Seebs.Net

The Port-A-Brain computer system

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Port-A-Brain computer system We moved recently, causing me to end up with all my books in boxes, which in turn led to removing many of my books from boxes, which led to rereading a lot of books I haven’t probably seen since the 1990s. I was particularly struck by a passage from Phule’s Company, Robert Asprin’s 1990 space opera version of Police Academy. (I say this with a mixture of exasperation and affection.

Why you should know Bresenham's line-drawing algorithm

Fri, 30 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Why you should know Bresenham’s line-drawing algorithm I have a soft spot for this algorithm because it’s the first one I actually learned. My father and a friend released a graphics library for the Zenith Z-100 series of computers using Turbo Pascal, and as a result, when I mentioned wanting to make a line that went smoothly towards a point, he could hand me a page and a half of pascal code for me to study and contemplate.

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

My cat is dead, and the world continues to move on, and this seems somehow unfair. On January 16th, 2008, my previous cat, Graystoke, died. On January 17th, I went to the local shelter and picked up a cat. They had two cats at the time, one with claws and one without; I took the one with claws, sight unseen. They had her listed under the name “Molly” and said she was probably 1-2 years old, and already spayed.

Affine Transforms

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Affine Transforms (Long time no blog! My blog rendering thing broke, my templates were incompatible with the new one, and I needed to figure out how to use MathJax to try to make this legible. Ugh.) So, I like fractals, especially iterated function system fractals (think the Koch snowflake). And I’ve been writing code to do these for years. And it’s been horribly, stupidly, slow that whole time because I didn’t understand affine transforms.

Debugging Social Interactions

Sun, 17 Oct 2021 15:28:48 -0500

In programming communities, a recurring problem is that social things go wrong, and no one knows how to do anything about this. What particularly frustrates me is that these are all people who know how to debug things, but are not aware that social interactions which Are Not Working As Expected are subject to many of the same basic principles as debugging software.

Building a live steno display

Sat, 18 Sep 2021 16:24:52 -0500

I finally finished a small project I started about five years ago, that being a steno display for my keyboard. The idea is that my keyboard allows me to support stenography input using software like Plover, but I found it frustrating not to have better feedback, and my keyboard is programmable, so I thought I’d implement that. It was more work than I expected.

Trolling case study: HCQ

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 13:05:54 -0500

There is a fascinating thing which I noticed recently in online discourse, and I have found what is, at least until they notice it, possibly a reliable way to distinguish between people who hold a perhaps surprising position, and people who are trying to spread misinformation.

The context of this particular thing was discussions of hydroxychloroquine, henceforth “HCQ”, an anti-malarial drug which some people thought might be an effective treatment of some sort related to COVID-19.

Triplebyte

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 12:39:54 -0600

Triplebyte laid off a lot of their interviewers (including me) in April, not long after laying off essentially their entire writing and talent-manager teams. The practical effect is that every single US-based interviewer got laid off, while the non-US-based interviewers remain for now. There was, perhaps unusually, no severance pay. I find myself in a novel situation; I’m actually disgruntled about losing a job. I’ve been hit by layoffs quite a few times before, and this is the first time I’ve felt like it was handled badly. As it happens, a solid majority of the other affected interviewers were also disgruntled about it. Long story short: We talked things out and reached an agreement everyone was happy with, but I think that could have happened a lot sooner.

Since then, Triplebyte has gotten discussed again on Hacker News, for what commenters there seem to feel is poor handling of a transition in their business model, and there’s some similarities between the problems there and the problems I was writing about here. They’ve also reversed the previous decision and posted/emailed an apology about it.

I think that the ways in which people were upset, in both of these situations, reflect a recurring pattern, especially in the tech industry. The pattern is that people do a thing that seems reasonable to them, other people become angry about it, and it seems surprising or mysterious. I don’t think it should be surprising, and I don’t think it’s mysterious. So I’m looking in more detail at this, in the hopes that explaining why I’d consider it reasonably obvious that people would be mad might help some readers figure out why people are sometimes mad for no obvious reason.

(This whole post was pretty much written in May, and then Events Happened and I’ve been too busy to come back and finish the draft. Oops.)

Fractally Wrong: Counting GUIDs

Thu, 06 Feb 2020 11:16:54 -0600

I was recently pointed at some code, and the more I looked at it, the more impressed I was by how wrong it was. I think this may be the highest density of errors I’ve ever seen in a single line of code, in fact. The stated goal: Listing all GUIDs. This can’t be done, but this is more wrong than that.

If the underlying task were at all possible, the other bugs would probably get noticed, but since they all prevent each other from being relevant, we ended up with… This.

RMS, Minsky, and the Search for Truth

Sat, 21 Sep 2019 13:07:54 -0500

Richard Stallman stepped down from the FSF recently. I don’t think it was necessarily 100% voluntary. This came about in part because of a highly critical article about his behavior, pointing out ways in which he has behaved poorly.

One of the complaints people have had persistently about his behavior is a tendency to offer what seem to be defenses of extremely bad behavior. In recognition of his influential leadership in the field of self-referential acronyms (e.g., “GNU’s Not Unix”), I’m going to write a perhaps self-referential piece in which I argue that the actual behavior he engaged in is not necessarily the same as the behavior he is accused of. But because I have studied and considered human emotions and behavior, I’m also going to try to do a better job of clarifying what I am defending, and also what I am not defending.

Goodbye Pixel

Mon, 02 Sep 2019 17:49:50 -0500

About two years ago, I got a Google Pixel. It finally died, and I’m so much happier already.

About Blogging

Mon, 18 Feb 2019 19:30:54 -0600

So, historically, I haven’t compartmentalized my life much. Maybe I should have; certainly, it’s a widely recommended tactic to separate your personal and professional life. It makes sense. People might find stuff distressing. But I am also coming to think that it is a dangerous model of the world. You can’t divide people like that. Maybe you can, but it’s not healthy. It’s also sort of pointless. Consider the common argument: What happens if a prospective employer reads my blog and finds out I talk about abused kids a lot?

Life Updates

Sat, 16 Feb 2019 08:55:54 -0600

It’s been a long time, partially because I ended up with my blogging software in a state where I didn’t feel like interacting with it, so I switched over to Hugo and such, and now I’m gonna try to get back in the habit of posting things here. Where was I? Well, mostly I was on tumblr, but then they performed the Cartesian product of all acrobatic maneuvers and all sharks, so now I’m not.

The Zak Update

Thu, 14 Feb 2019 00:02:30 -0600

So, just a followup, since people probably wonder: Yeah, I saw the Zak thing, in which Mandy Morbid, his erstwhile girlfriend, accuses him of long-term abuse. Yes, I believe it. Ironically, I was told repeatedly during the drama that Mandy was a bad person and I shouldn’t believe her accusations, but you know what? Fuck those people. The accusations are credible. During the whole thing, and thereafter, I talked to Zak a fair bit in email.

New blog

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 23:58:50 -0600

For reasons, I got frustrated with maintaining a blog software to interact with, so I stopped. I exported old posts, added aliases for them, but this is now a static page, for reasons. Using Hugo.

Whoops

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 10:45:01 -0600

So I spaced off actually checking out that this blog worked again after a rather rushed server move, but it’s up now, after a few small adventures.

The end of my Mac era

Tue, 29 Nov 2016 22:41:50 -0600

I first used MacOS X in 1988. No, that’s not a typo. See, MacOS X is really, under the hood, an older operating system called NeXTStep, which I started using in 1988.

Video games, art, and passion

Sat, 25 Apr 2015 23:02:20 -0500

So, I wrote about my distress over the very disappointing Angry Birds Epic game. And since then, I’ve seen a couple of things that I think make a good contrast with it.

Angry Birds Epic: This could have been a great game

Fri, 05 Dec 2014 06:27:10 -0600

I keep thinking about this, and then not doing it, and then thinking about it more.

Consultancygate: An Overview

Sun, 10 Aug 2014 00:52:32 -0500

UPDATE: New data showed up, and I’ve changed my conclusions on some aspects of this. Most noticably, Mandy Morbid has accused Zak of abusing her, and I have posted some initial thoughts on that, but suffice it to say, I do at this point think I have credible evidence that Zak is in fact abusive in serious and important ways.

So, I wrote a really long thing about this, but it is as noted really long. This article is intended to be a better-structured guide to what happened, and why I think that the attacks on Zak and Pundit are basically dishonest and without merit. This article does not attempt to include all, or even many, of the examples. I am not implying that the things I don’t address are true, or even plausible; I’m just picking the examples I think are the clearest and easiest to understand without a ton of extra research. I looked into a lot more of them, and kept reaching the same conclusions.

Things to do if you think someone has been or may be outed:

Wed, 06 Aug 2014 17:37:49 -0500

(CAVEAT: This is a draft. It may get updated. Feel free to suggest improvements.)

D&D Hatchet Job, Part 2

Wed, 06 Aug 2014 11:39:01 -0500

UPDATE: New data showed up, and I've changed my conclusions on some aspects of this. Most noticably, Mandy Morbid has accused Zak of abusing her, and I have [posted some initial thoughts on that](/log/post/2019/02/14/the-zak-update/), but suffice it to say, I do at this point think I have credible evidence that Zak is in fact abusive in serious and important ways.

Okay, this is where it gets funny. Remember the allegations about Zak's supporters attacking people? I defended Zak, so... One of the charming idiots is now accusing me of being transphobic. The number of problems with this is difficult to articulate, but it's a positive number.

How Dungeons and Dragons is actually not endorsing the darkest parts of the RPG community

Sun, 03 Aug 2014 19:34:26 -0500

So, I’m revisiting this, because the more I look into it, the more impressed I am with the many layers of sleaze. Of particular note, the use of a “Read More” makes it surprisingly hard to quote the full text.

The future is here.

Sat, 12 Jul 2014 12:22:53 -0500

This is a world that I could not have anticipated, or really even comprehended, when I was 18.

Failing to understand the word "disability"

Tue, 08 Jul 2014 08:31:05 -0500

I know a number of people who have disabilities, ranging from fairly mild to fairly severe. Most of them have some amount of interaction with social services of one sort or another, whether in the US or elsewhere. And everywhere, there is a single constant theme:

Why terminology is hard...

Sun, 08 Jun 2014 00:06:42 -0500

One of the joys of the Internet era is having teenagers explain things to me. Teenagers explain to me what gender is, and what sexual orientation is, and why it matters whether or not gay people are discriminated against. And this is, by and large, mostly just sort of charming.

Pathfinder's polymorph rules, presented in a usable format

Sat, 17 May 2014 23:05:03 -0500

Well, maybe not totally usable, but. Pathfinder’s various polymorph-type spells are all presented in a format where each spell past the first in a series gives additional powers, but then refers you to the previous spell. So they never give you the complete list of things you can get from them. In general, qualities are given only if the creature you assume the form of has those qualities. So, if you want scent, you have to assume a form that has scent and use a spell which lists scent as a quality it can grant.

Some thoughts about living with depression

Wed, 07 May 2014 15:11:54 -0500

A fair number of people I know have long-term depression, and it can be hard to deal with. For them, obviously, but also for me. And of course, then they feel bad because it’s hard for me and that makes them feel horrible and worthless (see also: depression). And I want to try to help.

ImageMagick/RMagick: Why your text is coming out blocky and unreadable

Sat, 03 May 2014 17:24:40 -0500

I found a ton of threads various places asking about this, full of really nice advice that was totally irrelevant and didn’t change anything.

The simplest autism diagnostic test.

Wed, 26 Mar 2014 23:33:11 -0500

So, I have stumbled across a lovely test for autism, which … well, I’ve now lost count. But so far, I have never once gotten a confirmed-false-positive from it, and I’ve confirmed well over half a dozen positives.

How to make poor people more responsible

Wed, 26 Feb 2014 15:22:52 -0600

I see a lot of complaints about how poor people are irresponsible. There’s plenty of existing work being done on the question of why this might be the case, and the obvious answer (“being irresponsible makes you poor”) appears to be only a very small part of the story. Most noticably, being poor deprives you of cognitive resources, while vastly increasing the cognitive cost of many things.

Kaiju

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 18:47:00 -0600

One of the things I like about Pacific Rim is its introduction of the term Kaiju to English. I remember loving Godzilla movies as a kid. And there’s a thing to them I always thought was fascinating, which is that Godzilla sort of started out as the monster which destroys Japan, but ends up being the monster which defends Japan. And this, I sort of empathize with, if that’s the right word.

Human nature

Sat, 23 Nov 2013 18:56:38 -0600

People talk a lot about human nature, often fairly cynically. I do it too. People say things like “in theory, only people who actually need the aid are supposed to apply for it, but human nature being what it is, lots of people apply fraudulently”. And, barring some dispute over what constitutes “lots” of people, that kind of thing is true. It really is the case that people steal, that people commit violent crimes. It is true that people try to get ahead without regard for others, and even at other people’s expense. It is the truth, and nothing but the truth… But it is not the whole truth.

Stay classy, Google!

Mon, 18 Nov 2013 21:14:03 -0600

Well, too late for that.

Starting spamd (and other related fun) using Server.app on OS X

Sun, 03 Nov 2013 19:46:34 -0600

Since my previous blog post on this topic was so useful to me, but slightly obsolete, I’m posting updates. I recently had occasion to rebuild my mail server, and decided to bite the bullet and go with Mavericks plus the new Server.app.

Why universal health coverage might be cheaper than it looks...

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 17:13:25 -0500

Been thinking about this for a long time. Medical costs in the US are unreasonably high, for unusually poor results, and that’s been true for a while. But it seems pretty reasonable, at first glance, to assert that providing health coverage for all the people who don’t have it will be pretty expensive.

FF14: A Realm Reborn. Review/commentary

Tue, 24 Sep 2013 16:50:15 -0500

Overall summary: A fairly good game, with a mix of some really cool things and some spectacular stupidity. The things that are wrong, frequently it’s simply mind-numbing that anyone could possibly have thought this would be okay, or taken the extra time it would take to get them wrong. The things that are right are often quite good.

A mismatch of visions

Thu, 08 Aug 2013 18:15:07 -0500

I’ve been, historically, a pretty big fan of Rift. I like the game. I like the developers. And throughout most of the last two and a half years, I have felt that the Rift team have earned a certain amount of trust. They make mistakes, but they fix them. In general.

The most important person you know

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 11:06:42 -0500

You never actually thought you’d meet them, of course. I mean, who would expect to? I mean, really, we all like to think we’re important, but we know that we’re just not that important, that we will never rate the attention of the truly great ones. So at first, it just seemed like they were a little rude. Maybe a little dismissive of other people. Who would have guessed, though, that you’d actually met the one person in the world whose time is the most valuable?

Statistics, brains, and science

Sun, 21 Jul 2013 15:48:21 -0500

So, it has come to my attention that I am sometimes a little weird. No, wait. A lot weird. And this isn’t just a matter of being autistic; even comparing my behavior to that of other autistics I know, I am somewhat further out there in some ways. So, as a result of this, I’ve spent a cheerful hour or so filling out the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), this being the “restructured” version of the MMPI-2.

Assume a spherical cat of uniform happiness

Thu, 18 Jul 2013 12:09:04 -0500

But you don’t have to assume her anymore. I have her.

The hate that dare not speak its name

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 13:08:24 -0500

Used to be, people were pretty shy about being gay, because it could get you in lots of trouble. Crazy, crazy, trouble. Not just being beaten or killed, but stuff like attempts to use mandatory hormone therapy to “treat” it. And this was a horrible situation. Thing is, this didn’t mean gay people didn’t want relationships, it just meant they had to find subtle ways to indicate that they might be interested in such things. (People who read a lot of Pratchett may recognize a similarity to his dwarves, who do not distinguish between male and female in most contexts, considering it a rather personal thing, making their courtships rather more complicated.)

Come on, Gabe, you're better than that.

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 12:38:45 -0500

Penny Arcade’s Gabe is doing the “poke the trans people” thing again (too lazy to link, its on the twitters). Gabe, dude. Claiming that anyone with a vagina is necessarily a woman is sort of a dick move (sorry, couldn’t pass on that straight line). It’s not cool or edgy. It’s also not usefully true. And the thing is, I totally get the idea that it would be nice if the world were nice and simple and everything fit into easy categories. But the world isn’t all that simple, not everything fits into easy categories, and dismissing people as not existing is an oversimplification with a significant body count.

Spare ideas

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 15:17:06 -0500

Was reading the Pathfinder (a tabletop RPG) book on game mastery, browsing their world-building stuff, came up with spare ideas.

Getting hit on in MMOs

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 14:20:50 -0500

So, last night, there was hilarity. There was this guy, in Rift, who was… well. First off, I believe he was about 14. So he was being generically homophobic, as a lot of young teens are, and people were teasing him about it. And he responded, as 14-year-old boys often do, by trying to be abusive and sexually harass people with female names. Whereupon he asked Katrinka (aka me) to “show me your milkshake”.

Critical theory in a nutshell

Mon, 27 May 2013 14:37:15 -0500

I once encountered someone who asserted that all men, without exceptions, were rapists. Not as hyperbole, but as a flatly literal claim. And when I pointed out that this was pretty sexist, she explained that, according to “critical theory”, there was no such thing as sexism against men, because men are a privileged group.

New personal best: 13 years.

Sun, 26 May 2013 14:01:18 -0500

So, you know that thing where people say they’ll get back to you, but they don’t? I had one of those pending from a programming conversation. I finally went back and tracked it down and sent a followup message. It’s been 13 years.

On being made out of meat.

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:55:49 -0500

We are, by and large, made out of meat.

Dear Ms. Scott: I believe you misunderstand the term "heart-breaking".

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:31:16 -0500

Peggy Scott’s heart breaks for the state of Minnesota.

The mirror test and cats

Fri, 03 May 2013 12:52:41 -0500

One of the standard tests for self-awareness is “the mirror test” – put dye on a creature in a place it can’t see but could see in a mirror, give it a mirror, see whether it investigates the dyed spot. Cats, in general, fail this.

The bat: Nature's temporary pet!

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:49:14 -0500

Now available for limited time trials: The bat, nature’s temporary pet!

Living in Minnesota

Thu, 02 May 2013 02:01:54 -0500

So, last week, we had a brief bout of freezing weather and snow, with rumors that temperatures would rise. And they did, fast enough that about a day after the snow, I installed a window air conditioner in my bedroom, since I have trouble sleeping when it’s warm. And then we had three consecutive days where it was warm enough that I ran the air conditioner so I could sleep.

Defining "proceeds": Harder than it looks

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:19:33 -0500

So, there were bombs in Boston recently. You may have heard. And there are people in Boston, and a lot of them feel that this is sort of a thing which affects them. It may in fact affect them significantly. And if they run, say, a company, one of the obvious things to do would be to collect some money and donate it to a charity.

Sympathy for the devil

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 04:04:51 -0500

A poster on tumblr recently expressed some unpopular views; to wit, the hope that Dzokhar Tsarnaev would escape and never be captured or killed. Lots of people have expressed the hope that he’d be captured alive, and some have hoped that he might one day be rehabilitated. Not so many have thought to show off their empathy by hoping a killer escapes to kill again.

Making OS X a little smarter: Conditional network configuration

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:40:36 -0500

So, I have ethernet, but I don’t always use it. If I’m not plugged in, I want my laptop to use the wireless. If I am, I want it to not use the wireless.

Dear Casey's: Also, autistics speak.

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:41:37 -0500

While I was out picking up delicious pizza last night, I noticed that our local convenience store (Casey’s General Store) was doing fundraising for Autism Speaks. This makes me unhappy. On the whole, I like existing.

The difference between doubts and questions.

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 15:18:56 -0500

There is a fascinating dialect quirk which has caused occasional confusions, which I think ought to get talked about. Many people who learned English in India tend to use the word “doubt” where most other English speakers would use “question”. I have been told that this is because, in one of the common languages around there, there’s a single word which is the best translation for both “doubt” and “question”, and people get told to translate it to “doubt”.

Theme and variations

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:53:33 -0500

Music tends to rely heavily on the use of recognizable themes; little bits and pieces of melody and/or rhythm which are repeated to create consistency in structure. In the simplest form, a theme may simply be repeated. The “rounds” often used in early music classes add the complexity that each part may be at a different point in the theme than the others, but all the parts are still the same. The famous example is “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, a piece of music which still has the power to enthrall children up through the age of seven or so, but tends to pale a little after that.

A thought experiment...

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 14:50:57 -0500

As commented previously, there’s a lot of outrage because a couple of kids who raped underage girls got sentenced as though they had comitted a crime.

Rape culture in a nutshell

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 16:02:23 -0500

I used to be pretty skeptical of the notion of “rape culture”. The idea that there was a strong cultural bias towards excusing, justifying, and overlooking rape struck me as, frankly, insane. I have since been reminded: Humans are, in fact, generally insane.

Sex-obsessed gay guys, privileged white males, and the fallacy of division

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:26:57 -0500

I was, at one point, derided for attempting to explain intersectionality (the awareness that people might be “privileged” in one category, but “opppressed” in another) to someone who was, I was informed, an autistic female person of color, and thus presumably aware of it. But given that I was explaining it in response to an allegation that white males cannot comprehend oppression, I somehow suspect the awareness had not quite percolated through to application.

Jesse talks about the "cure for autism" issue...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 12:30:44 -0500

Occasionally people mention the importance of “curing” autism, and a lot of autistic people usually react with a little concern; while the strangers who would replace us may be very nice people, they are not us.

Changes in society and how they affect literature

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:48:21 -0600

Been reading Raymond Chandler’s writing recently for a Project. So, in the last day, I’ve learned slurs I didn’t know before for gays, blacks, and women. Okay, maybe I’d heard the gay ones before, maybe, but probably not in ten or twenty years, and possibly not as slurs. I definitely didn’t know some of the stereotypes. The ones for blacks? Heck, I couldn’t figure out what half of them were until I’d seen them in enough contexts to pick them up (which took a chapter or two). Women? Pretty easy to guess, but seriously, wow.

Humor and apologies...

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:32:17 -0600

The Onion recently did something they have, so far as I know, never done before in their entire history. They apologized. Specifically, they apologized for a tweet in which they called a nine-year-old girl a “cunt”. Well, okay, that does sort of merit an apology, but I think commentary on this is missing something important.

I can't help but think this is intentionally misleading...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 13:32:28 -0600

So, I like rainbowy things and bright lights. There are a lot of modern keyboards, mice, and such which have color controls for what color they glow.

Did this ever happen?

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 09:42:43 -0600

I am curious.

The mosh pit at the Beyonce concert...

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 15:05:34 -0600

Beyonce has a concert today, and apparently, in an effort to reduce injuries, they’re trying an experiment where only a fixed number of people can be in the mosh pit at once, they have to wear protective gear, and there’s various rules governing their interactions, with pauses and interruptions to make sure people aren’t getting injured, or that any injuries can get treated before the moshing continues.

Life with disabilities: The citibank card in limbo

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 14:07:46 -0600

Couple years back, Jesse got a credit card offer. We filled it out and sent it in on a lark; mostly, we wanted to see whether Jesse had a credit rating.

Here and now, you are alive.

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:36:41 -0600

This, right here? This is it. You are alive. You are the one making your choices now. If your choice is to put everything on hold until the future, you can make that choice, but: It’s never going to be then; it’s always going to be now. When you do get to college, life will begin when you graduate. When you graduate, life will begin when you find work. When you find work, life will begin when you start paying off your student loans. Finish paying them off. Get that promotion. As long as you let yourself get tricked into thinking that life is somewhere else, some other time, you’re missing out.

How rules break down, and how to use them anyway.

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 13:20:23 -0600

The world does not lend itself to simple, absolute rules. Mathematicians have known this for a long time; politicians have never really accepted it. Unfortunately, the mathematicians are right. Perhaps more unfortunately, the politicians are in charge.

The doctor with the tattoos...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 13:22:48 -0600

There’s a popular image floating around the ’net of a doctor with tattoos, the gimmick being that when he’s wearing his lab coat, you can’t see any tattoos, and when he’s not, boy, does he have a lot of them.

The Swartz case appears to be turning more disturbing.

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 11:58:36 -0600

Well, that’s not quite fair. I mean, everyone already knew that the only reason serious charges were ever considered was because Carmen Ortiz wanted to make an example of some guy. But it’s one thing for everyone to “know” that, and another entirely to find the paper trail confirming it.

This kind of thing is unreasonably amusing to me.

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:31:17 -0600

Someone I had some run-ins with on a video game forum sent me what I consider just about the funniest thing ever. Now, normally, I don’t like to randomly repost private messages, but in this case, there’s some real value to commentary on the tactics here, because messages like this are emotionally abusive, and a closer look at how they work, and why that’s unambiguously abusive, may be of value. Knowing how it works can make it easier to resist the effects. Quoted text is from my correspondent.

Why automation exists

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 20:25:39 -0600

Rift (an MMO I quite like) has recently been plagued by people using bots to automate gameplay. Obviously, they do it because it’s more efficient than playing (this is sort of stupid, if you think about it; the purpose of playing is not to be efficient). The developer has introduced some automated measures to try to detect bots, which are having some initial problems, and some posters have started fussing about how this is a waste of time and money, and they should just hire “minimum-wage” gamemasters to manually investigate.

How to deal with prosecutorial abuses...

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 17:03:00 -0600

This one seems easy enough. As recently observed, prosecutors have a lot to gain from pursuing high-profile cases, going for lots of charges even if some might not stick, and bullying people.

How to improve political dialogue

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 13:44:24 -0600

So, I have complained in the past about the poor tone of political dialogue. But shouldn’t I offer solutions? Yes, yes I should.

The mystery of my bad writing and debate skills

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 02:02:26 -0600

Sometimes, when I am in an argument with some random person on the Internet, a thing happens which has always sort of mystified me. What will happen is, around the time that I conclude that someone is genuinely incapable of even basic logical coherence, they’ll turn to a variety of personal attacks. And what makes it mysterious is, the attacks are pulled from a small pool of things like “nothing you say makes any sense” or “you are too dogmatic” or “you are so authoritarian”, and…

Sorry.

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:01:43 -0600

So, I got up in the middle of the night to pee, and when I got back, I looked around for a pillow, and found it, and picked it up. Under it was a cat. He gave me… a look. He was not happy.

Spouses: awesome

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 15:58:29 -0600

So, last night, I woke up with weird leg cramps. Like, unlike any I’ve had before, and really disturbing. Different muscles, often two or three areas at once, and much more persistant than the kind I occasionally get and I’m sorta used to. And after a while of this, I concluded that I wanted painkillers, so I went to go get some.

Technological solutions to social problems don't work...

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 14:37:00 -0600

General observation: Most of the time, a social problem can’t be effectively solved by technology.

What you search for twice, exists

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 01:05:09 -0600

Long ago, I used to run a lot of D&D games. I still play on and off, as time allows. But back then, I used to run these gigantic, sprawling, dungeon adventures, with basically no preparation. And you know, the thing is, I’m not super organized, and I don’t have a great memory. And yet, no one ever seemed to find anything out of place; the verisimilitude was, by all accounts, exceptional most of the time.

Pinkie Pie advises you about programming

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 14:25:21 -0600

My usual response to particularly ill-considered ideas is to warn people that if they do these things, we will have to point at them and laugh while Oompa Loompas sing about how their downfall was the result of their own poor decisions. But after I got a compiler bug report where the test case wouldn’t even compile, and yielded warnings about 35% larger than the program source… Well. Time to step it up.

Shadowrun Genesis save format notes

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 01:08:16 -0600

Because it’s an awesome game, that’s why.

A few notes on how to run a forum or similar community

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 20:57:22 -0600

For some reason, people who run forums keep inventing the same ideas, and they keep being really bad ideas.

Instant Review: Laser Pegs

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 16:53:04 -0600

Laser Pegs are a toy consisting of clear plastic blocks containing LEDs and wiring, with the convenient trait that the blocks happen to be roughly physically compatible with Lego parts. They don’t exactly say “Lego”, but they indicate compatibility with “other construction kits”. They mean Legos.

Personal opinion: Python's "usability" and "readability" are marketing hype

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 22:16:09 -0600

People love to pitch Python as a language to learn in. I am pretty sure this is because everything you hear about Python is about how easy and intuitive it is, and how people love to pitch it as a good choice for learning.

Media bias, media coverage, and voting discrepancies...

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:43:56 -0600

Glenn Reynolds points out some interesting discrepancies in state and federal divisions between Republican and Democrat, which John Hinderaker says is probably not because of the national media bias, but because of differences in how people view governance.

I love the idea of having a working memory, anyway

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 02:35:56 -0600

So, my memory is better sometimes, not quite as good other times.

David Frum says true things. Pundits bash him.

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 18:28:54 -0600

It says something when David Frum is described as not really a conservative, or as someone unimportant and uninformed. The man has credentials. I don’t like everything he says or does, but I have read his writing and found it persuasive more than once. Not always, but more than once. And a speechwriter for George (H. W.) Bush is almost certainly not reasonably considered some kind of leftist.

Minnesotans for Marriage: Thank you.

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:07:20 -0600

Thank you. I think it would have been entirely possible for the recent attempt at an anti-gay constitutional amendment to succeed. Minnesotans are, by and large, a little inclined to tradition, to a sort of comfortably midwestern view of family, to be cautious about change.

Not a real fan of the options this year, but...

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 20:01:56 -0600

Okay, here’s the thing. In general, my intuition is that Republican candidates tend to advocate economic policies which are more likely to work decently than Democractic candidates. And for a long time, that was enough for me to vote for them even when I had to hold my nose on social issues.

Autistics Speaking Day: Predictably relatively quiet

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 20:50:58 -0500

So, there was some idea floating around that people ought to pick a day and not talk in honor of the communications difficulties faced by “people with autism”. Which, of course, helps cement the stereotype that we generally can’t communicate, and supports the idea that other people ought to speak for us. Which, it turns out, isn’t super popular with a lot of autistics, so some clever folks came up with the idea of Autistics Speaking Day. Of course. A lot of autistic people don’t particularly enjoy talking to strangers, or talking about themselves. Or are a little shy.

Polls and predictions

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 11:58:00 -0500

The election season is fascinating for math geeks, because it’s full of numbers, and numbers about numbers, and numbers about numbers about numbers.

Wow, thanks. It really is wonderful to be understood and appreciated.

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 17:49:10 -0500

Okay, this is a year old and all, but I only found it today. Apparently, according to someone who has letters after his name and is thus more important than I am, Teaching empathy to someone with autism/Asperger’s is almost like teaching a pig to sing - it is a waste of time and annoys the pig (at least most of the time).

Standing room only...

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 12:20:24 -0500

I’ve seen one too many news stories about how it’s bad for us to sit all the time. I now have a standing desk. It’s a little wobbly, so I’ll have to add some supports to it, which means a hardware store trip. Planning to add four corner supports to it. Initial feedback, yes my feet hurt, but I feel otherwise quite a lot better. I’ve always liked to pace when thinking, and this gets me some of the benefits of pacing without the difficulty reaching the keyboard.

Logic puzzle time!

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 08:19:11 -0500

Okay, so. There are three doors, two hiding goats, one hiding a car. You pick a door. The host now picks another door, revealing a goat. Should you switch? The answer is, of course, that if you switch, there is a one in three chance that you find the unexpected tiger.

Gricean Maxims, and why I have trouble with them...

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 23:21:07 -0500

A while back, I commented on Romney’s “Keep America American”. At least one person told me that I had given the impression that I thought that the people who liked this slogan were racists; this confused the heck out of me, because I thought what I said was that racists liked the slogan, and that I believe it was constructed the way it was in order to appeal to them.

I guess you're in big trouble, then.

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:48:21 -0500

Elizabeth Price Foley writes:

Burying cats: Humans are not sane.

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 21:25:20 -0500

Jesse’s cat Maya died today. She was 15ish. Our friend Aud had a cat named Penny, who also died today, so we dug them a grave. It turns out this is a lot of work. Our back yard has fairly dense dirt, full of rocks and tree roots, and it is really hard to get dirt out of a deep hole with a shovel. (We now own a shop vac.)

Skin in the game

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 15:48:01 -0500

The phrase “skin in the game” comes in and out of fashion. I always rather liked it; it’s evocative.

Forced password resets: you're doing it wrong

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 23:23:29 -0500

For the most part, I really like Dropbox, but it seems to me that their recent decision to roll out forced password changes is… poorly implemented.

Romney's 47%: The distinction between factual and truthful

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 01:09:01 -0500

You’ve probably seen it by now:

Partisan language has gotten silly.

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 02:39:44 -0500

I’ve noticed a thing, which is that angry internet commenters who use “libs” are using it as some kind of code word. It doesn’t mean liberals. It means bogeymen. “Libs” are a large, well-organized, utterly monolithic, group of people who are at all times completely dishonest, completely irrational, totally stupid, totally uninformed, and persisting in being this way out of malice.

This is sorta freaky, and I am not at all sure what I think of it

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 18:53:02 -0500

The FDA has approved clinical trials of a proposed cure for autism.

Reporting the wrong story

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 13:57:24 -0500

EDIT: See updates below. The actual thing Romney said was probably slightly different, and it is not clear that it ought to be considered a “slogan” really.

Wow, I was a lot more pedantic ten years ago

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 23:10:29 -0500

I think one of the most useful things, for me, about knowing that I’m autistic is that it helps me give a slightly more useful evaluation to questions like “is this inaccuracy a serious lie or not”.

Well, at least Akin isn't gonna be lonely.

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:17:41 -0500

“Apparently, it’s not just Akin.“http://www.politicspa.com/updated-smith-makes-abortion-gaffe-with-audio/40404/ (Or try this link if that one’s busted.)

Why I still think there's hope for humanity

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 02:17:05 -0500

On a forum I hang out on, someone mentioned that he was going to have to go to court and see the kid who had (inadvertantly) killed his wife. He was going there to plead for mercy. (Apparently, the kid looked down for a moment to set something down, looked up, saw a car, WHAM.) He chose to share with us the text of the speech he gave. Yeah, it’s full of typos. I put it to you that this is worth the time to read anyway.

Discrimination: A quick math puzzle

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 01:29:57 -0500

Someone in a discussion recently conceded that people in meetings will often ignore a woman’s idea, but react positively to the same idea if a man offers it. This is moderately well studied. He then went on to point out that if this didn’t happen, things might not be better; after all, it wouldn’t be “twice as many people are talking and being listened to”, the meeting would still have the same amount of time and pick up the same number of ideas.

Republican Senate nominee: Women don't get pregnant from "legitimate" rape

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:18:46 -0500

“Todd Akin believes that women’s bodies have some kind of magical mechanism to prevent pregnancy in the case of a “legitimate” rape.":http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/todd-akin-legitimate-rape.php

An open letter to some doctor somewhere.

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:14:12 -0500

A friend of mine recently spoke to you about a possible diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders, and reports being dismissed on the grounds that without a cure, there’s no benefit to a diagnosis. This reflects a number of severe understandings of the nature of autism-spectrum disorders, the experiences that autistic people have, the kinds of treatments available, the role of medical care in a patient’s life, and more.

How to call someone out

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 23:41:26 -0500

(Note: Currently still a draft, there may be edits later.)

Voter ID: How security theatre can win elections

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 16:07:31 -0500

As a number of people have observed, there is no obvious means by which taking nail clippers away from little old ladies prevents healthy young men from using weapons already secreted aboard an airplane to try to hijack it. Similarly, all the aggressive increases in ID checking seem irrelevant; none of the 9/11 hijackers were using assumed names. And yet, for the most part, people have put up with the TSA’s hijinks. Why?

A reminder: Overtime is nearly always stupid.

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 00:52:59 -0500

In a discussion about a video game, and why the developers should have been working on code rather than taking a break to do some social/promotional stuff, someone wrote:

The Secret World: Way, way, better than some reviewers think

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 14:04:52 -0500

Inexplicably, TSW reviews sort of poorly. Wait, that’s not inexplicable; it’s totally explicable, it’s just sad. Many of them aren’t even reviews of the retail; they’re from mid-to-late beta. Others are just plain wrong on basic claims about mechanics. But mostly, I think, reviewers tried to play it as though it were a modern-setting WoW, and got disappointed when it wasn’t.

Google+: In theory, they understand names

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 16:31:24 -0500

(Hello, hypothetical reviewer. Please read this; follow the link to see why.)

YouTube tries to push for real names: Google doesn't get it

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 18:18:38 -0500

After the drama over Google+ demanding “real names”, and the claim that they were now accepting pseudonyms (they aren’t, for real people), and after a friend had her G+ account deleted because someone somewhere decided the name wasn’t good enough, I suppose I sort of accepted that Google was constitutionally incapable of comprehending that there could ever be legitimate reasons for people to want any kind of privacy.

Liar, liar, pants on fire

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 23:51:59 -0500

So, there’s this long story. As always, Snopes has pretty good coverage of the whole issue.

We were not near the shooting.

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 12:21:27 -0500

There was a shooting in Colorado, but it was not here.

Are you sure?

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 19:20:04 -0500

One of the recurring themes in user interface design is confirming actions which might be destructive. You tell the computer to do something, and it says “are you sure?”

Says it all, really.

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 12:08:32 -0500

Build ran forever. Went and looked, and discovered that a program called ecj1 had taken up well over 3 hours of CPU time. I announced that it was probably Java-related based on that alone.

Cisco's new view of how routers work.

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 18:11:33 -0500

You may not know what routers are. Routers are devices which transmit information around, so for instance, if you have three computers, and an Internet connection, somewhere in there you probably have a router. The router is what makes sure that all three computers are able to access the Internet, and that your email ends up on your computer while someone else’s videos end up on theirs. They provide some basic control over data flows and such.

Surface Review: The Secret World

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 16:40:43 -0500

So, a friend of mine has been really interested in Funcom’s The Secret World, which is currently in “early access”, with full launch on June 3rd. This means that, for the next couple of days, “pre-order” bonuses are still available, which may be of interest to some people.

Microsoft: Liars.

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 04:37:55 -0500

“You may be a victim of software counterfeiting.”

Angry is a kind of stupid

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 15:21:39 -0500

Look, I’m not disputing that there are times when it is justifiable to be angry. I’m just saying… Angry people are dumb. Consistently. Being angry makes you think less clearly. Anger makes people unwilling to question, and unwilling to consider that they might be wrong; instead, they treat any suggestion that they are mistaken or confused as a personal insult. The angrier you get, the less competent you get.

Oh, that's... wow.

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:43:08 -0500

Some friends have commented on yesterday’s entry about my correspondent who argued that a relationship without a clearly defined male head of household and female non-head is defective. One comment, which I found very interesting, was the observation that analogies and similarities Do Not Work That Way. Even if we grant that a marriage is supposed to reflect the nature of Christ’s relationship to the Church, that doesn’t mean that having a different structure of marriage has any impact on Christ’s relationship to the Church. Good point.

Thank you for your concern

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 20:44:37 -0500

I was sent a copy of a reply to my recent opinions piece in the Star Tribune. I think it deserves some commentary and consideration.

Idle thought: Should we mandate statistically better things?

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 01:32:33 -0500

One of the premises of much anti-gay legislation is the notion that, since a particular family structure is asserted to be “better”, that we should push everyone towards that and penalize alternatives.

Thoughts on Christians and Leviticans

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 14:06:34 -0500

John Scalzi coined the useful term Leviticans for the subset of people who identify as Christian but appear to be more focused on compelling other people to follow particular moral rules than on being nice to people. I only just now noticed this, because I happened to have a copy of his delightful Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded.

Anytime Fitness: Good idea, horrible billing company.

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 13:45:40 -0500

So, we have had for a while a membership in a thing called “Anytime Fitness”, whose basic premise is that they issue keyfobs that give 24 hour access to a fitness facility; exercise machines, etcetera.

Propaganda analyzed: The threat to honest discussion about marriage

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 16:37:33 -0500

You’ve probably read some of the arguments advanced by proponents of the marriage amendment on the ballot in Minnesota this November. I want to analyze one such document for you, to show you why I conclude it is willfully dishonest – not just ignorant, or misguided, but deceitful at every level.

The soul of the thing

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 10:50:45 -0500

Reading David Blankenhorn’s article in the New York Times, I think I have come to understand what went wrong in attempts to preserve “marriage”.

Another way to come around to new views on gay marriage...

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 23:46:02 -0500

David Blankenhorn now supports the legal right to gay marriage.

I am, apparently, no longer an Amiga owner.

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:19:26 -0500

So, back when I got the first computer that was personally mine, not just a computer I used, it was an Amiga 3000. Back when PC users were dealing with a hilariously awful mess of IRQ allocations and jumpers, 640k limits, and the like Commodore shipped stuff with a clean 32-bit OS, SCSI disk access (instead of the elaborate mess of MFM and other drives), and so on.

Glossy displays, and why they suck

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 21:57:19 -0500

So the new MacBook Pro line is out, and they added a “Retina” model, meaning one with really high pixel resolution; it’s 2880x1800, which is to say, it’s a pixel-doubled 1440x900 display. VERY impressive. The color fidelity is gorgeous. The pixels are tiny, which is a good thing.

Junk science

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 21:31:38 -0500

So, it’s pretty well established that there is a market for bad science – that is to say, “science” which is really carefully-crafted to produce a particular set of results for which there is a market demand.

The role of investors and investment

Tue, 29 May 2012 06:38:39 -0500

One of the standard talking points of the political “right” is that scattering the wealth of very wealthy people prevents them from “creating jobs”.

The Pinkie Pie case for gay marriage

Thu, 24 May 2012 10:18:37 -0500

Marriages mean weddings. Weddings mean parties, with cake! More marriages mean more weddings. More weddings mean more parties, with more cake! Allowing gay marriage means MORE CAKE and MORE PARTIES.

The conservative case for gay marriage

Thu, 24 May 2012 01:08:36 -0500

It is at this point pretty obvious that, for the most part, gay marriage advocates are not particularly persuasive to the most vehement objectors. There’s some interesting differences in how people view the question. What’s most interesting is to observe that, fundamentally, people are making different categories of arguments. It’s not that the conservatives dispute the equality argument, it’s that they aren’t considering it to be particularly relevant.

Followup: Why you can't rely on logical disclaimers

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:12:26 -0500

It has been pointed out that my previous article about the famous “the talk: non-black version” seemed to imply that I do not understand the full weight of the “only when you have no better information” qualifier.

Intelligence, logic, statistics, and one's own petard

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:53:28 -0500

A while back, Eric Raymond blogged what he called an intelligence test. It’s based on the much-commented on “the talk: non-black edition” piece that was making the rounds a while back. Raymond continues with some questions, then says:

Cognitive dissonance and how people manage it.

Sun, 13 May 2012 11:17:24 -0500

The human brain is a complicated thing, and people have a lot of ego invested in thinking they are smart and correct.

Thanks to the Internet, societal change is faster.

Wed, 09 May 2012 21:04:41 -0500

Back in 2011, Rick Perry was whining about how there is “something wrong in this country when gays can openly serve in the military”. Ten years ago, that might have been a selling point, politically. But then, ten years ago, you didn’t find out, in real time, how people felt about things.

Amazing discovery: Talking to people sometimes helps.

Wed, 02 May 2012 10:49:51 -0500

School experiments with finding out why kids are acting up, discovers that this helps.

No girl believes that she's beautiful...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 02:21:39 -0500

Someone posted a little image meme on Tumblr recently, which was just the oh-so inspiring text:

Sometimes you just gotta eat the losses

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:13:33 -0500

A lot of our problems come from people being obsessively focused, somewhat irrationally, on trying to absolutely eliminate things that they regard as losses. From the DMCA’s “anti-circumvention” rules to the attempts at making SOPA/PIPA (and new attempts to make the same laws again), there is a huge amount of damage being done or attempted in the hopes of completely eradicating copyright infringement.

Legend of Grimrock: Quick review

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 22:48:13 -0500

Haven’t finished the game yet, but having a great time.

The tone argument argument: A straw man in motion

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:18:28 -0500

Someone linked me to a discussion of the tone argument. Here’s the key point:

Stereotypes: Sometimes not purely made up.

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:52:32 -0500

Homophobia stronger in unacknowledged gays.

Dear Mr. Santorum: You are out of order

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 18:29:59 -0500

Someone made a quip that Rick Santorum ought to have to carry his dead campaign to term, but this is of course ridiculous.

Power laws and percentages

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 12:47:35 -0500

So, was thinking more about the Million dollar Murray article. This raises an interesting question.

Followup on homelessness and the like

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 11:01:27 -0500

Million-dollar Murray is a more detailed look at some of the issues to do with homelessness and social services.

Hatred is still scary

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 21:43:57 -0500

So, our friend Rah did something pretty awesome. She made cheap, portable, housing. The summary of the thesis is particularly endearing.

Oh, what a beautiful piece of writing

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 21:08:43 -0500

A Person Paper on the Purity of Language (I’m sure there must be other copies somewhere) is a fascinating read.

We fear change

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 12:58:12 -0500

Okay, so, the greenhouse project has started. So today, there are holes in our back yard.

I am heartless and insensitive, part 5

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:52:10 -0500

I play video games. I play, in fact, roleplaying computer games. When I play MMOs, I tend to play them in-character. But sometimes… the character is, perhaps, not totally serious. So I used to have a character in WoW named Merisioux. And when I stopped playing WoW because of their horrific record of giving no fucks about trans people and queers, I continued playing characters named that in other MMOs.

Mmm, starbucks.

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 22:43:17 -0500

Okay, simple fact: I like frappucino, but it’s overpriced.

Seriously, Microsoft?

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:45:09 -0500

Problem: The “Windows Key” is annoying.

Least evil privacy policy handling ever

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:59:50 -0500

Okay, I am amazed. Seriously.

Wow, Google+. Just wow.

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 19:52:40 -0500

A friend-of-a-friend, who does not use Google*, just got a threatening letter from The Goog telling her that she has four days to change her profile name to something compliant with the Google* name policy or lose access to their other services.

Copyright and piracy

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 12:23:58 -0500

I recently happened to read an old David Pogue column in Scientific American, where he pointed out that modern copy protection schemes are punishingly hard on legitimate users, but have no effect on pirates.

Yay doctors!

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:06:37 -0500

In modern America, it is a career-risking move to come out and say that you refuse to rape your patients. So this doctor said it anonymously.

People, this is... not sane.

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:00:40 -0500

I would hope that when a woman goes in to a physician with a rape issue, that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was this pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage or was it truly caused by a rape.

Turnabout: Still fair play

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:39:06 -0500

Proposed restrictions on Viagra

Balance in journalism

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:16:22 -0500

NPR has some new standards up, which “clarify” the way in which they pursue balance.

Silly Texas

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:26:08 -0500

Possibility that an innocent unborn life with no central nervous system might be ended: It is necessary to legally mandate raping the mother with a device in order to prevent this risk.

Autistic people and phones

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:33:05 -0500

Hi! If you don’t normally follow my blog, someone probably forwarded you this link because you asked an autistic person to call you on the phone, or have some service or interaction for which your only provided contact information is a phone number.

Health care, and why fraud-prevention is suicide for someone else

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 19:45:46 -0500

So, a friend of mine is on government-provided health care. And while it’s great that this exists, I’d like to point out just how horrendously broken the system is.

Important not to be distracted

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:48:25 -0600

It’s important not to let those two particular words Rush Limbaugh used to describe a law student woman distract you from the message. Okay, just ignore those two words. Pretend he didn’t say “slut” or “prostitute”.

Getting git under MinGW

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:34:40 -0600

So, Git for Windows offers a working git under Windows – in a strange variant form of the MinGW environment that lacks all the usual creature comforts.

Followup: Why a vacation might not be relaxing

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:35:19 -0600

It occurs to me that it’s really hard for non-autistic people to understand sometimes why something that sounds relaxing wouldn’t be, as in the example of the family taking their autistic child on a family vacation to a strange place.

Why parenting matters

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 01:07:20 -0600

Having an autistic child wrecks your life, says a writer whose column on the Daily Mail is apparently “no longer accepting comments”.

The reverse-Bechdel test

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:56:24 -0600

The “Bechdel test” is a test which categorizes movies based on a simple criterion: At some point in the movie, is there a conversation between two women which is not about a man?

Quick review: ASUS G53SX

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 02:32:53 -0600

To make a long story short, the price of playing games with my spouse is having a 15" gaming laptop. We picked the ASUS G53SX because I have been pretty happy with my older G73JH.

Cognitive sickle-cell anemia

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:29:57 -0600

Sickle-cell anemia has been a favorite example of biologists for years, because it’s an obviously harmful trait which is strongly selected for by evolutionary pressures. The gimmick is simple; it’s a recessive trait, so you only get the anemia if you have two genes for it. If you only have one gene for it, you’re effectively immune to malaria. In circumstances where lots of people die from malaria, this can be a marvelously useful trait to have – useful enough to make up for losing a few kids to anemia.

Helpy McHelperson: An advice blog

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:07:17 -0600

Helpy McHelperson is my attempt to solve a crucial problem: I do not spend enough of my time giving people Useful Advice.

Rails: How to SANELY connect to an old database

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:48:43 -0600

The world is full of helpful people advising that, to connect a model to another database, you just do:

How to be richer than you've ever been

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:53:11 -0600

Wealth is largely self-norming; while people tend to want more money, past some point (I think currently around $50k/year income in the US) it stops actually showing measurable effects on happiness.

Phishing continues to succeed, banks mystified.

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:17:40 -0600

Here’s why phishing works.

My best sentence ever

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:34:30 -0600

I am concerned. We made a down payment on a lesbian and before it even shipped it got hit by a seagull.

Monkeys and Robots

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:40:39 -0600

I’ve been reading a book on “Scrum” methodology. Interesting stuff, and a lot of it makes sense.

Stealing the declaration of independence

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:58:31 -0600

Tumblr is full of jokes about “steal the declaration of independence”, which are (Jesse informs me) references to a move called National Treasure in which Nicholas Cage intends to do this.

Discrimination, fairness, and making comparisons

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:31:17 -0600

So there’s this guy in Tennessee, part of their legislature. He says stupid stuff, like claiming that it’s virtually impossible to transmit HIV through heterosexual sex (not true).

Canon Vixia HF S30 works fine with Mac

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:54:41 -0600

Attempts to research this failed, so I went to National Camera and checked it out. Yes, the S30 works fine with Mac. The dozens of badly-done fake blogs selling software to allow you to copy the stuff off it are, so far as I can tell, meaningless; it works fine.

Guys, guys. This is stupid.

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:51:09 -0600

So, I wanted to add tumblr to my Android tablet.

Thoughts about tone

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:19:39 -0600

While browsing for something else, I stumbled across a remark by Tyler Cowen observing the benefits of polite discourse. Or at least the disadvantages of rudeness.

Law of unintended consequences

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:05:49 -0600

The community over on tumblr (note: my tumblr blog is even more NSFW than this one) is interesting. See. Jesse and I are, quite obviously and visibly, Very Much In Love. And our mutual friend, Luka, has adopted the role of Jesse’s kismesis, which results in hilarity as Jesse and Luka insult each other loudly and obviously.

People like to be heard

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:24:19 -0600

So, thinking about it.

Google+: Getting there, but not there yet

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:45:35 -0600

Much-lauded announcements that Google+ allows pseudonyms turn out to mean that you can maybe get one through a procedure which doesn’t exist by filling out a nonexistent application.

I have VERY FEELS about language and ethics

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:00:16 -0600

I admit it, I’m pretty much a language snob. Some of this is quasi-intentional; I’ve learned that people who say stuff like “i dont read alot of books lol” are often frustrating for me to deal with. Whatever it is, I just plain filter people who write “poorly”.

Autism and identity

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:58:24 -0600

Tyler Cowen has a really interesting piece with the catchy title An Economic and Rational Choice Approach to the Autism Spectrum and Human Neurodiversity. I found it interesting, anyway.

Rules, boundaries, and autism

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:14:01 -0600

Something that has screwed me up occasionally is that I tend to take people precisely at their word.

Why Luka is awesome

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:09:09 -0600

Some person on the Internet was sad. This happens sometimes. He was so sad that he was thinking of killing himself. This, too, happens sometimes. And you know what else happens sometimes? Assholes happen. They write stuff like:

Why SOPA really is that bad

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:49:28 -0600

Why SOPA really is that bad.

Placebo: A new idea for a restaurant

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:56:00 -0600

There was some research a while back which found a possibly-surprising result. As most people probably suspect, the difference in perceived quality between wines does not really follow price very closely. But! It does follow stated price; if you serve the same wine to a lot of people, and tell some of them it’s $12 for a box and others it’s $400 for a bottle, the latter like it better. Better yet, they’re right – they really do enjoy it more. Thank you, MRI scans and the like.

Oh, apparently, Blizzard still hates gays

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 18:10:32 -0600

Apparently (it says a lot about Blizzard’s continued relevance to my world), back in October, Blizzard aired a long homophobic rant at Blizzcon. (No, it wasn’t bleeped at the actual con. EDIT: Or at least so some bloggers claimed.) Then there was a sort of half-baked apology. Eventually they posted an actual apology.

Autism: What's a "spectrum" anyway?

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:11:34 -0600

People occasionally see autism and Asperger Syndrome and related things referred to as “autism spectrum disorders” (ASD). People who work in the field tend to refer to someone being “on the spectrum”.

Bye, Walgreen's.

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:30:59 -0600

So, Walgreen’s and Express Scripts played chicken this year, and the answer is, we have to move our prescriptions.

Year 17. No end in sight.

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 23:41:15 -0600

Being married: Actually sorta cool.

Nice try, FedEx. Nice try.

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 10:45:27 -0600

Someone sent me something, signature required. Obviously, there’s no hint as to when during the day the package will show up, but usually FedEx is early afternoon here.

Buffer overruns

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 01:11:01 -0600

My spare cognitive capacity for the forseeable future will be on buffer overruns. I just saw a hunk of code which struck me as truly spectacular, in a number of ways, and it occurred to me that there is some kind of fundamental barrier here. I don’t think there’s been any time in the last fifteen years where I could possibly have made that mistake. I’m alert to this in some kind of structural way; that particular subclass of errors just leaps out at me.

numb3rs instant review

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 02:09:47 -0600

He’s an FBI agent. He’s a brilliant mathematician. Together, they fight crime!

Movie Review: Chocolate

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 17:44:14 -0600

Chocolate is a Thai film about an autistic girl. It’s a martial arts movie; the premise is that this particular autistic girl can imitate martial arts moves that she’s seen.

Autism and diagnostics

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 20:29:06 -0600

Apparently I have asthma. No, not adult-onset asthma. The thing where, if I run or breathe cold air, I have horrible coughing fits? Asthma.

Black bars on TV with ATI/AMD video

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 08:36:47 -0600

Okay, this one took me a while to figure out, and it turns out there’s not a solution I can find. (Before you rush to link me to the articles on this: Yes, I know about the overscan setting, I messed with it, it did not do what I need.)

Shoving sexuality down peoples' throats

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:03:06 -0600

There’s a recurring phrase I see in a lot of discussions to do with sexuality. People say things like “I don’t object to gay people, I am just sick of them shoving their sexuality down my throat.” That phrase, or close variants of it, shows up over and over.

That's sorta spooky

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 01:51:57 -0600

Siri is uncannily reluctant to talk about abortion.

Can programming be taught?

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:07:03 -0600

Apparently, many people simply cannot comprehend programming. That is to say, if you look at the people who come into a programming course, and give them a really, really, simple example of what programs look like, some of them Just Don’t Get It. Nearly all of these people fail out, because they never learn to program; they simply can’t get their heads around it.

Free advice: Learn to cook

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 22:03:09 -0600

Many people seem to regard cooking as some kind of strange magical skill that ordinary people cannot have, and restrict themselves to prepared food that only needs to be microwaved or whatever.

It's okay when we say it.

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:16:11 -0600

For years, the general rule that some words are deeply offensive for most people to use, but perfectly okay for members of the group offended to use, bothered me. It still does.

I want my spoons back.

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:07:54 -0600

(Spoons, you ask? Yes, spoons.)

Ahh, stupidity and evil.

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:14:45 -0600

http://boingboing.net/2011/11/11/stop-sopa-save-the-internet.html

True names and aphasia

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:19:10 -0600

A running theme in fantasy literature is True Names – each thing (or at least person) has a true name, and knowing the true name of a thing gives you power over it. But why’s that? Here’s my theory. If you use a normal word for a thing, the word has connotations and shades of meaning that distract you from the thing itself. Thus, the use of carefully-crafted “true names”, words which exist to be directly mapped to the thing itself without connotations, puns, and other distractions.

Razer's gaming stuff: Disappointing support

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:54:02 -0600

Okay, I gotta say. I like the hardware as such. Nice hardware. Good feel on the keyboards.

Therapy doggerel

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:28:19 -0600

With a bit of help from my mom, who spotted a meter error:

The foundational economics problem

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:21:46 -0600

We like to make fun of the music industry for being wedded to a fundamentally broken business model, based on a flawed assumption. But you know what? Our entire modern economy is predicated on a single, key, assumption, which is also false:

Shoplifting 2.0

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 18:21:58 -0600

It has come to my attention that, from time to time, it is important to reevaluate traditional business models and see how they can be improved with our modern and more advanced understanding of economics. With that in mind, I call your attention to a new business model I have developed, an extraordinarily effective means of removing items from retail establishments. It turns everything you thought you knew about shoplifting upside-down, and as such, I think it clearly worthy of the name “Shoplifting 2.0”.

Naproxen sodium is apparently friendship

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:34:27 -0500

… and friendship, as we know, is magic.

I learned a new phrase today.

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:50:20 -0500

Rotator cuff.

Goblins ate us.

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:39:51 -0500

So, I’m autistic. My spouse is autistic. Our housemate is autistic. And this means that sometimes, all three of us are socialed out and cannot handle social interactions. Least of all social interactions with strangers, which are not on a clearly defined schedule.

Priorities and importance

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:30:32 -0500

Places say “your privacy is important to us, please allow ten business days for your opt-out request to be processed.” Lies.

Why permission matters.

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 19:21:45 -0500

A guy I know recently started getting daily emails from eHarmony, a dating site.

Why are poor people so generous?

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:56:12 -0500

My mom once told me something I found fascinating, and at the time inexplicable. When she was a graduate student, she and her friends were, of course, poor. (Graduate students are.) They occasionally went out for dinner, and at the end of the meal, people would toss money in and there would end up being enough to pay for the meal and leave a respectable tip.

Man, that was fun.

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:14:31 -0500

/played
You’ve played 1 Days, 1 Hours, 22 Minutes, 32 Seconds

Learning from other peoples' experiences

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:19:56 -0500

One of the great abilities humans have is to learn from other peoples’ mistakes and experiences. A friend of mine was raised with a pretty strong sense that you should always do this rather than making your own mistakes. I have always had a prejudice towards this, but I have noticed that in fact I benefit a lot from learning from my own mistakes.

Smartphones and servers

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:33:32 -0500

Apple’s new “intelligent agent”, Siri, is taking a page from Wolfram Alpha and trying to answer questions in a funny manner – leading to an amusing blog entitled Shit That Siri Says.

Thanks, dmr

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 12:13:26 -0500

You’ll be missed.

Why Steve Jobs did more for free software than RMS did.

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:00:42 -0500

No one denies that Richard Stallman is a very smart guy. He’s also an asshole. Most recently, he’s been ranting about how glad he is that Steve Jobs is dead. In the past, he’s done classy stuff like tell people to stop wasting time on their kids and work on bug fixes for his software.

This is what I consider fun

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 19:21:12 -0500

Got a bug report. Studied the bug report. In it, apparently, a variable was ceasing to have its former value. Like, someone stored 3.0 in a variable, and a bit later, it was no longer equal to 3.0.

Charity marathons for people who do not actually run

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:18:11 -0500

So, I’ve signed up for one of those charity drive marathon things. The gimmick is, instead of running 26 miles, we’re playing video games for 24 hours.

This is why people never ask me questions

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:18:05 -0500

Discussing a bug report:

Gay rights activists win right to be shot at openly

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:07:57 -0500

I am not sure this was well considered. It is now in some cases legal to tell an openly gay guy to stand somewhere and be shot at, where previously you would have been required to send him somewhere that he wouldn’t be shot at.

You don't look sick

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:52:11 -0500

So, my spouse got diagnosed with autism recently, which explains one of our recurring problems: I’m the only one who can usually handle talking to strangers on the phone.

Great innovations in cat activity: Being chased by the tail

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 10:33:33 -0500

One of the cats we take care of has a problem. There is something that goes wrong with his butt occasionally which requires (trivial) medical intervention. Nothing serious, fairly common in cats, etcetera.

Always, always, always.

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:40:42 -0500

A person I know recently sent an email to me, on another topic. One sentence really stuck out to me:

You may not have heard of it

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 13:24:59 -0500

There is a running joke about hipsters being really proud of how obscure the bands they listen to are. (So well-known that a friend of mine was able to make use of a “hipster vampire” in a story. He was a vampire before it was cool. He’s from Transylvania; you may not have heard of it.)

Taking the "practical" out of "practical joke"

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:15:00 -0500

Okay, so. We coin a bunch of neologisms, and organize a number of writers, artists, singers, and so on, to get these words into widespread use quickly; so widespread that they enter dictionaries.

I have the most awesome knee injury ever

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:49:21 -0500

Something happened (no, I don’t know what) a couple of weeks back as a result of which my left knee was horribly sore for a few days. Then the lingering part: Horrible pain trying to walk up stairs, and this part seemed to be actually getting worse.

Aspie twin powers, ACTIVATE!

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 00:42:42 -0500

Turns out that, yes, Beloved Spouse is autistic. We had been suspicious on and off, but had been thrown because most autistic people do not find other peoples’ emotional states overwhelming… But apparently some do.

It made sense at the time.

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 00:21:41 -0500

Today, I bought a six-pack of fluorescent highlighters.

More random ideas!

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 10:54:37 -0500

So, I got to thinking. How does anyone know that the One Ring can only be destroyed in the fire in which it was forged? And how common is that kind of limitation?

New Japanese restaurant in Northfield

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 18:32:11 -0500

So, the former Wendy’s has reopend as a Japanese restaurant. The Northfield News says the Tokyo Grill is open, and since Jesse’s a fan of Japanese food, we went.

The Gospel according to a little old lady

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:34:30 -0500

A friend of mine, who goes by the nym “borealis” on a few forums, posted a thread entitled My Mother’s Religion on a forum I hang out on. I repost the text here with permission:

Some of my best friends are crazy.

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 22:19:29 -0500

No, I don’t mean eccentric. I don’t mean “differently abled”. No, I mean crazy. This is a distinction I learned about a long time ago, when a nice man in a wheelchair explained it quite succinctly:

Gifted child syndrome

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 22:31:16 -0500

A lot of “gifted” kids end up pretty messed up. There’s a lot of reasons for this, but one of them sorta came into focus for me recently. A friend refers to it as “the entity theory of intelligence”.

DRM sucks. Film at 11.

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 14:36:19 -0500

Apple’s got a new gimmick. They will now “rent” videos as well as “selling” them. If you “rent” a video, you can watch it for about 24 hours. If you “buy” it, you can watch it… for some unspecified period of time until it stops working.

Hasbro is sitting on a gold mine.

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:13:33 -0500

The problem is, when I say “sitting on a gold mine”, I mean “complaining about this chair being uncomfortable”.

Someone stole my spouse's porn.

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:09:03 -0500

Okay, that’s not quite right. I mean, for one thing, when Jesse wrote it, it wasn’t porn, it was character development. Also, it’s not obvious that “stolen” applies correctly to a thing you still have after someone takes it.

C. S. Lewis wrote about Bronies, too.

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:17:48 -0500

Bronies, you say? That would be adult fans of the recent reboot of Hasbro’s My Little Pony toy advertisements, which are cleverly disguised as a TV show.

New result: Futons + Box springs = No.

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 16:27:38 -0500

So, a while back, I had this idea. I had a pretty beat up old futon, and thought maybe I could get a bit more life out of it if I added a bit more springiness to it. Box springs! Those would help, right?

Shopping!

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:05:48 -0500

Went shopping today. Got:

CAR CAR CAR CAR CAR CAR CAR CAR CAR

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:01:32 -0500

So, what with one thing and another, we decided it was about time to consider replacing the 1992 Subaru station wagon that’s been in the family for the last 19 years. (It was originally my dad’s. I think it has belonged to both my mom and stepmom at one time and another, and currently I think it’s legally mine but I honestly don’t even remember.)

Power is hard to get

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:59:23 -0500

Someone on Usenet made a partial list of reasons that various power technologies were unsuitable. I have cleaned it up.

This may be the best of all possible worlds, but not the most awesome.

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 22:37:39 -0500

Our world: A Victorian lady would rarely be seen outdoors without her parasol.

What an exciteable boy

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 19:55:29 -0500

I’m pretty exciteable. I will drop everything because I suddenly realized I could make a hobbit hole in Minecraft. Gone are my rigidly square stone buildings; now I have a wooden doorway in the side of a dirt hill, with a little glowy window a few squares over. It looks lovely. And because this is new to me I got all excited about it. I get excited about everything, though. When my kitty is cute, I’m excited about that. When food is delicious (which it very often is), I’m excited about that. I had to run around telling people when I finally comprehended the relationship between RGB and CMY color spaces.

Problems with PostgreSQL 8, and PHP 5.2, on Mac OS X

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:35:01 -0500

For future reference:

I believe in ESPs

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 14:00:46 -0500

So, there’s a category of business which I am by default not much inclined to like, which is businesses which do pretty much nothing that isn’t focused on sending email. You might call such businesses “spammers”. But there’s a subset of these businesses which, I am now forced to grudgingly admit, reduce the amount of spam I get.

RYGCBM color space.

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:15:22 -0500

Okay, so. Light lets you assemble colors from R/G/B. Ink uses C/M/Y. So, for instance, R+G light = yellow.

Just for my own reference...

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 19:11:26 -0500

Long ago, I got sick of silly backgrounds for WoW characters. I decided to treat it not as a thing I disliked… but as a challenge. Reposted here since I don’t have easy access to it elsewhere.

Why RIFT is not a WoW clone.

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:29:05 -0500

This is partially a response to a forum poster on the RIFT forums asking whether someone could write an explanation of how RIFT is different from WoW without using the word “rifts”. To some extent, I think that’s unfair; after all, the rifts are a significant difference for me. But okay, let’s see.

More thoughts about books: How expectation affects reading

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:02:26 -0500

I have recently been re-reading the Ethshar books, by Lawrence Watt-Evans. I was first introduced to these many many years ago, when someone lent me a copy of The Misenchanted Sword, telling me it was a “very funny” book. I read it, enjoyed it, and kept an eye out for more books by the same author.

I am... not surprised.

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:28:36 -0500

So, a bit of background. A while back, I found a series of books… somewhere. I don’t even remember. It’s a trilogy of books, the first being Starrigger, by John DeChancie. (The other two are Paradox Alley and Red Limit Freeway.)

What to do with your friend, the electrical engineer

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 15:25:49 -0500

A friend of mine is an electrical engineer. An electrical engineer who is… sometimes bored.

Well, it's true.

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:05:03 -0500

“That depends on who is wearing the moose costume and who is determining hilarity levels.”

Push the kitten

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 21:52:25 -0500

For some reason, cats seem to insinuate themselves into the brains of cat people. If I am hearing music, and there is a kitty, I tend to get loose bits of lyrics which have somehow become cat-themed.

Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 18:40:04 -0500

This socket is rated for at most a 60W lightbulb. But wait! What about compact fluorescent lightbulbs, where 60W would be some kind of major flood light, and 26W or so gets you more light than a 100W incandescent?

Ask a smart guy without empathy!

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 18:39:20 -0500

Okay, here’s a little experiment. One of the problems I have is that my default answers to questions are often Unacceptable in ways that I have a hard time understanding. Why? Because I’m not empathic. When people ask me how to fix problems, I tend to give answers that are… well, too correct but not friendly enough.

So you think I'm wrong...?

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 15:49:16 -0500

Okay, this keeps coming up. People think other people are wrong. Then… they do things that cannot possibly help.

Player vs. Player... FOR SCIENCE!

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:09:49 -0500

So. I hate PvP. I hate it because for some reason, for me, being attacked by other players is intrinsically antifun. This is not restricted to video games; I can’t spar, and I can’t play a lot of competitive board games. (I can play games of competing to reach a goal, but not games of preventing other people from reaching a goal. Except Robo Rally which I play as a single-player game of moving across the board so fast that I’m not in contact with other players anyway.)

Good days, bad days

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 22:18:07 -0500

So, I have my good days and my bad days. This is true of both autism issues and ADHD issues… and they are not on the same cycles. This means that the variance between my good days and my bad days is huge. No, huger than that. I run the range from “I can’t feed myself” to “I just put in six hours and did something that was expected to take three to four weeks”.

Autism vs. Poetry

Tue, 31 May 2011 17:50:40 -0500

I am not great with poetry. Some of this, I think, is from people misexplaining it. See, when you use the phrase “the meaning of the poem”, you communicate, to me anyway, that the poem has exactly one meaning. Which you propose to identify and explain.

Setting idea, free to good home

Tue, 31 May 2011 11:18:16 -0500

So, sometimes in fantasy settings, we find the occasional charlatan. Crazy thought; what if everyone were faking it? Okay, now, make it a high fantasy setting. Mighty wizards, priests who impose the will of gods, vampires, werewolves, stuff like that.

Am I people? I tend to think so...

Mon, 30 May 2011 18:40:47 -0500

So, someone wrote recently to thank me for the blog postings, reminding me that I was doing them. My correspondant commented about people seeing the diagnosis, but not seeing that there’s a person in there.

Eating candy. FOR SCIENCE

Sun, 29 May 2011 18:14:08 -0500

Unsorted M&Ms taste the same.

Who does Lady Gaga sound like?

Sat, 28 May 2011 01:06:55 -0500

Everybody.

Hoover support: It sucks. Not in a good way.

Tue, 24 May 2011 12:58:58 -0500

I got a new vacuum cleaner, a Hoover “multi-cyclonic”, model number SH40060.

I sorta wonder whether I could hold down a job...

Sun, 22 May 2011 18:48:17 -0500

Yeah, I know. I have one. It works out, they seem happy, I’m happy.

An open letter to my psychologist of Way Back When

Sat, 21 May 2011 10:06:54 -0500

Hello, David. Long time no see. I got to thinking about our conversations some years ago, and something’s bugging me.

But what if wire mother let you stay up an hour later?

Wed, 18 May 2011 15:38:05 -0500

There was some fairly famous (and extremely disturbing) research on non-human primate babies raised by various substitutes for a mother, such as a wire frame shapped roughly like a monkey, one covered with cheap fake fur, and so on.

You can play WoW in any MMO.

Sat, 07 May 2011 14:15:12 -0500

There’s an old saying among programmers: You can write FORTRAN in any language. What this means is that, while many languages allow you to write much clearer and more expressive code than is typically produced in FORTRAN, none of them force code to be better. Even the ones that claim they do. It just can’t happen. You can’t make a bad writer good.

A month or so in: Why I still love RIFT (and Trion)

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 02:25:19 -0500

So, this weekend, RIFT had a “world event”. A huge in-game event that affected the entire in-game world. Lots of stuff happened. And… Some of it went pretty badly. The event design called for people to participate in a specific short time window, as a result of which thousands of players couldn’t log in, because the servers were full. Lots of complaints.

Coolest dice EVER.

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 19:31:13 -0500

Okay, this is gonna be a thing that will sound incoherent to gamers, but:

Car vs. Dog, round 2: FIGHT!

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:24:34 -0600

On the way up to an erranding in the cities, I noticed a dog standing by the side of the road at the mouth of a driveway. I slowed down. Good thing, because the dog did EXACTLY what you or I would do upon noticing that something >20 times our size was bearing down on a location about ten feet away from us – run in front of it. Stupid dog.

RIFT beta: A more in-depth review

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:46:34 -0600

Since a lot of people I know play MMOs or other games, I figure there may be some general interest. RIFT is in beta right now. Well, that’s a marketing gimmick. It’s really essentially in a sort of showing-off/demo mode which is more like an initial release than like a traditional “beta”, but the point is it’s not officially for sale yet, but people can play it.

I think the need for an Internet "kill switch" is now clear

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 17:59:38 -0600

Thanks to recent events in Egypt, I think it’s now clear why the American government desperately needs an Internet “kill switch” available.

Initial impressions of RIFT

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 12:03:25 -0600

I play MMOs sometimes. I’ve been playing City of Heroes lately, and it’s lovely, but I sometimes want Internet Dragons. But, since Activision turned Blizzard evil, World of Warcraft hasn’t really been a viable option for me.

According to the giant donut, I have a knee!

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:13:38 -0600

So my knee’s been hurting lately, and the doctor suggested an MRI. This is awesome fun. HUUUUGE donut full of machinery. Makes loud noises. They provide headphones, which have poor fidelity because they’re driven by a hose with air in it; they couldn’t have actual magnetic drivers near the MRI machine. Note for the curious: You know how they used to have something scary and dangerous called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, which was very scary, but now they have something harmless and safe called Magnetic Resonance Imaging? Same thing. The “nuclear” there just refers to the nucleus of an atom, which is boring and safe, and NMR/MRI is unrelated to fission and fusion.

To be, or not to be...

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 15:55:55 -0600

I’ve sort of come to terms with the fact that my language is changing. And I’ve found a way of thinking about this that makes me a lot happier about it. Instead of viewing every deviation from the usage rules I learned as an “error”, I consider them as proposed updates in a new version of the language.

This just in: "flaunt" is not fancy-talk for "have".

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 15:58:45 -0600

Someone recently reported that the iPhone 5 would be “flaunting” a Cortex A8 processor. As a guy who works on embedded toolchains, I actually know roughly what that means. I could even speculate as to its implications…

Barclay/Juniper charges interest on fees, or do they?

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 14:44:17 -0600

My credit card statement on my Barclaycard (aka Juniper VISA) account showed up with an unexplained $2.00 charge. Why $2.00? Because that’s the minimum amount of interest they can charge. What were they charging interest on? $0.46. But my statement showed the whole balance as being paid. When I asked a rep about this, he said that they charge interest on foreign transaction fees starting immediately, like cash advances. Now, foreign transaction fees are already sorta sleazy, but that quickly migrates into “ridiculous”. I asked them to cancel the account, whereupon I was transferred to a specialist who looked into it and informed me that no, they don’t charge interest on these fees, it was purely a banking error.

Stupidest liar ever

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:50:32 -0600

Okay, this is a thing of beauty. So, there’s this long ongoing thread on a forum I hang out on, on the topic of whether or not a wind-powered vehicle can move directly downwind faster than the wind. Answer: Yes, surprising though it may seem.

"Eliminationist" -- what a lovely word

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:41:43 -0600

I was discussing the recent shootings with my mom, and pointed out that I can’t help but feel that the widespread use of crosshair graphics and “take to the streets” type language might be a contributor to such things. She pointed out that this rhetoric is not particularly exclusive to the right wing. That’s true, both “sides” in US politics have tended to it of late. She also gave me a word for it; “eliminationist rhetoric”.

ADHD: More on exactly what's going on.

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 22:34:10 -0600

My mom wrote about recent research on ADHD. This is of interest to me in part because I was the one who pointed her at the articles. But it’s also of interest to me because it’s such a very good description of what goes wrong with my brain. It also, I think, explains why fidgets work so well for helping me focus; if I’m fidgeting, the default mode network can busy itself fidgeting while I go pay attention to something else.

The Skeptic's Skeptic's Skeptic

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:56:53 -0600

I’m sad to write this, because I (used to?) think quite highly of Michael Shermer. His column in Scientific American about skepticism has often really appealed.

Numerical literacy: It happens to other people.

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 13:02:52 -0600

This article about Zimbabwe’s old currency contains a thing of beauty:

Happy Anniversary!

Sun, 26 Dec 2010 10:24:47 -0600

Traditional form:

HAH AHAH AHAHAH AHAH NOW I HAVE A PRESENT

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 20:32:17 -0600

So, one of the problems I face, pretty much every year, is that I have no clue how to shop for Jesse. Jesse strikes me as basically self-contained and correct to begin with. Also, if I know Jesse wants something, I generally get it… Meaning that come late December, I’m stumped.

My first app, now available!

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 16:59:33 -0600

SeebsFrac is now available in the iTunes app store. This is an early version, and there will be, I expect, fixes and updates. There’s stuff that doesn’t work the way I want it to, there’s features I want to add, and so on. For more information, you could see the SeebsFrac support page.

Yay thumpy music!

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 12:15:13 -0600

One of the forums I’m on has a Secret Santa thing every year, and my secret santa sent me a bunch of thumpy music.

I finally fixed honey roasted peanuts!

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 19:26:26 -0600

I almost-like honey roasted peanuts. I like honey, I like peanuts, they ought to go together, but there’s always been Something Missing. Never could figure out what.

Christmas Music: What you need to know to understand it.

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 02:09:51 -0600

At a gas station the other day I heard a version of “Jingle Bells” which left me wondering whether meth is really illegal everywhere, or just everywhere but where they record Christmas music. I recently heard some horrible carol carefully redone to the tune of Ruby Tuesday, followed not half an hour later by something that had the same melody and arrangement as She’s So Heavy.

Holiday season retail secrets

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 00:46:47 -0600

I see no reason why WikiLeaks should have a monopoly on revealing carefully-guarded secrets. What I’m about to reveal to you are secrets more closely guarded than the formula for Coca Cola. Most people would not believe these things even if you told them. They are outlandish, they are implausible, and most people would never imagine them. And yet, I tell you: They are true.

Making the impractical practical

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:06:02 -0600

There was some cyberpunk novel I read some years back involving a character who had the phrase “poor impulse control” tattooed on his forehead, as a warning to people who encountered him. This strikes me as a great idea, but there would be serious problems with trying to impose such a thing as a penalty through the court system.

The better mousetrap

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 11:43:58 -0600

They say if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.

More thoughts about autism...

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 14:17:09 -0600

My friend Dave commented on my post about autism, using his own blog… madness!

Domino's Pizza: How to screw up an online ordering process

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:05:15 -0600

Okay, so, I like pizza. I order pizza. A while back, for some reason, it came to pass that I tried Domino’s pizza. The pizza was good, but what really struck me was the ordering process. They’d done a wonderful job.

Identity and attributes

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 15:33:11 -0600

In many fields of discussion, you eventually run into the fundamental question: How do you distinguish between identity and attributes? This might seem a bit abstract, so lemme give a few examples.

Sorry, puppy.

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 20:01:48 -0600

I hit a dog with a car today. Understand, this was not exactly a planned action. I was driving out to pick up some dinner, some time after dark, and as I was driving along Woodley (between Linden and Division), SUDDENLY DOG. I slowed down quite a bit, there was a sort of thump, and there was a dog running away off to the left of my car. I have no idea how hard the dog got hit, or whether it was seriously injured, or just bruised, or what. I didn’t go check; on my list of clever actions, you will not find “chasing an unfamiliar dog, possibly injured, across other peoples’ lawns”.

This is so weird... Autism group hates autistic people?

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 18:57:15 -0600

So, there’s this “advocacy” group, called Autism Speaks. They are… weird.

NetProspex: Verified spam.

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:52:43 -0600

I recently got spammed by some entity called NetProspex, which claims to have “verified” lists of various business people. They had one of my email addresses associated with my name, and were informing me that from time to time companies using their service would be contacting me with information they thought would be of interest to my business.

Clueless spell checker leaves me joyless, pointless rant ensues.

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:49:21 -0600

I am listless without Shinies, but they cost money; since I am at some risk of being penniless, and thence homeless, if I get every pointless Shiny Thing I encounter, I have imposed limits on the limitless and constrained myself to getting New Shinies only when I have found boundless income, such as an extra writing project. In fact, doubtless related to this, I recently sold some peerless writing. While there is some doubt as to whether it is the Perfect Shiny, I have nevertheless acquired an iPad.

Why health care is an outlier

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:23:06 -0600

I’m a pretty consistent sort, usually. I am a big fan of market economies as a way to allocate resources. They work. They work for all sorts of things, from steak dinners to cars, from telephones to glassware.

Accountability, empathy, and liability

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 16:59:13 -0500

Something has sort of clicked recently, between a couple of different things I’ve read.

Wow, lawnmowers got better.

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 18:23:30 -0500

For a variety of reasons (mostly having to do with gullible roommates), I haven’t actually mowed a lawn with a lawnmower in probably twenty years or thereabouts. But we got a lawnmower when we moved here; we had the clever idea of going to Sears in September to buy one, when they’d be on clearance. So we got one of the “nice” ones. Not a riding mower or anything, but it has features.

World of Warcraft and City of Heroes: Some comparisons

Sat, 09 Oct 2010 16:42:08 -0500

One of the frustrating things for me about looking for a new MMO when Blizzard turned evil was trying to find information about them which actually communicated anything to me. For lack of a better resolution, I’m writing up a brief comparison of City of Heroes and World of Warcraft, in the hopes that it might be useful to people who are trying to pick one.

T-mobile's G2: Android done precisely, totally, wrong.

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 12:42:49 -0500

Okay, don’t get me wrong. The fundamental hardware feature set of the phone? Great.

Mmm shiny

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 01:04:40 -0500

It’s finally happened.

We are living in the future.

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:48:56 -0500

A lot of the things people said we “would” be able to do are now pretty commonplace. One of my phones (the G2) has an app called “tricorder” that can measure gravity (well, acceleration – good luck telling those apart), magnetism, some kinds of EM spectrum, and can do real-time spectrum analysis of audio. It could probably do real-time spectrum analysis of the camera input, too, but they happen not to have written that yet. You can take a picture of an object and have a decent chance of the software figuring out what it is and telling you where you can buy one. If you can get a barcode, you’re set – it can get exactly that item for you.

A human body? We shall do SCIENCE to it!

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 20:54:46 -0500

So, Jesse had an appointment with a rehab therapist today.

Initial impressions of the Android G2, plus comparison with iPhone

Sun, 03 Oct 2010 17:19:40 -0500

Well, it’d been a while since I last got a phone, and I was due for an upgrade. And Microsoft seems pretty firmly committed to destroying the old Sidekick line. Worse, my Sidekick has a habit of stuttering when trying to send touch tone signals during a call, making online systems a nightmare to navigate. So I popped over to Radio Shack and got a G2.

Watching old movies is weird.

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 15:52:02 -0500

So, a while back, we saw a handful of old James Bond movies on sale for $5 each, and picked them up. They’re from the Roger Moore era. In the process of watching these, I’ve learned many things. For instance, I learned that in canon, James Bond was married. I didn’t realize this. I have to say, it’s not one of the things that would most come to mind if you were to think about his most noticeable character traits.

... WTF? "Diet" food is actually tasty?

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 21:47:14 -0500

So, one of my friends has been eating a bunch of food from the “diet” section of the grocery store, not out of a desire to lose weight, but just because it’s apparently tasty.

This is getting ridiculous.

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:37:02 -0500

So, I’ve been doing some cleaning, and I’ve consolidated some stuff, and moved some stuff around.

... But I wanna go to FROGGIES!

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:34:00 -0500

So, one of my favorite places to eat is Froggy Bottoms. Well, was. First, look at their web site, especially the picture showing their patio, above the river.

More thoughts about learning (computer) languages...

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:51:57 -0500

I’ve picked up a fair number of programming languages. In recent years, though, I’ve noticed something: They’re getting easier. Now, before you jump out and say “of course, language design has improved”, I’m not talking about improvements in language design; I’m talking about a shift in what my brain does when confronted with a new thing which looks sort of like a programming language.

ADHD in a nutshell

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:48:52 -0500

Realized I was hungry, went down to the kitchen to cook.

Prescriptive and descriptive language, and what it means...

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:39:13 -0500

There’s two basic schools of thought about grammar and language usage, although very few people adhere rigorously to either.

I think I'm turning into a grumpy old man

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 23:19:43 -0500

I’ve noticed something. I am a lot faster to plonk people than I used to be. (For those who aren’t old Usenet sorts: *plonk* is the sound made when someone is dropped into a killfile.) I used to be pretty much inclined to plonk people only for being outright spammers or way, way, over-the-top hostile. Now, I plonk people for annoying me. And it’s a lot easier to annoy me than it used to be.

Initial thoughts on Python

Sat, 18 Sep 2010 17:43:58 -0500

Well, for one reason and another, I have to learn Python. Like many people, I started out disliking the whitespace sensitivity. I’ve already been pretty badly burned by it at least once – to be fair, that’s partially because my editor likes to use tabs.

It just occurred to me...

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 21:00:34 -0500

Hypothesis:

My cat. Is afraid. Of the dark.

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:16:29 -0500

So, I have a really snuggly kitty, but for reasons heretofore unknown, she is almost never a kitty who cuddles up to me while I sleep. But she does sometimes. Especially when I’m napping.

An open letter to Blizzard

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:29:16 -0500

Yeah, still thinking about this. Decided that, just because I liked the company so much for so long, I ought to give them a summary which isn’t bounded by what you can post on the forums or surrounded by trash-talking teenagers. This is a copy (edited for blog) of something I sent to their PR department, after customer support told me those were the right people to send it to.

I love inventing FTL drives.

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:27:29 -0500

So, one of the recurring needs for science fiction stories is some way to travel faster than light, without which interstellar travel is impossible, and this tends to gravely undermine many awesome story ideas.

More thoughts about Real ID

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:29:23 -0500

A while back, I quit World of Warcraft over Real ID. A few days after this, Blizzard announced that they were not, at least for the moment, going to go ahead with the announced plan to move all their forums over to posting exclusively under peoples’ “real names” (by which they mean “the name registered to the account, whether or not it is your legal name”).

How to use OS X Server's built-in spamd

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:02:01 -0500

So, I’m now using OS X Server for a machine which does some email processing, but for Various Diverse Reasons, it is beneficial to me to be able to use the spamc client directly, which means I need to have spamd running. Luckily, someone else cleverly already solved this problem, producing a launchd .plist file for spamd.

Bye, Newegg. We liked you when you were still good.

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:48:47 -0500

So, Newegg started sending spam.

How to respond to software "piracy"

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:55:14 -0500

A software developer sent an unusual copyright-related demand to The Pirate Bay – he feels that the attempted crack of his shareware application was of poor quality and ultimately mockable.

Hearing music is so very, very, weird.

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:38:52 -0500

So, they’re still messing around with ADHD drugs and dosage. Currently, the experiment is bupropion (aka wellbutrin and about 6 other brand names), which tends to increase availability of dopamine and norepinephrine.

Might have to start doing this again...

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 16:40:16 -0500

So, I recently read an interesting book (Pragmatic Thinking & Learning), and it’s gotten me to thinking about the whole blog thing. I have a hard time remembering to do things that don’t call themselves to my attention, but I really enjoy the sort of thinking-out-loud that a blog provides, so I think I’m going to start trying to remember to post more often, possibly even setting up reminders so that this happens automatically.

So long, and thanks for all the fishing dailies...

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:16:57 -0500

A few years back, I decided that I wanted to try one of these Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs). After some poking around, and research, I settled on World of Warcraft. My reasons at the time were simple; Blizzard had a stellar track record of doing their best to make every game solid, well-considered, well-planned, and so on.

Hey, Google: Being evil is not just doing evil

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:16:18 -0600

Google’s corporate motto is, officially, “don’t be evil”.

The No Asshole Rule

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:45:02 -0600

I recently picked up a copy of Robert Sutton’s book The No Asshole Rule.

Las Vegas: Initial impressions

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:20:50 -0600

This place is crazy.

The Asparagus Letter

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:45:00 -0600

This is a bit of family history, uncovered while sorting through boxes of paperwork.

Doing something about hoarding

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:11:09 -0600

Okay, so, one of the problems I have is that with all this stuff, I can’t find stuff, so I can’t even tell if I already have something.

Confessions of a hoarder

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 01:53:30 -0600

So, it turns out, I’m a hoarder.

Why Sony's losing to Nintendo, revisited

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:14:29 -0600

So, I used to hang around on a video game forum devoted to the PS3. It was… interesting. Imagine a room full of people all of whom were 100% convinced that the PS3 would outsell both of its competitors, put together, and would sell more units faster than the PS2, leading to massive and total domination of the console market.

But plumbers are EXPENSIVE.

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:10:42 -0500

Observation: There seems to be a bit of a leak in the downstairs bathroom sink. Turning off the shutoff valves to it stops the leak.

Facebook: Congregational, not parochial

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:54:41 -0500

Got sucked into facebook by some friends. Fascinating toy; I can have lists of people I know from all over and watch updates about their lives, see news things they think are interesting to share, and so on.

Thoughts on "neurotypicality"

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:05:32 -0500

The term “neurotypical” as a catch-all for non-autistic people really bugs me. It bugs me because it’s patently untrue; someone with severe bipolar disorder is not neurologically typical.

Disabling Emulate3Buttons on Ubuntu

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:35:29 -0600

Okay, this might be just a bit specialized, but it took me long enough to figure out.

Portable shell scripting: Review up on Slashdot!

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:15:55 -0600

Beginning Portable Shell Scripting got a review on Slashdot. In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that the author of the review, Joe MacDonald, is one of my coworkers.

Rep. Bill Young, of Florida: Constitution was a bad idea.

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:12:54 -0600

Read the story.

Learning Rails, Round 2: Well, that was easy.

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:24:44 -0600

My ideal situation, given that I already know Apache, would be to have Rails work within an Apache server, because then I’d be using an existing server I understand instead of trying to learn and debug a new web server AND a new toolkit, but the pages I found were full of stuff about setting up FastCGI and embedding stuff in it, and so on… So, I finally had this idea: I’d try IRC. Because the IRC channel folks, while they may be rude sometimes, are at the very least current.

Rails, round 1: Initial setup

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:06:01 -0600

The initial setup is mostly easy.

A newbie's view of Ruby on Rails

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:17:18 -0600

I’m doing a project, and I think I’m going to try to do it in Rails.

Writing good change log messages

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 03:53:22 -0600

Ever wonder what that idiot was thinking when he checked in a change that completely broke a piece of software, typically right before a deadline? Ever wonder if anyone’s thinking that about you?

Circuit City liquidating...

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:07:47 -0600

Well, it’s not every day you hear about 30,000 people losing their jobs all at once.

Trivia point about external RAID on OS X.

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:25:43 -0600

This may be of more interest to Mac sysadmins than to the rest of my readers, but it was really, really, really interesting to me, in that kind of “OMG did we just lose everything” way that software so often is.

Read these books.

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:04:04 -0600

Here’s two books that you should read, even though you may have never heard of them.

Thoughts on ADHD, half a year in

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:32:26 -0600

A little bit over half a year ago, I started treatment for ADHD. Medication is amazing, but it doesn’t fix everything (and no one, I think, really expects that it does). So a bit of an update may be in order.

What's this, a new blog?

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 12:46:01 -0600

To make a long story short, I’ve long sort of hated Movable Type. This isn’t all their fault; I figured it would be fine to just use the file-based database scheme, and maybe it’d work well normally for a small, low-traffic blog…

More on the GameStop thing

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:38:02 -0600

This is a followup to GameStop doesn’t like my email address.

GameStop: We don't like your email address

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:56:39 -0600

So, a while back, I placed a pre-order at Gamestop for the Wrath of the Lich King Collector’s Edition.

WoW, zombie armies, and me.

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 02:17:07 -0500

World of Warcraft remains one of my favorite leisure-time activities. This evening, I decided to go hang out with some friends online, and play World of Warcraft.

Er, maybe this is dumb, but...

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:08:29 -0500

So, our government is arguing about how to spend hundreds of billions of dollars “rescuing” our financial system. In a great hurry.

Spore reviews: Not fake

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:22:34 -0500

As of this writing, Will Wright’s latest game, Spore, has about 1700 reviews on Amazon. 1600 of them are one-star reviews, mostly citing the horrible “DRM” system in use. Many critics allege that these are unreasonable reviews, and do not accurately reflect anything. These reviews are not fake, inaccurate, or unfair. Sony’s “SecuROM” copy protection is an absolute disaster.

Apache on OS X: Case sensitivity

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:49:46 -0500

Many Apache users use .htaccess files to control access to files. Of course, sometimes only some files are password protected:

Humanscale Freedom: Dumb name, decent chair

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:39:04 -0500

Like a lot of geeks, I spend a lot of time in a chair. Like too many geeks, I pick up office chairs at an office store, sit in them a lot until they break, and then go get another one.

I'm not dead, really.

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:02:26 -0500

It’s been a while. :)

A farewell to clowns.

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:55:27 -0500

About a week ago, I learned something really interesting. I learned that I have clowns, and that these clowns are treatable.

Microsoft Word for Mac: STAY AWAY.

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 21:41:32 -0500

So, I have to do some writing sometimes which involves things like, say, a standardized template form provided as a Microsoft Word document.

TaxAct users: BEWARE! Personal data leak.

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:37:46 -0500

I just got spam to the unique tagged address I gave to the TaxAct people a while back when I bought their tax software. (Not this year, either.)

New rebate lawsuit! MSI Computer tries to rip me off.

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:23:28 -0500

So, following up on the success of my lawsuit against Soyo Group for failing to pay a $20 rebate, I’m suing MSI Computer… for failing to pay a $20 rebate. They did, finally, respond with some kind of explanation of why they haven’t paid it – they claim an error in the submission. Can I correct it? No, the submission period is over.

I've got a bike, I can't ride it if I like

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:34:10 -0500

So, when I lived in the cities, my bikes got stolen. I mean, all of them. I’ve never been able to keep a bike over a year or two. Some less than that. Now that I’ve moved back to a town where I grew up with the knowledge that the car keys were kept in the ignition so you could find them, I figured it was about time to go get a bike. I had some store credit at REI (gotta love coops) so I figured I’d get a bike.

Happy Birthday!

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:14:18 -0500

A bit over month ago, I got interested in various demonstrations pertaining to the “Church” of Scientology. The February 10th demonstrations had at least 7,500 members around the world, at dozens of locations. There were apparently about three arrests – of Scientologists who attacked the peaceful demonstrators. There doesn’t seem to have been a single violent or illegal act by any protestor.

Rah walked the dog and the dog won.

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 23:52:37 -0600

So, once a few months back, we were coming home, and we saw one of our roommates. She was walking the dog. (Our other roommate got a dog.)

Today, I am FAMOUS!

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:10:51 -0600

I made it into the media. Twice!

Scientology's amazing tax break

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:21:53 -0600

Go to the search engine of your choice, and enter these keywords:

An open letter to the Scientologists

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:08:41 -0600

There was a really compelling Scientologist at one of the protests over the weekend, who was asking a really hard question: Do we want her to just walk away from the religion she’s practiced for twenty years because some guy who can’t even get his facts straight says it’s bad?

CoS protest report

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:29:42 -0600

So, I went to a protest today against the Church of Scientology. I’ve already written about the reasons. Here’s some impressions from the event:

Fair Game

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 20:59:04 -0600

Once, long ago, the Church of Scientology had a policy, called the “Fair Game” policy. This policy said that “enemies” of the church could be “SP Order. Fair game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.”

Dr. Bronner is dead, but has been reincarnated as a PS3 fan.

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:09:24 -0600

This is absolutely amazing. There’s a guy on a PS3 fan site who is… Well.

The Cat In The Hat

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:27:47 -0600

Molly, it turns out, was indeed not yet spayed. She is now. However, she is the sort of cat who nibbles at stitches, and she now has a nasty-looking incision that went a little septic, but looks to be improving with treatment.

Instant Review: No More Heroes

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:22:57 -0600

So, I figured I’d pick up the game most unlike Endless Ocean.

Endless Ocean: Is this even a game?

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:57:29 -0600

I’m not exactly flush with cash these days, but the new Wii title Endless Ocean just came out, it’s only $30 (most Wii games are $40-50, and many other games are $60 at release), and I had a Best Buy discount card.

The cat is dead. Long live the cat!

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:09:44 -0600

In 1990, or maybe 1991, we got a kitten. He was small and grey; my parents wanted to name him Shadowfax, but I insisted that Greystoke would be a better name. It stuck okay. He turned into an unusually large black and white tuxedo cat, and for the last seventeen years or so, was one of the most fascinating animals I have ever encountered. He was exceptionally tame; not servile, like a dog, but he acted as though he sort of understood that we were the ones making things go. He trusted humans, and put up with a great deal of stuff. He earned his own parody of a verse from Particle Man:

Running suexec on OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 11:39:33 -0600

As posted on macosxhints last time around, OS X ships with Apache configured so that it would use suexec if suexec were installed, which it isn’t.

Ian Renert wants me to take down some "defamatory" pages.

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:37:30 -0500

So, I used to run an ISP, and I still let a couple of the former “customers” keep files on my machine.

Trendnet refuses valid rebate... Not this again!

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 17:06:57 -0500

So, a while back, I wanted an 8-port gigabit switch, so I got a TrendNet which was $30 – $59.99, with a $30 mail-in rebate.

Point and click adventures are back!

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:22:47 -0500

I admit it: I’ve been a sucker for point-and-click adventure games for years. From Loom to Monkey Island, from Myst to the recent Sam & Max, I’ve played a huge number of these, and liked many of them. Some suck. Some are pretty good except for one bit or another – which sucks.

Okay, this is ridiculous.

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:44:58 -0500

Hard drive capacities, as just about everyone knows, are given in base-10 gigabytes: 1,000,000,000 bytes. So, a 500GB drive is 500,000,000,000 bytes. Operating systems tend to use base-2 gigabytes, which are (1024*1024*1024) bytes – about 7% larger.

I am the king of all packrats.

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 23:17:01 -0500

So, I’ve been going through my old computer stuff. (Suffice it to say that the pile’s noticably bigger than it was last time.)

New house!

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 17:03:26 -0500

We bought a house! We are moving to Northfield, MN, a small town where they have an annual celebration of the last recorded homicide, a tad over a hundred years ago.

King of the hill

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 18:49:28 -0500

I’m donating my old computer stuff that I never use to Computer Heaven, a local computer-recycling place.

Support the troops!

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 01:01:33 -0500

So, I’ve been talking of late to a friend who is in the military, and talking about things like Afghanistan (did you know that the US is involved in military action over there?) and Iraq (you probably heard about that one).

Very Silly Party

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 17:28:42 -0500

I get comment spammers. Mostly I just nuke them. This one was spamming some site, but the name was great. This was the spammer’s “user name”:

I think it's plagiarism, but I'm not sure.

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 12:36:13 -0500

So, the New Yorker’s article on spam may contain plagiarism. What’s weird about this is that the source (Spamhaus) has blanket permission to quote them with attribution, but that the quoted material, rather than being attributed, is very slightly modified.

Woah.

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 21:31:43 -0500

Local bridge collapses, during rush hour. I don’t yet know of anyone I know who was there at the time, but it’s still pretty scary.

Lolcat an sich!

Thu, 31 May 2007 00:29:26 -0500

Okay, so, lolcode is an attempt to build a programming language from lolcat captions. (One can only assume that this suggests a return to the older term for them: “cat macros”.)

It's funny, but is it a cat macro?

Sun, 27 May 2007 04:02:41 -0500

What I wish Weiss Kreuz had been

Sat, 19 May 2007 02:35:22 -0500

So, I was watching an anime called Weiss Kreuz, aka Knight Hunters. (Yes, I know that Weiss Kreuz is bad German for something that is not “knight hunters”. They have a hospital named “Magic Bus”, I don’t think there’s any kind of intent of coherence in the use of non-Japanese languages.)

Bye-bye, Mr. Falwell

Tue, 15 May 2007 17:03:45 -0500

You know, I don’t think anyone would call me a fan of the late Jerry Falwell. Whether it was blaming gays and abortionists for 9/11, or suggesting that we should “blow them away in the name of the Lord”, Falwell had an astounding talent for offending people, and in many cases, their offense was justified.

Amüsing ways to poke fun.

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 05:00:35 -0500

The folks at ChristianForums have now enacted a de facto policy that any reference to uberchristians (note: no umlaut) is obviously somehow “spam”. Whether or not there’s a link, whatever; it’s always spam.

ChristianForums: Hey, edit this.

Sun, 29 Apr 2007 22:32:18 -0500

So, in response to the new policy allowing only clinic-bombers to have ribbons, a few things happened. (Note: I have used slight hyperbole. In fact, everyone who identifies as “pro-life” can have ribbons. No one else can.)

Those annoying car stickers

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 17:07:41 -0500

So, every so often, someone plasters my car with little stickers advertising some kind of “earn $$$” thing. “If you have an extra 8-12 hours per week and desire to earn an extra $8000-1,000 a month”.

Why didn't they make us sing this in school?

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:55:07 -0500

The Fúfumal is an epic tale of magic and heroes.

Instant review: Ruby

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 14:05:25 -0500

I like to learn new programming languages from time to time. Some, I like better than others; I put in a few years on the ISO C committee (and I’d still be there if I had funding). Others, I don’t like so much; my first gut response to PHP was “I think this language may be uglier than perl”, and the impression has stuck with me.

ChristianForums: AM I NOT MERCIFUL?

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 09:36:40 -0500

There’s been some discussion at CF. Any time someone’s signature or avatar or other “bling” mentioned pro-choice positions, drama ensued, so a policy was reached where only pro-life things could be said, but drama ensued, so the policy was that no one could put comments like this in signatures or avatars; you can talk about these things in posts in certain forums, but not in others, and the ruling was that putting such things in signatures was “discussing” them in other forums. This has been changed! Read on.

Fanboyism

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 16:46:17 -0500

Engadget has a poll up, for “best console of 2006”. I first saw this through a link on a Playstation fan forum, where someone had cheerfully commented that “second place isn’t bad, with all the negative press”. Now, consider that, of the other three contenders, one is the Nintendo DS, which was released before 2006, and one is the “GP2X MK2”, a specialized hobbyist console. Obviously, the third is the Wii. The numbers were pretty solid last I checked; the Wii was at 63% of the vote, and the PS3 at 24%. Second place is, in this case, quite bad.

Integris Mortgage followup

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 22:27:20 -0500

Integris Mortgage finally got around to hiring lawyers. I suspect they’re paying a lot of money, because these guys sure love to write stuff.

Yet another Christian message board

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 02:56:41 -0500

One of the frustrations of online communities is that it’s hard to make a good one. I last ran a BBS back in the early 90s; it was called “Schrodinger’s Cathouse”, and many people assumed my last name was Schrodinger.

The man knew how to throw a party.

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:09:36 -0500

I went to a funeral today.

Why I'm getting sorta sick of Sam Harris

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:34:32 -0500

There’s this guy, Sam Harris, who has made quite a name for himself in the evangelistic atheist community. I first became aware of him through some ads he took out on the Internet Infidels discussion site. They had the text “The End of Faith” superimposed on a mushroom cloud.

UPS gets innovative with the concept of "history"

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:10:23 -0600

So, I ordered a thing. And, because it is a thing I need for work, I paid extra money for “next-day delivery”. It was shipped yesterday.

Google Checkout sees poor customer satisfaction: Duh.

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 19:01:55 -0600

Google Checkout Sees Poor Customer Satisfaction, says Slashdot.

William Carlos Williams is laughing in his grave

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 12:51:28 -0600

From http://punkassblog.com/2007/01/18/this-is-just-to-say/:

Why Nintendo seems to be winning

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:11:10 -0600

I’ve been hanging out on a PS3 board (because I’m doing paying work on the PS3 right now), and I’ve noticed something. Many of the PS3 fans are absolutely confident that the Wii will “get boring” once people are “used to the controls”. They’re seeing it entirely in terms of novelty value; that the controls are attractive only because they are unfamiliar.

Amiga RDB disk partition unpacking utility

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 14:19:06 -0600

I'm too lazy to publish this properly or clean it up.

Dove foundation astroturf!

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 21:35:13 -0600

So, a while back, I wrote about the lying telemarketers at the Dove Foundation. According to some of the comments, people who have talked to them have found out that, in fact, the alleged operator is just a set of recordings being played back in vague relation to what you say.

Debunking... chocolate?

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 10:14:26 -0600

This is one of the finest pieces of investigative reporting I’ve ever read:

Why gamblers lose money.

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 02:41:10 -0600

I found a card in the park. On one side was a detailed (and possibly even correct) chart of when to make which bets in a blackjack game to maximize your chance of winning.

PS3: First impressions

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 04:38:19 -0600

I have a PS3 now. It’s for work.

Today's cool idea

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 22:01:53 -0600

I think there should be plastic bags using a plastic which dissolves in contact with saliva, but not in contact with water.

ChristianForums: Defining marriage, part 2

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 01:42:01 -0600

So, to follow up from part 1, I’ll resume the story later in 2006, some time after the rules were revised to eliminate any reference to the definition of marriage.

Drive carefully out there!

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 08:28:35 -0600

Yesterday, I saw a traffic accident. I stopped for a light. Around when the light turned, a car in the left turn lane going the other way finally made her turn.

Frys still going...

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 17:04:01 -0600

Just for reference, the Frys spam run to old addresses is still going; I just got my fourth. So far, I have gotten no response from them, despite sending all the requested emails, jumping through hoops, and so on… And yes, I’m still getting mail from them.

ChristianForums: Defining marriage, part 1

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 12:01:59 -0600

This one’s long enough to need to be a series.

Allied Telesyn followup

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 11:38:46 -0600

This is just a followup to my article about the Allied Telesyn junk fax class action.

Allied Telesyn done!

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 19:22:10 -0600

So, way back when, I mentioned my junk fax suit against Allied Telesyn. The eventual settlement, signed in August 2005, was confidential until the settlement checks were mailed. They’ve been mailed.

Spammed by Frys

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 18:41:51 -0600

So, Frys Electronics seems to have bought the ancient “Cyberian Outpost” web store.

Wii!

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 01:19:52 -0600

I have had one of those experiences which is really interesting to have. Once.

ChristianForums: Bradfordgate

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 04:16:43 -0600

Ahh, Bradfordgate. The high point was when one of the ChristianForums staff confessed to killing and eating another (then-former) staffer.

ChristianForums: Confidentiality

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 01:04:49 -0600

There’s a lot of talk about confidentiality and secrecy, not to mention privacy.

ChristianForums: Socks and the appearance of evil

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 23:02:27 -0600

One of the quirks of CF is that, for as long as I can find records of, official policy has always been that moderators are strongly encouraged to have a separate account, not identified as theirs, which they use to debate.

ChristianForums: Secret origin story!

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 04:42:59 -0600

It’s funny, but in a way, the origin story of CF is secret.

ChristianForums: One Bread, One Body

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 18:01:34 -0600

One of the interesting things that ChristianForums had was a dedicated subforum for Catholics. Some forums exclude Catholics, claiming they are not Christians at all. CF actively included them. The subforum was called “One Bread, One Body”, and is one of the higher-traffic areas of CF, simply because there are so very many Catholics.

ChristianForums: Kicking the snot out of the Mormons

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 14:09:34 -0600

Once upon a time, very early on, one of the proto-boards which eventually merged to become ChristianForums as it’s known today used the Apostle’s Creed as its standard of “who is a Christian here”. By the time I reached the site, it was using the longer Nicene Creed. A brief experiment in 2003 allowed members to use either, but a “problem” was found: Mormons accept the Apostle’s Creed, but almost none of them can agree to the Nicene Creed.

ChristianForums: Moderators and the rules

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 04:10:44 -0600

One of the standing policies of CF for a long time has been that moderators are not exactly subject to the rules. In principle, moderators are expected to follow the rules. In practice, it is not always the case that they do.

ChristianForums: Interactions with Elsewhere

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 18:41:22 -0600

Many years ago, one of the CF regulars, who had gotten the feeling he wasn’t very welcome, started a thread over on Internet Infidels, called “CF Outcasts”. This thread grew, and more threads followed. Originally they were in the “Miscellaneous Discussions” forum, but when a forum reorganization moved that into the “no-preaching” part of the site, the threads were moved into IIDB’s catch-all “~~Elsewhere~~” forum.

ChristianForums: Trolls and spammers

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 14:48:56 -0600

It’s not all bad. ChristianForums staff do some really good work. In particular, let’s talk about trolls and spammers.

ChristianForums: Moderation and politics

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 03:52:10 -0600

This is gonna be a partial story, because there’s a lot more to the story, but much of it is covered by various confidentiality agreements.

ChristianForums: Gnosticism in action

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 17:59:41 -0600

ChristianForums is essentially gnostic.

ChristianForums: Helping people break the rules

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 17:41:10 -0600

So, sometimes, staff don’t really want to take a personal hand in things, but they want to break the rules. One user at CF, who posted under the name “Sharp” (he’s currently banned, it appears), used to get a lot of complaints about his posts being flames. He called people names, and asserted that they were not true Christians when they didn’t agree with him.

ChristianForums: ShannonKish gets banned, and unbanned

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 23:58:28 -0600

CF’s elaborate and complicated warning system was, in late 2004, rather a mess. The idea was that, if possible, staff should merely talk to you about things. If you kept pushing it, you would get an unofficial warning; unless you had received an unofficial warning (or, possibly, an unofficial warning for violating that same rule), you were not supposed to get an official warning. Only official warnings led to bans.

ChristianForums: Offending the little ones

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 21:08:05 -0600

One of the quirks of CF is that it has always been dominated by people who feel the need to draw firm lines and boundaries to exclude the people who aren’t quite right. It’s generally phrased in terms of protecting people from bad doctrine.

ChristianForums: Stray bullet, round 1

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 18:37:34 -0600

Okay, so, in a previous episode, I mentioned how Stray Bullet got suspended from CF for claiming to be Christian.

ChristianForums: The fortress mentality

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 17:08:04 -0600

A major shift in CF occurred in 2003-2004. Staff began to adopt a fortress mentality, in which they viewed themselves as being under constant attack from all sorts of sources. One of the funniest examples of this was masks.

ChristianForums: Technical enforcement rears its ugly head

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 13:16:18 -0600

So, the time has come to examine what I think is probably the real beginning of the end in many ways. Technical enforcement.

ChristianForums case studdy: Gunny, trolling, and funding.

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 05:00:45 -0600

Okay, time for another case study. Gunny. Gunny went by various names; Gunny, gunnysgt, GySgt, and others. (He changed his name away from GySgt after someone thought it meant Gay Sargeant.)

ChristianForums case study: Annabel Lee

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 03:13:07 -0600

I’m going to use an example here, but I have to give you a caveat first: One of the CF staff, some time after this, came out and gave a real apology for it. In a very real sense, this offense has been addressed.

ChristianForums, 2002-2003

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 00:37:37 -0600

It’s funny to imagine that this was the good old days. (And given how far back it is, and that no one realized back then how crucial it was to save everything in case it got deleted, I may have some subtle errors. Feel free to submit corrections, ideally with documentation. Alleged corrections submitted without supporting evidence will be remarked on, but not necessarily accepted as truth.) Throughout this article, there’s some references to “Erwin” – that’s Erwin Loh, founder of “Loh Enterprises”, which is the company that actually owns CF legally. Erwin is an Australian member of a Willow Creek church. His management of CF is often influenced by his lack of involvement with a lot of American politics.

The saga of ChristianForums

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 21:37:45 -0600

So, ChristianForums. It’s this site I spent a lot of time at for a bit over four and a half years.

Virtue is its own reward, but this is just awesome

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 05:27:29 -0600

When I was a kid, when I was really sick, there was no help for it but to pick up a 4-pack of “Jamaican Olde Tyme” ginger beer. Good ginger beer is something special; it’s sweet, but also genuinely spicy – spicy enough that you find yourself wanting a cold drink to wash it down with, sometimes. Unfortunately, so far as I can tell, the product is long gone.

Windows, again.

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 05:27:40 -0500

So, Fireball’s computer is acting up. Can’t play videos. Research reveals that it can maybe play them with acceleration turned off, which leads to the discovery that the BIOS is not assigning an interrupt to the video card.

NetBSD on an Intel-based Mac mini

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 03:19:42 -0500

Quick summary: NetBSD-current loads and runs beautifully on the Intel-based Mac mini.

Integris Mortgage: Dumb and arrogant

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 12:36:09 -0500

This looks like it’s gonna be a fun one. Will we get the madness and intensity of another Source Lending? The incoherence and babbling lunacy of Complex Capital? Only time will tell.

Junk faxes and "the little guy"

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 05:32:05 -0500

I just created a separate category for fax-related (and spam-related) articles in my blog. It’s been over three years now since I first sued a junk faxer.

Satcom: We make up for incompetence with rudeness!

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 16:27:59 -0500

Okay, so, I did, sort of, get the call back from SatCom.

Routing calls at its finest

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 14:15:10 -0500

So, we got some junk mail, which was interesting only in that, while it was addressed to my company, it was also addressed to our health benefits manager. By name.

UPS, Round 3: They paid up!

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 21:38:00 -0500

Okay, so, here’s the story. Two months ago (on July 12th), a computer I shipped via UPS showed up damaged. We filed a claim. I received a check on September 12th for an amount close enough that I don’t know exactly what they were paying, but they clearly paid the claim in a reasonably fair manner. (I honestly don’t know how the number was arrived at, but I think they reimbursed some portion of the shipping costs. Or the insurance. Or something.)

We miss you, August Moon

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 01:51:43 -0500

Back before Big Bowl popularized the notion of pick-and-mix stirfry, August Moon was letting you pick your protein to go with any of their stir-fry sauces. They were a local place which reviewers described as “fusion”, with such fascinating concepts as “Scandinasian Stirfry”. They had an astonishing variety of interesting foods, and combinations of foods. We went there to celebrate when Spider bought his house. We went there when people visited from out of town, or for any other occasion we could think of. It was at August Moon that a waitress identified a particular piece on the stereo as Herbie Hancock, leading me to expand my musical horizons quite a bit. They had local art on the walls, and lava lamps on the tables.

The spousal book is now available

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 14:50:49 -0500

Wow. I mean, in theory, we knew this would happen, but it’s still sort of weird. But, apparently, The God Eaters is now available for sale. That’s the Powell’s link. According to Bookfinder4u, it’s available all over. Note that there’s two different ISBN numbers for this book; one starts with “978” and ends with “3”, the other omits the “978” and ends with “0”. (That is to say, the last digit is a check digit; casting out nines will explain how it works.)

UPS: We only pay for parts

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 14:01:43 -0500

This may be of some interest to folks who are inclined to ship things that have actual value.

Smashing! Hand!! With hammer!!!

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 22:01:53 -0500

One of my favorite cartoons, Bob the Angry Flower, turned out a bit of political commentary:

Windows Genuine Advantage and the Blue Screen of Death

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 03:52:36 -0500

If you aren’t a techie, it may not be immediately obvious how incredibly incompetent the people who maintain Windows are.

Gevalia: Spamming scum

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:29:51 -0500

So, Kraft’s subsidiary, Gevalia, are spammers. Boy, are they spammers. They’ve been actively spamming the whole internet for years.

Baen Books made my day.

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:28:52 -0500

So, I finished reading some books I had lying around. And I realized that I wanted sequels.

Junk faxes: Back to the grind

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 13:41:48 -0500

Well, it’s been a while, and I had to replace my scanner…

New scanner = love

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:32:02 -0500

So, I get a lot of junk faxes, and I sue a lot of junk faxers. I’ve been planning to get organized, and one of the things I need is scans of all the faxes.

University of Phoenix: We don't know where we got your address

Wed, 26 Jul 2006 09:35:26 -0500

On June 27th, I got spam from University of Phoenix. It was addressed to “Dear Dawn”, but used my regular email address. A couple of emails and contact-us forms later, no luck.

Bob Jones and the memory hole

Sat, 22 Jul 2006 09:56:58 -0500

One of the key components of Christian teaching is metanoia, or repentance. That means admitting your faults, because if you won’t admit them, you can’t really correct them. Even if you change your behavior, if you can’t admit it was wrong, you’re not changing yourself, you’re just bowing to superior firepower.

Reflections on trusting TRUSTe

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 02:35:29 -0500

So, there’s this thing, called TRUSTe. They “certify” privacy. What’s that mean? Well, it means about the same thing for privacy that a diploma mill does for education. It’s not that a TRUSTe logo tells you nothing; it’s that it is a good indication that you are dealing with someone who could not otherwise hope to convince anyone that they would be safe.

How I stopped liking the Red Cross

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 13:58:34 -0500

Okay, so a while back, Studio Whipping Boy did a charity drive. We picked the American Red Cross, because hey, everyone knows they’re legit, right?

Suncoast: Shut up and eat your spam.

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:02:54 -0500

I’ll say what can be said in their defense: It wasn’t technically illegal.

(214) 279-0990

Fri, 12 May 2006 09:47:30 -0500

So, here’s the thing. You can spoof caller ID. There are several ways to spoof it, but all of them depend on the cooperation, at some level, of the phone company.

MoveOn's "email tax" meme considered harmful.

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 19:54:00 -0500

One sees, occasionally, reproductions of a heartfelt, probably sincere, dire warning about the coming Email Tax, in which AOL will soon destroy all good and innocent people by forcing them to pay email. It’s censorship, of course, because it’s backed by secret cabals of Republicans wearing special tinfoil hats which let them know when to falsely report the mail as spam.

The statute of limitations.

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 16:10:12 -0500

Sex allegations oust Gloucester Catholic teacher, read the headlines, and her heart skipped a beat. Had he finally been busted?

Ready-made child-sized coffins.

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 01:12:24 -0500

That’s the Problem of Evil, right there, in a nutshell: Child-sized coffins are ready-made. They don’t need to be specially commissioned.

Woo! I'm high-functioning!

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 09:25:50 -0500

So, a friend of mine recently put up some self-scoring Asperger’s tests, implemented based on some tests he foeund as PDF documents.

No! The one where I try to pick him up and there's blood.

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 23:39:49 -0500

My younger nephew, Gabriel, died last night.

Small developers with really good games

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 07:42:28 -0600

It turns out that the budget doesn’t make the game.

USAA: Willful harassment and lies

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 09:17:13 -0600

One of my friends has the tragic misfortune to have a credit card with “USAA”, who are a business. Probably; there’s some debate about their legal status.

The Dove Foundation: Lying telemarketers

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 20:23:24 -0600

So, we got a phone call from some lying telemarketer scum. They asked to speak to “the lady of the house”. (We don’t have one.) I told them not to call. A while later, they called again. We told them not to call.

AMD processor goes belly-up zeroing memory

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 17:53:11 -0600

My friend Dan found this:

Today's funny spam

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 21:44:04 -0600

Got this today, found it amusing:

Please phish our customers, 'k? thx! lol

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 14:43:19 -0600

Citibank sent me something.

Making sense of Fred Phelps

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 18:42:02 -0600

Everyone uses Fred Phelps as an example of conservative Christian bigotry and hatred. I even used to; he’s certainly walked the walk for many years.

Yay! Free of Sprint's clutches at last!

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 13:09:47 -0600

Okay, so, long ago (1997, in fact), I decided that it was about time for me to consider a cell phone. I ended up going with Sprint PCS, one of the early competitors in the then-new digital phone market.

You win.

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 01:23:10 -0600

Until such time as the comment spammers give up, or comment-spam-prevention improves, there are no comments on my blog.

Source finished!

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 01:39:08 -0600

I sorta spaced off mentioning this. See, every time I come to my blog, it’s buried in unapproved comments, 99.5% of which are spam. I’m lucky to get one comment per two hundred which isn’t spam. Spam has random plausible names on it, and comment bodies like “Pending Very interesting site, beautiful design, thank.” (attributed to “Nelly”). I have to skim it and delete it ALL to find the one comment from an actual person.

How to do backlash like an adult

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 09:09:53 -0600

So, as you’ve doubtless already heard, there’s been some anger about cartoons allegedly offensive to Muslims, and a large Iranian newspaper decided that the best way to get back at the Danes for not having clear policies against offending people was to, get this, have a contest for Holocaust cartoons. Because, you know, Denmark is almost entirely Jewish, or something.

I love Linux, but I hate it.

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 01:51:46 -0600

This’ll sound strange coming from someone making a living using and writing about Linux, but it’s damn hard to take it seriously sometimes.

Domestic Discipline: Abuse by any other name

Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:29:31 -0600

Someone started a thread on a “lifestyle” called Domestic Discipline. This is the term used for it by some Christian groups, although similar practices are found in some Muslim communities.

In All Things, Love

Sat, 10 Dec 2005 00:20:51 -0600

So, I started hanging around at another Christian BBS. It’s called In All Things, Love, and it is a site run by Christian principles, not just a site run by Christians. No doctrinal purity test for membership. No 12-page rules documents. Just people who have agreed to be nice and treat each other decently.

Okay, this is just pathetic.

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 10:41:04 -0600

So, a friend of mine does fanart. (And before you ask, yes, most anime/manga publishers actively encourage fanart.)

Bertrand Russell 3

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 01:59:30 -0600

Well, it’s time once again for a Bertrand Russell party.

Wow.

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 13:48:39 -0600

We have a kitten, around 10 months, running around the house. He’s energetic and bouncy, and loves to playfight; my hands are normally covered with tiny little scratches. Nothing serious, mind you.

Ways to eke more money out of ex-customers.

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:11:45 -0600

So, I run an ISP as a hobby. And for that, we have various services; T1 lines, things like that.

Never mind the numbers, I don't get what the damage is.

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:17:13 -0600

I recently had the opportunity, no, the privilege, to watch a court proceeding that I think would have been improved only by a car from which an unreasonably large number of clowns climbed during the course of the event.

Fundies Said the Darndest Things

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:09:52 -0600

A friend of mine, Allan (a.k.a. WinAce), just died of complications from cystic fibrosis. He was perhaps best known for his very funny web page, Fundies Say the Darndest Things. Where others might have preferred to take things out of context to make them look bad, Allan went out of his way to provide links so people could evaluate the context. He removed quotes when people were offended or hurt. In this, as in most things he did, he showed compassion and grace along with his inimitable sense of humor.

Fiddlefuckin'

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 21:01:34 -0600

We learned a new word today. The word is fiddlefuckin’, and it refers to the process of refusing to waste time trying to help someone fix the glaring errors in his stipulation to dismiss a baseless lawsuit. As you may recall, Source Lending sued my lawyer to attempt to create conflict of interest. They now want to dismiss the case, perhaps after the hilarity of the judge’s inimitable “I don’t understand your theory of damages, Mr. Mahoney”. (Apologies if the quote isn’t exactly right; the transcript isn’t done yet.) But they want to dismiss… And can’t be bothered to write a stipulation to dismiss that does not contain flagrant errors.

McLeod USA's vaguely threatening customer retention

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 13:15:33 -0500

So, we have a T1, through a local company called McLeod USA. We got involved with them many years ago, when they were related in some way to a smaller local competitor, and when Qwest was at their worst.

That Cenk Uygur thing

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 06:44:46 -0500

So, lots of people have pointed me at If you’re a Christian, Muslim, or Jew - You Are Wrong.

Copy protection: Dismally ineffectual

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 22:46:46 -0500

The yutzes who tried to sue some kid for mentioning the existence of the shift key are still collecting money for their snake oil. The latest Black Rebel Motorcycle Club album is protected (hah!) by SunComm’s stuff.

Just to put things in perspective...

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 23:49:24 -0500

Two steps forward, one step back.

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 20:42:47 -0500

Okay, so, I reorganized my office. (I’m still working on it, some, every day.)

Why a Greyhound bus is acceptable blues transportation

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 22:56:37 -0500

As you may be aware, a Greyhound bus may be acceptable blues transportation.

Reorganizing my office

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 02:28:31 -0500

Okay, so, I just spent, get this, roughly a whole week cleaning my office.

StarOffice 8 on NetBSD

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 19:43:25 -0500

Yes, you can run Linux StarOffice 8 on NetBSD-current. (Tested only using the SuSE 9.1 emulation stuff.) These instructions are from memory.

The more we owe you, the more you owe us

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 18:33:42 -0500

Forgot to mention this gem in Source Lending’s lawsuit against my lawyer.

Dice again: Are they just trying to be stupid?

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 02:13:56 -0500

Followup to this previous entry:

Source Lending sues my lawyer!

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 22:24:01 -0500

Okay, I admit, at first I didn’t really think this happened. I mean, hey. Once or twice, Steve’s called up with some silly or hilarious story. Like the time he said that a defendant, get this, wanted me to provide blanket indemnity against all future liability. Oh, wait. That actually happened too. Same folks, even.

So, about this whole "pro-life" thing.

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 23:53:36 -0500

I’ve heard it said that “pro-life” tends to pretty much cover people only before they’re born or once they’re actually dying. I’m not that cynical, although I’ve seen it in action. But I’d like to explore this thought a bit.

Why I will not apply for a job through Dice.com.

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 02:51:26 -0500

I saw this on Slashdot:

Soyo issues "rebate"... Or do they?

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 00:20:10 -0500

This is a followup to an earlier article, about my Soyo rebate lawsuit.

A printer worth -$150.00

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 22:41:10 -0500

I have a sudden need for a faster computer. One of the winners in the AoI benchmarks was a surprisingly cheap eMachines system. Its successor is available at Best Buy.

Soyo rebate lawsuit: I win.

Sat, 01 Oct 2005 01:37:27 -0500

On August 1st, 2004, I bought a Soyo product with a $20 mail-in rebate.

Better compression, and MORE OF IT!

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 02:24:55 -0500

Well, this is a followup to Compressing the bible from yesterday.

Compressing the Bible

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 02:57:22 -0500

This might be sort of a religious topic in some ways, but really it’s pure geek stuff.

What. The. Fuck.

Sun, 04 Sep 2005 03:47:56 -0500

http://www.christianforums.com/t2050810-understanding-new-orleans.html

Pwnz3d, beeyotch

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 19:30:21 -0500

Well, well, well. Let’s just cut to the chase; Defendant’s motion to dismiss is DENIED. (Emphasis in original.)

Too busy!

Mon, 11 Jul 2005 15:15:34 -0500

You may wonder why I never write. The answer is that I’m in the phase every book I’ve ever seen goes through, where the deadline is already gone, and all available cycles must go into producing improved text and dealing with review comments.

Intentional incompatibility?

Sun, 19 Jun 2005 00:39:45 -0500

One of the most incredibly standardized things in the history of computing is the Plain Old Serial Port. These little buggers haven’t changed detectably since 1990 or earlier.

Factory-preloaded keylogging?

Thu, 16 Jun 2005 18:15:40 -0500

http://www.chromance.de/wtf/lol.htm

Source Lending gets wacky.

Fri, 03 Jun 2005 21:42:01 -0500

I sued Source Lending corporation some time ago for junk faxes; the case has been pled as a class, on behalf of all the people who received junk faxes from source lending. They have been playing games, ignoring phone calls, and making ludicrous demands (they wanted me to indemnify them against all possible future junk fax cases at one point!) for quite some time; it’s been almost two years since they decided to completely blow off a scheduled deposition, and to this day, we have received no substantive answers to most of our discovery requests.

Advertising as assault

Fri, 27 May 2005 17:18:18 -0500

Advertising is an assault. Don’t let the hyperbole put you off. This is a well-considered piece on the essential hostility of modern advertisements.

Apple loses and wins, yet again.

Fri, 27 May 2005 16:28:32 -0500

So, about two years ago, I bought a G4 mac. And it was a demo model, or possibly a return, so I bought AppleCare for it. There was some trouble; they had the machine marked as sold in August of 2002, not March of 2003. But I sent the receipt in, and they said it was covered.

Why I'm still using Macs, even though I don't always like them.

Sat, 21 May 2005 01:44:23 -0500

I’m doing more Apple-related work these days, so I decided it was time to go ahead and get a G5. I got the second-cheapest G5 Mac they sell, the dual 2.0Ghz. (Dual-processor is a big win.)

At least they're honest.

Fri, 20 May 2005 16:46:00 -0500

I have a credit card through US Bank. They recently announced that payments over the phone will be subject to a $10 fee. They used to be free if you did them automatically, and only cost money if you needed to talk to a person.

Sometimes I don't know what to make of these.

Thu, 19 May 2005 16:23:01 -0500

So, I got a call, from “David Collins” (305-971-4149).

Con!

Thu, 12 May 2005 05:22:38 -0500

Now, I get to drive to Chicago, for Anime Central. I enjoy anime conventions, but acen has a special place in my heart – it was my first con. It’s also, so far, one of the best-run. The Artist’s Alley director is active and competent; these are both rare traits in an Artist’s Alley director. We’re looking forward to it.

Open letter to the Illinois Department of Transportation

Sun, 08 May 2005 02:17:59 -0500

Illinois Department of Transportation
2300 S. Dirksen Pkwy.
Springfield, IL 62764

Measure once, cut once, paint it over.

Fri, 06 May 2005 18:36:20 -0500

My house has been home to a variety of do-it-yourself people. There’s a light in the basement which can be disabled by unscrewing either of two fuses. We don’t know exactly why. The blinds on one of the windows upstairs are spray-painted – strings and all. The house is full of patchwork corrections on top of originally ill-considered things. We’ve found grounded outlets where the ground wire just ran a couple of inches into a pipe to run into… Well, nothing. The lamp over the upstairs kitchen sink has a pair of wires (of the same color!) coming out of the wall to it, and then has a ground wire running around inside it, not connected to anything.

Judgment!

Thu, 05 May 2005 19:57:07 -0500

Most of my junk fax cases have settled. Once, we actually got summary judgment on liability (but not on damages) before settling. But we have a new example. Complex Capital Mortgage bounced a settlement check. (With the amount of money involved, I think this is technically even a criminal act.) We went to court to ask for enforcement, and… Well, it was funny. To make a long story short, CCM was ordered to pay up within a week, or at least to make sure their bank account could provide the money.

Time to migrate away from Sprint

Mon, 02 May 2005 15:47:06 -0500

Well, Sprint’s finally managed to get me to rethink keeping my four cell phone plans (I share minutes with friends and family) with them; not only did they not shift their “insurance” thing to the expensive phone when I asked them to, not only will they not insure it for any reason now… they won’t even credit my account for the charges for the “insurance” on a really cheap phone I didn’t need insured at all.

... and two charges of "impersonating a legitimate business"

Mon, 02 May 2005 10:55:35 -0500

Lots of carpet cleaners use prerecorded calls. Well, at least one does; they might just be very busy. Every so often my phone rings, bearing only a prerecorded message from some guy named Mike, who wants me to know about carpet-cleaning specials. Last two times, he’s told me that “Electronic Coupon Code B1” qualifies me for special pricing. Caller ID is blocked. The only way to talk to them is leave a message for a callback.

Apple's "sales event" - WTF?

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 17:50:41 -0500

So, MacOS X 10.4 is out. Sort of. Apple has been playing up for ages that the release would be Friday, April 29th.

Gotcha!

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 11:12:03 -0500

A journalist commented on my third AltiVec article, saying that, for instance:

Sore Loser II

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 22:02:42 -0600

Okay, this is funny.

Marriage Ministry: The drinking game.

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 22:04:00 -0600

There’s a forum at Christian Forums called “Marriage Ministry”. The advice given ranges from brilliant analysis of the needs and beliefs of those involved, to painfully inappropriate pat answers, to platitudes that may or may not even suggest a potential relevance to a poster’s question.

Why DeviantART is a joke.

Fri, 11 Mar 2005 19:13:49 -0600

deviantART admins demand people stop talking about art theft – note that the page has several screens worth of solid evidence of willful art theft, which is apparently too abstract for the dA admins to comprehend.

What a maroon.

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 20:35:17 -0600

Ike Njaka, the guy who runs Complex Capital Mortgage, agreed to a settlement in mid-January. In late January, I signed the settlement agreement. In late February, he sent his lawyer a check that was about $100 too small. We got a settlement agreement from him, dated March 2nd. I do wonder whether Complex Capital sent any faxes between January 25th and March 2nd. Today, we got a check signed by him, not passed through his lawyer’s trust account. This check was rejected by the bank due to insufficient funds.

Instant review: Salad at Wendy's.

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 08:53:14 -0600

Wendy’s will now allow you to substitute salad for fries in combo meals. This is a very good thing. The salad isn’t excellent, but it’s not bad. The ceasar dressing is mediocre… But once again, not bad. If you want a ceasar dressing with some kick, go to a real restaurant. If you want something a whole lot tastier than fries with your meal, though, get the salad.

Allied Telesyn almost settled.

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 17:11:12 -0600

Argh! This is the junk fax case I rarely talk about. It’s mostly-nearly settled, but they want terms to be confidential until after they’ve mailed checks, because there would be fewer claims that way. They have done the whole nine yards with silly and/or false defenses, and I’m not inclined to be cooperative. Furthermore, how am I supposed to keep this information secret from journalists when I’ve been discussing the negotiations with my mom all along?

Room for one more.

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 10:57:28 -0600

Quakers tend to sit in circles quietly for worship. This involves putting out chairs. Attendance varies; we’ve had anywhere from 3 to 14 people at Wednesday night meetings. There’s generally about 10 chairs. Sometimes, that’s not enough, so we go get extra chairs, to make room.

Twenty two days.

Wed, 02 Mar 2005 05:45:57 -0600

So, my spouse and I are both inclined to collect music, and I keep all my music on the computer as MP3s. To be fair, we have about five downloaded songs in the collection; stuff that isn’t in print, like Skeewiff’s techno remix of Man Of Constant Sorrow. And, like most people, we have an album or two we don’t own, such as a copy of the musical By Jeeves, which I have never seen for sale in the US.

Ethical money laundering

Tue, 01 Mar 2005 12:00:16 -0600

The idea of money laundering is to take money that is in some way dirty and make it clean. For instance, a business could take in a lot of cash, some of it stolen, but as long as that’s normal for that business, it’s hard to prove anything.

Looks to be hard to settle this after all.

Mon, 28 Feb 2005 11:32:50 -0600

Ace Mortgage wanted to settle, but they don’t get it. They are trying to talk about settlement, but they want confidentiality and a time limit on the no-faxing rule. Hah. I don’t think they get it. The reason I settle fax cases for money is that people who send junk faxes generally don’t get ethics; all they hear is indistinct buzzing noises. This means they have to pay money, or they won’t believe it’s real. They also need an agreement not to fax, or they will anyway.

Datahand first impressions

Sat, 26 Feb 2005 03:09:54 -0600

This is a cool gizmo. It isn’t perfect, but it’s quite nice. I’m using it in Dvorak mode.

On second thought, maybe a little less unity.

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 03:53:13 -0600

In a post titled A call for unity, I put forward what was, ostensibly, a call to unite behind the current American President. Several people have expressed concerns about the wording. Let me help explain.

DataHand keyboards... Mmm, keyboards.

Thu, 24 Feb 2005 01:21:54 -0600

Okay, I admit to being a little biased towards Kinesis Ergonomic keyboards… But it’s hard not to be sorta tempted by the DataHand keyboard, which is honestly one of the coolest-looking keyboards I’ve ever seen.

A call for unity

Sun, 20 Feb 2005 23:45:51 -0600

America has historically been a great country, a bastion of freedom, and I think it’s clear that we need to take action to regain our rightful place in the world. America is under attack; the enemies of the state are a clear and present danger to us. We need to do something about terrorists. We need to reclaim what is historically ours.

Moneydance is still the best.

Fri, 18 Feb 2005 03:56:32 -0600

A while back, I wrote about switching to Moneydance. Moneydance is a shareware home finance program.

Even funnier art theft.

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 18:48:25 -0600

This isn’t, technically, theft. No, I’m sure it’s all very carefully considered, and legal.

Art Theft Is Funny

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 00:28:46 -0600

I stumbled across this livejournal entry recently:

McDonalds' nutrition charts: Obviously faked numbers

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 01:43:47 -0600

This caught my eye, while I was at McDonalds’ today. These numbers were found originally printed on the back of a placemat. The same numbers were provided by a little brochure called “A Full Serving of Nutrition Facts”, and match the information I found on the McDonald’s web page, at http://www.mcdonalds.com/app_controller.nutrition.index1.html.

Distinguishing between vanity publishers and real publishers.

Thu, 10 Feb 2005 19:19:17 -0600

Real publishers put a lot of money into editing and printing a book in the hopes that it will sell well. They gamble. They have a lot of interest in checking work for quality.

Understanding the difference between grape sodas.

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 21:05:46 -0600

So, I like grape soda sometimes. I had a 12-pack of Welch's "sparkling grape soda", and I liked it. And the next time I was out, there was no Welch's grape soda, but there was Fanta grape soda. I figured they would be interchangeable. I was wrong.

Buoy

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 01:09:00 -0600

If you program in Java, take a look at Buoy. It’s a public domain interface toolkit that makes Swing look pathetic, ill-considered, and bloated. I mean, not that this is hard… But Buoy is nice.

The famous metanoia rant

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 00:16:55 -0600

To make a long story short, there was a funny mini-flamewar about Metanoia, and I decided to play around with the style of ranting by “defending” the comic. So I wrote this. This is not merely a bad defense. This is an awful defense. It is a parody of every bad defense ever written for poor fiction.

What a strange settlement agreement.

Mon, 24 Jan 2005 23:40:57 -0600

So, I have this settlement agreement. With Complex Capital Mortgage, junk faxers extraordinaire.

Why am I even here?

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:57:07 -0600

This is another post originally from ChristianForums, reproduced here so I don’t have to search for it so often. It was originally in the Apologetics forum.

Hanoi Coding

Thu, 13 Jan 2005 02:07:40 -0600

There's a game, called Towers of Hanoi. The basic idea is that you have a bunch of disks of varying thickness, and with holes in the middle, and you start with them stacked on a central pole, and you move them to another pole. You can only move one disk at a time, and you must never place a disk on a smaller disk. There are three pegs.

The true spirit of Christmas

Sat, 25 Dec 2004 23:23:56 -0600

So, we had a real lesson today in the real meaning of Christmas.

Woo! Bertrand Russell party time!

Fri, 24 Dec 2004 12:48:44 -0600

Just a reminder, for folks in or about Minnesota: Open party, here, starting around 1PM, running until whenever. For folks who need a place to go, just people who wanna hang out, whatever. Some food provided. Social stuff. No Christmas carols etc., but probably some mulled cider. More explanation of the Bertrand Russell party was given in an older entry.

Nostalgia, and what made video games fun.

Mon, 20 Dec 2004 15:12:52 -0600

So, I used to have a game console; the Intellivision. It was a great toy.

Predatory lending: if you thought your life was bad...

Sat, 18 Dec 2004 22:49:26 -0600

edit, 3/4/05: I am updating this piece to make sure everything is correct. more information once I’m done.

Court TV: Dishonest, hypocritical, spammers.

Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:04:26 -0600

So, here’s the idea. You have a really sucky TV channel, called Court TV (or perhaps they’d rather we spelled it CourtTV). Here’s the idea. Rather than market honestly, they have shills post spam. Lots of spam. They register for a dozen message boards and post identical messages to all of them, asking questions and linking to the coverage on Court TV’s page. They don’t admit that it’s an ad, or that they’re posting the same thing everywhere; they pretend to be members of the community, hoping that no one will notice right away that, say, the user “matt81” has never posted anything but links to Court TV.

Junk faxers demonstrate their fine grasp of the law.

Thu, 16 Dec 2004 19:46:07 -0600

Gather round, readers, and I will tell you the story of a junk faxer, demonstrating once and for all the fine grasp of legal subtleties one learns to expect. I believe these people may actually be the dumbest junk faxers I have ever sued.

On running a Christian forum.

Sun, 12 Dec 2004 04:42:35 -0600

Someone asked, after being told that there were too many pharisees at CF, where the pharisees were. This is the response that happened. I’m not sure how much of this had much to do with me… Ironically, when I posted a copy of this at the forum in question, it was trashed quickly, by someone carefully citing several rules which it may or may not have technically broken.

Spurious collect call charges - a new scam? "OANWEB.COM"

Sat, 11 Dec 2004 05:40:46 -0600

So, I got a call billed to my account “on behalf of Nationwide Connections, Inc.”. Listing the phone number 1-800-944-9646, and the web page www.oanweb.com. They claim that we got a 4-minute collect call, on November 7th, at 11:08 AM. We didn’t; our caller ID log shows no calls at all on November 7th, not even “OUT OF AREA”.

Commercemass

Tue, 30 Nov 2004 03:55:14 -0600

A friend of mine posted an interesting comment or three about Commercemass, when we celebrate how much money we have to spend, and how the day after it is Ingratitude Day, when we exchange gifts for, well, toys we want to pick for ourselves instead of reminders of our friends who care about us.

Why I'm not buying Shrek on DVD.

Sun, 28 Nov 2004 21:42:44 -0600

So, I really liked Shrek. Funny movie. And I might like Shrek 2.

What if it were all true?

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 00:31:22 -0600

(Once again, a reference to something posted over at ChristianForums. The original thread is here.)

Who says you need words to tell a story?

Thu, 18 Nov 2004 00:01:01 -0600

http://students.risd.edu/yr2005/eflynn/site/gallery/prophet.html

How, then, shall we live?

Wed, 17 Nov 2004 01:01:57 -0600

(Another copy from ChristianForums: the original thread is here.)

Bertrand Russell 2

Tue, 16 Nov 2004 23:46:43 -0600

Bertrand Russell Parties are fun. So much fun that we’re gonna do one this year, too. December 24th, 2004. Afternoon and evening; figure we’ll have the house in some kind of shape for visitors by 1PM. There will be food. There might be video games. There will be a grapefruit tree with lights on it, and maybe some music. Come by whenever, before about 11PM. Call if you’re unsure, or if you just want someone to talk to. Our party, like us, will be in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Email for directions, if you need them.

Why peaceful resistance is so threatening.

Mon, 08 Nov 2004 14:57:48 -0600

So, why is it that peaceful resistance is so dangerous?

I am so ashamed.

Tue, 02 Nov 2004 16:50:52 -0600

Okay, so, I mostly vote Republican. And I like to think of myself as a fiscally conservative Republican sort.

God is not a Republican, or a Democrat.

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 13:01:45 -0600

There’s a petition about God and politics. A petition to remind the people who keep claiming God’s part of their party that, well, He’s not.

The Economist on our election: Kerry. Because he sucks, but Bush is worse.

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 14:27:26 -0500

The Economist’s story on the election says about what I’d say.

Bush, Christianity, and politics

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 13:51:47 -0500

Bush is something I never expected to see; he’s too religious to be a good President, and yet, he’s a crappy Christian.

Scary stuff, kids.

Wed, 27 Oct 2004 17:53:04 -0500

LiveJournal user talks to Secret Service. Neat! Apparently, if you say bad things about the President, you can be visited by the Secret Service.

Treo 600 - least reliable phone I've ever owned.

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 14:28:18 -0500

So. My Treo 600 ($600 phone!) failed a while back. And I got it replaced, and the replacement didn’t work at all; the digitizer was useless. So I got it replaced, and the new one, scheduled events and alarms didn’t work. So I got another. And here I am, with my fourth Treo 600… And it’s failing again.

Another reason not to use paypal.

Sat, 16 Oct 2004 18:27:50 -0500

So, I don’t use Paypal. Well, not much. Every so often I need a gizmo that is sold only via paypal.

What a piece of crap! HP DVD Writer dvd630i (aka 630c) is AWFUL!

Fri, 15 Oct 2004 05:20:05 -0500

Okay, this is just plain ridiculous.

Where do they get this stuff?

Tue, 12 Oct 2004 04:17:43 -0500

I am not making this up.

A lesson in patience.

Sat, 09 Oct 2004 19:05:05 -0500

We went to Noodles & Company to pick up some food for Melony. The guy in front of us ordered a couple of dishes; the woman after him ordered at least three.

Well, then.

Sat, 09 Oct 2004 15:58:32 -0500

Thanks to MillyFan, found this terrifying site:

Sprint insults my intelligence

Fri, 08 Oct 2004 15:36:11 -0500

So, I got an offer from Sprint. I can get service credits (not money, just credits towards service) by selling them my old phones.

Thoughts of a Christian agnostic

Thu, 07 Oct 2004 13:47:35 -0500

I kid you not, this is a FAQ. I have been asked this question no less than ten times since I got here, probably twenty or more. I’ve been asked by moderators, by other members. I’ve had posts deleted from Christians-only forums by well-meaning staff.

Why I'm not voting for Bush, part 1.

Wed, 06 Oct 2004 21:11:58 -0500

I posted this in a thread on CF about the handling of the people being kept by the U. S. Government in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. My correspondent is another member of the Republican politics forum. This is from an ongoing conversation, so the context is a bit sketchy, but I think everyone’s familiar with the basic situation: Lots of people being kept as prisoners, with no trials, no charges, no lawyers. And, I might point out, we’ve already had court rulings saying this is wrong.

Athy, Athier, Athiest

Sun, 03 Oct 2004 23:47:52 -0500

I am soooo sick of people misspelling “atheist”.

Studio Whipping Boy

Sat, 02 Oct 2004 21:57:10 -0500

It’s been a long day’s puttering and configuring, but the initial pages are up for Studio Whipping Boy. What’s that? That’s a studio consisting of Chartreuse, my lovely spouse, Fireball, our roommate, and the writer of Kagerou, and the inimitable Rah.

Commuting is destroying our world.

Sat, 02 Oct 2004 17:56:34 -0500

Seriously. Commuting really is that bad.

Anime Weekend Atlanta con report

Tue, 28 Sep 2004 17:21:25 -0500

Well, that was fun!

Reasonable precautions?

Mon, 27 Sep 2004 15:16:43 -0500

(Posted originally in the Republican forum on ChristianForums. Edited to make the Sisters of Mercy reference clearer.)

Sharpening the butter pencil.

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 07:09:28 -0500

My spouse is a wonderful artist. He can draw a person well enough that you can tell how often he works out, and what exercises he skimps on.

Wow.

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 06:33:12 -0500

Originally, “let’s just drive straight through” was a joke.

A practical observation.

Sun, 19 Sep 2004 07:39:44 -0500

When an editor asks if 1:51AM Sunday morning is “an okay time to call” and wants to know whether you can have a two thousand word article done “by Monday”… That is a good sign that the answer to one of life’s pressing dilemmas is “you can pay both the mortgage and your health coverage, after all”.

A delightful ambiguity.

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 20:26:22 -0500

So, my friend Kevin said, as we were leaving the coffee shop, that this year we have a choice between a liar and an incompetent. I like that description, because it’s perfectly ambiguous.

Learning C.

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 01:15:36 -0500

Wow. This brings back memories. I just found an article describing how I learned C.

The "space travel is way cool" discount.

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 22:11:41 -0500

So, my company (Plethora Internet) builds computers. Not very many. We don’t do much in the “we need a computer for under $700” market. We don’t do swarms of identical 1U servers.

Donations!

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 20:04:38 -0500

THIS SITE IS NOT PART OF EBAY OR PAYPAL. POSTING YOUR QUESTION FOR THEM HERE JUST MAKES RANDOM STRANGERS HAVE YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION.

More thoughts on the DMCA

Mon, 13 Sep 2004 14:54:04 -0500

Well, I talked a bit to someone at the ESA. They acknowledge that the notice they sent was in error. Apparently, a person did actually “review” that message, but… They also said they send out hundreds of thousands of messages a month. That would imply an awful lot of people, or very very cursory work. I suspect the latter.

Cryptography is fun.

Sat, 11 Sep 2004 16:21:37 -0500

So, I’m playing a game called Morrowind, and I got a “coded message”. And of course, all I have to do is take it to the set of pixels representing the quest-giver, and I have completed the quest.

I can't believe this is still going on.

Sat, 11 Sep 2004 03:43:30 -0500

So, there’s this long-running claim that the etymologies of Chinese characters “reveal the truth of Genesis”, because, if you don’t know anything about Chinese etymology, and you ignore all use of phonetic radicals, and you misinterpret some symbols to be other symbols, and you put in a lot of connective words, you can find a few characters where you can make up an etymology for them which connects to the Genesis story.

Finally added a few more posts to my April Fools page.

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 16:14:47 -0500

I do April Fools posts to Usenet almost every year. I haven’t been remembering to add them to my April Fools page, but now I’m mostly caught up again.

Project Home

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 07:03:57 -0500

So, my church is involved with something called “Project HOME”. I believe it’s the same one as this one, although that’s not my church. But, hey, we all agree on this stuff.

AWA revisited: We get to go there, but no thanks to spammers.

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 00:24:58 -0500

It turns out that the problem is that Anime Weekend Atlanta loses a lot of mail to spam filters. The alternative, of course, is to not get any at all; for anyone who has published addresses, trying to get by without spam filters is just a joke. (I get well over a thousand spams a day, and I’ve gotten a few hundred bounce messages from a spam run someone put one of my addresses on.)

Unless this guy is WAY more subtle than I think he is.

Tue, 07 Sep 2004 03:27:43 -0500

We just got visited by the Stupid Thief.

Usability, applied.

Sun, 05 Sep 2004 00:30:18 -0500

I just found this example particularly interesting.

Can they really be this stupid?

Thu, 02 Sep 2004 01:40:20 -0500

Here’s a delightful message I just got. It’s funny enough to be interesting, so I’m including it.

Why I'm probably not going to Anime Weekend Atlanta

Sun, 29 Aug 2004 17:00:37 -0500

When we were at Animazement, there was this guy who was talking up the Anime Weekend Atlanta art show to one of the people in our studio. He talked up the Artist’s Alley at AWA. He told her how much they’d like to have her.

Overheard conversations

Sat, 28 Aug 2004 02:58:56 -0500

Well, one of them wasn’t exactly overheard. A bit over ten years ago, I was walking outside the movie theater at HarMar mall. (Yes, the same one where I saw the funny sign.) There were a couple of people up ahead, talking and laughing. And the guy said something to the girl, and then he walked up to me, and said “You know what? I love this girl. I really love her.” And she giggled and blushed, and they walked on their way.

Just some scratch space.

Sun, 22 Aug 2004 22:57:32 -0500

(This post removed from CF by request of a moderator.)
Wasn’t all that long ago that Christianity was “classified as a cult”.

Conversations at their finest.

Sun, 22 Aug 2004 20:21:25 -0500

Conversations are best taken totally out of context.

We have a churchmouse.

Thu, 19 Aug 2004 04:48:16 -0500

So, when I went to Meeting tonight, I noticed a pup tent in the coat closet. Brightly colored tent, maybe three or four feet long. Red and blue. With pastel blankets in it. I asked one of the other Friends about it, and she said “a little girl lives there”.

What a COOL TOY!

Wed, 11 Aug 2004 03:56:13 -0500

So, I got another embedded systems gig. This time, it’s actually more a network appliance thing; firewalls, built on Soekris Net4801 boxes. These boxes are great. Three ethernet ports, one serial, power, USB. CF drive for booting from. Pluggies for a standard notebook hard drive, and a second serial port, and a MiniPCI slot for expansion.

What is salvation, anyway?

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 18:08:25 -0500

(Another repost from ChristianForums. The original thread is here.)

Do you deserve to be loved? Who cares!

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 00:02:11 -0500

(There’s some discussion of this over on ChristianForums, in this thread.)

Deus domesticus

Sun, 11 Jul 2004 17:48:38 -0500

I originally posted this at ChristianForums, but I like it enough that I’m keeping a copy in case some moderator with a chip on his shoulder deletes the thread. The original is/was posted here, as thread #720,474 on that site. (Thread number provided in case the URL style for threads changes in the future.)

Go Virginia!

Mon, 14 Jun 2004 01:34:37 -0500

Someone on a Christian BBS I frequent posted a message titled “Go Virginia!”

Man's humanity to man.

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 12:28:13 -0500

For some reason, you don’t get to read about it as much when people are nice to each other. Maybe it’s less exciting.

I'm back.

Thu, 03 Jun 2004 14:07:28 -0500

Well, that was fun. We had multiple disasters, ranging from a sudden and unplanned need for Canadian work permits, to losing a clutch in North Carolina. But… We’re home. And, on the whole, I think it was a pretty good, and arguably profitable, experience. More details to come as we get the paperwork sorted out and the dust settles.

Sprint wants spammer dollars!

Tue, 11 May 2004 11:07:19 -0500

Sprint has made a request on your behalf to remove your email address from the\ distribution list used by Las Vegas Locals.

ANOTHER road trip?

Mon, 10 May 2004 23:09:01 -0500

So, now we’re prepping to go to Anime Central. That’ll be a lot of fun, I hope. We’re taking Jesse’s art, and we’re hoping to sell some. We also hope to have a working airbrush when we go. Woo!

Strata/Fifth-letter are SPAMMING SCUMBAGS.

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 19:25:35 -0500

If you are ever thinking about writing, and you encounter an entity using the domain “fifth-letter.com” or the name “Strata Magazine”, AVOID THEM LIKE THE SPAMMING PLAGUE THEY ARE! They have been spamming me for a LONG time. They scrape addresses off of web sites, and spam spam spam the night away. They do this despite multiple requests that they go away. The one good thing they ever did was stop for a while, but they started up again.

Road trip redux.

Thu, 29 Apr 2004 17:37:09 -0500

My fastest entry ever, this is being written at about 75mph on I80 west near Des Moines. I love technology. I saw a weird looking store called “gravitylab” and decided to look it up. I looked it up over the course of about 15 miles. :)

Road trip!

Thu, 29 Apr 2004 02:54:35 -0500

I’m going on a road trip to Denver. This is expected to be a great deal of fun. Really, it is. :) I’m trading cars with my mom; she wants an automatic, and we want a station wagon.

Well, it's honorable by comparison, anyway.

Wed, 28 Apr 2004 01:38:43 -0500

Well, here it is. The first fax I got from “Rasheed”. Who’s Rasheed? We don’t know. We know very little about him. What we do know is this: On March 11th, 2003, he sent me this fax:

Customer support success stories.

Wed, 28 Apr 2004 00:41:24 -0500

I just wanted to share a couple of positive stories, since all we ever hear about is trouble.

Sometimes, too much spam is funnier than too little.

Tue, 27 Apr 2004 00:56:29 -0500

One of these diet plans is 2.2 times as efficient as the other.

Cheap TV, redux. Advent turns out to be a zombie.

Fri, 16 Apr 2004 11:20:58 -0500

As I mentioned previously, my Advent TV sucks. A month or two out of warranty, it lost the ability to power on. This behavior has been noted by other people. I took it in for service, based on the suggestion from the Advent people that it wouldn’t be very expensive.

Giving up food for Lent.

Tue, 13 Apr 2004 19:42:59 -0500

I didn’t really give up food. I just fasted during the day. During Lent, except on Sundays, I didn’t eat food during daylight hours. (The picky reader will doubtless observe that this is more like Ramadan than Lent. I figure, they weren’t using it, so no harm done.) After some consideration, I drew the line at “things with calories” - I could drink iced tea, but not caramel latte.

Photoshop Friday, eat your heart out. This one's real.

Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:32:29 -0500

I saw this sign. I refuse to believe that this is not intentional. This is from the HarMar theatre in Roseville.

Religious holidays and history.

Thu, 01 Apr 2004 02:00:43 -0600

A recurring theme in apologetics debate is the cycle of claims that Holiday X, whatever X may be, was originally a pagan celebration, only recently coopted by Christians. We’re told that Easter was originally the Equinox Festival, or originally Oestre, and celebrated the rebirth of a goddess. We’re told that Christmas was a winter solstice festival. Saint Nicholas was originally some other godling. And so on, and so forth.

Hennepin County offers discounts on traffic tickets!

Fri, 26 Mar 2004 13:29:19 -0600

I overpaid a traffic ticket. I don’t get a refund. Hennepin County traffic tickets, it turns out, can be overpaid by up to $5 and there’s no way to get a refund. The computer, you see, is willing to approximate. If you pay anything within $5 of the ticket price, either way, your ticket is closed out.

Religion and the Pledge of Allegiance

Thu, 25 Mar 2004 20:43:26 -0600

Okay, time for another hot button issue.

More shop stuff!

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 14:52:49 -0600

Milo posters and Zander t-shirts.

Christian beliefs you'll never see on television.

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 02:11:52 -0600

Whenever you find someone frustrating or difficult, consider that the most perfect judge possible evaluated this person fully, and decided that this person was worth dying for.

Mid February.

Tue, 09 Mar 2004 13:06:19 -0600

TaxCut has been saying, since early February, that the Minnesota state program update is expected “in mid February”.

New shop stuff - bumper stickers!

Tue, 09 Mar 2004 03:46:03 -0600

I’m mostly apolitical. However, my friend Melony came up with a funny bumper sticker design, so here it is; the support the jobless recovery bumper sticker. In with all the other bumper stickers.

Why Christianity implies support for legal gay marriages

Mon, 08 Mar 2004 04:26:43 -0600

So, for some reason, everyone seems to think that Christians are required to be opposed to gay marriages. Not so; in fact, so far as I can tell, Christianity suggests strongly that we ought to be supportive of them. There are a number of reasons for this.

Happy leap day!

Sun, 29 Feb 2004 19:43:41 -0600

I remember fondly the leap year wars of the late 1990s. There were endless debates over whether or not 2000 would be a leap year. It was, of course.

The lesson of the cheap TV

Fri, 20 Feb 2004 16:21:01 -0600

Okay, first things first: I don’t like Sony anymore. In the years since they made the TV I like, they’ve become a fairly nasty, evil, company, with a really strong commitment to screwing consumers. They are in every way diametrically opposed to any kind of rights for the consumers of media, and they go out of their way to introduce shiny new incompatibilities (Memory Stick, anyone?) for no reason other than to try to make themselves be the holders of the patent on a new toy.

New Cranky User columns up!

Mon, 16 Feb 2004 01:35:13 -0600

It’s been a while, so I decided to update my local listings of Cranky User columns. In a bit, I hope to be doing the same thing for my various other IBM columns that have run in the last year or so.

SETTLED!

Wed, 11 Feb 2004 12:53:19 -0600

Seebach v. CaDan is settled!

I sometimes regret things that only happened in my head, too.

Tue, 10 Feb 2004 21:59:32 -0600

We got a letter from the Defendant’s counsel - or rather, Defendant’s insurance company’s counsel. It looked like a pro forma attack on me, probably done to make the client happy. Someone needs to know that the lawyers aren’t afraid to call me names.

Trial preparations

Sat, 07 Feb 2004 14:12:11 -0600

Sorry for the downtime, folks. We have trial preparations, and there’s a lot of work to be done, and I can’t write about what I’m doing.

Writer's Block Redux

Mon, 02 Feb 2004 23:29:36 -0600

Now I’m just stuck because I know roughly what I want to write about, but it’s too large and confusing to start all at once, and I may sort of need to take advantage of my mighty dual-boot system to do the actual writing work. Annoying! I sort of wish I hadn’t casually included “Unix-like environments running on Windows” in this article description.

New roommate!

Sun, 01 Feb 2004 19:51:36 -0600

We have a new roommate. This was mostly unplanned, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Anyone in the Twin Cities area who’s hiring part-time folks, let us know, we have a guy who just got here and needs a job.

Now that's service!

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 23:38:42 -0600

Long ago, there was a computer called the Amiga.

Honesty

Thu, 29 Jan 2004 23:37:21 -0600

So, a friend of mine wandered into a Firestone store (they do various car service), and had something minor looked at on his car. While it was there, they checked it for other stuff, and pointed out that his front brakes needed to be replaced; they were worn down to metal-on-metal, so they’d need new rotors and everything, about $500. He said no, because he was in a hurry, and figured he could get them looked at in a day or two.

Yin/Yang design

Wed, 28 Jan 2004 03:30:19 -0600

This is derived, somewhat, from a design idea Sean Eric Fagan gave me a while back. This isn’t exactly the way he described it, but I think it’s pretty.

Was Bingo the farmer or the dog?

Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:08:57 -0600

Seen in this thread, we have the key question: Was Bingo the farmer or the dog?

Prices reflect a 3% cash discount

Sun, 25 Jan 2004 16:27:14 -0600

This is too funny.

What an annoying noise!

Fri, 23 Jan 2004 23:55:10 -0600

I’m trying to extract old backup tapes before they become unreadable.

250,000.

Fri, 23 Jan 2004 01:05:42 -0600

Just for the curious: I’m well past 250,000 spams received now. Wayyyyy past. I think it’s right around 275,000.

Honest marketers, honest lawyers, and other mythical beasts.

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 02:53:51 -0600

One of the things that I think is a problem is the way we get cynical. Cynical is easy. Cynical is what you get when you get burned too often.

Writer's block

Tue, 20 Jan 2004 22:40:53 -0600

I like to try to update my blog regularly, but sometimes I just have nothing to say.

Spam, blacklists, and long memories.

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 23:38:06 -0600

We have about 5000 lines in our spam filters.

Science!

Sat, 17 Jan 2004 20:09:44 -0600

My mom took me to the Science Museum of Minnesota today. Wow. I’d forgotten how much bigger this place has gotten since they moved into their new digs.

Why MOO3 sucked.

Thu, 15 Jan 2004 00:56:20 -0600

Okay, let’s ignore the problems with copy protection… No wait, let’s not. The copy protection was a major component of what moved Master Of Orion 3 from “mediocre” to “awful”. Quite simply, it took me a good extra five or six hours of work to even get the game to run.

5-Speed and the Pluto Spoon

Wed, 14 Jan 2004 02:20:19 -0600

So, I used to run a BBS, called Schrodinger’s Cathouse. The readers of this BBS were inclined to get together socially from time to time. Everyone went by handles; for instance, one of my friends went by “Troll For Hire”. One guy went by “5-Speed”. At one point, we formed a plan that he’d rent a room in the 3-bedroom apartment I was sharing with one other roommate. This ended up falling through… But not before he brought over a spoon with a handle shaped like Pluto. No, not the planet; Mickey Mouse’s dog. I seem to recall the spoon was used to eat cookie dough, and then left in the dishrack for washing.

Instant Review: Charlie's Angels 2

Tue, 13 Jan 2004 23:16:05 -0600

This is a really, really, fun movie. None of it makes any sense. Continuity falls by the wayside. On the other hand, lots of big-name actors, even just in cameo roles, and beautiful fight choreography. You can tell it was a lot of fun to make this movie.

Doing the right thing

Sun, 11 Jan 2004 23:01:02 -0600

That’s something you don’t see every day.

If ever a wiz there was

Sat, 10 Jan 2004 23:48:29 -0600

We went to see a production of The Wizard of Oz today, at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis.

Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick

Fri, 09 Jan 2004 22:35:30 -0600

A little after nine last night, my phone rang. It was my friend dave.

Roxio joins the spam wagon

Fri, 09 Jan 2004 19:07:59 -0600

So, Roxio spams. I mean, a lot. I bought Toast Titanium 5, a couple of years ago. No problem. A few months back, Roxio started spamming me at the address I used - even though I had never given them permission to do so, and they had previously implied that they wouldn’t do that.

Never let a hacker get bored.

Fri, 09 Jan 2004 02:05:04 -0600

So, I love writing, but the fact is, I like to program. I’m not happy if I’m not programming a little.

Please enter in a spirit of worship.

Wed, 07 Jan 2004 22:36:06 -0600

There are double doors leading into the meeting hall at the Quaker meeting house I go to. Before a meeting starts, they are propped open. On each door there is a little sign:

More about TCS.

Wed, 07 Jan 2004 17:20:41 -0600

http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000848.html

They're still at it!

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 18:19:30 -0600

Woo! More spam from TechCentralStation.

Wow. Traffic.

Mon, 05 Jan 2004 23:52:24 -0600

I don’t commute, so I haven’t seen rush hour traffic in a few years.

The sanctity of marriage

Sun, 04 Jan 2004 22:26:13 -0600

I know a lesbian. She might, some day, find someone she’d like to settle down with. When she does so, depending on local politics at the time, she might be able to legally marry this person, or might not. The argument for “not” is that, somehow, letting her get married would violate the “sanctity of marriage”.

Metanoia update: Prologue finished

Thu, 01 Jan 2004 20:18:26 -0600

The prologue to Metanoia is done now. If you haven’t read this, you might want to hop on over. Warning: Graphic violence, not-quite-so-graphic sex, religious themes, you name it, it’s all there.

Hey, lady! You parked in a handicapped spot!

Tue, 30 Dec 2003 12:18:07 -0600

On Saturday, I saw a woman steal a handicapped spot. It looked deliberate. Maybe she just didn’t notice, but it’s hard to tell. The car was a Ford Mustang convertible, silver with a black top. The license plate was BTN 870. The car was there for at least two hours.

Cygwin and the Little Tin God.

Mon, 29 Dec 2003 21:07:53 -0600

The 10 Commandments for C Programmers is a very important document. All programmers should read it.

Wow. I mean, just wow.

Mon, 29 Dec 2003 03:09:13 -0600

A friend of mine got what may be the worst Christmas presents I’ve ever heard of.

The secret joys.

Fri, 26 Dec 2003 22:09:19 -0600

One of the great joys of life is knowing about something wonderful which most people don’t know about.

Happy anniversary to me!

Fri, 26 Dec 2003 15:47:41 -0600

Wow.

I bet you forgot about the online store

Thu, 25 Dec 2003 15:57:49 -0600

Well, it’s been a while since we added anything to the online store, but we’ve got one today.

Be not afraid.

Thu, 25 Dec 2003 02:23:18 -0600

Party preparation

Tue, 23 Dec 2003 23:47:01 -0600

Here’s how you prepare for a party. You vacuum a rug that probably hasn’t been vacuumed before this millennium. It turns out the dusty pink carpet is actually sort of a deep maroon.

"Charlie" McCarthy

Mon, 22 Dec 2003 01:37:35 -0600

Please disregard this post. Unless, that is, you know what the letters “C”, “M”, and “U” have to do with Charlie McCarthy, and the word “Gail” means something to you, in which case, everything’s moving up two weeks. Drat this inefficient cell structure!

Pathetic. Just pathetic, really.

Sat, 20 Dec 2003 22:29:49 -0600

So, I was at SuperAmerica (local convenience store chain), and some guy stole about $40 of gas. Put gas in truck, drove off without even hanging up the hose.

Company X is Belkin.

Fri, 19 Dec 2003 14:17:54 -0600

In this article, I refer to “Company X”. Actually, I referred to Belkin, but the editorial staff deemed it best to avoid too clear a mention.

Lord of the Rings movies

Thu, 18 Dec 2003 22:38:13 -0600

I’m always torn. I really enjoy these movies, but I sometimes wish that they’d stayed closer to the books; on the other hand, that would have made six to nine hours per movie. Maybe it’ll be a miniseries some day.

Why would a guitar need documentation, anyway?

Mon, 15 Dec 2003 18:11:56 -0600

I’m gonna be writing some documentation for a guitar company.

Self-employment tax

Fri, 12 Dec 2003 23:42:57 -0600

Here’s the idea: If you get paid, some amount of your money is due in taxes. If you were self employed, you then pay additional taxes on that money. Why? I don’t know why. It’s presumably because self-employed people are bad for the economy, because a single guy working directly for his customers imposes so much extra overhead compared to what a good chain of middle-men can do… This is a plausible explanation for part of the tax code because it’s precisely backwards, and perfectly stupid.

At least I got some writing done.

Wed, 10 Dec 2003 23:43:04 -0600

Today was our “settlement hearing” in Seebach v. MCU. That’s the event where the lawyers go head to head in an iron cage, trying to find a number they can both live with.

MCU coughs up the money.

Wed, 10 Dec 2003 12:10:42 -0600

No, not my money. We’re still going to have a hearing about that. But apparently, now that word’s gotten out that they’re losing cases on this, they’re pretty eager to pay money; they settled with one guy for $1,200 in the last couple of weeks. So, if you have old junk faxes from Mobile Cellular Unlimited, don’t throw them away!

Weirdest research ever.

Mon, 08 Dec 2003 21:15:50 -0600

So, I’m going to be writing the user’s manual for a guitar. So, as part of my research for this job, I, uhm, I moved a bunch of synthesizers upstairs and hooked them up.

Tech Central Station: "We don't know how you got on our list, but we don't spam."

Fri, 05 Dec 2003 15:28:29 -0600

Boy, that’s useless.

Lawsuits are hard work

Tue, 02 Dec 2003 23:36:53 -0600

Just for the record:

Sorry, out sick again.

Sat, 29 Nov 2003 23:26:59 -0600

Actually, I’m mostly better. Stomach flu of some sort; out cold for about a day, suddenly feeling almost well again.

I think I'll call it a "Bertrand Russell Party"

Thu, 27 Nov 2003 23:37:36 -0600

One of the miseries of the “holiday season” is the tendency for people to find themselves, unexpectedly, with nowhere to go. There is something horrible about the day when all your friends are visiting their families, and you are alone. This happens to different people every year, for different reasons. Perhaps a sibling is visiting Puerto Rico in late december. Perhaps a dispute over whether or not a loved one is a suitable partner has created a rift. Does it matter? There it is, December 24th or 25th, and there’s no one to spend time with; just an empty house, perhaps with a forlorn tree, which you are increasingly aware is already dead, even if it doesn’t know it yet, and which will shortly need to be thrown out.

Finally.

Wed, 26 Nov 2003 03:05:55 -0600

So, in 1996, I was a real jerk. Some newbie posted what he intended as helpful advice to comp.lang.c. I insulted him at some length. A while later, he posted pointing out that I had been right… but a phrase stuck in my head.

Metanoia update soon

Sun, 23 Nov 2003 23:31:46 -0600

I have to go scan the pages, but pretty soon, we have the long-awaited metanoia update. If the secret to a happy ending is knowing when to stop the story, well, we just missed our chance.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be tech writers.

Fri, 21 Nov 2003 21:37:47 -0600

Here’s the trick. It’s not hard to write about things you know. What’s hard is writing about things you don’t know. To do this, you have to learn things, quickly. You have to beat the self-evaluation problem. You have to know what you don’t know, so you can figure it out, so you will know it. You have to learn to recognize blind spots.

The guy with the crutches.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 23:37:56 -0600

When I was younger, I used to go hiking with my father. We liked mountains, especially. We could never pass up a hikable mountain. I’m not talking mountain climbing here; just friendly, walkable, paths. When we were in Lassen Volcanic National Park (my favorite of the national parks), one of the trails available was on Mount Lassen itself. Well, we couldn’t pass that up. So, up we went. We brought snacks and drinking water, because it was a longish hike. We took a few rest breaks. We struggled to cross the one place where a snowfield covered the trail; my father’s balance wasn’t all that good.

I'm getting old.

Tue, 18 Nov 2003 23:33:56 -0600

So, Sunday, I moved some furniture.

He says he doesn't want to fight.

Sun, 16 Nov 2003 23:56:32 -0600

He says he doesn’t want to fight.

More spam from people I once trusted.

Fri, 14 Nov 2003 19:58:26 -0600

It’s sort of becoming a recurring nightmare. Companies with whom I once had a happy relationship turn to spam. The latest victim is The Chip Merchant. These people used to be a good source for reasonably-priced computer parts. I bought a lot of stuff from them. My first order was probably in 1998, and they sent order confirmation to a tagged address in the domain “nospam.plethora.net”. As they should have.

Creating worlds is always slow starting.

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 17:36:42 -0600

The problem with D&D is that it’s fun to have a good, detailed, world, but it’s a lot of work to make a world interesting enough to play in, without building into it The Conflict which, once resolved, leaves you with nowhere to go.

200,000 pieces of spam.

Wed, 12 Nov 2003 04:24:50 -0600

Sometime this week, I got my 200,000th piece of spam. Actually, this is not precisely true. It’s my 200,000th piece of spam since I switched to the MH mailer in October of 1997. I’d gotten a bit before then.

The design flaw with the GameCube.

Wed, 12 Nov 2003 01:06:19 -0600

I got a GameCube a while back. It was cheap, and it had neat games, but most importantly (for me), it lets me play GameBoy games on the Big Screen.

And TechCentralStation is still spamming me.

Tue, 11 Nov 2003 00:44:34 -0600

Just for the record:

They're not problems, they're tasks.

Mon, 10 Nov 2003 17:50:14 -0600

So, in an old version of IBM’s VisualAge Java development environment, there was a thing called a “Problem List”. This was, as the name suggests, a list of problems. When you typed in code, the list would be updated to reflect problems with the code. So, when you fixed the problems, the list got shorter.

I cannot believe this.

Sat, 08 Nov 2003 12:51:59 -0600

It’s times like this when I wonder whether anyone with a soul is left in corporate America.

A little light reading...

Fri, 07 Nov 2003 23:10:50 -0600

So, one of my habits is genre fiction. I love genre fiction. I know it’s not “real literature.” I don’t care.

A definition is the obituary of an idea.

Thu, 06 Nov 2003 23:22:35 -0600

One of my father’s favorite sayings was “a definition is the obituary of an idea”. For all that our culture, and our very survival, depend on rationality, it has its limits. There are things we cannot usefully encapsulate in our nice, rational, minds. Some things don’t survive dissection; you can take a clock apart to find out how it works, or at least how it used to work, but you can’t take a kitten apart to find out why it’s cute. There are things which no definition can fully capture. I can describe them, and you can recognize them if you’ve experienced them, or possibly just if you’ve experienced something similar. I’ve “recognized” what people were talking about when they spoke of “being in love” more than once. I think I’m right this time, but that’s what I thought last time, too.

... and all he hears is some indistinct buzzing noises.

Mon, 03 Nov 2003 23:45:12 -0600

One of the problems you occasionally face is trying to communicate with people who simply don’t have the framework to understand what you’re doing. For instance, some of the junk faxers I’ve talked to have been, so far as I can tell, incapable of comprehending the motive “I think this behavior is wrong, and want to make people stop doing it”. If it’s not profitable, it doesn’t make sense. You talk about damages, they understand. You talk about giving money to charity, and all they hear is indistinct buzzing noises. The words simply can’t make sense. A couple of these people have made it quite clear that they’ve “seen through” my claims that I think junk faxing is wrong. They don’t buy it, not for a minute, because that’s not how people are.

Too beautiful.

Fri, 31 Oct 2003 20:08:08 -0600

Yahoo! is one of the companies who spams. They don’t harvest addresses the convential way. What they do is, every so often, declare that “database errors” mean that they can no longer be entirely sure about their database records, and that the only thing they can do is… Mark everyone to receive everything. They have done this at least once, possibly twice.

Summary Judgment for the Plaintiff

Wed, 29 Oct 2003 14:11:53 -0600

I won my junk fax case against Mobile Cellular Unlimited on Monday.

Sprint is totally and utterly incompetent.

Mon, 27 Oct 2003 23:53:47 -0600

So, the most stunning thing about this is the sheer bulk quantity of massive, total, incompetence. I can’t imagine how they managed to end up with so many people with totally different claims.

Understanding agnosticism

Sat, 25 Oct 2003 23:22:53 -0500

Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word “agnostic”, describing it as follows:

Another formal debate coming up.

Fri, 24 Oct 2003 03:49:53 -0500

Well, I’m a total sucker, so I’m arguing Problem of Evil. I’m arguing that it ends up not disproving anyone particularly interesting. My opponent is arguing that it does. Here’s the debate thread. As of this writing, no posts yet. My opponent should have something up in the next couple of days, I’d guess, and I’ll get back to him on it eventually.

Standardization

Wed, 22 Oct 2003 14:52:31 -0500

People wonder what standards committees are like.

Formal debate over.

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 16:45:02 -0500

Well, my formal debate is over. It was fun. It pleases me to imagine that I did fairly well, but I can hardly be sure. Obviously, my arguments convince me.

Weird Stuff, Vol. 2: It's not that the faucet is in the wrong place, mind you.

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 02:07:48 -0500

Manufactured culture

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 01:47:22 -0500

What would “aloha” mean if there were no tourists in Hawaii?

I made it! No thanks to the TSA.

Mon, 20 Oct 2003 21:04:35 -0500

TSA. Transportation Safety Administration. Imagine people who have been tasked with making everyone feel safe. They can’t do a damn thing about the real problem. This is partially because it’s already been done; everyone knows that you don’t cooperate with hijackers now. That solves it. If we’d known that, 9-11 would have been the day a few people got killed - maybe even one whole plane.

Packed!

Sun, 19 Oct 2003 21:48:29 -0500

Packing has gotten less stressful over the years. The secret? A carefully-maintained list. If you have the list, and modify it every time you miss something, you gradually develop a very complete list. Perhaps too complete. My computer backpack is 20 pounds, not including my monster laptop. My suitcase doesn’t bear thinking about. But, of course, it is unthinkable that I should be away from home and not have audio and video cables handy in case I… Hmmm. Well, I can’t think of a use for them now, but maybe something will come to mind. I’ve stopped bringing the SCSI adapter, but I do have just about everything else. Two keyboards, trackball, movies, floppy adapter, blank CD’s, books…

Tragically, I hate going to Hawaii

Sat, 18 Oct 2003 23:23:16 -0500

I think this will be my third trip to Hawaii. I still don’t like it. I don’t know why; I’m sure it’s a wonderful place. I think it has to do with travel time; it takes most of a day to get from here to there. This has gotten worse with the flood of totally irrelevant airline “security” measures.

Formal debate!

Thu, 16 Oct 2003 01:11:02 -0500

I’m in a formal debate.

I was 0wn3d by a small child.

Tue, 14 Oct 2003 23:29:48 -0500

So, I was at Best Buy, with my friend Kevin, and I saw a GameCube running a shiny new game called “Soul Calibur 2”. So I went and poked a few buttons to see what it looked like. Beautiful.

I forgot to mention...

Sun, 12 Oct 2003 00:52:00 -0500

I am nature’s Friend To Opportunistic Lung Bacteria. About half the time when I get a cold, I get a nasty bacterial lung crud immediately afterwards. I forgot to mention this, I guess.

I'm back!

Mon, 06 Oct 2003 09:42:34 -0500

I’m not all the way better, but I’m better enough to start working again, and that implies that I feel up to writing.

I can't write well with a cold.

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 21:38:48 -0500

I have, over the years, gradually learned my limits. One of them is that, when I have a cold, that vague sense of disassociation with what’s happening means that my writing is probably a lot less coherent than it seems. Thus, I don’t write much when I have a cold. The relevance of this is left as an exercise for the reader.

Learning about cats by observation.

Sat, 27 Sep 2003 14:33:29 -0500

My cats were being cute, and I wanted a picture. I got out the camera.

ToEE: Nice try.

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 23:52:41 -0500

So, I got Temple of Elemental Evil today. For the uninitiated, that’s a game for the PC. It’s based on an old D&D adventure titled, unsurprisingly, The Temple of Elemental Evil.

Cartoons!

Thu, 25 Sep 2003 23:34:48 -0500

The Cranky User book, it turns out, is likely to have cartoons. At least one of the cartoons won’t be in the book - it’s a bit over the top. But there should be a few cartoons, to spruce things up a bit. Beloved Spouse is doing a couple, and a friend from Internet Infidels has volunteered to contribute some. YAY!

The truth, the whole truth, or nothing like the truth.

Wed, 24 Sep 2003 13:16:47 -0500

I think I just watched a witness lie under oath today. It’s a bit weird. You know that it happens, but you never really expect to see it happen. Today, I was a witness in a trial with Mobile Cellular Unlimited. I almost settled a case with them. Watching Richard Luzaich testify was, however, quite enlightening. For one thing, he kept watching for hand signals from his lawyer.

Car alarms.

Wed, 24 Sep 2003 07:43:02 -0500

What do these numbers have in common?

Law enforcement to internet: FUCK YOU!

Tue, 23 Sep 2003 18:55:12 -0500

It’s time we were honest.

The big lie

Mon, 22 Sep 2003 15:12:31 -0500

Deep in the core of mainstream religious thought is a lie so deep, so pervasive, that it often seems to have corrupted everything. This lie is the belief that to have faith, you must be totally free of doubts. It’s wrong.

Hard Drive Failures 'R Us

Sun, 21 Sep 2003 18:02:54 -0500

I think this is probably my fifth or sixth hard drive failure this year. And, so far, it looks like I’ll make it through without serious data loss. One of my drives is being fussy about writing blocks, but I can still read from it just fine, so I’m gonna migrate all the stuff to another machine right away. This is getting weird; I guess all that stuff about keeping good backups and keeping an eye out for disk error messages really works.

Sore Loser

Fri, 19 Sep 2003 17:23:21 -0500

We’ve reached settlements in fax cases before. What’s different is that, this time, they didn’t bail on the deal at the last minute. Which isn’t to say the one guy didn’t want to.

Thanks Microsoft!

Thu, 18 Sep 2003 16:17:22 -0500

It’s another Microsoft Virus Day.

Don't forget that tomorrow is "Talk Like a Pirate Day"

Thu, 18 Sep 2003 16:00:35 -0500

Hallmark hasn’t covered it yet, but Dave Barry has. Tomorrow, September 19th, is Talk Like a Priate Day.

VeriSlime t-shirts

Wed, 17 Sep 2003 19:49:25 -0500

It occurred to me that I have access to an incredibly talented artist, so I got some nice, oogy, green, icky, slime drawn up.

Blogspam.

Wed, 17 Sep 2003 03:38:18 -0500

So, I don’t know what the deal is, but TechCentralStation spams me. They probably think it’s just a newsletter, but when I get 357-line blasts of HTML in my mailbox from people I’ve never heard of, it’s spam.

U. S. Navy announces formation of Shore Leave Division

Tue, 16 Sep 2003 22:41:13 -0500

Responding to concerns that some members of the U. S. Navy had not lived up to the standards expected of them, the U. S. Navy has announced today the formation of the new Shore Leave Division. Members of this division will be specially trained in responsible drinking, as well as undergoing a whirlwind course in the etiquette of over two hundred cultures. Beginning on April 1st, 2004, every ship that puts out to sea will have a squadron or more of members of the new division, to take on the responsibilities and challenges of shore leave. The extra training is expected to produce vastly more efficient shore leave, improving crew morale substantially. Members of the division’s precision whoring squad will perform regular displays around the world, demonstrating the finesse and skill that have made the U. S. Navy famous everywhere.

VeriSgni [sic] t-shirts!

Tue, 16 Sep 2003 18:19:54 -0500

Here’s my t-shirt idea.

VeriSign destroys the internet, film at 11

Tue, 16 Sep 2003 15:20:59 -0500

It’s hard to explain how important this is. Most of you won’t notice much; you’ll get a bit more spam today, and maybe your email will be a little slow, but who’d notice? The sysadmins, though… Most of us are noticing.

Car alarms

Mon, 15 Sep 2003 03:14:56 -0500

The car alarm across the street is going off again.

Of course it'll work. It always works.

Sat, 13 Sep 2003 22:14:26 -0500

For eternal beings, they are strangely impatient. “Will it work? Will it happen?” “Of course it’ll work. It always works.”

TM is back in town!

Fri, 12 Sep 2003 02:16:34 -0500

TM, my ex-roommate, is back in town. He spent a year in Pearl Harbor, working for Naval Intelligence. There is a great deal of fun to be had explaining to people that “TM used to be in the Army”. No matter how often you do this, he always corrects you. Politely, but he corrects you. “TM used to be in the army.” “Navy.” “Oh, yeah, TM’s ex-army.” “Navy.” It’s great fun.

I seem to be a writer.

Wed, 10 Sep 2003 02:25:20 -0500

For months, I’ve been saying “gosh, it looks like I’m sort of turning into a writer”.

What if Eve tempted the serpent?

Sun, 07 Sep 2003 21:03:00 -0500

One of the things that people often wrestle with in Christian theology is the question of where, exactly, evil came from. Why was there anyone around to tempt Eve? What purpose had this evil thing in being?

Lies, and the lying liars who lie about the people who tell them.

Thu, 04 Sep 2003 14:57:37 -0500

I heard Al Franken on the radio last night. I didn’t take notes, but here’s roughly what he said that caught my attention:

Would you buy a used car from this man?

Tue, 02 Sep 2003 15:48:09 -0500

So, one of the weird things about getting a shitload of junk faxes is that you never actually read them all. Who has time? I have seven hundred pages of these things. Mostly, I don’t see them when I have a lot of spare time and I’m looking for something to do; I see them when I’m looking for a specific fax on my fax machine, and all that’s there is a stack of unwanted shit, helpfully shoveled by our junker friends. (“friends” is perhaps a euphemism here.)

Who's Kiki, anyway?

Mon, 01 Sep 2003 11:25:50 -0500

I dunno. Kiki was this one chick. Back when there was a Mandy’s, we used to go there late at night to have coffee. Sometimes, Kiki would be there. It was a great little place. We saw Joel Hodgson there a couple of times. Once, when someone played a ballad on the jukebox, a couple of people did the “holding lighters in the air” thing for a while. Everyone there was always your friend, even if you had no idea who she was.

Collect all 15!

Sun, 31 Aug 2003 12:52:30 -0500

While at a local Pizza Hut, I spotted a vending machine selling stickers. One of the types of stickers on offer was symbols of the Zodiac. A bright sticker encouraged me to buy as many as I could – “Collect all 15!” Did they have duplicates? Three extra symbols not included in the normal Zodiac? Was the sticker lying?

Hello, Little Swimmer.

Sat, 30 Aug 2003 00:01:05 -0500

There is a living creature, which will be like my friend Dave, and my friend Jordan, but it will not be either of them. This is strange to me. They call it “Little Swimmer”; it is expected to be a girl. The name is a placeholder; I’m sure they’ll think of a better name in the next couple of months. But, for now, it’s strangely appropriate.

Hilarious stupidity

Sun, 24 Aug 2003 00:49:27 -0500

This is one of the funniest messages I’ve ever received. It was sent anonymously, by “sentinel79@hushmail.com”.

Giant eagles threaten Xinjiang province

Fri, 22 Aug 2003 16:05:49 -0500

Dissociated Press, August 22, 2007

Maybe he's not certified with Google technologies.

Tue, 19 Aug 2003 12:21:59 -0500

One of the best parts about being deposed is watching the deposition decay into a farce. A circus, even.

Advance!

Mon, 18 Aug 2003 18:50:49 -0500

I got a check today. This check is interesting because it’s the first half of the advance on my forthcoming book, The Cranky User. It’s weird; it’s one thing to have signed a contract, and it’s another thing to have written a rough draft of a book, but it’s another thing entirely to actually get paid. It’s not that I don’t get paid for writing the rest of the time; indeed, it’s about all I get paid for recently. However, this is the advance on my first actual book. Not just a couple thousand words; an entire book.

Breeder reactor

Mon, 18 Aug 2003 00:52:52 -0500

Jesse and I like to play word games, and one of my favorites was invented spontaneously at Perkins one night. It's a word-association game, called Breeder Reactor. Here's how to play.

That was unsettling.

Mon, 11 Aug 2003 19:50:54 -0500

So, our settlement with Mobile Cellular Unlimited fell through, which is to say, they changed their minds about the compromise agreement we had reached on confidentiality. The agreement was that the existance of a monetary settlement was not confidential, but the amount was. They decided they couldn’t have that, but that means “no settlement”.

It's like an object-oriented BCPL.

Sat, 09 Aug 2003 16:20:42 -0500

Inform is one of the coolest languages ever. It’s a language for writing text adventures.

Where do they find these people?

Thu, 07 Aug 2003 13:50:06 -0500

“Yeah, Microsoft.”

I put gas in my car!

Wed, 06 Aug 2003 18:58:10 -0500

I put gas in my car today. This may not seem like it’s news, but it is to me; it’s been just under a full month since I last put gas in my car. This is why I love my hybrid; I went 502.2 miles, with an average milage on this tank of 54.9 miles per gallon. (For the metric folks, that’s about 4.3 l/100km) That’s a low number for my car, but it’s summer, and I hate the heat, so I run the AC all the time.

<Redacted>

Thu, 31 Jul 2003 15:39:15 -0500

The great thing about being involved in lawsuits is asking your lawyer what you can say. “Hey, can I post about the deposition?” “Sure.” “Hey, can I discuss the <redacted>?” “Not yet.” (This posting has been approved by counsel.)

Metanoia got updated.

Mon, 28 Jul 2003 15:52:14 -0500

Well, it actually happened. metanoia survived through the first page update. That’s something. A lot of online comics don’t make it that far. :)

I won my first junk fax case!

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 18:12:42 -0500

Today, in court, we reached a settlement in my case against Mobile Cellular Unlimited, who sent me 7 unsolicited faxes in 2002. So far as I’m concerned, we won. They have agreed to a court order prohibiting them from sending illegal unsolicited faxes; if the laws ever change, they can fax again, but right now, they can’t. They are paying me some money. The amount of money is confidential, so I can’t discuss it.

METANOIA!

Tue, 22 Jul 2003 15:44:24 -0500

Well, it’s taken a while, but metanoia is officially live. There’s one small discontinuity; you can already get the cover for Issue #1, even though the Prologue isn’t all up yet.

I do a cool scripty thing.

Wed, 16 Jul 2003 22:40:39 -0500

My spouse’s comic, Metanoia, is getting closer to being done. He designed a web page for it, which had the text “Here Peter does a cool scripty thing” on it. The idea is that I’m supposed to create the index pages the comic will use. So, I created a couple of scripts, and now, if his laptop hasn’t fallen asleep, I can read the comic. Well, the first five pages. A page of comic takes a long time to draw, ink, and shade. I think it’ll be a page or two a week… but it’s looking pretty cool, so far. In the first five pages, we have sodomy and at least one possible death. It’s sorta disturbing, but at least I don’t feel that the author is coddling me, or shielding me from the gritty realities of the setting.

I hate computers.

Fri, 11 Jul 2003 02:44:01 -0500

In late May, the hard drive in my Thinkpad failed. So, I ran out and immediately bought a slightly smaller drive, and started copying data around and so on. The old drive could still be used, just only for about 20 minutes at a time, then it would overheat and stop working.

I guess it is genetic.

Tue, 08 Jul 2003 23:14:48 -0500

So, I’ve always wondered which of my many traits are hereditary, and which are learned. I got a chance to explore these boundaries a bit over the last week, because my mom was in town. A few curious points:

It's good to be known.

Thu, 03 Jul 2003 01:33:35 -0500

So, one of the points a lot of people miss in evaluating or choosing presents is that the point of a present is largely to express awareness of who, or what, someone is. Any idiot can buy you something expensive; the hard part is buying you something that makes you happy because of who you are.

More Cranky User

Wed, 02 Jul 2003 17:32:45 -0500

It’s just a first draft, but there’s a book there now. The first Cranky User book is starting to look like an actual book; people have read it. There are gaps, there’s all sorts of revision needed, but it’s a book.

I don't understand large numbers.

Sun, 29 Jun 2003 12:27:45 -0500

I’m a bit of a math geek by nature, so I use large numbers all the time. Just by squinting a bit and thinking, I was able to estimate the size of the sun within a factor of 2 the other day… Not that this is especially useful. But I’m comfortable with the way numbers stack and interact and modify each other.

Mac is back!

Fri, 27 Jun 2003 23:40:57 -0500

Well, I can’t prove that all is well, because I’ve had one crash since it came back, but I think that was my own stupid fault. :)

My Mac is dead. Again.

Tue, 17 Jun 2003 23:36:13 -0500

Every so often, this happens to me. My Mac will enter a state where it is unreliable, and I will be unable to use it for production work, but the reliability will be sporadic enough that it’s hard to diagnose. Yesterday, I brought my G4 tower in to a local repair place in the hopes that they can fix it up for me. I sure hope they can. The crashes it has are exceptionally strange, and I really don’t know what to make of them. All the normal steps have been taken; were it up to me, the next thing I’d do would be to swap the processor module out (it’s a dual-processor Mac, but there’s just a single “processor module”), and the thing after that would be swapping the motherboard.

Dark Falls Early

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 02:02:58 -0500

Well, it’s not a full issue, but the the cover for the first issue of Metanoia is scanned in now. The first couple of pages are coming along. The web site (not accessible, sorry) is starting to look like a web site.

It's sort of depressing, really.

Mon, 09 Jun 2003 19:00:31 -0500

Intuit was, for a long time, the valiant little company, standing up to big bad Microsoft. But it’s been going downhill, for a long time. First came the spam problem; they started spamming registration addresses. Then came the dubious Mac support. Then Quicken 2002 turned out to be prone to crashes and occasional data corruption. Then I found out they were NEVER going to fix those bugs, and that 2003 simply added flashy features. Then I finally got data corruption that I positively could not get rid of.

My new Zaurus

Sat, 07 Jun 2003 14:13:39 -0500

I am typing on the tiniest keyboard. Actually, the C700 has a pertty big keyboard, but it’s still tiny compared to a real computer.

Bible II: Electric Boogaloo

Thu, 05 Jun 2003 23:50:33 -0500

I have always wondered if other people have a different Bible than I do; perhaps it’s called “Bigger, Longer, and Uncut”.

Trolls, flames, and responsibility.

Thu, 05 Jun 2003 23:07:40 -0500

“What should be done about a member who repeatedly misquotes, paraphrases and sets up strawmen, only to get the other posters upset and frustrated, and when the other posters reply in this upset and frustrated state, the member who set the whole thing in motion reports the members who have been upset or frustrated by the tactics?”

Writing and laziness.

Wed, 04 Jun 2003 22:49:13 -0500

The hardest part, for me, of being a “writer” is trying to figure out whether or not I’m being lazy.

Hey, I can combine these into one sentence!

Tue, 03 Jun 2003 23:52:44 -0500

I’m one of those people who talks before he thinks. No malice, no ill-intent; it’s just that forming words doesn’t require any kind of conscious intervention on my part, so it tends to just happen, without much awareness until it’s already happened.

Metanoia

Mon, 02 Jun 2003 03:02:28 -0500

So, my spouse’s working on a comic. And it’s a cool comic. It’s tentatively called Metanoia, and I can’t see the title changing any time soon.

My love/hate relationship with Apple.

Sun, 01 Jun 2003 22:06:39 -0500

I love Apple. Their computers “just work” most of the time. OS X is more stable than anything I’ve ever used except NetBSD and BSD/OS. OS X is pretty, for all that most of the time I’d rather it wasn’t.

My Instapundit Number Is 2

Sun, 01 Jun 2003 03:31:19 -0500

My Kibo number is one. That is to say, I have gotten email from Kibo. If you have no idea who or what “Kibo” is, but I’ve emailed you, your Kibo number is two.

I hate it when they do this.

Fri, 30 May 2003 23:45:43 -0500

We may also use the Personally Identifiable Information you provide to (a) administer and manage your account, (b) pay commissions to you, © include you on mailing lists and © advertise and promote our services.

SpamAssassin: Better than nothing, anyway.

Fri, 30 May 2003 01:52:50 -0500

So, I get a fairly large amount of spam. I mean, nowhere near the thousands upon thousands some people get… but maybe a few hundred a day. Yesterday, 257 that were identified as such. Some days, maybe twice that. I’ve already gotten one spam since I started writing this piece.

No geek stuff. Well, okay, a little geek stuff.

Thu, 29 May 2003 22:49:50 -0500

My friend Dave has been working on a new Mandelbrot generator, the eventual goal of which is a continuous-zoom generator which “zooms in” the way you expect things to, rather than refreshing all at once. This is insanely ambitious, but it’s been very interesting watching the development.

Best search terms so far.

Wed, 28 May 2003 20:18:55 -0500

For those who missed it, this blog was briefly named “The Brain of Seebs”. And it was indexed by several search engines under that name.

Building a perfect D20

Tue, 27 May 2003 22:47:21 -0500

I have a favorite toy. Well, I have tons of them, but my recent love is GeoMags.

WinAce, Annabel Lee, and hypocrisy.

Tue, 27 May 2003 12:40:36 -0500

This entry is sort of an expansion on this thread over at ChristianForums, but also a bit of thinking about some other issues that came up one day. The thread it was based on was lost in the Great Crash of 2003; sorry.

Thoughts on being an honorary Catholic.

Mon, 26 May 2003 14:05:59 -0500

When I first started hanging out at ChristianForums, I made a few friends fairly early on. One day, they informed me that they’d declared me an honorary Catholic.

Hey, Scooter!

Mon, 26 May 2003 12:30:21 -0500

So, I’ve looked through the logs to see who visits this site, and I’ve found something interesting.

New Cranky User pieces online!

Mon, 26 May 2003 00:42:48 -0500

Some readers may be aware that I have a regular column over at IBM developerWorks. What you may not know is that IBM’s exceptionally author-friendly policies mean I’m allowed to maintain local copies of articles, once they’ve been up for a month! So, for instance, I now have the first TWENTY SEVEN columns up. That’s right! TWENTY SEVEN of them. #28 is formatted, but they have exclusive rights for another week or so. #29 has been edited, and should be showing up around June 1st on the IBM site.

There is hope.

Sun, 25 May 2003 16:19:03 -0500

So, when we were coming home from lunch, the car that pulled off the freeway in front of us was emitting smoke from the tailpipe, and stalled, and put on his hazard lights. So, we stopped to help out - lent him a cell phone, helped push his car over.

Junk fax lawsuits

Sun, 25 May 2003 03:51:02 -0500

This StarTribune story is the first coverage I’ve seen on my own personal contribution to trying to get rid of junk faxes.

Name My Blog!

Sat, 24 May 2003 17:26:20 -0500

I’m no good at names (just ask any of the players in my D&D games). So, I don’t know what to call my blog… So you guys can name it for me. Post comments. If I like a name proposal, I’ll change the site’s name to that.

Poor kitty!

Sat, 24 May 2003 15:05:26 -0500

A friend of mine got a new kitten.

Yay for software...

Sat, 24 May 2003 14:59:57 -0500

So, I decided to try movabletype. I mostly like it, except for the way it specifies sizes that don’t work with the huge fonts I love to use. See, I’m a sucker for high resolution displays - and thus, for huge fonts. So, most of the time, when I’m browsing the web, I don’t see ANY fonts under 18 points - I set that as a minimum font size in Mozilla. Unfortunately, MovableType seems to have specified a few things in pixels, so I’ll have to go fix those eventually. Eventually. For now, I’m just happy, not just to have a blog, but to have gotten my first comment! :)

Two more pictures up on the store...

Sat, 24 May 2003 03:51:00 -0500

These are oldies, but I liked them a lot. Both are in the fantasy art section of the store.

New art scans!

Fri, 23 May 2003 16:01:00 -0500

I’ve wanted these pictures scanned in for a long time; years, probably. I don’t even remember what year these pictures were done in, but these are the pictures my spouse did for our Christmas cards one year.

What's that strange yellow thing in the east?

Fri, 23 May 2003 10:37:00 -0500

One of the wonders of being a freelance writer and consultant is that there’s almost never any reason to get up in the morning. I am one of those people who, allowed to drift freely, gets up around noon most days. Today, I had to get up a whole two hours early to begin the interminable wait for a delivery truck - which may or may not come in before noon anyway.

Traditionally, one always starts a blog...

Thu, 22 May 2003 22:15:00 -0500

Traditionally, one always starts a blog by pointing to another blog. (If this isn’t a tradition already, it should be.)

Just what the world needs, another blog.

Thu, 22 May 2003 21:57:00 -0500

Well, I’m a writer these days, so I do a lot of typing, and a lot of muttering under my breath, and I thought this would be a great way to combine them!

License

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

License Page Copyright (c) 2004-2018 Seebs Nothing here strikes me as sufficiently generally important to justify having a lawyer look it over. I do retain copyright to the stuff I made. I don’t probably have copyright for stuff other people submitted as comments, though. Heck if I know. Please exercise common sense, be respectful, and don’t go around acting like you got stuff from here with a warranty of any kind, because you totally didn’t.