Archive for November, 2009

Random notes: November 19, 2009.

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

The artist Jeanne-Claude, wife of Christo and his collaborator on “The Gates“, has died.  (NYT obit here.)

In other news, the Oakland Raiders have benched JaMarcus Russell, their number one draft pick in 2007. Per NFL.com, the Honorable Mr. Russell has a quarterback rating of 47.7 (at the time of this writing) which places him 30th. The only player he outranks at the moment is Derek Anderson of Cleveland, with a 36.2. To quote Gregg Easterbrook, “If every attempt by a quarterback falls to the ground incomplete, his rating is 39.6.

On Wednesday, the LPGA released its 2010 schedule, and despite the loss of 13 tournaments from two years ago, 17 open weeks in the season and a few TBDs (to be determineds), there is optimism among tour officials and players.

Fine. Just as long as it stays off my television. (Since I don’t have cable, the Golf Channel is perfectly okay.) The only televised sport I hate more than golf is women’s golf. (I have nothing against playing golf; though I’ve never done it myself, I’m sure it is a fine sport. But watching golf – men’s or women’s – is about as exciting as reading transcripts of Roman Hruska speeches.)

“This America, man.”

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Lawrence suggested that I blog this; I think he wanted it as a bookmark to watch later. (Warning: contains language.)

They got most of the quotes I like, though some of them are cut short. (Stringer Bell’s “Later for that gangster bullshit” speech, Rawls’ “gaping a–hole” speech to McNulty (in context, the whole speech is actually pretty unexpected and moving), “…then we fight on that lie”.) How could you not pick up anything from Snot Boogie, though?

(I can understand not using the Bunk-McNulty crime scene investigation – that stands by itself.)

Reminder.

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Tomorrow is National Ammo Day.

I always tell folks, “If you can’t do anything else, swing by Wal-Mart and pick up 500 rounds of .22 and a copy of Red Dawn.”

Irrational hatred.

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

I can’t explain why I dislike the Buffalo Bills. It has nothing to do with the Honorable Mr. Owens; I disliked the Bills before they signed him. It has nothing to do with Buffalo itself, a city that brought us the Buffalo wing, or Buffalo fans; I’m sure they are wonderful people who adopt stray puppies and help old ladies across the street. (I have a friend who used to live in Buffalo; he tells a great story about his experiences during one of the epic Buffalo snowstorms. When he talks about moving down the street with his cow-orkers, all of them roped together so they didn’t get lost in the blinding snow, you gain a new appreciation for Texas.) It has nothing to do with the Oilers and their spectacular collapse; if I was going to resent anyone for that, it would be the Oilers.

No, I really can’t explain it. But it does make me happy that Dick Jauron is the first coach firing of the season.

Instead of actual content…

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

….here’s something I whipped up quickly using Pages, inspired by Reason’s Hit and Run fundraiser, and because I can’t actually find that bumper sticker elsewhere.

Bake Sale bumper sticker (PDF).

I haven’t tried printing these yet, but Office Depot apparently sells bumper sticker stock. I may give that a try in the next day or two. If anyone does try it, please leave feedback in the comments.

Edited to add: Here’s a Word version that I’m actually somewhat happy with.

It will be a great day when the Pentagon has enough money to bomb public schools having bake sales.” (Word .doc)

The Office Depot inkjet bumper sticker stock may have been a waste of money; the ink came out more grey than black, and smeared all over the place when I handled it (even after about 15 minutes of drying time). I printed another sheet and am going to let that dry overnight; we’ll see what happens.

Project updates.

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Project e update: I took the machine up to 2GB of memory earlier this week; it turned out to be much harder than I expected, mostly because getting the memory access door off the machine took more effort than I expected.

I just finished doing a clean install of Ubuntu 9.10 on Project e; I went the clean install route, instead of doing an upgrade in place, because there were some things I wanted to clean out, and I didn’t really have a whole lot invested in the current system. (However, I didn’t re-partition and blow away /home.) So far, wireless seems much more stable; no connection drops yet. Ethernet just works, straight out of the box (no loading of modules) and Bluetooth seems to work as well, modulo some flakiness in listing devices.

This install also took more effort, and more time, than I expected. However, much of that was my fault; the process for creating USB install disks changed from 9.04 to 9.10, and the instructions on the Ubuntu website are not clear on how to do that under OS X. I ended up having to move the 9.10 ISO over to the netbook and use the USB startup disk creator to make a bootable flash drive. I don’t see this as an Ubuntu problem as much as a “thought I knew what I was doing, should have read the docs first” problem.

Question: does anyone know of a good Karmic-compatible eeePC tray utility, now that eeepc-tray has been end of lifed?

6.00 update: I’ve been tied up dealing with some personal issues that I don’t want to go into here (for reasons of other people’s privacy) and haven’t had as much time as I would like to work on this. I’ve gone through all of lecture 2, and I’m hoping to knock out the assignment and move on to lecture 3 this week.

School: Registered for CSYS 4334, “Implementing Information Systems In Organizations” (in other words, more SQL Server 2005) and CSYS 4330, “Advanced Networking/Network Security” next semester. That second one should be fun.

Random notes: November 9, 2009.

Monday, November 9th, 2009

The NYTPicker has an interesting post up related to the whole Brighton Beach Memoirs fiasco; what they’re reporting is that the failure of this revival may have had a great deal to do with an unusually restrictive advertising deal the NYT made with the producers of the show.

With the understanding that both of these people are good friends of mine (can you say “blogrolling”? I knew you could.) I’m linking to Lawrence’s interview with the actor we’ve hired to play Karl Rehn of KR Training.

Consider this an official endorsement of Child’s Play. I have donated money to them in the past and will do so again this year if I have any to spare. (I just checked: Yes! The Desert Bus guys are doing it again this year! November 20th; mark your calendar.)

Edited to add: by way of Jimbo, who killed Chicago crime reporter Jake Lingle?

Edited to add 2: I forgot that I wanted to note this LAT story, mostly because I don’t know what to make of it. The headline and sub-head imply that the main concern of the article is “Private citizens can fly high-performance jet aircraft? Oh, noes!” However, buried towards the bottom of the article is a more interesting story; allegations that the FAA investigation into this case was sandbagged. (I was wondering where a convicted felon gets the money to purchase one of those planes; however, Google tells me that a 1973 L-39C Albatros goes for around $269,500. Or somewhat less than a house in LA.)

Change.

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

Part two of Bruce Buschel’s “100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do” is up at the NYT website. Oddly, FARK linked to part one on Saturday. My earlier comment stands; the only problem with this list is that the people who need it the most won’t read it, or if they do, won’t pay attention. (The comments confirm this.)

I do want to call out one item in particular; this is a pet peeve of many people I know, including some members of my family, and I was wondering if Mr. Buschel would include it:

88. Do not ask if a guest needs change. Just bring the change.

Your loser update: week 9.

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

I thought perhaps it was too much to expect another 0-16 run after last year. I had hopes that the Lions would make it 0-32, but those were dashed. But it hurts that Green Bay lost to Tampa. You see, I have a certain fondness for the Packers; I admire their ownership structure, and I have a certain amount of affection for the silly cheeseheads, among other reasons.

Sadly, the Pack wasn’t able to pull this one out.

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

None.

That’s all, folks. Drive carefully, and remember to tip your waitress.

Edited to add: But, hey! The New Jersey Nets still have a shot at going 0-82! Too bad I don’t care about NBA basketball (or, as I like to call it, “our long national nightmare”).

Extreme geek humor.

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Inspired by chapter 6 of Learning Python (the 3rd edition, alas).

IDLE 1.2
>>> A ='A'
>>> A is 'A'
True

(Well, I thought it was funny.)

Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everyone!

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

The Gunpowder Plot Society.

Antonia Frasier’s Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot.

Edited to add: Speaking of revolt against established government, I was totally unaware that College Station voted out traffic enforcement cameras until I read about it in…the Washington Post?

A boat is a hole in the water…

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

…that you pour money into. But $10 million for a mast? Even a carbon fiber one?

Edited to add: FARK has provided a link to coverage from Sail-World.com which is a bit more detailed than the linked NYT article above.