specialist. A few minutes of talking it came to light that I was talking to the wrong billing specialist and I needed to talk to someone over in residential billing.

I think FPL automatically assume that anyone calling (and try, just try to get a live human operator there! Ha! That takes navigating the “Phone Voice System From Hell” first!) about electrical service is calling from the facility under question and not from some other location.

Since I'm calling from the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere (an apartment complex) I ended up talking to a commecial billing specialist and not the residential billing specialist.

I'm still half expecting the pow

Ha ha, only joking.

I think.

Anyway, I'm now talking to the residential billing expert and we're going over the recent billing situation with Condo Conner. It comes to pass that the guys I talked to in late July were making everything they said up, of course, and that that's just the way it is; will that be check or credit card?

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …

The GNU GPL/LGPL Quiz

Not too bad—I scored 8 out of 9 questions right on the Free Software licensing quiz which tests your knowledge of the GNU GPL and LGPL. This is not an easy quiz either, as I thought I did worse than I actually did.

Thursday, August 15, 2002

FÖR SVERIGE I TIDEN

More European coinage. This time from Denmark and Sweden.

It seems that Queen Margrethe II of Denmark decided to keep up with the Windsors' and in the period between 1989 and 1998, updated her image from her younger days to a more current likeness, while upgrading the crown she was wearing. It's also interesting that some of the lower value coins from Denmark have holes in the middle, although I'm unsure of the exact purpose of such holes. Perhaps they were used to store coins on strings? Decorative? Not enough metal for coinage in the past? Who knows?

Sweden's Carl XVI Gustaf has forgone the crown (at least in 1991) but did sported two different looks—a conventional likeness on the 10 Kroner but an odd, early 70s android look for the 1 Kroner. At least, that's how it struck me when I first saw it.

Another recurring theme on Swedish and Danish coins are crowns. Lots of crowns. That, and the recurrence of hearts on Danish coins. Very odd to these American eyes. But unlike the British pounds, these coins all feel like coins.

Friday, August 16, 2002

She's leaving, on a jet plane (Part II)

Drove Spring to the Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport for her one-day trip to Denver to pick up her kids (yes, the same Denver airport with the underground empire I wrote about two weeks ago). Much less silliness at the Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. No car searches. No restricted levels.

Although the maze of ropes leading up to the security scanners was rather amusing.

The Hazzardous Guess of the Good Samaritan

“I think you might want to get into the next lane,” said Rob. I had just pulled into the left-turn lane to wait for the light and several cars in our lane had just maneuvered into adjacent lanes. “I think a car up ahead is stuck.”

“Okay,” I said, and maneuvered into the other left-hand lane. I was able to pull up past the car in trouble. Car seemed to be stalled with the driver just sitting there, making little attempt to do anything. I then watched the car in the mirror. “She should have her hazzards on.”

“Maybe she doesn't know how to turn them on,” said Rob.

“It could be an electrical problem,” I said. Rob turned around in time to see her flash her lights.

“Nope, she's got electrical.”

“Guess she doesn't know how to turn her hazzards on,” I said. Rob turned to face forward again while I still watched in the mirror. “Oh wait,” I said. “There goes a Good Samaritan to help her.”

Rob turned around and we both started watching. The Good Samaritan climbed into the driver's seat. Just then the hazzards flashed on. The Good Samaritan then got up and walked back to his car.

“Nice of him to turn on her hazzards,” I said. The light changed to green and we started to pull forward.

“Very,” said Rob. “Guess she didn't know.”

Saturday, August 17, 2002

She's arriving on a jet plane! (Part II)

Around 11:15 pm I left to pick up a very tired Spring and two tired kids from the Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Again, no sillyness.

Upon reaching home, Rob announced he was hungry and did any of us want to join him for food. This readily surprised both Spring and I as Rob is allergic to kids, but I guess his adversion to eating out alone is greater than his allergic reactions to kids. Unfortunately, at this time of night, the choices are rather limited and we ended up driving to a nearby Denny's for food.

Afterwards, the two kids had no problem falling asleep. Neither did Spring, unsurprisingly.

A most sophisticated form of humor

With two kids (boys no less), I see I am going to have to learn to enjoy bathroom humor.

Or at least tolerate it.

Joy.

Sunday, August 18, 2002

Yet another option

On the way to a friend's house I stopped by a local McDonald's for a quick bite to eat; I was rather surprised when I saw that the drive through was now open 24 hours!

It may not seem like a Godsend to you, but when your only other viable choice for nearby 24-hour food is Denny's and … well … Denny's …

[One problem with digital cameras is the rather long time it takes for them to actually take a picture. Apparently I took too long taking a picture that a fellow driver in a large pick-up truck roared around and cut in the drive through line. Gee … how nice … ]

Thursday, August 22, 2002

Now and future features

In talking the subject over with Rob and some email exchanges with Aaron Swartz I've decided that even though I'm a bit relunctant I've decided to go ahead to include the entry bodies in my RSS feed.

As Aaron said:

But it's OK for their browser to reformat it as they see fit? What if my aggregator is my browser.

He has a point. And if Marcus, who spent over a month working on his site design is okay with his RSS feed …

It wasn't that much work to add the full descriptions (although I did have to add some code to make sure that the entries contained abosolute URLs but nothing difficult).

Now, adding comments to my journal/blog on the other hand …

At first, it was one person asking for comments. After awhile there was someone else. Now I have a whole gaggle of people clamouring for me to add comments.

Sigh.

It's not like it's difficult or anything; I just don't know how I want to integrate them with the rest of this site. This whole site is an experiment where each entry has a unique URL—and one that isn't tied to a portion of a page (I dislike having to use the fragment portion of the URL to specify a document fragment—why else would I go through the trouble of writing a bunch of code to handle portions of documents?). So I would like to treat comments the same way I treat entries here, but I'm unsure of the best way to go about doing that.

And even if I figure out a way, do I always display the comments? Have a link to read the comments? Not quite cut and dry.

Still pondering …

Friday, August 23, 2002

The Rubber Chicken of Discontent

The four of us, Spring, her two kids, The Older and The Younger and myself, were walking through the local Wal★Mart Supercenter; rather, Spring was walking and I was pushing a kid-laden shopping cart. The Older was riding in the main basket while The Younger was laying down on the bottom shelf of the cart.

Turning the corner in the grocery section, I see an arm shoot out and snatch a rubber chicken off the floor.

A rubber chicken.

Leave it to a kid to find a rubber chicken lying on the floor.

Immediately both kids start barraging Spring with pleas to keep it. Can we keep it? We promise to share. We won't break it. We'll take care of it! Can we? Huh? Huh? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?

No.

The final answer came down. The cashier didn't know if Wal★Mart even sold the rubber chicken we found. And Spring wasn't about to search the Wal★Mart Supercenter.

And thus we left behind the rubber chicken … the Rubber Chicken of Discontent.

Saturday, August 24, 2002

Look who came for breakfast

Ten years ago today I was huddled in the master walk-in closet of Condo Conner with my Mom and her Mom, watching Hurricane Andrew on TV as it blew past us outside.

It was a very surreal experience.

Two weeks earlier I had moved out and into an apartment with two friends, Bill “Giant Hogweek” Lefler and Sean “Semigod” Williams (and there's a long story about those nicknames but that's for another time) and suddenly, here we were, faced with the biggest hurricane South Florida had seen in years (and the first one since Mom and I had moved down here to South Florida—Hurricane David (late August '79) had turned north at the last minute).

I had moved all my computer equipment to my second floor windowless office at FAU (once of the nicer things about a second floor windowless office—the building was four floors high so the likelyhood of my office being flooded by Hurricane Andrew were pretty nil and if it did get flooded, we'd have more pressing things to worry about than just computers), and went down to Condo Conner to help Mom prepare for the worst.

A Class Five Hurricane coming to town and the insipid Condo Association forbids hurricane shutters, or anything else that can possibly protect the units' windows from being installed.

Because, you know, hurricate shutters will detract property values …

Sorry, I digress.

So we move everything we can inside, move as much as I can away from the windows and get everyone inside one of two areas in Condo Conner that doesn't have a window—the master walk-in closet (the other being the master bathroom).

I then spend the rest of the time watching Brian Norcross cover Hurricane Andrew.

We were lucky. Very little damage in the area (mostly downed trees). Others not so lucky; Mark (who lived in Miami at the time) ended up with a traffic signal sitting on his bed. And he was lucky compared to those living in Homestead …

More Mozilla neatness

I'm currently playing around with Pie Menus for Mozilla (which I found via an article at Slashdot). Pie menus are an intriguing idea that have been floating around for several years now and this may be the first major application to get support for them (yet another reason to love Mozilla).

As a user interface, pie menus tend to be easier to use as they don't require precise navigation to select items—just move in the appropriate direction far enough (most pie menus are limited to eight possible options at any level) and there you go.

So, using the points of the compass with N (north) being up, to open a page in a new tab (which is another feature I love about Mozilla), it's RightButton-East (hit the right mouse button, move right). To switch to a previous tab (or one to the left): RightButton-NE-W (right mouse button, move NE until the second menu pops up, then move left). Next tab (or one to the right): RightButton-NE-E. Bookmark? RightButton-SE-E. The menu will always pop up so it's not like you have to memorize all these but after awhile you just remember it (or at least I do).

It would be nice if you could use the keyboard to bring up the menus. Say, hitting the 0 key on the numeric keypad would bring up the menu, and then the keys 1–9 to select the menu item you want. So RightButton-NE-W could also be 096.

Although not all the options from the old menu are available on the Mozilla Pie Menus; the biggest one I miss is the one to copy the link, which I use quite a bit (especially when writing entries). But other than that, I definitely like the pie menus.

Just gotta love MSIE …

I have a question about HTTP for you. Okay. If you compile Seminole 2.14 and go to a URL that is a directory with an index.html in it, you will find that (unlike Apache), I instead just send out a temporary redirect to the /index.html URL instead of serving up the index.html as the directory URL.
Now, it seems that this works fine with all browsers except one: Microsoft Internet Explorer. Apparently a 302 Redirect causes MSIE to just display the redirect page.

Question from Mark via email

The solution Mark found was to not send out the HTTP header Content-Type: and then MSIE would work properly. When I investigated though:

Very curious. Using MSIE 5.0 (original and SP2) if I went to:
http://www.example.net/testredirect
I got redirected. But if I go to
www.example.net/testredirect
I get the MSIE redirect page (and not the one from the web server!).

My reply to Mark's email

Mark then asked if it was a violation of RFC-2616 to not send out the Content-Type: header. Nope.


7.2.1 Type

   When an entity-body is included with a message, the data type of that
   body is determined via the header fields Content-Type and Content-
   Encoding. These define a two-layer, ordered encoding model:

       entity-body := Content-Encoding( Content-Type( data ) )

   Content-Type specifies the media type of the underlying data.
   Content-Encoding may be used to indicate any additional content
   codings applied to the data, usually for the purpose of data
   compression, that are a property of the requested resource. There is
   no default encoding.

   Any HTTP/1.1 message containing an entity-body SHOULD include a
   Content-Type header field defining the media type of that body. If
   and only if the media type is not given by a Content-Type field, the
   recipient MAY attempt to guess the media type via inspection of its
   content and/or the name extension(s) of the URI used to identify the
   resource. If the media type remains unknown, the recipient SHOULD
   treat it as type "application/octet-stream".

§ 7.2.1 of RFC-2616

The SHOULD gets Mark off the hook for not sending out the Content-Type: header.

But then Mark also found:

Internet Explorer does not properly handle an HTTP/1.1 302 redirect returned from a proxy server or Internet server when the HTTP/1.1 302 redirect is sent to Internet Explorer in two separate TCP frames (one with the HTTP/1.1 302 redirect, and the other with a HTML body containing a page for the new location).

Internet Explorer Returns Error Message When Being Redirected

Incredible. Not only is this for MSIE version FOUR but it still doesn't work properly for MSIE version FIVE.

Just gotta love MSIE …

Sunday, August 25, 2002

Squashing bugs and historical context lost

A few days ago I was going through the error log for the webserver and noticing the rather large number of Internal Server Errors I was getting for this site.

That was easy enough to solve: my software wasn't handing not-found pages correctly; it was aware that the files weren't there, it just wasn't bothering to send back the proper response to the webserver. I hadn't bothered to actually write that part of the code.

Mark had noticed. So had about a dozen robots (who so far had made about 700 failed requests this month).

I fixed the problem (although the error pages themselves are rather spartan) and then spent some time going through the error log seeing what problems I could fix. One typo on the template page probably accounted for half the failed requests; the rest were typos in individual entries and missing files from way back. For instance, an entry over two years ago when I was still playing around with formating entries. It pointed to some mockups I had done that I had neglected to actually copy over when I went live. It's interesting to look at those mockups and compare the format I'm using today (which just revealved another display bug that I'll need to get around fixing. Sigh). I actually liked the rounded corners I used originally but I used a hack to get them and (as the sidebar on those pages show) they don't always work like I intended them to, which is why I dropped the concept.

I eventually solved the problem I was having with Lynx by using CSS and because of the loss of historical context for that entry, the opening sentance now makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Of course this is the layout you are looking at right now.

Monday, August 26, 2002

No more Mozilla neatness

I've disabled the Mozilla Pie Menus. While a neat idea the current implementation proved to be too unstable to use, especially when you hit a fairly heavy-hitting CSS-based site (like, oh, this one?).

Well, it wasn't that I uninstalled the pie menus as I reinstalled Mozilla (well, installed the latest version).

At least I have the Site Navigation Bar back.

Tuesday, August 27, 2002

“What the heck is going on here?”

“What do you mean you haven't read it for a year?” said Spring.

“I just haven't,” I said.

“You hook me on Sluggy Freelance and yet you haven't kept up!”

“Well, smart pushers never take their own merchandise,” I said, dodging a flying keyboard.

That was a couple of days ago. So tonight I hunkered down and caught up with a years worth of Sluggy Freelance. Fire and Rain has to be one of the best story arcs Pete Abrams has done for Sluggy (and like Dave Sim's Cerebus, Sluggy Freelance is one of those comics that you pretty much have to read from the start or else it doesn't really make all that much sense; and also like Cerebus, the artwork has progressed wonderfully).

Now I finally can make in-jokes with Spring and Rob.

Ka-click

Thursday, August 29, 2002

“Look Ma! I'm syndicated!”

Wow.

Sydic8.com has been pulling my RSS file for some time now, but I didn't realize it would actually display the contents of the file. It is interesting to see my blog using a different layout than one I created. My complaint about the way it's being presented at Sydic8.com is the lack of distinction between each entry. Other than that, it doesn't look all that bad although I can see a potential problem where an entry has a very long title and a very short body.

Also, in looking over the page, I found yet another small bug—for the RSS feed, I (supposedly) check each URL and if it's relative to this site I change it to an abolute URL so the links will still work in a foreign environment.

Only it looks like I missed a few local links.

Back to the source code …

Saturday, August 31, 2002

What a racket

I had problems with people reformatting my RSS feed but it appears that other people have problems with RSS feeds but for another reason: unintentional content stealing.

Granted, if you make an RSS feed available, with the full content of your site available odds are people will take advantage of this in ways you may not have intended, up to making it available for other people to read. The person in question did not know the software he was using made an RSS feed available and was shocked at finding his content elsewhere (but that republishing of his content has since been removed).

Walk About

The Facility in the Middle of Nowhere was quiet. Rob's at DragonCon, Spring took the boys out for a day of swimming (borrowing the car, Lake Lumina) and thus left me and Spodie (the cat) to ourselves.

Leaving Spodie to fend for himself, I decided to walk to US-441 (just shy of two miles west of The Facility in the Middle of Nowhere) and take pictures along the way, to get used to the new digital camera I picked up a week or so ago.

The one thing I've noticed about the camera (an Olympus D-550 ZOOM) is its propensity to suck the living daylights out of batteries. So the night before I recharged eight AA batteries to see just how long they could last in this camera.

Not long as I found out.

Just outside the front door a large spider had made its home and I thought I'd get a picture of it. Turn the camera on, activate the digital zoom (10x) and click the camera is dead.

Fiddle around some more, turn it back on, attempt to zoom and click it was dead.

Take out the four freshly recharged batteries, replace them with the other four refreshly recharged batteries, turn it on, zoom and click its dead.

No combination of batteries lasted at all.

So there goes the taking of pictures. But I still did the walk out to US-441.

I was amazed to find not only sidewalks along the way, but concrete sidewalks. Nearly every sidewalk I've seen down here in Lower Sheol have been asphalt so it was refreshing to see a real sidewalk. Chain link fences too. Except for the occasional palm tree it felt like I could have been walking through a neighborhood from Detroit (where I spent many a summer). Although unlike Detroit, I was the only one out and about walking. Granted, it's South Florida, end of August in late afternoon where the heat and humidity have backed the landscape for the day. Come October the walk might actually be very nice.

Sunday, September 01, 2002

The more illucid corner of the web

Crank.net is a great way to kill time. A site with links to cranks, crackpots, kooks and loons on the net, and it even ranks them, from fringe to ILLUCID (“something so beyond understanding that it defies classification,” according to the description) and they don't get more illucid than Gene Ray:

Time Cube empowers wisdom above all gods and educators. I am the wisest human of all, for I have absolute proof of 4 simultaneous 24 hour days in a single rotation of the Earth. God is 1-day, Science is 1 day. My 4 days disproves 1 day god and evil lying 1-day educators. Students are dumb and stupid for ignorance of Time Cube. Cubeless word allows the evil to rule and the liars to teach. You've ignored the Time Cube and you shall suffer its curse, as did all the past civilizations. Prepare for a hell you created.

The rant goes on and on, repeating itself without really explaining much; it's only at the bottom of the page where there are some links that explain what Gene claims to have found, which seems to be four “days” per rotation of the Earth. Given one person standing on Greenwich, one person standing at 90°E, another at 90°W and one on the International Date Line (at 180°); each experiences a day (of 24 hours) apparantly separate from each other.

I can kind of see what he's getting at, but then according to that logic, why not 24 “days” per rotation (one per hour of the day)? Or 86,400 (number of seconds in a day)?

Wacked stuff there.

The Crank.net section on tax evasion is quite interesting. In reading up on the supposed theory of non-payment of income tax, I got curious as to what the actual laws stated, and a quick search for USC Title 26 revealed that the entire United States Code is online.

I just wish the USC online made more use of hypertext than it does, as that would make following (as in understanding) the law easier.

Monday, September 02, 2002

Why yes, it was laborious …

Twelve hours of babysitting.

Even with the help (of which I am eternally grateful), it wasn't pretty.

Excuse me while I pass out.

Tuesday, September 03, 2002

Find Another Airstrip

The meaning of the name Boca Raton has always aroused curiosity. Many people wrongly assume the name is simply Rat's Mouth. Boca (or mouth) often describes an inlet, while raton can mean a “cowardly thief” in old Spanish terms. Thus, a possible translation “thieves' inlet” could be explained by legends that describe Lake Boca Raton as a haven for pirates.

Boca Raton Historical Society—History

My friend Greg and I were trying to find the name of the airport that was later turned into FAU. It is well known that the airstrip was an important training ground for airmen during World War II but we couldn't find a name for the airport at all, although I did find out that Lyndon B. Johnson was at the dedication ceremony.

Wanted: Scientists for secret project; may be turned into Zombie

Mark, JeffK and I saw Resident Evil, a pretty standard zombie flick with not much going for it (except for Milla Jovovich in various forms of undress).

Large evil corporation is doing genetic experimentation in a secret underground lab when an act of sabotage releases a deadly virus and a corporate/millitary SWAT team, along with three amnesiacs (who are found at the entrance to the secret underground lab) go in to investigate.

What I would like to know is, where do they get all the scientists who work there? Do they put out classified ads?

WANTED: Scientist willing to work on top secret projects in an undisclosed location. Benefits include full medical, dental and hazzard pay. Applicants should be aware they might be killed, blasted into parallel universes, or turned into mindless zombies. Call 555-555-1212.

And I would also like to know is how are these large, secret underground labratories built? In the movie, the lab is situated underneath a town for crying out loud. NORAD took over five years to clear out Cheyenne Mountain and that was under orders to do it quickly. I can only imagine what building a secret underground labratory would take, both in time and money.

Living within your means? How quaint …

The fundamental problem here, see, is that I'm not a typical American. And by typical American, I mean, “Living beyond my means.” Well, maybe I'm taking that a bit far. But you get the point.
The fact that I've made a good salary for the last three years? Meaningless.
That I have cash saved in the bank? Eh, who cares.
That I have no debt, have never defaulted in anyway, etc. etc.? Not interesting.

peterme, Abnormal American

I can certainly relate to that. Back in '97, I found out the hard way that I was considered a “ghost,” one without a credit history. I also found out that being a “ghost” is worse than being a “debtor” and one step away from declaring bankruptcy (heck, it may be worse than actually having declared bankruptcy).

I am begining to think that the old notions of saving money isn't as important as it once was; the economically powerful aren't those that have tons of money at their disposal, but rather the ability to move money through the economy. It's less about what you have and more about what you control and the two aren't necessarily synonymous. Building credit is a way of showing you can control the flow of money, which (from what I've read) seems to be the current theory behind the economy these days.

Hoarding is so 19^th century …

Wednesday, September 04, 2002

Yea, like you can really trust them

Early last month I received some mail from Verisign that my domain, conman.org was about to expire.

Yea. It expires in October, you idiots.

I've been meaning to transfer my domain over to Dotster, where the rest of my domains are registered. About two weeks ago I figure it was time. So I put in the transfer request and the credit card information to pay for it.

Only a day or so later, I lost the credit card. I cancelled that one and had a new one issued, but it took quite a while before I got the new card (partly because the mailing address is separate from where I currently live and that mail box is checked about once a week). So during that time, Dotster kept attempting to charge the cancelled card.

Every single day.

Gee, you'd think that after three or so attempts they would just cancel the transfer but I guess not.

But once I cleared up that snafu the transfer completed without problem and I no longer have to deal with Verisign or Network Pollutions.

Woo hoo!

Traffic

Since 1970, the population of the United States has grown by forty per cent, while the number of registered vehicles has increased by nearly a hundred per cent—in other words, cars have proliferated more than twice as fast as people have. During this same period, road capacity increased by six per cent.

The New Yorker: The Slow Lane

A long but interesting article about traffic trends in the United States (and New York City in particular) and it sounds like thing will get worse before they get better (if they get better at all).

I also believe that zoning laws also contribute to the traffic problem. Strict zoning (like the zoning down here in Lower Sheol) creates traffic problems since to get anywhere you have to drive. There are no closeby commercial areas to The Facility in the Middle of Nowhere (which is why I gave it that name); the closest is about two miles away whereas back in Condo Conner, there was a small shopping center just around the corner, and a major one about a mile down the road. Heck, the closest park is over two miles away, whereas my paternal grandparents lived right next to a park.

Don't get me wrong—I love my car and I certainly don't want to get rid of it. I just wish there were more places close by that I could walk to (then again, I would certainly settle for about a 60% reduction in the number of cars down here).

A day at the park

Spring and I took the boys to a local park in the hopes that they would wear themselves out playing. The park had this huge, nearly three story tall Escheresque wooden building with all forms of stairs, bars, slides, cubby holes and what not to let kids play on, but unfortunately, it was closed that day so we ended up walking around some nature trails.

I did, however, get to test the digital camera, having gotten batteries the other day. Regular batteries. They lasted long enough to get over 40 pictures.

Other than the power consumption, I have no other complaints about the camera.

Thursday, September 05, 2002

A bit dazed, a bit confused, and a whole lotta South Park

So Spring found the South Park Character Creator and had some fun with it.

And my South Park characterization looks pretty much how I feel these days.

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

United States Code, Title 4, Chapter 1

§ 1—Flag; stripes and stars on

The flag of the United States shall be thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and white; and the union of the flag shall be forty-eight stars, white in a blue field.

§ 2—Same;additional stars

On the admission of a new State into the Union one star shall be added to the union of the flag; and such addition shall take effect on the fourth day of July then next succeeding such admission.

§ 3—Use of flag for advertising purposes; mutilation of flag

Any person who, within the District of Columbia, in any manner, for exhibition or display, shall place or cause to be placed any word, figure, mark, picture, design, drawing, or any advertisement of any nature upon any flag, standard, colors, or ensign of the United States of America; or shall expose or cause to be exposed to public view any such flag, standard, colors, or ensign upon which shall have been printed, painted, or otherwise placed, or to which shall be attached, appended, affixed, or annexed any word, figure, mark, picture, design, or drawing, or any advertisement of any nature; or who, within the District of Columbia, shall manufacture, sell, expose for sale, or to public view, or give away or have in possession for sale, or to be given away or for use for any purpose, any article or substance being an article of merchandise, or a receptacle for merchandise or article or thing for carrying or transporting merchandise, upon which shall have been printed, painted, attached, or otherwise placed a representation of any such flag, standard, colors, or ensign, to advertise, call attention to, decorate, mark, or distinguish the article or substance on which so placed shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $100 or by imprisonment for not more than thirty days, or both, in the discretion of the court. The words “flag, standard, colors, or ensign”, as used herein, shall include any flag, standard, colors, ensign, or any picture or representation of either, or of any part or parts of either, made of any substance or represented on any substance, of any size evidently purporting to be either of said flag, standard, colors, or ensign of the United States of America or a picture or a representation of either, upon which shall be shown the colors, the stars and the stripes, in any number of either thereof, or of any part or parts of either, by which the average person seeing the same without deliberation may believe the same to represent the flag, colors, standard, or ensign of the United States of America.

§ 4—Pledge of allegiance to the flag; manner of delivery

The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”, should be rendered by standing at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. When not in uniform men should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Persons in uniform should remain silent, face the flag, and render the military salute.

§ 5—Display and use of flag by civilians; codification of rules and customs; definition

The following codification of existing rules and customs pertaining to the display and use of the flag of the United States of America is established for the use of such civilians or civilian groups or organizations as may not be required to conform with regulations promulgated by one or more executive departments of the Government of the United States. The flag of the United States for the purpose of this chapter shall be defined according to sections 1 and 2 of this title and Executive Order 10834 issued pursuant thereto.

§ 6—Time and occasions for display

(a)

It is the universal custom to display the flag only from sunrise to sunset on buildings and on stationary flagstaffs in the open. However, when a patriotic effect is desired, the flag may be displayed 24 hours a day if properly illuminated during the hours of darkness.

(b)

The flag should be hoisted briskly and lowered ceremoniously.

(c)

The flag should not be displayed on days when the weather is inclement, except when an all weather flag is displayed.

(d)

The flag should be displayed on all days, especially on New Year's Day, January 1; Inauguration Day, January 20; Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, third Monday in January; Lincoln's Birthday, February 12; Washington's Birthday, third Monday in February; Easter Sunday (variable); Mother's Day, second Sunday in May; Armed Forces Day, third Saturday in May; Memorial Day (half-staff until noon), the last Monday in May; Flag Day, June 14; Independence Day, July 4; Labor Day, first Monday in September; Constitution Day, September 17; Columbus Day, second Monday in October; Navy Day, October 27; Veterans Day, November 11; Thanksgiving Day, fourth Thursday in November; Christmas Day, December 25; and such other days as may be proclaimed by the President of the United States; the birthdays of States (date of admission); and on State holidays.

(e)

The flag should be displayed daily on or near the main administration building of every public institution.

(f)

The flag should be displayed in or near every polling place on election days.

(g)

The flag should be displayed during school days in or near every schoolhouse.

§ 7—Position and manner of display

The flag, when carried in a procession with another flag or flags, should be either on the marching right; that is, the flag's own right, or, if there is a line of other flags, in front of the center of that line.

(a)

The flag should not be displayed on a float in a parade except from a staff, or as provided in subsection (i) of this section.

(b)

The flag should not be draped over the hood, top, sides, or back of a vehicle or of a railroad train or a boat. When the flag is displayed on a motorcar, the staff shall be fixed firmly to the chassis or clamped to the right fender.

(c)

No other flag or pennant should be placed above or, if on the same level, to the right of the flag of the United States of America, except during church services conducted by naval chaplains at sea, when the church pennant may be flown above the flag during church services for the personnel of the Navy. No person shall display the flag of the United Nations or any other national or international flag equal, above, or in a position of superior prominence or honor to, or in place of, the flag of the United States at any place within the United States or any Territory or possession thereof: Provided, That nothing in this section shall make unlawful the continuance of the practice heretofore followed of displaying the flag of the United Nations in a position of superior prominence or honor, and other national flags in positions of equal prominence or honor, with that of the flag of the United States at the headquarters of the United Nations.

(d)

The flag of the United States of America, when it is displayed with another flag against a wall from crossed staffs, should be on the right, the flag's own right, and its staff should be in front of the staff of the other flag.

(e)

The flag of the United States of America should be at the center and at the highest point of the group when a number of flags of States or localities or pennants of societies are grouped and displayed from staffs.

(f)

When flags of States, cities, or localities, or pennants of societies are flown on the same halyard with the flag of the United States, the latter should always be at the peak. When the flags are flown from adjacent staffs, the flag of the United States should be hoisted first and lowered last. No such flag or pennant may be placed above the flag of the United States or to the United States flag's right.

(g)

When flags of two or more nations are displayed, they are to be flown from separate staffs of the same height. The flags should be of approximately equal size. International usage forbids the display of the flag of one nation above that of another nation in time of peace.

(h)

When the flag of the United States is displayed from a staff projecting horizontally or at an angle from the window sill, balcony, or front of a building, the union of the flag should be placed at the peak of the staff unless the flag is at half-staff. When the flag is suspended over a sidewalk from a rope extending from a house to a pole at the edge of the sidewalk, the flag should be hoisted out, union first, from the building.

(i)

When displayed either horizontally or vertically against a wall, the union should be uppermost and to the flag's own right, that is, to the observer's left. When displayed in a window, the flag should be displayed in the same way, with the union or blue field to the left of the observer in the street.

(j)

When the flag is displayed over the middle of the street, it should be suspended vertically with the union to the north in an east and west street or to the east in a north and south street.

(k)

When used on a speaker's platform, the flag, if displayed flat, should be displayed above and behind the speaker. When displayed from a staff in a church or public auditorium, the flag of the United States of America should hold the position of superior prominence, in advance of the audience, and in the position of honor at the clergyman's or speaker's right as he faces the audience. Any other flag so displayed should be placed on the left of the clergyman or speaker or to the right of the audience.

(l)

The flag should form a distinctive feature of the ceremony of unveiling a statue or monument, but it should never be used as the covering for the statue or monument.

(m)

The flag, when flown at half-staff, should be first hoisted to the peak for an instant and then lowered to the half-staff position. The flag should be again raised to the peak before it is lowered for the day. On Memorial Day the flag should be displayed at half-staff until noon only, then raised to the top of the staff. By order of the President, the flag shall be flown at half-staff upon the death of principal figures of the United States Government and the Governor of a State, territory, or possession, as a mark of respect to their memory. In the event of the death of other officials or foreign dignitaries, the flag is to be displayed at half-staff according to Presidential instructions or orders, or in accordance with recognized customs or practices not inconsistent with law. In the event of the death of a present or former official of the government of any State, territory, or possession of the United States, the Governor of that State, territory, or possession may proclaim that the National flag shall be flown at half-staff. The flag shall be flown at half-staff 30 days from the death of the President or a former President; 10 days from the day of death of the Vice President, the Chief Justice or a retired Chief Justice of the United States, or the Speaker of the House of Representatives; from the day of death until interment of an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, a Secretary of an executive or military department, a former Vice President, or the Governor of a State, territory, or possession; and on the day of death and the following day for a Member of Congress. The flag shall be flown at half-staff on Peace Officers Memorial Day, unless that day is also Armed Forces Day. As used in this subsection—

(1)

the term “half-staff” means the position of the flag when it is one-half the distance between the top and bottom of the staff;

(2)

the term “executive or military department” means any agency listed under sections 101 and 102 of title 5, United States Code; and

(3)

the term “Member of Congress” means a Senator, a Representative, a Delegate, or the Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico.

(n)

When the flag is used to cover a casket, it should be so placed that the union is at the head and over the left shoulder. The flag should not be lowered into the grave or allowed to touch the ground.

(o)

When the flag is suspended across a corridor or lobby in a building with only one main entrance, it should be suspended vertically with the union of the flag to the observer's left upon entering. If the building has more than one main entrance, the flag should be suspended vertically near the center of the corridor or lobby with the union to the north, when entrances are to the east and west or to the east when entrances are to the north and south. If there are entrances in more than two directions, the union should be to the east

§ 8—Respect for flag

No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor.

(a)

The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.

(b)

The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.

(c)

The flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.

(d)

The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free. Bunting of blue, white, and red, always arranged with the blue above, the white in the middle, and the red below, should be used for covering a speaker's desk, draping the front of the platform, and for decoration in general.

(e)

The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way.

(f)

The flag should never be used as a covering for a ceiling.

(g)

The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.

(h)

The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything.

(i)

The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.

(j)

No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. However, a flag patch may be affixed to the uniform of military personnel, firemen, policemen, and members of patriotic organizations. The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing. Therefore, the lapel flag pin being a replica, should be worn on the left lapel near the heart.

(k)

The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning

§ 9—Conduct during hoisting, lowering or passing of flag

During the ceremony of hoisting or lowering the flag or when the flag is passing in a parade or in review, all persons present except those in uniform should face the flag and stand at attention with the right hand over the heart. Those present in uniform should render the military salute. When not in uniform, men should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Aliens should stand at attention. The salute to the flag in a moving column should be rendered at the moment the flag passes.

§ 10—Modification of rules and customs by President

Any rule or custom pertaining to the display of the flag of the United States of America, set forth herein, may be altered, modified, or repealed, or additional rules with respect thereto may be prescribed, by the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, whenever he deems it to be appropriate or desirable; and any such alteration or additional rule shall be set forth in a proclamation.

Thursday, September 12, 2002

They may look crude, but they sure were fun

While perusing Slashdot I noticed this article about a new Quake 3 map based upon the old Atari 2600 VCS game Adventure, which brought back a ton of memories, spending hours playing games—the most hilarious being Football (well, at least I found it hilarious to play; the Intellivision Football game rocked though).

Not wanting to wake The Boys up, I found an Atari 2600 VCS emulator I could use to play the games I remember from childhood. So I spent a few hours (okay, way too many hours) playing a ton of games, including one made in 1990! (who knew Atari even made cartridges for the 2600 that late?)

I even found a game that Rob might like.

Friday, September 13, 2002

It's not even the end of September yet …

We were out and about today and The Younger kept insisting upon going to Wal★Mart; I suppose he wanted to buy the toy department (or rather, us to buy him the toy department, it being so close to his birthday and all) so we capitulated and the lot of us (Spring, her father (who came in late yesterday), The Older, The Younger and I) ended up walking into the local Wal★Mart SuperCenter (clearing customs took forever!) only to find the melodious strains of Christmas carols being piped in over the loud speakers and shelves filled with festive Yule-tide decorations.

Words fail me …

It's not even the middle of September and already the Christmas season is upon us …

I guess that's what happens when you enter a Wal★Mart SuperCenter on a Friday the 13^th.

Wednesday, September 18, 2002

Holy homoerotica, Batman!

My favorite super hero has to be The Batman. Not the campy goof from the 50s and 60s but more of the brooding anti-hero from the 70s (and definitely the version Frank Miller did in The Dark Knight Returns).

But there always has been this undercurrent of homoeroticism lurking just beneath the surface. I mean, come on, a younger sidekick named Robin? Big controversy about this in the 50s but still, it just keeps coming up.

Thursday, September 19, 2002

“Just sign on the dotted line … ”

1. Name. Likeness, etc., Promotional Activities. I hereby consent to Producer's filming, taping and/or recording of me for use in and in connection with the Series (including, without limitation, whether I am aware or unaware of the photographing, videotaping, filming or recording of same, and by requiring me to wear a microphone at all reasonable times, at Producer's discretion) and agree to cooperate fully with Producer in such activities. I acknowledge and agree that Producer will be the sole and exclusive owner of all rights and material filmed, taped, and/or recorded pursuant to this Agreement. In addition. I hereby grant to Producer the unconditional right throughout the universe in perpetuity to use, simulate or portray (and to authorize others to do so) or to refrain from using, simulating or portraying, my name, likeness (whether photographic or otherwise), voice, singing voice, personality, personal identification or personal experiences, my life story, biographical data, incidents, situations and events which heretofore occurred or hereafter occur, including without limitation the right to use, or to authorize others to use any of the foregoing in or in connection with the Series (or any episode or portion thereof) and the advertising, promoting or publicizing of the Series or any Series episode by Producer, the Network, its operations, activities or programming services and with any merchandise, tie-in, sponsor, product, or service of any kind by Producer, the Network, or any of its programming services, and in any other manner whatsoever as Producer may elect in its sole discretion. I understand that, in and in connection with the Series, I may reveal and/or relate, and other parties (including, without limitation, other contestants, the judges, Producer and the host and/or co-host of the Series) may reveal and/or relate information about me of a personal, private, intimate. surprising, defamatory, disparaging, embarrassing or unfavorable nature, that may be factual and/or fictional. I further understand that my appearance, depiction and/or portrayal in the Series and my actions and the actions of others displayed in the Series, may be disparaging, defamatory, embarrassing or of an otherwise unfavorable nature and may expose me to public ridicule, humiliation or condemnation. I acknowledge and agree that Producer shall have the right to (a) include any such information and any such appearance, depiction, portrayal, actions, and statements in the Series as edited by Producer in its sole discretion, (b) broadcast and otherwise exploit the Series containing any such information and any such appearance, depiction, portrayal or actions, and (c) use such information, appearance, depiction, portrayal, actions and/or statements in any manner whatsoever, in Producer's sole discretion. The waivers, release and indemnities in this Agreement expressly apply to any such inclusion and exploitation.

Via randomly ever after, Kelly Wins Idol—Now What? (emphasis in text added)

It's hard to be satirical when reality beats you to it.

I certainly hope that Kelly's career is worth the price she paid. And the sad thing is, if she didn't sign it, there were 9,999 other people willing to sign that contract for a shot to stardom.

Just one more reason not to trust your life's work to a corporation.

Captain Napalm vs. Airport Security

With a flurry of last minute panicing and packing and Lake Lumina (the car) nearly empty of gasoline, Spring, her kids and I drove to the Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport.

Spring was freaking out due to the late start and having to navigate both the ticket counter (for her two boys were flying alone back to Colorado) and the security checkpoints. I was freaking out because the gas guage was hovering on the red line marked “E” the entire way with no time left to refill the car.

The car managed to make it there, and to a gas station.

Spring was able to navigate the ticket counter and with the help of the ticket agent was able to avert a crisis at the last minute (that would have prevented the kids from flying today). So, with tickets and special badges (so we adults could accompany the kids to the gate) in hand, we started the long arduous process of clearing the security checkpoint.

At one end of this corridor is a security guard who sits there, making sure everyone that passes has either a ticket, or a special badge. Then you walk down this byzantine maze of ropes that snakes its way to the other end of the corridor where the security checkpoint lies. There, another security guard will direct you to a particular x-ray station.

Spring, with bright green hair and two small boys, went through without a problem; they were through in minutes.

Me, white Anglo-Saxon Protestent who on a good day, looks like a Cuban refugee, had a slight issue walking through the scanner, with hand in pocket, which I learned is a real big no-no around airport security.

Whisked to one side I was scanned. Shoes … beep. Take them off to be x-rayed. Pants … beep. Remove keys to have them x-rayed, pants tried again … beep. Remove wallet to have that x-rayed, pants attempted yet again … beep. Pants removed to have that x-rayed. Shirt … clean. Head … beep. Glasses removed to have that x-rayed. Second attempt on head … clean. By this time the shoes come back clean (“Must have been the eyelets for the laces that trigger the sensor”), then the keys (“Just ordinary keys, thank you very much”). Followed by the wallet (“Spare house key I see, and on, by the way, the magnetic strip on your bank card is now wiped out, just for your protection”), then glasses (“Clean from a security standpoint, but could use a cleaning themselves, and they're somewhat beat up”) and finally the pants (“It's the zipper. Sorry about that”).

By the time I got through, the boys were already boarding the plane.

Spring and I had to stick around until the plane took off. While there, we watched as a few late stragglers where searched at the gate, even more intrusively than I was. It took something like six security guards to scan the three late passengers. One poor passenger had everything removed from her carry-on luggage, unwrapped, scanned and x-rayed.

Even with all that, the plane left the gate within 10 minutes of its scheduled departure time. Amazing.

After some twenty minutes or so hanging around, we assumed the plane took off without incident, since we didn't have a good view of the main runway.

Sunday, September 22, 2002

The alien flutterby

I met Mark, JeffK, Kelly (who took some convincing to come over) and ChrisS at Miserak's, a local pool hall I've been going to for several years now.

While there, Chris gave me a present—a chrysalis. A live (I hope) chrysalis. It's not a Monarch though—I think he said it was a native Florida species.

Not wanting to keep this to myself, I put the chrysalis on Spring's desk when I got home.

When she got home she freaked out at finding this alien looking thing on her desk. Skeeved is the term I think she used.

Heh.

So I put the chrysalis on a plant in the court yard where it will hopefully remain undisturbed until it … well … until the butterfly comes out (it's not exactly hatching and I don't recall what the term is when a butterfly comes out of a chrysalis).

Tuesday, September 24, 2002

Armkreuznacht

Very bizarre day today.

It started just as I was falling asleep.

Noise, and lots of it, coming from above.

Which is odd, considering that the master bedroom is on the second floor of a two story building, there shouldn't be noise coming from above.

But there was, and as I found out from Spring a work crew were up on the roof doing roof-like work.

All day.

Sigh.

Also, through the day we both noticed some rather odd behavior from Rob, which culminated at around 9:30 pm when we took him to the emergency room; he had a bad reaction to something earlier in the day and our attempts to help him weren't working.

The hospital is keeping him overnight for observation but everything seems to be under control, thankfully.

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

A Life Less Interesting

It seems that wierd things are happening all around.

Earlier last week Mark was attacked by a feral cat. Mark's bathroom opens up to the back porch in his house, and he heard some noise at the door. When he opened it this cat latched itself to Mark, scratching and biting him, then it flew around the bathroom, breaking anything and everything that could be broken.

Mark was able to remove the cat from his house before more damage could be done. He then called Animal Control who came out to set traps for the animal (since Mark's house is on the edge of a nature preserve). They also told him to get rabies shots.

The first hospital he went to (in east Boca Raton) told him he did not need the shots and that a case of rabies had not been seen in Boca Raton for years. The next day when Animal Control came back out to check the traps, they were horrified to hear that Mark was blown off by that hospital.

So, Mark went to the West Boca Medical Center (which is where we took Rob) and they set him up on a rabies shot schedule.

I also heard some news about John, the paper millionaire of a dot-com. I haven't heard from him in almost two years (I think the last time I saw him was Thanksgiving of 2000). I occasionally wondered about him, his wife and how they could afford to live in that house of theirs after the DotCom Bubble burst.

Well, it seems that John lost most (if not all) of his money when it burst, since most of his money was in stock to begin with, and sometime last year he apparently split without telling anyone, including his wife where he went.

She, however, is still in the house and how she can afford it, I don't know. Perhaps John, the paper millionaire of a dotcom didn't loose all his money and just decided to leave everything behind.

Perhaps.

But I'm not even to the wierd part in this story.

John, the paper millionaire of a dotcom, had wired up a computer to control the house. Lights, music, air conditioning, you name it, it was controlled by a computer. He was, after all, a paper millionaire of a dotcom, and with that much (paper) money you can buy some pretty fancy toys, like a computer controlled home.

And even though John, the paper millionaire of a dotcom, no longer lives there, he still, however, has control over that computer. And he's been using that control to control the house, remotely.

And his (ex?) wife has no idea how to prevent him from logging into that computer remotely. Even after she cut the Internet access, John, the paper millionaire of a dotcom, apparently still has a way in.

Me, I find that terribly amusing.

The roof! The roof! The roof is under construction!

Work continues on the roof.

WHAM WHAM WHAM WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRR WHIRRRRRRRRRRRR WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRR WHAM WHAM WHAM

All

day

long.

Scream.

The bureaucratic shuffle

“What do you mean he's not on record?” asked Spring. It was four in the afternoon and we hadn't heard back from the hospital about Rob, so Spring called them up. “We brought him in last night! … No record … okay.” She hung up.

“I guess we better go there and ask them in person,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

Half an hour later, we arrive to the emergency room and start asking. Oh, Rob was moved to another medical facility. Why weren't we notified? Don't know he was just moved. Oh.

Fourty-five minutes later we arrive at the other medical facility, where were weren't allowed to see Rob. We got no information about Rob at all, since we were not on a list to have information. We don't even know how bad off he is. We have to come back tomorrow during visiting hours (and there's only four (4) hours per week anyone can visit at this particular facility).

Sigh.

Thursday, September 26, 2002

The Wireless Net

Last week I again borrowed Rob's Cisco Airo 340 wireless PCMCIA card to use. I've been trying to get it to work for the past two days (it isn't working because Rob shut down the WAP as he started rearranging his room and hasn't gotten back to it yet) so I tried yet again.

This time, I brought up the interface, which seems to be fine, and ran a network sniffer on it and found, to my surprise, not one, but two WAPs nearby, given the ARP traffic I'm seeing. Given the signal strength, I'm inclined to say that the two WAPs are in the same building we're in, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

Still under construction

Given the noise I'm hearing above me, I suspect they're still working on the roof.

Visiting hours

Spring and I went to visit Rob and see how he's doing. He's doing fine although quite groggy from the drugs the hospital is administering to him. He's still under observation and does not have any indication as to when he'll be out, but hopefully it will be Real Soon Now.

Sunday, September 29, 2002

Some months, it just doesn't pay to get out of bed

Updates.

The roofers finally finished whatever they were doing to the roof on Thursday. Rob got out of the hospital on Saturday. The chrysalis is empty, so I suppose the flutterby popped out (or eaten, who knows). Just then you think things return to normal I find a flat tire on my car.

And the spare is flat.

Wake me up in 2003 please …

Monday, October 07, 2002

Lessons learned

I ended up learning the hard way that the water pressure here at the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere does not have the pressure required to drive an industrial strength water hose nozzle; nothing is more pathetic than a dribble of water from a nozzle when one is expecting a rushing tourrent.

Okay, maybe a wet cat is more pathetic, but not much else.

Next time, get the non-industrial water hose nozzle.

A small karmic payback

I know what it's like being stuck in the middle of nowhere; 5½ years ago I found myself in the middle of Georgia in a car with a seized up transmission. Being 500 miles from home is bad enough.

It's worse when half-way between Christmas and New Years Eve.

On the weekend.

But due to the kindness of quite a few people I didn't know (like the tow truck driver who never did charge me for towing) and quite a few people I didn't know in person (some friends I met over the Internet drove the three hours south from Atlanta to pick me up) I was able to enjoy the rest of my vacation and get home (I arranged a ride with a couple down to Disney; from there I was on my own, which is a story for another time).

Chuck didn't have it quite as bad.

Chuck, a high rise window washer (which made for some interesting conversation during the drive) who hails from Ohio, found himself stuck in Miami, having missed the last Tri-Rail train. My friend Greg found him there (as he too, missed the last Tri-Rail train out of ~~Dodge~~ Miami). Chuck needed to get to the Tri-Rail station serving the Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport so the two of them shared a taxi (which Greg expensed to his company, since he was down in Miami on business).

It was from there that I met Greg and Chuck to give them a lift.

Actually, I was only expecting to give Greg a lift.

But to save Chuck from riding his bike nearly 10 miles, at night, up hill all the way (okay, so maybe not up hill) I gave him and his bike a lift.

Wednesday, October 09, 2002

The Leap

I've been playing around with the digital camera the past couple of nights trying to find the optimal settings for digital night photography. I was outside in the court yard when I snapped a picture of Spodie leaping to the top of the gate.

The gate (and the surrounding fence) is as tall as I am; I find it amazing that he can jump up that high.

Then again, I found it amazing that he could balance a bowl on a pot handle.

The $95,000 check

A few years ago I came across the story of Patrick Combs depositing a fake check for $95,000 and having it actually clear but at the time he had yet to finish telling the story.

Time passed. I lost the link. Couldn't find it again, until now. I was reading the journal of Amanda Robbins (who is the girlfriend of my friend Kurt, the high school English teacher turned plumber) when she linked to it!

Of course, the story is now finished—he ended up giving the check back to the bank, but only after they furnished him with a latter detailing their mistake in cashing it and apologizing to him. And I suspect doing such a stunt today wouldn't work.

random thoughts

Yes, I'm actually updating the journal. Yes, it has been a while since I last updated. And yes, the past few entries where made today (okay, so I predate entries occasionally … ahem).

I haven't felt much like writing the past week or so (I'm updating! I'm updating!) and I can't quite pin down why … perhaps it was the rather horrendous week I had. Or it could be some negative feedback I've had about The Boston Diaries (and for the record this is entry is not about blogs or Google; nor is it too techincal)?

It's not like I have a huge audience.

Vocal, yes.

Huge, no.

I really don't know. Perhaps I should make a concerted effort to write at least one entry per day. And avoid the batch posting like I've been doing the past few weeks (usually a weeks worth of posts posted once a week).

On the other hand, it has been rather nice getting out while the sun is up (my sleep schedule is way off lately—primarily because I may be syncing up with Spring who works third shift), sitting in the court yard making entries. The weather here in Lower Sheol is getting nice again, which means that traffic is going to get horrible but that's the trade-off one makes living here.

Good Humor

I've lived here in Lower Sheol for over twenty years and this is the first time I've seen an ice cream truck.

Okay, so it's more of an ice cream van than a truck. And it's not even a custom cooled ice cream van—a regular mini-van with magnetic signs on the side. And a speaker mounted on the outside to blare the very annoying childrens' tune.

But it sells Good Humor Ice Cream treats munch munch.

Near Death Experience (or at least getting somewhat hurt)

Okay, maybe sitting out here in the court yard of the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere isn't such a good idea. This tree that's lording over me just shed a branch and it came this close to beaning me on the head.

Bad tree! Bad tree!

Thursday, October 10, 2002

Not bad for $56 …

Last summer, Kalman was asked to come up with ideas for a New York City design show built around functional elegance, He was struggling when he accompanied his children to the shoe store and a clerk pulled out the device. There it was, exact and symmetrical, unchanged since the days when Kalman used it as a boy.
“Perfect,” he says. …
Most shoe stores don't get rid of their Brannock Devices for 10 or 15 years, until the numbers finally wear away from so much use. While Charles is guarded about production—he says the company makes “tens of thousands” each year—that total could be more. It would require switching to plastic, which would guarantee that each device would quickly crumble into ruin.

Via utopia with cheese, Brannock Device foot measuring device

I've never really given them a second thought. Every shoe store I've been in has them; I don't think I've ever seen an alternative to the Brannock Device, and I think it's wonderful that the company makes a device that will last years and won't scrimp on quality just to make a quick buck.

Alas, if only more companies would follow suit …

Friday, October 11, 2002

An overheard conversation between system administrators whilst at lunch in a local bar and grill …

“I caught another customer spamming. Very annoying—took me nearly fifteen minutes to figure out how he was doing it before I could stop it.”

“I thought your company was friendly towards spammers?”

“I don't care what corporate says; if I catch someone spamming through our system, I'll cut them off. Of course, I couldn't just delete the account though.”

“Bummer.”

“But it did get sent to Abuse, and I nearly blocked their IP address from our system.”

“You didn't try mounting their drives and reformatting them?”

“That goes way beyond my ethics.”

“Even just wiping out their WINDOWS directory, assuming they are running Windwows?”

“Nope, wouldn't even do that.”

“What about changing their IP stack?”

“In what way?”

“So that, say, only localhost reponds?”

“Hmmmm, I might have to give that some consideration.”

“Or seeing how the minimum IP header size is 20 bytes, changing their MTU to oh … say … 10 bytes?”

“Would it even work then?”

“I don't know, actually.”

“Would that even crash Linux?”

“You know, I don't know how any TCP/IP stack would deal with an MTU that small. A receiving host would probably just toss such a packet a way as being corrupted or just bad.”

“Yes, but what about the sending side?”

“Might be worth trying on the next spammer … ”

A question of power

Friend and reader Steve Crane send the following to me in email:

Hi Sean,
I recall reading in your blog a while back that you were dissappointed with the battery life of your new digital camera. I came across this article today that might give you some ideas on improving it.
http://www.digiteyesed.com/writings/articles/000001.shtml
Cheers.

Well, since then, I've found that the Rayovac NiMH rechargable batteries seem to work wonders in the camera as I can get hours, nay, days, of use out of these batteries in the digital camera. I had attempted to use the Rayovac Alkaline rechargable batteries in the camera (since I found they work great for the Newton I have) but they lasted all of maybe five seconds, if that.

But the NiMH ones work beautifully, and I can use the same recharger for both these and the Alkalines.

Sunday, October 13, 2002

The Usual Suspects

[The Usual Suspects]

The usual suspects grilling the usual hamburgers at an undisclosed location in South Florida. Approach with caution as authorities state they are technically proficient and will install free Unix-like operating systems on unattended PCs.

Monday, October 14, 2002

The Universal Sense of Humor

A few weeks ago I received a check for a considerable sum of money. It wasn't from a company that I recognized and there was nothing within to indicate what it might be for, I assumed it had something to do with the sale of Condo Conner. I of course deposited the check and forgot all about it.

Until today.

Found out that my car insurance was cancelled (and today was the last day of coverage) and that the check I received some weeks ago was the balance remaining on my now cancelled insurance. In talking with my insurance agent it turns out my account was cancelled because of a speeding ticket I received in April of 2001.

Which, if you do the math, is over one and a half years ago!

Seems they took exception to a speeding ticket at 18 miles per hour over the posted limit over one and a half years ago with no tickets since and felt they no longer needed my business.

Okay.

I'll skip the rants about the racket known as “insurance.”

Now, last week I received in the mail (postal mail, not e-mail) notification that I am potential “Settlement Class member” of a class action suit against my previous car insurance company and that if I elect to participate and that insurance company loses the suit, I get back $10 per six-month policy period (which for me, would mean a whopping $20—woo hoo).

Guess who's the only insurance company that gave me a quote?

The universe has a bizarre sense of humor.

It bites tadpole of the wax

What happens when an English phrase is translated (by computer) back and forth between 5 different languages? The authors of the Systran translation software probably never intended this application of their program. As of April 2002, translation software is almost good enough to turn grammatically correct, slang-free text from one language into grammatically incorrect, barely readable approximations in another. But the software is not equipped for 10 consecutive translations of the same piece of text. The resulting half-English, half-foreign, and totally non sequitur response bears almost no resemblance to the original. Remember the old game of “Telephone”? Something is lost, and sometimes something is gained.

Via Mr. Barrett, Lost in Translation

It's a neat little application that uses BableFish to convert to and from English five times and produces some rather amusing translations. We have years yet before anything remotely close to a universal translator is invented.

Oh, and the title? That's what you get when you translate a transliteration of an American company into Chinese through the above application.

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

“An Era has ended. The wise have moved on.”

Last weekend, I decided to do something I've always dreamed about. Travel. Alone. Unrestricted and for an indefinite period of time.…
I will sell or get rid of most of my posessions. and keep one trunk of important stuff here in the States as well as my golf clubs and sailing gear. The rest will go. I need to do this in two weeks so I can get out of my expensive apartment.

Via an email from Ken, Steve Smith's Livejournal

Steve is a friend from college who moved up to Boston several years ago. He was (and still is) quite the character—he lived in his office at FAU for an entire semester, moving in when he couldn't afford either a dorm room nor an apartment (granted, living in Boca Raton isn't cheap).

But now that Boston is no longer the place to be (apparently), and without a job (it isn't clear whether he was let go or quit) he just up and decided to see the world. I wish him well.

Friday, October 18, 2002

MSN nearly killed my Linux box

And not because I tried dialing up to MSN either. It was a referer string, from their search engine, that nearly killed my Linux box.

Seriously.

A while ago I wrote a program to go through the web log files, pulling out referers from search engines (more or less). It wouldn't quite run through an entire log file before quitting on some input it apparently didn't like. It hasn't bothered me that much until today. So I figured I would run it under the debugger, see what it doesn't like and fix the program.

It's amazing what garbage you get from search engines.

The spec for query strings is pretty straight forward—a series of name/value pairs separated by ampersands—“&” (except perhaps for the last pair) and each name/value pair is in the form of name “=” value. Pretty easy, right?

AOL/UK's search engine was sending a query string with two consecutive ampersands. Fixed that, go on to the next problem.

The dreaded referer string from MSN.

Usually when a variable that has no value is sent, what you get is:

foobar=&

Basically, the name, then the equal sign, and either the end of the query string, or the start (signified by the ampersand) of the next name/value pair. But not MSN.

Nope. You get:

foobar&

And it was in the process of testing my work around that my Linux box seriously went dead.

Okay, so technically MSN didn't nearly killed my Linux system, my program did.

But still … it's an accessory to attempted murder!

Ahem.

Back to the drawing board.

Monday, October 21, 2002

Long dull posting about site construction, reconstruction, reformatting, XML, XSL, XPath and other alphabet soup

One of the reasons (okay, possibly the reason) I don't update my personal site all that often is that it's a pain to update. Just to add a new portrait involves editing two pages (sometimes three, depending upon the format of the image), and creating a new page. Between the creating, editing and testing it takes something like fifteen to twenty minutes before I'm done, and that's fourteen to nineteen minutes too long.

Why so much editing to add a picture?

Mostly for the navigation aspects of the site. I remember, oh, this must have been in '96, '97, having this huge discussion (okay, argument really) with my friend Eve about site structure and the (at the time) lack of navigation elements on my site. I was dreading having to edit some 100 pages but her argument (“Sean, what if I show one of your pages to some hot babe and she wants to see your picture? There's no easy link to a picture of you!”) finally convinced me to dive in and edit over 100 pages to add navigation links. While I was at it, I also added <META> and <LINK> tags as well.

Painful process, that.

And it's maintaining the relationship between pages that consumes so much time when adding a new page (not to mention that I technically, should add new pages to the sitemap but haven't, and that only one in six links on my gratuitous links to people I know, or just like their webpages still work, leaving five out of six broken but that's another issue right now) that is a complete drag on updating the site. Years ago I thought of writing software to maintain the pages in one form, then feed them through a template engine to generate all the navigation and meta-information but never really got around to it, although I still have the notes floating around somewhere on my harddrive.

So now here it is—October of 2002 and my site hasn't changed its look since at least 1998, possibly longer (I want to say 1996, but that might be too early). I'd like to convert over to using CSS, and improve the navigation links (mostly by taking advantage of the <LINK> tag) but that means I have to edit 145 pages.

If I'm going to be making such drastic changes, I might as well rethink how the site will be generated while I'm at it. And what I had originally wanted in a templating engine seems to exist in XSL. Nice if my pages are in XML but right now, they aren't. So as long as I'm editing them anyway I might as well convert.

And converting I have. And I've found some rather odd aspects about XSL and XPath (which is used to reference portions of an XML document). I'm building the navigation links within the template, so to generate a link to the next page I have:

<xsl:if test="position()!=last()">
<link
 rel="next"
 title="{following-sibling::column/child::title}"
 href="{following-sibling::column/attribute::filename}.htm"
/>
</xsl:if>

Basically, following-sibling::column/child::title gets the following column from the input file and extracts the title, and following-sibling::column/attribute::filename gets the filename of the following column. Pretty straightforward. To get a link to the previous column, there's a corresponding preceding-sibling:

<xsl:if test="position()!=1">
<link
 rel="previous"
 title="{preceding-sibling::column/child::title}"
 href="{preceding-sibling::column/attribute::filename}.htm"
/>
</xsl:if>

Easy, strightforward and hopelessly wrong.

That kept generating a link to the first column. Now, since the phrase preceding-sibling::column returns all the columns preceeding the current one, the engine looks like it is returning the title to the first column. So I thought that selecting the last column of the preceding columns would do the trick:

<xsl:if test="position()!=1">
<link rel="previous"
 title="{preceding-sibling::column[position()=last()]/child::title}"
 href="{preceding-sibling::column[position()=last()]/attribute::filename}.htm"
/>
</xsl:if>

Nope. Still getting the last column. Hmmm … check up on preceding-sibling:

All nodes that precede the context node and are contained in the same parent element node in reverse document order.

Okay.

So let's see what happens when I return the first column of the preceding columns:

<xsl:if test="position()!=1">
<link rel="previous"
 title="{preceding-sibling::column[position()=1]/child::title}"
 href="{preceding-sibling::column[position()=1]/attribute::filename}.htm"
/>
</xsl:if>

Okay, that works!

Very intuitive, that.

So, outside some wierdness like that, the conversion process is slowly making progress.

Jumping off a bridge, since everyone else is doing it

I was going to attribute this to the blog I first found it on, but since every blog I've viewed today already mentioned it I figured what's the point in doing that today? (for the record, I first found the link on Camworld).

But in any case, since everyone has decided to link to the Doonsbury cartoon where he lambasts bloggers, I decided to throw caution to the wind and present the actual comic here. I'll claim fair use and hope that the lawyers don't swarm all over me on this.

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

Names

‘It's long,’ said the Knight, ‘but very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it—either it brings the tears into their eyes, or else—’
‘Or else what?’ said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
‘Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called “Haddocks' Eyes.”’
‘Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?’ Alice said, trying to feel interested.
‘No, you don't understand,’ the Knight said, looking a little vexed. ‘That's what the name is called. The name really is “The Aged Aged Man.”’
‘Then I ought to have said “That's what the song is called”?’ Alice corrected herself.
‘No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is called “Ways And Means”: but that's only what it's called, you know!’
‘Well, what is the song, then?’ said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
‘I was coming to that,’ the Knight said. ‘The song really is “A-sitting On A Gate”: and the tune's my own invention.’

Chapter VIII, Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll

I feel a bit like Alice right now.

It stems from an email conversation Mark and I have had over the past few days about a new feature he's adding to Seminole which got derailed over namespaces.

The realm that Mark works in is one that is vastly different than the one I work in. His realm, for example: take the source code to the Linux kernel, add it the source code to X Windows and Mozilla and get it to work. As a monolithic whole. Under a single (read: flat) namespace (source code wise).

Okay, so that's not exactly what he does, but he does work on embedded systems and as he says, his current project with 800,000 unique names is small compared to what he's worked with before.

800,000

I would be amazed if everybody in Miami has a truely unique name, and that's a namespace of 400,000.

More on this later, when I return from behind the looking glass …

Names

Chrysler: What is the name of this court?
Counsel: This is No 5 Court.
Chrysler: No, that is the number of this court. What is the name of this court?

Via Flutterby, High court hang-ups

Speaking of names …

This has to be one of the oddest court cases I've come across. Not only did the defendant (Mr. Chrysler) steal over 40,000 hotel coat hangers, his testimony is straight from Monty Python:

Judge: Shut up, witness.
Chrysler: Willingly, m'lud. It is a pleasure to be told to shut up by you. For you, I would …
Judge: Shut up, witness. Carry on, Mr Lovelace.
Counsel: Now, Mr Chrysler—for let us assume that that is your name—you are accused of purloining in excess of 40,000 hotel coat hangers.
Chrysler: I am.
Counsel: Can you explain how this came about?
Chrysler: Yes. I had 40,000 coats which I needed to hang up.
Counsel: Is that true?
Chrysler: No.
Counsel: Then why did you say it?
Chrysler: To attempt to throw you off balance.

The transcript of the trial (it's not very long) is very funny, in that British Monty Pythonesque way …

Naming names

Well that was certainly painful.

I wrote the previous entry only to have some of it show up. Odd, I thought. It's never done that before. Of course, I had just updated the codebase to support more more <META> tags (DC.Date.Updated and WMDI.LastUpdateType if you're curious) so the code did change just prior to the previous entry, even though I did a test and it shouldn't have affected the addition of new entries (shouldn't).

Throw the code under the debugger and place a stopping point jusr prior to the program exiting, then run.

It's exiting normally. Only it's getting a partial entry.

Now, when I cut-n-paste the excerpt, it did pick up a few characters that gave my editor fits but I thought I had gotten fixed that. Check the contents of the entry (as I sent it) and it's all ASCII—no funny characters at all. I even retype the lines around where it's failing and still it's not getting everything.

And that's when I see the problem:

<class="…" href="…">

It should have read:

<a class="…" href="…">

My HTML parser was bailing out on bad input. Sigh.

Fix the text (which is easier than fixing the code) and try again. Test goes fine. When I go resubmit the entry for real it crashes.

Insert primal scream.

Think think think think think

Okay, I submit entries via email. The email system feeds the email (in RFC-822 format to the submission program. When testing, I fed the entry the same was as the email system. When mailing, I was sendind my test file, which included a duplicate set of email headers! Which my program couldn't deal with—or rather, it dealt with it by crashing.

Sigh.

Mispelled names

Now that all that mess is cleared up, I can get back to the original entry I was planning on writing.

When doing a search for Monty Python for the previous previous entry I mistyped the query as “Monty Pythong.”

I was amazed when I found plenty of Monty Pythong sites …

Finding names

I'm reading the Slashdot article about Curious Yellow, a theoretical superworm, when I come across this post about an increase in NetBIOS probes. Curious, I decide to check the firewall here at the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere to see just how bad it is.

From September 29^th starting at 6:11 am, to now, at 7:06 pm, 92% of all rejected packets have been NetBIOS probes (14,379 out of 15,563); about one every three minutes or so. Not quite twice a day as the post says, but still, not a good thing.

Reading further, it may be due to the Opaserv worm.

Wonderful.

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

About the lack of comments around here

I've generally been relunctant to add comments to my weblog/journal even though several people have been hounding me to do so. And now there's a problem of spam hitting comment systems on blogs (see sidebar). Mark Pilgrim explains the problem into much detail, and gives good reasons why he's not adding comments any time soon.

Which is pretty much how I'm feeling about it myself.

Devil's Night

I took this picture a few weeks ago and it reminded me of what it might look like in Detroit on Devil's Night which historically has a higher incidence of arson than the rest of the year.

I've never experienced Devil's Night but I've heard about it plenty of times from family that live in the Detroit area. But in reading up on it it seems that the amount of “urban renewal” going on has dropped dramatically over the past fifteen years or so.

Thursday, October 31, 2002

Bwomp-chicka-bwomp-bwomp

Several years ago I was invited to a Halloween party being hosted by my friend Greg; his wife and kids were still in Israel visiting family so he didn't have any problems with hosting the party.

Not like we're a bunch of obnoxious party revelers to begin with.

The party starts, plenty of people show up, we have fun.

Several hours later there's about six of us still left, all male and with the exception of Greg, single. Greg gets into a mood and decides we should all watch some porn.

Now, this isn't your standard silicon-inflated video porn of today—no! This is the vintage stuff from the 70s when porn was filmed and there was still a pretentiousness of plot because, you know, it was art and stuff.

So there we were at Greg's house, about six of us, still in costumes from the Halloween party when Greg's Dad walks into the house to find us, all guys, watching vintage porn from the 70s (bwomp-chicka-bwomp-bwomp). He stares at us, a deer caught in deadlights; we turn and stare at him, caught like deers in a headlight. “Excuse me,” he mumbles, then turns and quickly leaves the house.

“Dude,” says Kurt, “That was your father!”

“Dude,” says Greg, laughing hard, “this is my house!”

Breaking names

I hate it when things just stop working for no apparent reason.

DNS stopped working here in the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere. It was working fine yesturday but not today and as far as I could tell, nothing on our end changed.

At first, I thought it might be another attack on the root DNS servers but in checking outside sources proved that wasn't the case.

Then I thought maybe our Internet provider was filtering out DNS traffic or something silly like that but Spring's Linux box, which was running a DNS server, could resolve fine.

I didn't have a clue, and Rob didn't either—and both of us weren't really in a condition to think things through (he's fighting a cold; I had just gotten up).

Eventually, I was able to get it working. First, I had to remove

query-source address * port 53;

from /etc/named.conf and making that change required me to relax the firewall rules to allow all UDP in, since the name server will pick a random port to send the queries out on. I could probably specify an unreserved port for the name server to send queries and then strengthen the firewall back up.

Sigh.

It's still very annoying though.

Friday, November 01, 2002

“How many words per day?”

And so it starts: National Novel Writing Month.

Thirty days to write a 50,000 word novel, or about 1,666 words per day.

Sounds like fun.

Or torture perhaps.

“No, really! How many words per day?”

And if writing a 50,000 word novel in one month is bad enough, Anvil Press holds a 3-day novel contest every year (it's already been held this year sadly).

I don't think I'm up to that challenge.

But for the more visually talented people out there, you also have the 24-hour comic, in which you draw a 24 page comic book in 24 hours. I've read a few and inevitably, the drawings get more and more loose and the story line (as much as there is one) gets less and less coherent. It might be interesting to draw one backwards—that is, start with the last page and work your way forward. That way, the drawings get tighter and the story gets more coherent as you read along.

Again, I don't think I'm up for that challenge either.

And then there's the 24-hour play …

Pringles and fudge stripe cook-ays

Through the electronic grapevine (and it's a fairly well connected electronic grape vine down here in Lower Sheol) I heard that my friend Kelly was fired for doing what he was told to do.

Three weeks ago!

Mark, Lynn, JeffK and I went to Kelly's to console him and to partake in the ritual Pringles and fudge stripe cook-ays of the suddenly unemployed.

In discussion it came out that a VP is probably protecting his job and using Kelly as a sacraficial goat to appease the CEO who is under investigation by the SEC so it might not be a bad thing that Kelly is no longer there. Oh, but what a tangled web corporate politics and accounting weave.

Sunday, November 03, 2002

A happy Eric

I found this dollar bill with the words “Eric is gay” scrawled across the top.

I'm certainly glad that Eric is happy enough to share it with the rest of the world.

Monday, November 04, 2002

Torture

I figured I needed to torture myself and so I started my 50,000 word novel as part of National Novel Writing Month.

I had actually signed up in the few remaining minutes of October but didn't get around to actually starting my novel until today. Let's see, Friday I spent helping Kelly coping with his job situation, Saturday was spent at a BBQ with some friends (where I met Dennis Willson, responsible for running dnsrbl.com, a spam-blocking site) and Sunday I spent contemplating the happiness of Eric. So I'm a few days behind.

And what I have I'm not happy with at all. Not one bit.

I'm contemplating starting over tomarrow.

But otherwise, I have about 3,000 words of utter drek to contend with.

Tuesday, November 05, 2002

No really, I'm in O'Reilly!

I just got word from Mark that I've been mentioned in O'Reilly's HTTP: The Definitive Guide on page 230. It's in reference to a draft proposal I had to extend the robots exclustion protocol (~~and as I see, I really need to update the links on that page—they're all out of date~~ which I had to go back and fix the links since link-rot had set in) I wrote back in 1996. I had no idea I made an O'Reilly book. And Mark is pissed off that I made it first (well, “pissed off” is not quite the right word—maybe “envious” is more like it).

I get maybe one email about it every other year or so, namely asking me if I know of any robots that implement my proposed extentions and to my knowledge I know of none that do.

Wednesday, November 06, 2002

Music of the dead

But then, Tupac Shakur's Better Dayz, released later this month, is no ordinary album. It is the 16^th Tupac release since the gangsta rapper's murder in September 1996.
Sixteen albums in six years would be a prodigious feat for an artist who was still breathing, particularly when you bear in mind that many of them are double CD sets. For a dead artist who released only four albums during his lifetime, it smacks of macabre exploitation, not to mention an ever-dipping quality control.

Via Robot Wisdom, Albums from the crypt

Tupac is certainly in the running to be the L. Ron Hubbard of the hip-hop set. Sixteen albums? That's good.

So let's see—to make it in the music industry, record lots of music. It doesn't have to be good, just there. Release an album or two and lead a very exciting or controversial life (preferably both) then fake your own death. Cut the proceeds 50/50 with the record industry and live the rest of your life in style.

I think it could work.

“Honey, play as long as you like … ”

A bit early for Valentines but this would also do well for a Christmas gift for that gamer girl in your life. It's … um … well … a multimedia game that extends … um … yea …

Let me just say the link is borderline work safe … and the game in question is definitely meant for home use …

Ahem.

Thursday, November 07, 2002

The '92 Vice-Presidential Debate was more interesting than this

Spring and I were invited to “War at the Shore III: Battle Operating System—Windows .Net Server vs. Linux” presented by the Gold Coast .Net Users Group. In one corner was Ivar Hyngstrom, Senior Technology Specialist II, Systems Architecture, Messaging and Storage for Microsoft, representing the (obvious) Microsoft .Net server side. In the other corner was Von Walter, Senior Consultant, IBM Global Services from Orlando representing the Linux side. The fight theme was quite strong in the debate; they even had a woman (Gina) walking about the conference room with a placard numbering the rounds.

Round 1—General capabilities

IBM won the coin toss and declined to go first. In the first of two major embarassing moments, Microsoft had hit the wrong button the their laptop and we had to wait several minutes for him to recover. My impression of the first round is that Microsoft is slowly re-inventing Unix within their operating system. .Net server is a bit more scriptable than previous versions of Microsoft Windows and now includes remote administration! Woo hoo! (Of course, that could be due to Microsoft wanting to put Citrix out of business)

Also learned a new acronym: SAN: System Area Network.

And how is that different from Local Area Network?

I was impressed that Microsoft has added a versioning file system to .Net server. The presenter deleted his Power Point presentation and was able to restore from two previous versions. Granted, this isn't new: DEC had this in VMS years ago, so no real innovation there (“but of course Microsoft invented ‘Shadow Copies’”).

IBM? I'm sorry, I fell asleep during his presentation.

It was that bad.

Round 2—Security

IBM goes first. Highlight of IBM's presentation: a distinction between hackers and crackers. Low point: mentioning the r-commands (like rsh, rcp, rlogin etc.). No one in their bloody minds uses those commands anymore. I never used them when I first started using UNIX back in 1990! Sheesh!

Spring mentioned that Microsoft was using buzz words during their presentations, while IBM was just saying how it worked.

But Microsoft was more polished in its presentation, even if it was empty of real content.

Highlight of Microsoft's presentation: “Relative Attack Surfaces” said with a straight face. Amazing.

He also said that .Net server was secure by

Design
Default
Deployment

Again, with a straight face.

Amazing.

At the end of this round I got to ask a question: What's the time between an exploit that is found and the time the vendor (Microsoft, any particular Linux distribution) will get a patch out? I knew the answer (Microsoft, if they even acknowledge the exploit, will have a patch out maybe a week or two. Linux: hours). I was quite disappointed in the answers. Microsoft hemmed and hawed and never did give a definite answer. IBM didn't quite know how to answer the question and gave a weak answer, more of a guess, of a week turn around time for RedHat.

Round 3—Scalability and Failover

Microsoft goes first. He tried to create a cluster, but the software crashed on him. He seemed to be running .Net server under VMWare but I'm not sure if it was .Net server that crashed, VMWare that crashed, or he just closed the wrong window. In any case, the presentation failed over to IBM.

This was one of the better rounds for IBM. Or I was less familiar with the material. He mentioned IBM's Blue Gene which is a computer with 65,536 CPUs and some 16 terabytes of RAM (which is 16×2⁴⁰ or 17,592,186,044,416 bytes—a typical book takes up about a megabyte, or 1,048,576 bytes, this thing could hold 16,777,216 books in memory!). And he also mentioned Google, which is now up to 15,000 machines, have indexed some 3 billion pages and handles around 150,000,000 search queries (a day? A month? my notes are a bit illegible at this point).

Round 4—System Administration

Dull dull dull dull dull. IBM just read off the slides and Microsoft was still trying to get the clustering to work from the previous round.

Round 5—Is there a point?

Microsoft finally finished setting up the cluster software (from Round 3) only to shut down the wrong server. I must have fallen asleep at this point since I have no notes at all of what IBM talked about.

End of this debacle

This was thankfully the last round of a rather pointless debate—the Microsoft guy kept claiming to be too technical to answer any questions about pricing or licensing or anything (although he did say he didn't like subscription model of RedHat tech support—this from Microsoft? Who is trying to force a subscription model on software?) and apparently the IBM guy was here in an “unofficial” capacity and did not know Linux all that well (he lost the TCO argument to Microsoft! How sad is that?).

Friday, November 08, 2002

Notes on a conversation about bumper stickers

“I can't make that out,” said Spring. “I can see ‘Practice Sex.’”

“It says ‘Practice Safe Sex. Get married and be faithful,’” I said, reading the bumper sticker on the SUV in front of us.

“Aw. I just want to practice sex.”

“And then” I said, “there is ‘The Big Bang Theory: God said it and BANG there it was.’ Funny, I didn't think God was Emeril: ‘BANG!’”

Spring laughed. “Kick it up a notch.”

The Hero's Arc

[Notes taken from Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces. The text is quoted directly from his book. Typographical errors are most likely mine.]

Departure
- the call to adventure
  A blunder—apparently the merest chance—reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into a relationship with forces that are not rightly understood.
- refusal of the call
  Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case fo the call unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or “culture,” the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved.
- supernatural aid
  For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero-journey is with a protective fiture (often a little old crone or old man) who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass.
  What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of destiny. The fantasy is a reassurance—a promise that the peace of Paradise, which was known first within the mother womb, is not to be lost …
  Not infrequenty, the supernatural helper is masculine in form. In fairy lore it may be some little fellow of the wood, some wizard, hermit, shepherd, or smith, who appears, to supply the amulets and advice that the hero will require.
- the crossing of the first threshold
  With the personification of his destiny to guide and aid him, the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the “threshold guardian” at the entrance to the zone of magnified power. Such custodians bound the world in the four directions—also up and down—standing for the limits of the hero's present sphere, or life horizon.
- the belly of the whale
  The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or consiliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown, and would appear to have died.
Initiation
- The road of trials
  Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survice a succession of trials. … The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into the region. Or it may be that he here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage.
  And so it happens that if anyone—in whatever society—undertakes for himself the perilous journey into the darkness by descending, either intentionally or unintentionally, into the crooked lanes of his own spiritual labyrinth, he soon fineds himself in a landscape of symbolical figures (any one of which may swallow him) … In the vocabulary of the mystics, this is the second stage of the Way, that of the “purification of the self,” which the senses are “cleansed and humbled,” and the energies and interests “concentrated upon transcendental things”; or in a vocabulary of more modern turn: this is the process of dissolving, transcending, or transmuting the infantile images of our personal past.
  The ordeal is the deepening of the problem of the first threshold and the question is still in balance: Can the ego put itself to death?
- the meeting with the goddess
  The ultimate adventure, when all the barriers and orgres have been overcome, is commonly represented as a mystical marriage of the triumphant hero-soul with the Queen Goddess of the World. This is the crisis at the nadir, the zenith, or at the uttermost edge of the earth, at the central point of the cosmos, in the tabernacle of the temple, or within the darkness of the deepest chamber of the heart.
  Only geniuses capable of the highest realization can support the full revelation of the sublimity of this goddess. For lesser men she reduces her effulgence and permits herself to appear in forms concordant with their undeveloped powers. Fully to behold her would be a terrible accident for any person not spiritually prepared.
- woman as the temptress
  The mystical marriage with the queen goddess of the world represents the hero's total mastery of life; for the woman is life, the hero its knower and master. … With that he knows that he and the father are one: he is in the father's place.
  … Where this Oedipus-Hamlet revulsion remains to beset the soul, there the world, the body, the woman above all, become the symbols no longer of victory but of defeat.
- atonement with the father
  For the ogre aspect of the father is a reflex of the victim's own ego—derived from the sensational nursery scene that has been left behind, but projected before; and the fixating idolatry of that pedagogical nothing is itself the fault that keeps one steeped in a sense of sin, sealing the potentially adult spirit from a better balanced, more realistic view of the father, and therewith of the world. Atonement (at-one-ment) consists in no more than the abandonment of that self-generated double monster—the dragon thought to be God (superego) and the dragon thought to be Sin (repressed id). But this requres an abandonment of the attachment of ego itself, and that is what is difficult.
  For the son who has grown really to know the father, the agonies of the ordeal are readily borne; the world is no longer a vale of tears but a bliss-yielding, perpetual manifestation of the Presence.
- apotheosis
  And so it must be known that, though this ignorant, limited, self-defineding, suffering body may reguard itself as threatened by some other—the enemy—that one too is the God. The ogre breaks us, but the hero, the fit candidate, undergoes the initiation “like a man”; and behold, it was the father: we in Him and He in us. The dear, protecting mother of our body could not defind us from the Great Father Serpent; the mortal, tangible body that she gave us was delivered into his frightening power. But death was not the end. New life, new birth, new knowledge of existence was given us. That father was himself the womb, the mother, of a second birth.
  This is the meaning of the image of the bisexual god. He is the mystery of the theme of initiation. We are taken from the mother, chewed into fragments and assimilated to the world-annihilating body of the ogre for whom all the precious forms and beings are only the courses of a feast; but then, miraculously reborn, we are more than we were.
- the ultimate boon
  The boon bestowed on the worshiper is always scaled to his stature and to the nature of his dominant desire: the boon is simply a symbol of the life energy stepped down to the requirements of a certain specific case. The irony, of course, lies in the fact that, whereas the hero who has won the favor of the god may beg for the boon of perfect illunination, what he generally seeks are longer years to live, weapons with which to slay his neighbor, or the health of his child.
Return
- refusal of the return
  When the hero-quest has been accomplished, through penetration to the source, or through the grace of some male or female, human or animal, personification, the adventurer still must return with this life-transmuting trophy. The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess, back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet, or the then thousand worlds.
  But the responsiblity has been frequently refused. Even the Buddha, after his triumph, doubted whether the message of realization could be communicated, and saints are reported to have passed away while in the supernal ecstasy. Numerous indeed are the heros fabled to have taken up residence forever in the blessed isle of the unaging Goddess of Immortal Being.
- the magic flight
  If the hero in his triumph wins the blessing of the goddess or god and is then explicitly commissioned to return to the world with some elixir for the restoration of society, the final stage of his adventure is supported by all the powers of his supernatural patron. On the other hand, if the trophy has been attained against the opposition of its guardian, or if the hero's wish to return to the world has been resented by the gods or demons, then the last stage of the mythological round becomes a lively, often comical, pursuit. This flight may be complicated by marvels of magical obstruction and evasion.
  A popular variety of the magic flight is that in which objects are left behind to speak for the fugitive and thus delay persuit. …
  Another well-known variety of the magic flight is one in which a number of delaying obstacles are tossed behind by the wildly fleeing hero. …
- resucue from without
  The hero may have to be brought back from his supernatual adventure by assistance from without. That is to say, the world may have to come and get him. For the bliss of the deep abode is not lightly abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wakened state. “Who having cast off the world," we read, "would desire to return again? He would be only there.” And yet, in so far as one is alive, life will call. Society is jealous of those who remain away from it, and will come knocking at the door.
- the crossing of the return threshold
  The two worlds, the divine and the human, can be pictured only as distinct from each other—different as life and death, as day and night. The hero adventures out of the land we know into darkness; there is accomplishes his adventure, or again is simply lost to us, imprisoned, or in danger; and his return is described as a coming back out of that yonder zone. Nevertheless—and here is a great key to the understanding of myth and symbol—the two kingdoms are actually one. The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimention of the world we know. And the exploration of that dimention, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero. …
  … The boon brought from the transcendent deep becomes quickly rationalized into nonentity, and the need becomes great for another hero to refresh the world.
  Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the sould-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? … The easy thing is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock-dwelling, close the door, and make it fast.
- master of the two worlds
  Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal deep and back—not contaminating the principles fo the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other—is the talent of the master. …
  The meaning is very clear; it is the meaning of all religious practice. The individual, through prolonged psychological disciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears, no longer resists the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment. His personal ambitions being totally dissolved, he no longer tries to live but willingly relaxes to whatever may come to pass in him; he becomes, that is to say, an anonymity. The Law lives in him with his unreserved consent.
- freedom to live
  The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is.

The typical myth

[Notes taken from Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces. The text is quoted directly from his book. Typographical errors are most likely mine.]

The mythological hero, setting forth from his commonday hut or castle, is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother-battle, dragon-battle; offering, charm), or be slain by the opponent and descend in death (dismemberment, crucifixion). Beyond the threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero's sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own divinization (apotheosis), or again—if the powers have remained unfriendly to him—his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft); intrinsically it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of the return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle flight). At the return threshold the transcendental powers must remain behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (return, resurection). The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir).

Thursday, November 14, 2002

20 minutes into a quagmire

There is nothing quite like having thirty days to write fifty thousand words and you have no idea what to write. So you write. And write. And write some more. And end up with a mess that will either be really terrible or a masterpiece.

It's early 1961. Eisenhowser gave his farewell speech that warned about the millitary-industrial complex and Kennedy, after the closest Presidential race in U. S. History, is turning the White House into Camelot. The horrors of the Cold War have yet to come. Vietnam is still back page news in the papers, McCarthyism is, if not completely dead, mostly over. The mood of the nation is optimistic.

And into this idyll place a novel is given to some random 20something to read. It's not a novel in the conventional sense but more of a collection of vignettes about the future. Nothing exciting, nothing overly grand. Just normal life as it would appear to someone in the future. Some fourty years into the future.

About our now.

Notes from my poor attempt at a novel, 20 Minutes Into The Future

My intent was to write a series of loosely coupled stories taking place in the near indeterminate future, some fourty, maybe fifty years down the road. Just take current trends as I see them, and extend them down; maybe toss in a few outrageous things that can't possibly happen (who could foresee the fall of Communism or terrorists piloting a plane (a commercial plane!) into the Pentagon? Or two of the tallest buildings in the U. S.?) and let it stand at that.

Only I'm getting rather depessed the more I contemplate the near future. And not just over Pax Americana either. The abolishment of anonymous money (unless of course, you are already filthy rich in which case there are plenty of tax havens for you to shuffle your funds towards), the abolishment of ownership (and not by a Communistic government fiat but by the relentless shift of ownership from personal to corporations and foundations), creation of corporate fiefdoms (which are worse than the fiefdoms of Europe—at least there you gave your fielty to your local barron and he protected you—now you still have to give your fielty to your local corporate masters but they don't have to protect you, or even keep you employed), errosion of privacy (data mining of cross indexed corporate and government databases, ubiquitous cameras watching our every move, and every citizen being fingerprinted and chipped from childhood) and excuse me whilst I slit my wrists right now …

For Sale!

Investment Homes for Sale—4 days use! Buy now while they last! Going fast, so hurry!

Two days overnight use only. Use during Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas extra. No Trick-or-Treating allowed during Halloweeen. Dinner parties of more than 20 require permission of the Board. Taxes include city, county and school district. Monthly cleaning required.

Excerpt from my poor attempt at a novel, 20 Minutes Into The Future

I thought it best to rethink my strategy, and it's then when I turned to The Hero Of A Thousand Faces. Joseph Campbell did extensive research into the myths from around the world and noticed certain themes coming up time and time again. These he outlined and explained in his book, The Hero Of A Thousand Faces, notes of which I made into entries (mostly for myself but hey, someone else could find a use for them). So if George Lucas can apply the monomyth to a crappy script (“You can type this XXXX, George, but you can't say it.” –Harrison Ford), bad acting (Need I mention a whiny Mark Hamill? Or Carrie Fisher's faux British accent through half the film?) and a derivative plot (taken from Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress, right down to the two peasents rendered as A2-D2 and C-3P0) and have one of the top grossing films ever, then it couldn't hurt me, right?

But I have a problem with the Hero's Arc. Not that I don't think it's valid (it is) but more for what it represents—that the Hero is extraordinary in some sense; that he's of divine birth (or noble birth, but really, there is no difference as the early kings and emperors of our history were thought to be of divine birth anyway) and has a higher destiny; a calling to greatness. Joe Serf need not apply. And that doesn't sit well with me. Even Luke Skywalker turned out to be the spawn of a knight and a queen …

The other problem I'm having is that I've yet to write fiction. Okay, sure, I have a few comedy sketches I did (Monty Python phase) and my humor columns towards the end might be considered mostly fictional but they did derive from actual events (however exaggerated they became—perhaps this was my Hunter S. Thompson phase, unbeknownst to me) and there was the one college paper on Gothic Cathedrals was largly fabricated on the spot (I was in my Dave Barry phase at that point) but overall, most of my writing has been non-fictional in nature. This fictional stuff is quite different for me, so there's difficulty there.

So right now, I'm at a loss of where to go …

Chemical experimentation on minors, all in pursuit of educational excellence

The second document, the gigantic Behavioral Science Teacher Education Project, outlined teaching reforms to be forced on the country after 1967. If you ever want to hunt this thing down, it bears the U.S. Office of Education Contract Number OEC-0-9-320424-4042 (B10). The document sets out clearly the intentions of its creators—nothing less than “impersonal manipulation” through schooling of a future America in which “few will be able to maintain control over their opinions,” an America in which “each individual receives at birth a multi-purpose identification number” which enables employers and other controllers to keep track of underlings and to expose them to direct or subliminal influence when necessary. Readers learned that “chemical experimentation” on minors would be normal procedure in this post-1967 world, a pointed foreshadowing of the massive Ritalin interventions which now accompany the practice of forced schooling.

Participatory Democracy Put To The Sword, part of Chapter 2 of The Underground History of American Education

I came across this link not as research for my poor attempt at a novel, but because I have an interest in just how bad our educational system is, but I didn't realize just blatently manipulative it is. And it's just one more depressing data point to add to the every growing list of depressing trends in society.

Real life giving satire a run for the money

[from orders given on Mr. Gatto's first day of teaching:] Good morning, Mr. Gatto. You have typing. Here is your program. Remember, THEY MUST NOT TYPE! Under no circumstances are they allowed to type. I will come around unannounced to see that you comply. DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING THEY TELL YOU about an exception. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS.
Not a letter, not a numeral, not a punctuation mark from those keys or you will never be hired here again. Go now.
When I asked what I should do instead with the class of seventy-five, he replied, “Fall back on your resources. Remember, you have no typing license!”

Wadleigh, The Death School, part of Chapter 4 of The Underground History of American Education

Words fail me.

I wish I could say this was satire; a damning critique of the U. S. educational system and unions or guilds but no, this isn't satire, it's real life. It's the New York City school system (in Harlem) circa 1961.

I'm so glad I'm out of that system. But I feel for Spring's children …

Saturday, November 16, 2002

“Where I want you to be … ”

It's 1997. You call up the 800 number to order another computer, and after you've chosen between the Alpha-III and the Octium chip and the 15 and 30 gigabyte hard drive, the salesperson tells you that the machine comes with the “Basic Package” of Windows NT, Word, Excel, Access, Money, and Multimedia Producer, and asks if you'd like to turn on any additional software at the time. You request Project, Designer, and Visual C++, and they're enabled also. In any case, you're told, “it's all on the CD-ROM, so you don't have to decide right now”.
Now let's look into the other end of the binoculars; from Bill Gates' chair rather than his customers'. Today, there more than 125 million MS-DOS personal computers installed. Given the rapid adoption of Windows and sustained high sales rate of new machines driven by price performance improvements in new chips, I believe it conservative to expect that 100 million Windows NT machines will be installed 4 years from today, most equipped with CD-ROM, multimedia accessories, and contemporary peripherals; some upgraded from current high-end MS-DOS machines, but most new machines of the Pentium/Alpha generation and their successors. Further, let us assume that Microsoft is unsuccessful in selling any software other than the Basic set (I'm sure you'll concede, based on Microsoft's new product success rate, this assumption is conservative). Well, multiply it out. That's 100 million machines times US$10 per month times 12 months per year, and the answer is: US$12 Billion-with-a-B-like-Bill per year of automatic recurring revenue for which the marketing costs are essentially nil and distribution margin is nonexistent since fulfillment is direct.

Programs Are Programs

Microsoft in the past year or so has been pushing for software subscription, much like we do now with cable TV (as pointed out in the article). After all, programs are programs.

Also mentioned in the article is Bill Gates wanting to shift to software subscription in 1992!

And to think that there actually does exist an American company that can think more than two quarters out.

While consumer reaction to Microsoft's attempts to shift to a subscription base have been negative, Microsoft also realizes that it's not the end user that pays its bills—it's the corporate accounts that do, and selling a subscription to corporations is probably an easier sell there. Predictable billing cycles and an easier amorization schedule will do that. And as the article states:

I think the answer lies in the observation that most companies who succeed in building self-sustaining subscription-based businesses start from a position of effective monopoly of their sector. In the case of AT&T, it was a combination of technology, patents, and government grants which conferred the monopoly. IBM built its first monopoly in tabulating equipment on the patent of the Hollerith card, then clawed its way to an effective monopoly in computers by out marketing and out-customer-servicing Remington Rand, Burroughs, and others. Xerox derived its monopoly from the patent on xerography.

The article itself is dated from 1993 (the last update reported by the webserver is 1998, but that may be when the page was uploaded to the server) which may have been around the time the first real mumblings of Microsoft being a “monopoly” at the DOJ were being heard but I think that even back then in 1993 it was a forgone conclusion that Micosoft was indeed a monopoly, and thus had the power to switch to a subscription base for its software offerings.

Not that Microsoft has actually done that. Yet.

Okay, excluding the Microsoft Developer Network, it hasn't done that.

Yet.

And if Bill Gates was thinking of this in 1992 I have to wonder what he's got in store for 2012 … then again, the world is expected to end in 2012 … hmmmmmm …

Friday, November 22, 2002

Floppies? What are those?

Spring and I are off to the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Exhibition in Orlando. Spring found a stuff animal manufacturer for a project of hers and instead of flying up to New England to meet them, found out they were going to this show instead, where there might be other manufacturers and it was certainly cheaper than flying (not to mention less hassle).

But first, we needed to print some forms before going up there, but due to the lack of printers here in the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere and some poor planning on my part, we ended up at Kinko's at about 10:00 in the morning (ick). I had put the document we needed printing on the webserver here at the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere (floppies? What are those?). Download, print, no problem.

The setup at this particular Kinko's was quite nice—you slip your credit card into the reader next to the computer and you are automatically logged in. When you log out, you can then go to another machine, slide your credit card into that and get a receipt; never have to even bother the staff if you don't want to (of course, we couldn't find the receipt machine and had to ask—it was located around the corner from the computers partially hidden by a stand of merchandise). And before you print, the computer will display the charges per page of output and allow you to cancel.

Quite nice.

What wasn't so nice was downloading the document we needed.

Because our cable provider filters (relative to the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere) incoming web requests, I'm running the webserver on a non-standard port; I just have to remember to include the port number in the URL. No big deal.

Execept that Kinko's (or the office we were at) doesn't allow outgoing web requests except on the standard HTTP port. Okay, I can still FTP the file down.

Except there is no FTP client installed on the machine. I can't get to the command line prompt on the machine (of course it's a Windows box) nor is there a way to run a command line program from the “Start” button. While I have an FTP server running on the firewall at the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere, I don't allow anonymous FTP so I can't use the web browser. And that's assuming Kinko's even allows FTP.

Okay, don't panic.

I need to get the document to a “real” webserver. To do that, I need to log into the firewall and transfer the document. To do that, I need puTTY, a fairly small Windows program that allows one to log into a Unix system. Nice thing about this program is that you don't need to install it—you can just download and run it. And that I was able to do. I was even able to log into my firewall, transfer the file to my “real” webserver, download the document and then print.

Ten minutes top.

And then we were on our way.

Not everyone is real

The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Exhibition. Spring and I had finally arrived, registered, eaten lunch, and were now wandering the huge convention hall.

The convention itself wasn't really populated with booths from amusement parks like Disney or Six Flags but of companies that provide materials to amusement parks and attractions. Lots of engineering firms; what with roller coasters and animatronics, concessions with their free samples, artisans, costumers, scenery, just about everything you need to run an amusement park or an attraction.

Everything interesting and distracting as hell. We had found the booth to one of the companies we went up there to talk to, and just as Spring started talking to them I got distracted with an architectural model in a nearby booth and wandered over there, fascinated with the display. That, in turn, distracted and disturbed Spring enough that we ended up walking through the exhibits for nearly two hours, just to get it out of my system.

And it's a shame that pictures were not allowed. There was something at nearly every booth to take a picture of. The human statues—two people all in white standing so still that you had to watch for quite a while to make sure they weren't real statues. The Robocoaster (I think I have the name right)—a huge articulated robot arm (oh, 20′ high easy) with roller coaster seats where the hand would normally be. Two people can fit inside and the arm will then gyrate around in time to music. There was quite a line for that one. The one booth with the huge laser system, shooting beams of light across the entire exhibit floor. The Beast—a 150′ long, 40′ high inflatable monster you enter through the mouth and wander inside of (only to be expelled where in most animals most solid waste is expelled, with a most convincing sound effect). Animatronic dinosaurs, people, ghosts, zombies and monsters (Spring found the electric chair animatronic most disturbing).

We eventually ended up talking the companies we went up there to talk to and both meetings went quite well.

And then it was time to head back to South Florida.

A scare on the Florida Turnpike

So there I was, lazily driving 80 mph or so on the Florida Turnpike about a mile north of a service plaza (where I was planning on stopping) when I heard a siren. I looked up into the rear view mirror and right there, just inches behind me, were the dreaded flashing red and blue lights.

XXXX!

I start to pull over and the cop flies past me down the Turnpike.

What the …

While in the service plaza Spring and I spot more emergency vehicles flying southward down the Turnpike.

Later, as we're passing Yeehaw Junction the off ramp is a parking lot; the overpass is yet another parking lot and just past the toll booths is a sea of flashing lights. Not entirely sure what happened there, but what ever happened, it was pretty bad.

Saturday, November 23, 2002

Mail Chauvinism, indeed

The United States Postal Service is mad at us.

We received notice that we have to check the mail every three days at a minimum. After ten days mail delivery service will be cancelled.

You know, if we didn't receive so much junk mail this wouldn't be an issue, even if we do go up to two weeks between checking the mail box.

Compliments of the house

It does seem, however, that United Parcel Service does love us. I received a complimentary copy of O'Reilly's HTTP: The Definitive Guide today in the mail!

I learned a few weeks ago that I was mentioned in the book on page 230. I made mention of that on the WWW Robots Mailing List (which I've been on since 1995 or 1996) and the author of the chapter in question, Brian Totty, replied back to me! We exchanged some email and he said he would try to get O'Reilly to send me a complimentary copy.

Which they did.

Woo hoo!

The book itself seems to be well written and does explain some of the more obscure bits of the HypterText Transport Protocol, which will certainly help Mark and I on Mark's webserver.

Silver change

I almost didn't go.

I was feeling a bit tired after lunch so I debated with myself if I really wanted to hit the convenience store and get some Coke. I'm not sure if I won or lost as I ended up going to the convenience store. I was most surprised to find myself with a 1952 U.S. quarter in the change I received.

As a kid, I had one of those books that list the prices collectors are willing to pay for coins of certain years and there was a remarkable difference between the 1964 and 1965 U.S. quarters. The 1965 quarter was the first year the U.S. mint stopped using silver to make the quarter; therefore the price differential.

I no longer have the book (which was the price guide for something like 1979 or some such year) so I have no idea how much exactly my 1952 quarter is worth, but it shouldn't be hard to figure out—a quarter weighs 5.670g (those are the current quarters, but they can't have changed that much in weight over time and that's the first figure I found with Google) and the current price of silver is $4.445 an ounce, but that's Troy ounces of which there are 12 per pound, not 16, so you have 38 grams/ounce and not the usual 28 grams/ounce … so you divide … then multiply … but the quarters back then were 90% silver, not 100% so you adjust accordingly and you get … 59¢ worth of silver!

Um … yea.

But it's still neat!

I hate traffic this time of year

The double yellow line down the center of the road has a meaning. The meaning of the double yellow line is “Thou shalt not pass.” It does not mean “Thou shalt not pass unless thee is in such a hurry that you cannot wait for another car to turn.” Nor does it mean “Thou shalt not pass unless thee is in such a hurry that you cannot wait for another car to turn and Thou art in a yellow Beetle.”

Sunday, November 24, 2002

Engineering Porn

Jim says the fault lasted 20 milliseconds before breakers tripped. (The breakers for a wire like this are pretty amazing in their own right. They use high pressure gas to blow out the arc as the circuit begins to open. Anything that can cut off this number of megawatts [230kV at about 700 amps –Sean] in 20 ms gets my respect.) It blew carbonized oil about 3000 feet down the pipe to either side of the fault. (Compute velocity … )

engineering pornography

The term “pornography” here is used in the sense of “more detail than you ever wanted to know” rather than “lewd sexual content” (much like CNN is “news porn” and the Food Channel is “food porn”). And I find such engineering feats fascinating, primarily because such engineering feats have to be done right or you waste tons of money (it's not to say that engineering mishaps don't happen—the space shuttle Challenger, Three Mile Island and Bhopal come to mind but given the extent of our infrastructure those events are probably rare. As Feynman said, “You can't fool nature.”). And I can't but help marvel at the inginuity used, such as using liquid nitrogen to freeze the oil dielectric to form ad-hoc end caps in the pipe so it could be repaired since the oil used is very expensive and a large enough reserve of oil could not be found in time, or using a car battery and a millivoltometer to locate the short.

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

When I grow up …

Via inluminent/weblog I came across two rather funny satires of the advertising industry: “When I grow up …” and The Reel Truth.

I found it quite amusing to see kids say things like “I want to be so far removed from the day to day business that I need a crane to pull my bloated head out of my ass,” and “to lay awake at night, writing the Great American novel, that will never get published.”

Okay, maybe not that last one then …

Wednesday, November 27, 2002

Oh, so that's what that is …

Okay, so I've gone back and fixed the entry—it's a “Storage Area Network” and not “System Area Network.” Somebody (I think it was Mark) told me what it actually meant, but since there's now a link to the entry (who also thoughtfully corrected me) I might as well go back and fix it. I originally did a Google search (I don't remember my exact query) but what I do remember coming up for “SAN” was “System Area Network.” It was never defined durring the presentation.

Sigh.

Thursday, November 28, 2002

Gobble gobble!

My Dad sent me the following recipe for Thanksgiving turkey:

10-12 lb. Turkey
1 cup melted butter
3 cups stuffing
2 cups uncooked popcorn
salt/pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Brush Turkey well with melted butter, salt and pepper.
Fill cavity with stuffing and popcorn.
Place in baking pan with the neck end toward the back of oven.
Listen for popping sounds.
When the Turkey's rear end blows the oven door open and the Turkey flies across the room, it's done.

It's a traditional recipe when anybody who is anybody these days knows that you brine the sucker first and don't stuff it (although I might do the popcorn thang).

So I'm off to brine the bird …

Letter to Joe Udah, Nigeria

From
Sean “Captain Napalm” Conner <sean@conman.org>

To
Joe Udah <joeudah4@gandabacha.com>

Subject
DPR (JOINT VENTURE)

Date
Thu, 28 Nov 2002 11:05:00 -0500

DEPARTMENT OF PETROLEUM RESOURCES
PLOT 225 KOFO ABAYOMI STREET VICTORIA ISLAND,LAGOS, NIGERIA.
DIRECT FAX: 234 1 759 0904. TEL; 234 1- 7763126
ATTENTION: THE PRESIDENT/C.E.O
RE: URGENT & CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL

Dear Sir,

I am ENGR. JOE UDAH (MON) member committee of the above department.

Terms of Reference
My term of reference involves the award of contracts to multinational companies.
My office is saddled with the responsibility of contract award, screening, categorization and prioritization of projects embarked upon by Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) as well as feasibility studies for selected projects and supervising the project consultants involved. A breakdown of the fiscal expenditure by this office as at the end of last fiscal quarter of 2000 indicates that DPR paid out a whooping sum of US$736M (Seven Hundred And Thirty Six Million, United States Dollars) to successful contract beneficiaries. The DPR is now compiling beneficiaries to be paid for the third Quarter of 2002.
The crux of this letter is that the finance/contract department of the DPR deliberately over invoiced the contract value of the various contracts awarded. In the course of disbursements, this department has been able to accumulate the sum of US$38.2M (Thirty-eight Million, two hundred Thousand U.S Dollars) as the over-invoiced sum. This money is currently in a suspense account of the DPR account with the Debt Reconciliation Committee (DRC). We now seek to process the transfer of this fund officially as contract payment to you as a foreign contractor, who will be fronting for us as the beneficiary of the fund. In this way we can facilitate these funds into your nominated account for possible investment abroad. We are not allowed as a matter of government policy to operate any foreign account to transfer this fund into. However, for your involvement in assisting us with this transfer into your nominated account we have evolved a sharing formula as follows:

20% for you as the foreign partner
75% for I and my colleagues
5% will be set aside to defray all incidental expenses both Locally and Internationally during the course of this transaction.

We shall be relying on your advice as regard investment of our share in any business in your country. Be informed that this business is genuine and 100% safe considering the high-power government officials involved. Send your private fax/telephone numbers. Upon your response we shall provide you with further information on the procedures. Feel free to send response by Fax: 234-1-7590904 / TEL: 234-1-7763126 expecting your response urgently. All enquiries should be directed to the undersigned by FAX OR PHONE.
Looking forward to a good business relationship with you.
Sincerely,
ENGR. JOE UDAH (MON)

Dear Mr. Udah,

I am shocked, nay, dismayed at the corruption and strife going on in your part of the world. I've been in contact with Mr. David Tofa, Manager of the Eastern District Bank for Africa, PLC who wanted to move $26,000,000 (20% cut for me) out of his country. Things were going along nicely and I flew out to Brussels for a meeting. I later learned through a contact I had with the Nigeria Ministry of Information (NMI) that as he attempted to fly out of Porto-Novo, Benin (to avoid scrutiny of the Nigerian military) he was caught in a rebel insurgency there and had to use $16,500,000 as ransom to the Benin General People's United Army of Liberation. Before he was able to leave Benin he was yet again kidnapped; this time by the Benin Republic Liberation Army of the People but in turn the van he was being transported in was blown up by the Democratic Army for the Liberation of the Republican People of Benin. It was quite the mess let me assure you.

While sitting in a cyber café in Brussels I was then contacted by John Doe, the elder brother to the late Liberian President Samuel Doe (who was murdered by the then rebel leader Charles Taylor, now Liberian President) who wanted to move $18,500,000 (25% plus expenses) out of his country. I agreed to meet him in Freetown, Sierra Leone since it was close to him and I had business there to help move some diamonds out of the country. We were close to actually consumating the deal when I was doubled crossed by the Sierra Leone diamond merchants and I'm afraid that the late John Doe was caught in the Men's room of a Kurdish restaurant during a bomb explosion set off by Iraqi agents thinking I was a CIA operative. I'm nothing more than an honest person trying to help launder money for those less fortunate than myself; I am in no way a CIA operative.

The deal with Ekwueme Chiekwugo Ukwu fell apart as well. He had first contacted me under the name of Dr. Oshoniwo Kogi, an official of the Federal Government of Nigeria, looking to transfer $10,500,000 (20% cut). Knowing the circumstances of your government I could understand why he choose to use a pseudonym but previous legal entanglements with the government of Libya blocked the transfer of funds. Over a month and a half later he got in contact with me again, under the name of Dr. Edet Amama, yet another official of the Nigerian Federal Government. I went to Lichtenstein to meet with him but found out later that he was attempting to move much more than the $10,500,000 he claimed to have by using several agents, one claiming to be James T. Kirk from the United States but in reality was an ex-KGB agent now working for the Chechnya separatist government. The last I heard Mr. Ukwu was still in an Algerian prison waiting to be extradited (please do not ask how I know such information; even if I were inclined to tell you, I would have to silence you afterwards).

Your offer of $7,640,000 (net) is the best I've received yet, but I'm afraid that with the recent events it is no longer financially viable for me to continue with such endeavors. So it is with much regret that I have to turn down your fine offer.

I do hope that you find another agent to work with, but beware of James T. Kirk; he's a most unsavory character.

Your's truly,

Sean “Captain Napalm” Conner

Fat, dumb and happy

Considering that the bird hadn't thawed before brining and not discovering this until afterwards, then some last minute thawing triage which threw the timing of everything else off, the meal was quite successful. Which is to say, the bird wasn't totally dry.

Nap timeeeeeeee. . . . . . . .zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Friday, November 29, 2002

The International Money Order Conspiracy

I decide to help AccordionGuy by helping to save his Christmas by buying a book or two (or four—he had a good selection of computer related books at about half of what I would pay new). I asked what his preferred non-PayPal method of payment would be, and he said “international money order.” Seems that Canada (since he lives in Canada) is not part of the United States, yet, and any personal check I write will take nearly a month to clear, which won't exactly help AccordionGuy for Christmas. An “international money order” would clear faster (days perhaps) and allow him access to the funds while there are still shopping days left.

Now, I've dealt with money orders before—an “international money order” shouldn't be all that difficult, right? Just head to my bank and get one, right? It's not like my bank is a small, obscure bank that no one outside of west Boca Raton have heard of—no, it's this behemouth of a bank where you can't throw a bagel without hitting a branch down here in South Florida (for the record, my checking account has outlasted three (3) banks so far; each one getting consumed by a larger entity).

So of course getting an “international money order” should be trivial.

“You want a what?” asked the teller, eyes glazing over in puzzlement.

“An internation money order,” I said. “I want to send money to Canada.” I was met with a blank stare. “You know, the place where all the people with ‘Bring me souvenirs’ on their license plates come from.”

“Oh! Well,” said the teller riffling through some stacks and pulling out a small form, “we can handle a money order.”

“No, I want an international money order so it doesn't take a month for the check to clear.”

“Let me ask my boss,” said the teller and left. Several minutes pass. “I'm sorry, but we don't know anything about these international money orders. Maybe you can get one at 7-11.”

Blink.

“Okay, I'll try,” I said and left.

Spring suggested a check cashing store down the street. She theorized that a sizable portion of the domestic help in Boca Raton might send money back home south of the border, so they might be able to deal with an “international money order.”

“A what?”

“An international money order,” I said. “I want to send money to Canada.”

“The place where all those people want our souvenirs come from, right? I didn't know that was international.”

“It is.”

“Don't you want to wire the money?”

“I'd like an international money order,” I said.

“We have money orders,” said the teller, holding up a form.

“An international money order?”

“Sorry, don't think we have any of those here. Did you try a bank?”

Last attempt. Even though we've received a stern warning from them, the United States Postal Service may be my only hope—they send stuff all over the world; they might have heard of “international money orders!”

“Oh, yes,” said the United States Postal worker. “Where is the money being sent to?”

Amazing! Such a thing as an “international money order” does exist! It wasn't a Canuck playing a joke on us Yanks after all! “Canada,” I said.

“Oh, those nice people that make toques.” A few minutes later I had my “international money order.”

Aboot time, eh?

Wednesday, Debtember 04, 2002

Silent Blog

It's that month.

The one month I wish I could skip entirely. I want to hibernate, to avoid any conscience moments in a month of forced cheer, out of control spending, Christmas Carols, and ever increasing traffic levels.

Unfortunately, it's progressing … one … day

time.

Ugh.

Also, both Spring and I have been rather down lately. I also feel less inclined to do stuff and would rather just hang out and converse with friends. The problem with even that though, is getting in the right mood for conversing; it doesn't help that my sleep schedule is all screwed up to the point where I'm actually getting up in the morning!

If you know me at all, you know that is not a normal thing for me.

Anyway, some email from readers about previous entries:

From
Jeff Cuscutis

To
Sean Conner

Subject
Mail service

Date
Wed, 27 Nov 2002 23:25:50 -0500

Saw the http://boston.conman.org/2002/11/23.1 3 days entry. My boss had the same thing happen this week. He checks his mail once a week. They returned his mail. He was not pleased and called them up. After insulting them “I'm sorry, but no one who answers a phone is a supervisor,” he told them his vacation plans: he will be gone every Monday through Friday for the next 3 months so he will only get mail service on Saturdays.
Amazing.

I guess I can take solice in that we're not the only ones with this problem.

From
Kojiro

To
Sean Conner

Subject
Hey …

Date
Fri, 29 Nov 2002 17:02:22 -0500

Hey, man, I just hit your page with the New Opera 7, Beta 1, and it's following some nice little tags that you have in your HTML … check it out … it's pretty bad ass … Of course, it's gotta be on a windows box, cause Opera's development on Linux, and all things non-windows is just a bit behind.
I put a screenshot in
http://www.samurai-administrator.com/images/opera7
Kinda large, cause they're bitmaps, but it's kinda impressive. I haven't seen this sort of functionality on any of the other browsers … at least, not straight out of the box, so I was a bit impressed with this.

Opera finally supports the <LINK> tags it seems, and unlike Mozilla you don't have to turn it on. I suspect (not having seen Opera in action) that the navigation bar only comes up on sites that have the <LINK> tags. It's nice to see that tags I started using some four or five years ago finally getting use …

From
Steve Crane

To
Sean Conner

Subject
International Money Orders

Date
Sat, 30 Nov 2002 22:13:15 +0200

Hi Sean,
I liked your story about the money order. Of course if you were dealing with a South African you would have got it right away. We call them POSTAL orders. :-)
Cheers.

And now I know (for the record, Steve is a friend from South Africa, if your curious about the time zone in the date).

From
Mischief

To
Sean Conner

Subject
Engineering Porn

Date
Mon, 2 Dec 2002 21:21:53 -0500

Where did you hear about pronography being used in that manner? I'm reading a cyberpunk book, Synners, right now and it mentions porn in that context. It was the first time I've ever heard it used in that manner, so I was quite surprised to see it a few days later in your journal.

I actually got it from the same book, and I'm sure that's where jwz got it from as well (I titled that entry the same as his entry by the way). I read that book, oh, what? Eight years ago or so and it's stuck with me ever since. The first draft of that entry mentioned Synners but a subsequent edit removed it (for better flow).

“The check is done with the process' real id … ”

Your journal software leaves the content files world writable:

That is not so much a bug as a work-around the rather brain-damaged Unix permissions. The software accepts new entries via email or a web interface (okay, so I've yet to actually use the web interface, it's there if I ever need it) and since sendmail writes files as “mail/mail” and the web server runs as “www/www” and since I can upload files (usually images) as “spc/users” there's a bit of a problem.

Why not just have those programs execute SUID/SGID as spc/users? Then there is no problem. Assuming those programs check paths so I can't do anything naughty that shouldn't be a security risk at all.

This is something I'm willing to live with.

I can cook you up a comment system :-)

Email exchange between Mark and myself about mod_blog

Since Mark also has access to the webserver, it would be rather easy for him to “cook up a comment system.”

Heh.

Anyway, I've spent the past hour or so working on making mod_blog SUID and not having much success.

Or rather, partial success.

New entries are added, that isn't the problem. The problem is in displaying the entries (and in generating a few static pages like the main page and the RSS feed which technically I don't have to do, but it lightens the load on the server if I do). And tracking down the problem wasn't straight forward—it worked fine if I (as me) ran it under my own user ID, but it would fail if I ran it as another user (which is odd, since the program, being SUID should have run as me reguardless of who started it). And gdb doesn't allow one to debug a SUID program if you run it as a different user than the one who owns it.

Nice.

That just means I have to resort to other means to debug the program, which is a skill I picked up, despite being tediously annoying (okay, gdb may be able to debug a SUID program as someone other than the owner, but I don't know the magic incantations to do such a thing and I'm trying to track down a problem with my code; I don't really want to fight another program at this time).

I finally found the problem, and it's a Unix problem.

The current method I use to store entries is to store each one in its own file, using a directory structure as so:

year “/” month “/” day “/”

where the directory “day” contains the actual entries.

Now, not every day or month has to be there (heck, entire years can be skipped), so as a quick check I use the access() function to see if a date (as stored on the disk) exists.

access checks whether the process would be allowed to read, write, or test for existence of the file (or other file system object) whose name is pathname. If pathname is a symbolic link permissions of the file referred to by this symbolic link are tested.

access(2) manual page

Since I'm testing for the existence of a directory (and I don't really want to change into it or even at this point open the directory for reading) access() seems the perfect choice to use. But reading a bit further …

The check is done with the process's [sic] real uid and gid, rather than with the effective ids as is done when actually attempting an operation. This is to allow set-UID programs to easily determine the invoking user's authority.

access(2) manual page

Yea.

So while all the damaging system calls use the effective user id, the safest system call you can make, the one that does practically nothing, uses the real user id.

Tell me again how this helps?

So, even though the program supposedly runs under my user id, it really isn't and I have to tell the system that it should. setreuid() should solve that problem.

Three years and still going …

I just realized that today is the Third Anniversary of The Boston Diaries.

My, how time flies …

Thursday, Debtember 05, 2002

Letter to Mr. Woo Chong, Republic of China

From
Sean “Captain Napalm” Conner <sean@conman.org>

To
Mr. Woo Chong <woo_101chong@myself.com>

Subject
Re: CHINA TRUST COMMERCIAL BANK

Date
Thu, 5 Dec 2002 20:47:12 -0500

MR. WOO CHONG
CHINA TRUST COMMERCIAL BANK.
NAN KAN BRANCH, TAIWAN
REPUBLIC OF CHINA

I am Mr. Woo Chong, Bank Manager of Chinatrust Commercial Bank, Nan Kan branch, Taiwan, R.O.C. I have urgent and very confidential business proposition for you.

Wonderful! It was most unfortunate that I had to turn down the Nigerians and their wonderful offers; this couldn't have come at a more opportune time.

On June 6, 1998, a British Oil consultant/contractor with the Chinese Solid Minerals Corporation, Mr. Smith Lawrence made a numbered time (Fixed) Deposit for twelve calendar months, valued at US$30,000,000.00 (Thirty Million Dollars) in my branch. Upon maturity, I sent a routine notification to his forwarding address but got no reply. After a month, we sent a reminder and finally we discovered from his contract employers, the Chinese Solid Minerals Corporation that Mr. Smith Lawrence died from an automobile accident. On further investigation, I found out that he died without making a WILL, and all attempts to trace his next of kin was fruitless.

Oh how fortunate for us that no will could be found, nor could any next of kin. Oh why am I not terribly surprised at that?

I therefore made further investigation and discovered that Mr. Smith Lawrence did not declare any kin or relations in all his official documents, including his Bank Deposit paperwork in my Bank. This sum of US$30,000,000.00 is still sitting in my Bank and the interest is being rolled over with the principal sum at the end of each year. No one will ever come forward to claim it. According to Laws of Republic of China, at the expiration of 5 (five) years, the money will revert to the ownership of the Chinese Government if nobody applies to claim the fund.

Why not let it ride out the five years? Even at a paltry 2% you'll end up with an extra US$1,549,968.10, unless you don't exactly trust your own bank in these matters.

Consequently, my proposal is that I will like you as a foreigner to stand in as the next of kin to Mr. Smith Lawrence so that the fruits of this old man's labor will not get into the hands of some corrupt government officials.

So that instead, the fruits of Mr. Smith's labor will then go into the hands of some corrupt corporate officials. Wonderful!

This is simple, I will like you to provide immediately your full names and address so that the attorney will prepare the necessary documents and affidavits that will put you in place as the next of kin. We shall employ the services of an attorney for drafting and notarization of the WILL and to obtain the necessary documents and letter of probate/administration in your favor for the transfer. A bank account in any part of the world that you will provide will then facilitate the transfer of this money to you as the beneficiary/next of kin. The money will be paid into your account for us to share in the ratio of 90% for me and 10% for you.

Ten percent? That's it? The Nigerians all offered at least 20%, along with the Russians. Heck, a gem merchant offered me 70% to participate! You are going to have to do better than a measly 10% to ~~scam~~ ~~persuade~~ ~~scam~~ ~~entice~~ ~~scam~~ intrigue me. Just for your insolence, 50/50 split, or talk to the hand.

There is no risk at all as all the paperwork for this transaction will be done by the attorney and my position as the Branch Manager guarantees the successful execution of this transaction. If you are interested, please reply immediately via the private email address above. Upon your response, I shall then provide you with more details and relevant documents that will help you understand the transaction. Please send me your confidential telephone and fax numbers for easy communication.

You know, at least the Nigerians give excuses why they can't just do this themselves, such as government corruption, legal blockages, etc., and I'm wondering the same thing here. If you, who are in the banking industry, don't know anyone else outside of the Republic of China that could help you, then I'm not sure if I want to trust you … not that I trust you to begin with.

Please observe utmost confidentiality, and rest assured that this transaction would be most profitable for both of us because I shall require your assistance to invest my share in your country.
Awaiting your urgent reply via my email address.
Thanks and regards.
Mr. Woo

You wouldn't happen to know a Mr. Zhou Shun Lam, would you? He too, found the account and is proposing a similar ~~scam~~ offer to someone else.

But overall, I was impressed with your command of the English language and spelling, which is more than I can say for some of the other ~~scams~~ offers I've received. But if it's the same to you, I would like to decline the offer.

Your's truly,

Sean “Captain Napalm” Conner

Saturday, Debtember 07, 2002

Another mod_blog user …

Over a year since I've publically released the source code to mod_blog and some else is now using the code!

Woo hoo!

Mark finally broke down (or rather, our current society broke him down) and he now has an online journal for which to vent.

I will admit the install process is a bit on the rough side (but then again, I haven't had much feedback on actually using the software and I know the quirks too well to actually remember them to consciously remember them) and I have cleaned up the code a bit (fixed one small bug that only happened if you had fewer than seven days worth of entries, and replacing calls to access() with stat() since it was stat() I should have used in the first place).

And now, I finally get to bug Mark about when he's going to make his next entry …

Infamy

So, if today is a date which will live in infamy, what does that make September 11^th?

Sunday, Debtember 08, 2002

The ultimate in cubicles

Scott Adams approached IDEO to create Dilbert's Ultimate Cubicle, an attempt to address the myriad issues connected with partition-based offices. The result is a modular cubicle that allows each worker to select the components and create a space based on his or her tastes and lifestyle.

Via The Duff Wire, Dilbert's Ultimate Cubicle

I don't know if I would love to work in such a cubicle, or want to run away as quickly as possible. I mean, I love the idea of flippable floor modules and the pop-up floor storage but the sun indicator and the snap hammock are scary; a way to spend way too much time at the office slaving away for “The Man.”

And I'm still of the opinion that cubicles are eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil!

Enlightened Palms

One of the few things I actually like about this month are the lights. More specifically, the lights most people decorate their palm trees.

Driving back from dropping Spring off at work, I saw some impressive displays; impressive enough to go back and take pictures.

So I find myself parking my car at a shopping center in northern West Boca at 2:00 am in the morning, digital camera and tripod in tow as I walk a block towards an exclusive, gated community to photograph their entrace light show, thoughts of cops dancing in my head; anything done at 2:00 am can be construed as suspicious these days but the traffic is very light, which is one of the reasons I picked 2:00 am for this little outting. I setup directly across the street from the development and start taking pictures.

Of course, it was at that precise moment that traffic picked up, cars and trucks wizzing past (as you can see in the picture, which isn't a bad effect really; I like it).

Obviously, I made it home okay.

Directors commentary on “Enlightened Palms”

I'm not really thrilled with how Enlightened Palms turned out; I think Deserted Shopping Center in West Boca at 2:30 am turned out much better. Enlightened Palms is too washed out and grainy whereas Shopping Center is crisper.

I set the digital camera for night shots, indoor (artificial) lighting, no flash and an effective film rating of ASA 400, which as films go, means it's a fast film. It's the speed of film I used in college and I've had good results in using it at night, so I decided to use that setting here. Only the digital camera gives rather poor results with ASA 400 at night; very grainy and black areas tend to be a very blotchy bluish-black (which is more noticable on the original 1984×1488 images).

For Shopping Center (which was taken when I headed back to the car) I decided to see what the results would look like if, keeping the other settings the same (night shot, indoor lighting, no flash) and set the ASA to 100. The results I think look much better, so I'm thinking of doing another attempt at Enlightened Palms in the near future.

Monday, Debtember 09, 2002

Chills from the Cold War

I'm thinking a lot about privacy today. I had a conversation with someone this morning which left me in an internal debate. We were talking about holiday shopping that he needs to do soon so that he can mail presents and I suggested he just buy stuff at Amazon and have it shipped already wrapped. He said he doesn't want to have his every activity tracked by the new Homeland Security database and so uses cash now. It's not that he's sending people uranium for Xmas; he just believes that consumer tracking is America's form of totalitarianism.
My first thought was that he was being a little extreme, but on further explication his reasoning seems sound. It goes like this: If all your consumer activity can be tracked, a profile can be developed and you can be more effectively marketed to. The more you can be convinced that you have needs, the more you will spend your time and money meeting those needs, and the less of your time and money will be available to activities which corporations or government would consider undesirable, such as self-sufficiency or activism. Further, if all your online reading can be tracked, the profile can be expanded to associate the consumer profile with an intellectual profile thus permitting easier identification of those whom the government finds to be intellectually of concern. …
It's an interesting conundrum. Vanity makes me reluctant to abandon the site (and believe me, I'd make a ridiculous number of backup copies of all this work). However, realism is bringing it home to me that I'm sticking my neck way out. Should I consider it activism? Am I providing a useful service in being visably opposed to the Bush administration? In publically stating that I'm a woman who has no intention or need to bear children? In reminding the world that not everyone believes in God? In saying that my life and personality would change very very little if I was suddenly male instead of female? In being, in short, a stinkin' liberal freak?

MetaGrrrl: Exposure

I was with friends yesterday and the topic turned slightly towards politics. I mentioned article I read where a man got 37 months of jail for making a comment about a burning Bush; the possibility of someone pouring a flammable liquid on Bush and lighting it. Someone (and I'm not naming the group of friends at all) mentioned something that, while I suspect most of the group involved felt sympathetic towards (or at least could understand the sentiment), would have, in public, netted him 37 months in a Federal pound me in the ass prison if not more.

It certain puts a chill on things when you are … “concerned” about what you say, even in the presence of friends.

Something is rotten in the District of Columbia; it appears that even though the Cold War is now over it seems as if Washington (or perhaps the Beltway Republicans would be more precise) can't comprehend that it's over. Done. Dead. We won. The pinko-Commie Ruskies lost. Get over it. First, we get old Cold War Warrior Dick Cheney (Deputy Chief of Staff during Ford's Administration), then Donald Rumsfeld (Chief of Staff during Ford's Administration). And more recently, we get John Poindexter appointed as head of the Information Awareness Office, and über Cold War Warrier Henry Kissinger to lead the investigation into 9-11. And don't forget that our own President's father headed the CIA during the Cold War.

This isn't the fox guarding the hen house—this is a pack of hungry wolves guarding the hen house (and them, along with a lone sheep, voting on what's for dinner).

What next? Alexander Haig shambling back from the Cold War grave?

Growing up, thoughts of nuclear armageddon in my head (after all, Ronald Reagan was in office, one finger on “The Button”), New Zealand sounded like the perfect place for the nuclear weary expat to live (it didn't hurt that in 8^th grade I had to do a “political report” on New Zealand and couldn't find a darned thing bad (or political) about the country—consequenty I received an “F” on that report but I wasn't lucky enough to get a country like Cuba or Lebanon or Iran). Now, twenty years later it's not nuclear anihilation that's scaring me, but biological armageddon and corporate slavery and New Zealand is still looking nice (just look at the exterior shots in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring just to see how beautiful New Zealand is).

Sigh.

Will the Cold War ever end?

Echoes from the Cold War

Take command of your soldiers from this fully outfitted battle zone. 75-piece set includes one 11½″H figurine in military combat gear, toy weapons, American flag, chairs and more.

Via email from Hoade, the JCPenny Forward Command Post.

I guess the Cold War isn't over yet.

I won't route 500 miles

I was working in a job running the campus email system some years ago when I got a call from the chairman of the statistics department.
“We're having a problem sending email out of the department.”
“What's the problem?” I asked.
“We can't send mail more than 500 miles,” the chairman explained.
I choked on my latte. “Come again?”
“We can't send mail farther than 500 miles from here,” he repeated. “A little bit more, actually. Call it 520 miles. But no farther.” …
“Okay, let me take a look, and I'll call you back,” I said, scarcely believing that I was playing along. It wasn't April Fool's Day. I tried to remember if someone owed me a practical joke.

Via MrBarrett.com, The case of the 500-mile email

I can't say that I've had a problem this wierd to track down, but I can sympathize with the fellow—email just shouldn't fail due to geographical distances. Hops, yes, but miles?

No way.

But actually, way. Turns out to be a problem dealing with geographical distance, oddly enough.

Re: mR WOO CHONG

I just can't believe it.

From: XXXXXXXXXXXX <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
To: Sean “Captain Napalm” Conner <sean@conman.org>
Subject: mR WOO CHONG
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 15:53:11 -0500

Do you have any more details on this character? I actually called and talked to the guy, pretty odd stuff.

I don't have any more details; but I consider this to be a scam anyway. I don't know anyone in Taiwan, nor do I own a business.

Tuesday, Debtember 10, 2002

Fake Moon landings and other silliness

The James Randi Educational Foundation is a great site for educating oneself with claims of the paranormal, the supernatural and other outright silliness of the New Age. Just recently, their newsletter pointed to a site that had definitive proof that the moon landings were faked!

Way to go!

And the following week even more proof moon landings were faked.

Incredible stuff.

I'm not hearing you

Ring.

“Hello?”

Complete silence.

“Hello?”

Silence, then a nearly inperceptible click.

“Hello.”

“Hello?”

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Hello?”

“Hello sir. Is a Mr. or Mrs. Conner there?”

“Hello?”

“Can you hear me?”

“Is there anyone here? Hello?”

Another click. ”Hello sir.” Voice has a bit of an echo.

“Hello?”

“You still can't hear me?”

“Hello? I'm sorry, I just can't hear you.” I hang up.

I love playing with telemarketer's minds.

Wednesday, Debtember 11, 2002

Will trespass for enlightened palms

I did another attempt tonight. I found myself at the shopping center (you can see my car in the lower right corner of the picture) for a second try. I had just parked my car behind a hedge when just over the top I see the lights of a police cruiser slide by, heading out of the shopping center and onto the main road; the cop either ignored my presence or didn't see me, which suited me fine. I grabbed the camera and tripod and started walking, only to see a security van drive by, again either ignoring me or not seeing me.

Other than that, there was much less traffic this time.

This time, setting the camera to night scenes, no flash, artificial lighting and ASA 100 the images came out much better.

It was only as I was walking back did I notice the “NO TRESPASSING” signs leading into the shopping center and I had to wonder, Am I really trespassing? Technically it might be, but I had only used the area to park the car; I wasn't really hanging out in the area and I did park very near the entrance.

Good thing I had just missed the cops.

“If it's useless, it must be art …”

I rather like this image which was the result of an experient I did tonight.

Can you tell I've been playing around with graphic images tonight?

Thursday, Debtember 12, 2002

Neon trails along the Florida Turnpike

Years ago I worked as a stage hand at FAU and when working the spot lights I would be working on a platform about fifty feet above the audiences' heads. As long as I was busy, I was fine. But during the times I had to sit up there waiting my cue, my thoughts would wander, inevitably to the fact that I was fifty feet above the audience on a thin metal platform and the only thing holding the platform and cat-walk system were a series of poles bolted into the ceiling some fifteen feet above my head and what would happen if that bolt, right there, would suddenly slip?

My grip about the metal railing would tighten at such times, waiting for my cue (or the show to end so I could climb back down to earth). But as long as I was busy, I was fine. Such thoughts entered my mind tonight as I snapped pictures of the Florida Turnpike from an overpass, mainly when a fast moving vehicle or a large semi-truck passed by and the overpass would vibrate.

The sidewalk was covered with a chain link fence (as this false colored image shows) but even so, my attention was drawn to the concrete walls along each side of the walkway. The one separating me from the road was about three-three and a half feet high while the one separating me from a fall of about thirty-fourty feet was only six inches high (as you can see in this enhanced false-colored image). I suppose that since the entire walkway was covered with chain link fencing and that a car along the overpass is more likely to slam into a person than a car flying up from the Turnpike below to slam into a person, that only devoting 6″ of concrete is more cost effective than putting 3′ of concrete on both sides.

I still found it rather disconcerting.

And it doesn't help that I'm rather susceptible to vertigo.

To take the pictures, I (again) set the camera to night scenes, artificial light, no flash and ASA 100, and while the camera was on the tripod, leaning it against the fencing so that the lense had a clear shot through a link. Then it was waiting for a suitable number of vehicles to pass and hitting the button at the right time. For the vehicles coming towards me the trick was to find the right time to hit the button—too soon and I wouldn't get a good streak of light. Too late and I'd miss them entirely. It was easier to time the vehicles going away from me—as soon as I saw the headlights appear from below the overpass, hit the button.

What I really find interesting in these shots is that you can't even see the vehicles—they're just not visible, which I find fascinating.

Friday, Debtember 13, 2002

Oh duh! It's Friday the 13 …

Wierd.

Our October water bill was something like $300.

Huh?

According to the Water Company though, we used something like nine hundred billion gallons of water in October and thus we were duly required to pay for this spike in usage. And spike it is—our normal water bill is not even close to this range.

None of us here in the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere can recall how or where we used nine hundred billion gallons of water. We thought that perhaps the construction workers used our spigot to water down the roof or something, but that was back in September, not October. The only odd thing water wise to happen in October were my attempts to clean the courtyard but I seriously doubt I used nine hundred billion gallons of water doing that (come on—the water pressure here could barely drive an industrial strength water nozzle).

Color us perplexed.

On top of that:

The city of Boca Raton has declared a water contamination emergency and is warning all residents and businesses to boil drinking water until further notice. This water advisory was issued Thursday, Dec. 12, after routine water tests revealed the presence of Coliform bacteria in samples from throughout the city's water system.
The Palm Beach County Health Department requires two consecutive days of clean water tests before the advisory can be lifted, so Boca Raton water users will be asked to boil their water until at least Saturday, Dec. 14.
Water should be boiled for at least three minutes before drinking, brushing teeth, washing dishes or food preparation.
The presence of bacteria could cause diarrhea, cramps, nausea and headaches. Boiling the water kills the bacteria.
For updates, water customers can call the city's hot line at 367-7004.

Nice …

Saturday, Debtember 14, 2002

Nigerian scam, meet Cthulu …

From: “DR DAVID EHIZOJIE”
Date: Mon, 07 Oct 2002 079:1429:44 -0400
Subject: God is above all things

… Another thing is that, you must take the shining trapezohedron and keep it in a safe deposit box, until you are ready to come to Nigeria. I want you to bring it with you to Nigeria. You know that a lot of people here are very experienced in this kind of matter over here, therefore when you bring it here we will consult the wise ones for them to tell us what it is and what you should do with it. Now that they know that you have it and they have not come near you but they have shown themselves t you, then there is an edge you have over them. In this case you must not take anything for granted. Keep the thing in a safe deposit box and also keep the key to box far away from where you are goimng to sleep this night, let us see if they are after you or they are after the stone. Which ever way we have to get to the bottom of this. I am very positive that this will put your name in the front pages for a very long time.…

Oh my god. This may be the most gullible person in the whole world. I should be trying to scam him for money. I mean, I'm not even writing good Lovecraftian fiction here. You'd think anyone with an IQ greater than that of a bag of hammers would see through this. If I'd know the guy was this gullible, I would have planned out a longer story arc.

David Ehi Reverse Scam

I have a few friends (Hi Jeff, hey Rob) that will get a kick out of this. And I think this predates a story line at User Friendly.

But I'm seriously wondering just how long the Nigerians can keep this up. Mass emailing random people just makes the scam more known and as more and more people take sport and try to reverse scam the scammers, at some point it's going to be more cost effective to get a real job than attempt a 419 scam …

It wasn't the Wrath of Khan, but neither was it the Final Frontier

Spring and I went to see Star Trek X: Nemesis and as an even movie, it stands a very good chance of being half way decent.

It does have an interesting premis—after all, the Romulan system is a double planet consisting of Romulus and Remus and all we've seen so far are the Romulans (who branched off from the Vulcans long ago) and never any Remians ... until now. But we only get glimpses into the political situation between the two systems, which is a shame. I will say, though, that the space battle is one of the better ones I've seen (almost as well done as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) and I just couldn't believe the amount of damage done to NCC-1701-E (“There goes Picard's premiums,” I said to Spring).

Is it worth seeing in the theater? Perhaps if you like eyecandy space battles (my only complaint—the design of the Enterprise-E—there were parts when I could tell it was computer generated and what's with the Aztec design? The peak in design was still Star Treks I & II) it's worth seeing on the big screen, otherwise, it's a rental.

Sunday, Debtember 15, 2002

Is turn about fair play?

Really … I wonder just how illegal it is to scam a scam artist? I mean, if I report the income to the IRS it shouldn't be a problem, right?

From: Sean “Captain Napalm” Conner <sean@conman.org>
To: usman g <usman7431@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: help me
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 06:42:54 -0500

ATT, MNG.DIR & GEN MGR

It is with mixed sentiments that I write to lodge this pressing situation to you. Actually it took me time before writing you because of the importance of the huge confidence herein. However, the recommendations made about you by a very good friend of my father who is working with the Export Promotion Council of mali is sufficient for any trust. I hereby wish to introduce my humble self.

I am USMAN GWARZO, eldest son of Alhaji Ismaila Gwarzo, the former security advisor to the Nigerian late Head of state, General SANI ABACHA, who passed on in June 1998.

currently the incumbent government of General Olusegun Obasanjo is freezing all foreign accounts suspected to be misappropriated government fund. And this has culminated in freezing my fathers foreign accounts.

Unfortunately, the trial may be extended to the family as advised by my fathers legal counsel if the utterances by the Director of Publicity to the Federal Government CHIEF DOYIN OKUPE is anything to go by. Invariably, this affects me as my father lodged the sum of US48.2M in my account in October 29, 2000. as a result of this development. I have taken measures to protect and secure the fund. So on the 5th of November, 2001, I converted the whole amount in $100 bill and immediately lodged it into a Security house to avoid detection with the help of some high rated officials for ultimate movement into foreign beneficiary account. All machinery has been put into place for this money.

Now I recourse to you for assistance to shield this fund in your account until this trying period is over. I have the approval of my incarcerated father to offer you a trust instrument of 25% of the total amount for your assistance after the deal is over.

I request that you apply degree of confidentiality to this humble plea for help with all seriousness, as it demands.

Please contact me at once by reply fax through my fax 234 8037236567 and state your private telephone and fax number.

NOTE: The deal is 100% risk free.

TREAT AS URGENT

Best regards,
USMAN GWARZO
My Email usman701ng@yahoo.com

Someone working for the Export Promotion Council of Mali recommended me? Yea, I know the guy.

THAT FAT BASTARD!

No wonder he recommended me for this—he figures that I'll just forgive him the $500,000 (United States Dollars) he owes me if he does me this favor.

WELL SCREW THAT!

Tell that fat bastard I want my damn money and I won't deal with him, nor his friends or family until I am repaid IN FULL!

Got that?

US$500,000 in full. Until then, I will not deal with anyone he recommends.

No offence to you.

Best regards,
Sean

Update later today ...

Turns out Mr. Usman Gwarzo is over his email quota and can't receive any more emails.

Bummer.

Nigeria Central

Man, it's Nigeria Central here. No sooner do I get yet another Nigerian Special Offer than I receive the following about Mr. Woo Chong:

From: XXXXXX <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
To: <sean@conman.org>
Subject: FW: PLEASE CONTACT ATTORNEY
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 15:26:30 +0800

Dear “Captain” Conner,
Perhaps you would enjoy some further comedy from Mr. Woo. I received the same “scam” letter … But, having no previous experience with such types of “unusual offer,” and being as I actually bank with China Trust, I replied with some remarks roughly equivalent to what is contained in your posted commentary (minus the stuff about the Nigerian offers and the request for 50%). I was just curious as to how this letter found my email address, etc. Also I was hoping that whoever “Mr. Woo” is … He is someone completely unrelated to China Trust Bank that is just finding ways to amuse himself.
In his reply, his command of English appears to be slipping; he claims to have tried a phone number I didn't give him and has misspelled my name. If he indeed is a member of China Trust and has access to my files, indeed my phone number would not have worked as I have moved; however, I find this unlikely. See below:

From: “woo chong” <woo_chong123@amrer.net>
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 11:28:26 +0800
To: <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>

Subject: PLEASE CONTACT ATTORNEY
PLEASE CALL MY ATTORNEY! DEAR XXXXXX, I MUST THANK YOUR PROMPT RESPONSE TO MY MAILS, PATAINING THIS TRANSACTION,AND FOR SENDING YOUR TELEPHONE NUMBER.I TRIED THE NUMBER, I HAD NO RESPONSE. I HAVE TO ALSO BRING TO YOUR NOTICE THAT BECAUSE OF THE LOAD OF WORK HERE IN MY BANK, I HAVE GIVEN MY ATTORNEY WHO IS IN LONDON, THE RIGHT TO CARRY ON WITH THE TRANSACTION. HE HAS ALL THE DOCUMENTS AND INFOMATION REGARDS THIS TRANSACTION. HERE IS HIS DIRECT TELEPHONE NUMBER:(447753262320), HIS NAME IS MR WATTS. PLEASE TIME IS NO LONGER ON OUR SIDE, ENDEAVOUR TO CALL HIM AS SOON AS YOU GET THIS MAIL. I WANT TO ALSO REMIND YOU ONCE AGAIN THAT ALL I NEED FROM YOU IS UTMOST TRUST AND MAXIMUM SECRECY IN THE COURSE OF CARRING OUT THIS TRANSACTION.I WANT TO BELEIVE THAT YOU ARE A GOD SENT, AND WE WILL MEET WHEN THIS TRANSACTION IS OVER TO DISCUSS INVESTMENT MODALITIES. ALWAYS GET BACK TO ME AFTER EACH CONVERSATION WITH MR WATTS,MY ATTORNEY. LOOKING FORWARD TO A SUCCESSFUL AND PROSPEROUS BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU. REGARDS, CHONG. – Get your free email from www.amrer.net Powered by Outblaze

(and it's not helping matters that I'm the second result for a Google search on “Woo Chong”)

If this keeps up, I'm going to have to write more about blogging …

“I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”

WASHINGTON—Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stepped down Friday as chairman of a panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, citing controversy over potential conflicts of interest with his business clients.

Via The Duff Wire, Kissinger Quits As Chairman of 9/11 Panel

So that's one Cold War Warrier down, many more to go. But it scares me that Kissinger had to resign because of conflicts of interest. Just what clients would have a conflict with Kissinger investigating the September 11^th attacks? The US? The nations of OPEC?

The man scares me.

The meeting [in June 1969] was unpleasant. As Valdés [foreign minister of Chile] describes it, Kissinger began by declaring: “Mr. Minister, you made a strange speech. You come here speaking of Latin America, but this is not important. Nothing important can come from the South. History has never been produced in the South. The axis of history starts in Moscow, goes to Bonn, crosses over to Washington, and then goes to Tokyo. What happens in the South is of no importance. You're wasting your time.”
“I said,” Valdés recalls, “Mr. Kissinger, you know nothing of the South.” “No,” Kissinger answered, “and I don't care.” At that point, Valdés, astonished and insulted, told Kissinger: “You are a German Wagnerian. You are a very arrogant man.” Later, to his embarrassment, Valdés learned that Kissinger was a German Jew, and suspected that he had gravely insulted him.

Via Robot Wisdom, The Price of Power

It's a good article about the events leading up to Kissinger's involvement with the CIA backed coup that overthrew the elected government of Chile on … September 11^th, 1973.

Don't drink the water … oh wait … now you can!

I called the Boca Raton water hot line (as opposed to the Boca Raton hot water line) and was duly informed that as of noon today, the water was safe to use.

Yea!

Monday, Debtember 16, 2002

Could have been drinking the water

From: Jeff Koecher <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
To: Sean “Captain Napalm” Conner <sean@conman.org>
Subject: Hey … Don't drink the Water [comment]
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 17:30:11 -0500

Hey,

Just as a curiousity, why are you posting about calling the Boca Raton Water HotLine to ask if the water is ok to drink? You don't use Boca Raton Water, you use PBCWUD water, in other words Palm Beach County Water Utilities Department. Boca Raton Water Goes west to the turnpike, no further. And to think you were actually brushing your teeth with bottled water a few days :-)

Just figured I'd tell you, since you seemed to not of known.

P.S. This would have been a good comment to your journal :-) I'm just messing around.

Jeff

Heh. I didn't know we didn't use Boca Raton water since I don't pay the water bill around here (Rob takes care of the water bill) and don't actually see who we pay for water.

Ah well …

Christmas shopping

Mark and JeffK invited me to go with them on some last minute Christmas shopping at Sawgrass Mills. Sawgrass Mills is the largest outlet mall in South Florida, and it may very well me the largest one in the US—two miles of stores. It's been a few years since I last went and if anything, it's larger than the last time I visited it.

What struck me the most about the mall were the ever pervasive television sets hanging from the ceiling. Huge sets blaring commercials. It's a trend I've noticed over the past few years as more and more commercial locations have television sets for your viewing pleasure. Mostly I've noticed it in restaurants (even fast foor places like McDonalds and Burger King) and it's a trend that I don't really care for; if I want to watch TV I'll watch it at home, I don't need to go out and watch it.

It's amazing how big some of the stores are. Also amazing is the stuff being sold nowadays. One store dedicated to nothing but items advertised via infomercials at 3:00 am on most cable channels (although we did not see any Flowbees which was a disappointment). Foreign soldiers. Sumo wrestlers. Baby dolls in car seats (since you know, it's now illegal to have a baby in a car without a baby seat). One amusing item was a plastic statue of James Brown, perhaps 12″ tall; press a button and he starts moving around singing “I feel good!” although he doesn't look all that good—he's more of a James Green than a James Brown.

In one toy store, JeffK had hidden a toy he wanted for his niece on a previous trip, due to the long lines he figured it would be best to hide the toy and retrieve it at a later date. Since we arrived at the mall about an hour before closing the crowds weren't that bad and the lines, if any, where short. So JeffK took advantage of this opportunity to retrieve the gift. Although because of the lack of crowds, we did have to fend off people manning the kiosks trying to offer us samples of their wares. Not even lack of eye contact was enough to signal our disinterest in their sales pitches and we had to continuously state “No thank you” time and time again.

We finally found an exit near a Disney Store. Standing nearby was a security guard looking particularly bored so as we passed, I took pictures of the display window, saying “Copyright violation!” loud enough for the guard to hear each time I took a picture.

He didn't seem to care.

Tuesday, Debtember 17, 2002

More enlightened palms

Mark, JeffK and I met to take even more pictures of enlightened palms. Driving around looking for a good place to photograph, we came across a small park just south of Mizner Park (a shopping center) in Boca Raton. We parked the car about a block away and I proceeded to take numerous pictures. In the middle was an interesting abstract sculpture that was a nice focal point to some of the photographs. While we were there, Kelly called and we convinved him to drive out and meet us.

After a few hours, we decided to move on and as we drove past Mizner Park itself, we realized it was a terrific place to take pictures. By then I had run out of battery power, so Kelly and I went off to a local 7-11 to get more batteries while Mark and JeffK waited at Mizner Park for our return. As we drove back, a security guard started following us, so we decided it wasn't worth the possible problems; it was after 1:00 am and Mizner Park is considered private property. At this point, Mark and Jeff felt it was late enough and since they had to work the next morning, decided to bail out. Kelly and I continued driving around, but there weren't any places as impressive as Mizner Park, although I did take quite a few pictures from the front seat.

Around 3:30 am Kelly and I were both hungry, so we drove to a diner he knew of in Ft. Lauderdale; it looked closed as we drove up to it, but it turned out that the signage was being worked on. Afterwards Kelly dropped me off, then he himself went home.

Those crazy Canadians

I finally received the books from AccordionGuy and those crazy Canucks, using duct tape and foreign newspapers to wrap packages.

So now it's time to hunker down and learn all there is about genetic algorithms, Lisp (both Scheme and Common Lisp) and Rebol. Fun fun fun.

Wednesday, Debtember 18, 2002

Lord of the Movies, II

Spring and I went to an early matinee showing of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The scenery was just as lush as the first movie, the special effects were just as good and Gollum was much better done than in the first film (I think they completely re-did how Gollum looked between the two films—in the first he was less … cute and more threatening looking). But while the first film followed the book closely (cutting a few scenes out and compressing the time quite a bit) the film makers here took quite a few liberties with the story as I understand (I know the general story; I've yet to actually read the books). The two biggest being Elves at Helm's Deep (“Elves? The Elves never showed up at Helm's Deep!” shout the true fans of Tolkien) and (sorry for the spoiler here) the near death of Aragorn (“What's with that?” we have the Tolkien fans saying).

Some quibbles I had with the film—Gimli is played more for humor than anything. While in the first film there was only one dwarf joke (“No one tosses a dwarf!”) there were multiple ones in this film (“Toss me. I cannot jump the distance. You'll have to toss me. Don't tell the elf!” Or that he's too short to see the orcs coming because he can't see over the wall). And two—Faramir is less sympathetic than his brother, Boromir (in the book Faramir is supposed to be the wiser of the brothers and more likeable).

Overall, still a very good film and worth seeing on the big screen. Still, my complaint is about having to wait yet another year for the next installment.

Thursday, Debtember 19, 2002

Hacking your way to worse grades

(CNN)—It was a breeze for 15-year-old Reid Ellison to hack into his high school's computer grading system. But what to do once he broke in took a bit more ingenuity.

You see, Reid already has a perfect 4.0 grade point average at Anzar High School in San Juan Bautista, California. So to leave his mark, he decided to lower his grades to a 1.9 GPA—a meager D+.

Via email from Ken, Student gets ‘A’ for hacking school computer

He got away with it because he had permission from the school to hack their computer system.

While I never hacked the computer systems that housed the grades in FAU I did hack a few systems. More specifically, I tested exploits on the CSE computers, then promptly reported the holes to the sysadmins there. And there were a few other things I did (notably in the Computer Graphics Class) that now a days would get me thrown out of school pronto (okay, so I disrupted class one day—the instructor was quite boring).

I was, however, there when the CSE found their systems hacked. Seemed someone broke into the system and replaced the login program with one that would allow anyone to log in with root privileges (highest access). It was poorly done from a purely asthetic standpoint—any non-valid user id (and anything for a password) would get you logged in as root; the first student that mistyped their userid would get root access and possibly blow the whole back door.

Sheesh.

A better written program would only allow a certain userid with a special password access, without the login being logged.

Um … not that I ever did that, mind you.

I mean, if you are going to install a back door, you might as well do it right …

Friday, Debtember 20, 2002

A different breed of animal

What type of insane telemarketer calls at 8:00 am? Have they no shame? No decency?

What am I saying? These are telemarketers …

Evolving answers

So I'm reading the genetic algorithms book I received, An Introduction To Genetic Algorithms by Melanie Mitchell and it's quite interesting. I've known the basics of genetic algorithms but I've never really programmed any. Generally, they work like natual selection: you have a population of possible answers (e.g., a list of cities to visit in a particular order) to a problem (e.g., the Traveling Salesman, where you want to minimize the distance traveled) and you cross breed the current population (by taking two (or more perhaps) answers, selecting a portion of their results, and mixing the two to form one (or more) new answers), and possibly mutating the result a bit (e.g., swapping two random cities in a given answer). You keep doing this over and over until you get an answer, or an answer that is good enough. You don't just select potential answers to breed by random—no, you select them based upon a certain criteria (in this case, those in the population with the shortest answers so far) that drives the results towards your eventual goal.

This can't be applied to every problem though, and for those that it can be, the trick is to pick a representation of the data that can be mixed up and mutated easily.

As I'm reading, I'm also doing certain exercises from the book to help cement my understanding of the processes involved in programming genetic algorithms. It's an enjoyable way to spend a few hours.

Saturday, Debtember 21, 2002

The days flying by

Today's going to be a very short day.

It's the Winter Solstice, which actually is the shortest day of the year.

Robocoaster

Back on November 22^nd Spring and I attended The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions where I mentioned seeing a large robot arm that would fling people about.

Well, I came across the website for it.

Manipulating images

One of the reasons I haven't been updated as I should is due to the delay in processing the images from the other day and I really wanted to get them done and posted before I resumed regular posting here so as to give you a chance to see them before they slide off the main page and into archival oblivion.

I took over 100 images that night.

There are two problems with selecting which images to choose from: one—Spring's computer, which has enough memory to process large images (the raw images are 1984×1488 high quality images—they average about 700K each) but her monitor is less than optimal for viewing images (it's a bit dim and the color is way off). Two—my computer has a much better monitor but seriously lacks the memory to process large images; with only 32M of RAM just working with one of these images is taxing (loaded into memory each image takes up some 11M of memory, and my system usually has 5M of physical RAM free so loading these images for processing causes the system to hit swap space pretty hard). Ideally, I wanted to convert these images down to a managable size to view them quickly and pick the ones I wanted, but I did not want to sit there resizing 100 images by hand (either on my machine or on Spring's).

Little did I realize that I had software to do batch conversions already installed—ImageMagick. It's a series of programs you can run from a command line to batch up processing of images, so convering 100 images is as easy as:

for i in *.JPG
do
	echo Converting $i 
	convert --sample 496x372 $i /tmp/$i
done

And then go off and do something else while my computer crunches away.

And crunches. And crunches. And swaps. And swaps. And I mean seriously swaps. The harddrive LED was searingly bright.

For two hours.

I told Rob this, and he let me use his computer to do the processing. Since he also runs Linux, I was able to log into his computer from mine, use ImageMagick (since he had it installed) to do the mass conversion (less than five minutes for 100 images—sigh) and run the GIMP to do final tweaks on the images I did select.

“Coffee, tea or strip search?”

After some more grumbling on my part they eventually finished with me and I went to retrieve our luggage from the x-ray machine. Upon returning I found my wife sitting in a chair, crying. Mary rarely cries, and certainly not in public. When I asked her what was the matter, she tried to quell her tears and sobbed, “I'm sorry … it's … they touched my breasts … and …” That's all I heard. I marched up to the woman who'd been examining her and shouted, “What did you do to her?” Later I found out that in addition to touching her swollen breasts—to protect the American citizenry—the employee had asked that she lift up her shirt. Not behind a screen, not off to the side—no, right there, directly in front of the hundred or so passengers standing in line. And for you women whove been pregnant and worn maternity pants, you know how ridiculous those things look. “I felt like a clown,” my wife told me later. “On display for all these people, with the cotton panel on my pants and my stomach sticking out. When I sat down I just lost my composure and began to cry. Thats when you walked up.”

Via jwz's livejournal, Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wifes Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There?

My Dad keeps asking when I'm flying out to visit him again. And I keep telling him I'm no longer going to fly anywhere until crap like that stops. I got stripped search the last time I went to the airport and I wasn't even flying!

Several years ago for Thanksgiving I flew a round trip from Ft. Lauderdale to Chicago to Boston and I got searched in Chicago, never mind the fact that my plane was taking off in about twenty minutes.

Lord knows what will happen to me if I try flying now.

Sunday, Debtember 22, 2002

Break-in attempts

Must be some new exploits out there. Mark called and said he found evidence of someone attempting to break into the co-located box we have. He would have notified the appropriate parties of the attempt but he wasn't feeling very well.

I check the logs, and sure enough, there were attempts to break in from XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.birch.net. I then checked the logs going back a few days and on the 21^st I found more attempts from XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.videotron.ca and yet more on the 19^th from XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.videotron.ca, each using similar methods to break in.

None of the attempts succeeded though.

The two from videotron.ca are probably the same person; I have to wonder if the one from birch.net is also the same person?

Monday, Debtember 23, 2002

Splitting hairs

I finally got fed up enough to have my hair cut (much to the relief of Dad). There was enough hair on the floor to make a small pet and my hair is a bit shorter than I generally like, but that just means I can forego the next hair cut for an extra week or so.

Tuesday, Debtember 24, 2002

A whole new meaning to computers crashing

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) intends to conduct a race of autonomous ground vehicles (see “Technical Details” for a definition) from the vicinity of Los Angeles, CA to Las Vegas, NV in 2004. A cash prize will be awarded to the winner. The course will feature both on-road and off-road portions and will include extremely rugged, challenging terrain and obstacles. The purpose of the race is to stimulate interest in and encourage the accelerated development of autonomous ground vehicle technologies that could be used by the US military.

Via c o d e r l o g, DARPA Grand Challenge

Sounds like a fun challenge actually. An autonomous vehicle that needs to travel 300 miles over uncertain terrain and any refueling must be autonomous as well (although each team can place the refueling station along the route before the race begins). And a cool $1,000,000 to the winner.

Unfortunately, unlike Full Metal Challenge, the teams do not get funding before hand …

Wednesday, Debtember 25, 2002

Christmas

Bah! Humbug!

Thursday, Debtember 26, 2002

“The database server crashed … it must be high tide.”

A week without problems … everybody was happy. Happy, that is, until it started again. The same pattern. 10 hours on … 2-3 hours off …

And then somebody (I seem to remember he said that the person had nothing to do with IT) said:

“It's high tide!”

Which was met with blank looks and probably a wavering hand over the intercom to Security.

“It stops working at high tide”

This, it would seem, is a fairly alien concept to IT support staff, who are not likely to be found studying the Tide Alamanac during the coffee breaks.

It's high tide

Like the last problem I mentioned, this one, while sounding entirely off the wall, does have a logical explanation as well.

Users. The problems they come up with sometimes …

Saturday, Debtember 28, 2002

A small college reunion

I spent the evening with several friends from FAU; it just worked out that several of my friends from college were back in the area visiting family, although I missed out on meeting with SeanW (who was unable to make it to the dinner tonight).

Monday, Debtember 30, 2002

Semantic HTML

There's quite the buzz in the weblogging community over Mark Pilgrim's use of the <CITE> tag (among other more esoteric tags in HTML). It's a nice idea, but all the standard says about <CITE> is:

CITE:
Contains a citation or a reference to other sources.

HTML 4.0 § 9.2.1 Phrase elements

And only a few scant and quite trivial examples. I'm not sure of the exact usage of the <CITE> tag. In the following:

In Snowcrash, Neal Stephenson explored the implications of neuro-linguistic hacking …

Now, am I supposed to mark that up like:

In <CITE>Snowcrash</CITE>, Neal Stephenson explored the implications of neuro-linguistic hacking ...

Because I'm citing the book Snowcrash? So, along those lines, if I had instead written it as:

Neal Stephenson, in his book Snowcrash, explored the implications of neuro-linguistic hacking …

Would I then mark it up as:

<CITE>Neal Stephenson</CITE>, in his book Snowcrash, explored the implications of neuro-linguistic hacking ...

since now I'm emphasizing Neal Stephenson over the book? But the book was written by Neal Stephenson so should it instead be:

In <CITE>Snowcrash</CITE>, <CITE>Neal Stephenson</CITE> explored the implications of neuro-linguistic hacking ...

Okay, so it's a contrived example, but generating semantically correct markup isn't trivial and expecting the general public to get it correct is asking a bit too much. As one person pointed out, given a hypothetical tag like <EDITOR>, is it:

<EDITOR>Joe Blow</EDITOR>

<EDITOR>vi</EDITOR>

(except when it's <EDITOR>Frontpage</EDITOR> but I won't go there)?

There are other semi-obscure tags for semantic mark-up and fortunately, most of them are less ambiguous as for usage, like <CODE> is for mark-up of computer source code, or <SAMP> for program output. Unfortunately the HTML spec lists both <CODE> and <SAMP> as an inline tag, not a block tag which really restricts their use. I'm not sure what the W3C was thinking when they made <CODE> and <SAMP> inline. Using <CODE> to mark-up code fragments will turn something like:

for (i = 0 ; types[i].sl != NULL ; i++)
{
  if (strstr(filename,types[i].sl) != NULL)
    return(types[i].sl);
}
return("text/plain");

into:

for (i = 0 ; types[i].sl != NULL ; i++) { if (strstr(filename,types[i].sl != NULL) return(types[i].sl); } return("text/plain");

Nice, huh?

Dougal Campbell suggests using:

CODE
{
  white-space: pre;
}

Which sounds good, but doesn't work. The CSS spec states that white-space is only valid for a display type of “block”, which <CODE> isn't (remember, it's “inline”). To work, you really need:

CODE
{
  display:     block;
  white-space: pre;
}

Which works fine in Mozilla, but fails for IE 5x (which is most likely a bug) and Lynx, which doesn't even look at the CSS file (and it looks like I have one regular reader who uses Lynx). As much as I would love to use <CODE> and <SAMP> for semantically better mark-up, I'm afraid I'm still stuck with using <PRE>; otherwise I'll end up with:

<CODE>for (i = 0 ; types[i].sl != NULL ; i++)</CODE><BR>
<CODE>{</CODE></BR>
<CODE>  if (strstr(filename,types[i].sl != NULL)</CODE><BR>
<CODE>    return(types[i].sl);</CODE><BR>
<CODE>}</CODE></BR>
<CODE>return("text/plain");</CODE><BR>

Which is silly. (Okay, it's easy enough to write some code to automatically convert the source code, but semantically, does it even make sense?)

The upshot of all this rambling about semantically correct HTML? Um … not much really. I won't be changing the mark-up I use too much since I do lose the visual appearance in most browsers (although I may try giving the <CITE> tag a bit of a go).

One lucky dude

11:15 pm. Mark, JeffK and I were hanging out here in the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere, trying to work up the energy for a walk when I received a phone call from my friend Russel S. Our friend Gregory Pius was in a motorcycle accident, although fortunately he only (only!) broke a few ribs and his clavicle. Russel was on his way to the hospital.

Mark, Jeff and I then headed to the hospital. Once there, we inquired about Gregory and was told the rules there only allow one person to see a patient in the ER; since Russel was already there we would have to wait our turn. Word was sent back to Gregory that I was there waiting. A while later Russel and L. (Gregory's ex) arrive back in the waiting room, breaking hospital rules by both visiting Gregory). After a bit of brief conversation, L. and I break hospital rules and both go back to see Gregory.

Gregory was conscious and coherent, although his arms were scraped up and still a bit bloody. He had indeed broken six ribs and his clavical; more tests were being done to see what else might be wrong. I asked him what happened; he was on his motorcycle folling his parents (mom and step-dad) home when he took a corner a bit too fast and hit a car next to him at about 35 mph. I don't know when exactly the accident happened but considering what happened, Gregory was very lucky.

Gregory was also quoting Monty Python so things aren't that bad.

In the room with Gregory was L., her friend (which surprised me) and I. We were talking to Gregory, trying to keep his spirits up as a technician came in, strapped some electrical pads to his chest for monitoring and allowed Gregory some small sips of water in an attempt to get a urine sample for testing purposes. After about fifteen minutes the head nurse popped in, saw that there were two people too many in the room with Gregory and started to kick us out. As I walked back to the waiting room, I kept expecting L.'s friend to tag along but he remained behind with L. Once back in the waiting room, Mark, JeffK, Russel and I sat around waiting for news.

About an hour later, L. and friend come back saying that Gregory has been heavily medicated and was currently sleeping. A urine sample had been retrieved and it came out clean, which was a good sign. Gregory was being admitted to the hospital and there was no real point for anyone to remain at the hospital.

On the way out, L. showed us Gregory's helmet, which the visor had been split up the center and one of his steel-toed shoes, which had the leather torn away at the toe, explosing the steel tip.

More as things progress.

Tuesday, Debtember 31, 2002

Notes on a book found in the emergency room at 12:07 am

While waiting in the emergency room to hear news of Gregory, JeffK pointed out a book sitting on a near by table. “Why don't you read about Queen Victoria?” he said.

“Is that what that book is about?” I reached over to pick up the book. It has obviously been abandoned in the emergency room and had been sitting there for some time. No one else was near the book. “It looks pretty old,” I said.

“When was it written?” asked Mark.

I flipped to the copyright page. “It was printed in 1971,” I said.

“Wow, that's older than I am,” said Jeff.

“But that's not when it was originally written.”

“When was that?”

“1965.” I flipped through the first few pages. Just past the Table of Contents was a list of illustrations that appeared in the book. “Hey, pictures!” I then started flipping through the book and stopped dead. “Now this is odd,” I said.

“What is it?”

“It's an ad,” I said, holding it to where Mark and JeffK could see it.

“I've never heard of ads in books before,” said Mark.

“Neither have I,” I said.

It was wierd. Four ads appear in the book. The first for Club Cocktails, the “ready to drink real cocktails. Hardstuff.” 25–48 Proof no less! The second ad—Kotex Kotique™. “Truly effective—but ever so gentle.” Third ad is a classic—you're soaking in it. Yup, there is Madge, telling the incredulous customer that yes, “Palmolive softens hands while you do dishes.” And last but not least, Sanka® Decaffeinated Coffee, just in case you couldn't stay awake reading the book.

Kotex and Kotique are registered trademarks of Kimberly-Clark Corporation. Sanka is a registered trademark of General Foods.

Madge! A dishwashing liquid to soften hands?

Core dumps, WAPs and war driving

After visiting the hospital, Mark, JeffK and I headed over to Kelly's to hang out for a bit. How we ended up talking about Michael Jackson, I don't know, but when we were tyring to show Mark just how badly Jacko looks these days, Kelly's Windows XP box crashed. What I did now know, but Mark did, was that Windows XP can generate a crash dump for later analysis. When Mark checked the dump directory, Kelly had approximately 50 dump files already there.

Unlike Windows NT, Windows XP doesn't come with dumpcheck.exe, which will tell you exactly where the crash took place. Mark then spent the next half hour or so (why not?) trying to determine the location of the crash, and to track down a copy of dumpcheck.exe. Unfortunately, Kelly's copy of Windows XP was set to only record a minimal dump, of which dumpcheck.exe wasn't able to work with. But Mark was able to track the crash down to ntkernel.dll which pretty much means a buggy driver, although not which driver is bad. Kelly then configured Windows XP to do a full dump next time it crashes.

After expressing the sad state of affairs with ~~Wacko~~ Jacko, talk then turned towards wireless networks. Mark recently aquired some equipment and was looking to set up a WAP at home. Mark didn't quite realize that WAP security was a joke (crackable with as little as 5K worth of traffic) and that really, you need to firewall off any wireless stations; all WAP security was good for was “to keep someone from inadvertantly connecting to your network.” Mark was then curious as to the range and from experiments done here at the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere, we were able to pick up a signal outside the building, up to maybe twenty yards or so (Rob and I didn't go much futher than that). We then decided to test Kelly's range.

Mind you, this was at 2:30 in the morning.

So with laptop literally in hand, we walked down the street and found that the signal strength was good for perhaps a hundred yards or so—definitely three houses down although it wasn't a straight cut-off point. The frequencies used tend to bounce around so that going around a corner only ten yards away would cut the signal entirely; but hit just the right spot and the signal can bounce down the street.

We also talked a bit about war driving and the best areas to concentrate on down here in Lower Sheol. We figured the best places would be around Congress, between Yamato and Clint Moore (in Boca Raton) and along Cypress Creek, between I-95 and Powerline (in Ft. Lauderdale). One of these days …

“We need to work on your blood-curdling scream … ”

Spring and I went to visit Gregory in the hospital tonight. He was awake and coherent and finally in a proper hospital room; until something like 5:00 pm today he was stuck in room 7 of the emergency ward since his arrival. From the explanation there seemed to be a shortage of beds at the hospital.

On the good side he has the whole room to himself.

Around 9:00 pm the nurse somes in to change the bed sheets. We leave the room, but it was plainly audible that Gregory was not happy about the situation, what with six broken ribs and a snapped clavicle. Half an hour and three nurses later, the bed sheets are fresh and Gregory is receiving the Oh-So-Blessed Pain Killers. Spring leans over to Gregory and says, “Gregory, we need to work on your blood-curdling scream. Something that will definitely tell the nurses to back off!” Greg found that quite amusing.

Fifteen minutes later he's snoring away in drug-induced dreams. We stay for a bit longer, then head on our way.

Fudgie No-Bakes

Obligatory Condo Commando Clashes

Obligatory Banana Sidebar Links