Archive for November, 2009

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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.

Posted in Firings, Loser, NFL | Comments Closed

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.

Posted in Media, Rand | Comments Closed

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.

Posted in asus_eee, Bluetooth, Lazyweb, linux, netbook, project_e, Radio, School, WiFi | 1 Comment »

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.)

Posted in Clippings, Endorsements, Geek, Media, Planes, Theatre | Comments Closed

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.

Posted in Clippings, Food | Comments Closed

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”).

Posted in Loser, NFL | Comments Closed

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.)

Posted in Geek, Python, Rand | Comments Closed

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?

Posted in Books, Cars, Clippings, Explosives, Law | Comments Closed

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.

Posted in Clippings, Loser, Stupid | 1 Comment »

Everlasting cogstockers.

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

By way of Jimbo, we learn that two WP employees, Henry Allen and Manuel Roig-Franzia, had a bit of a disagreement over the merits of a story co-written by Roig-Franzia. The Honorable Mr. Roig-Franzia allegedly called the Honorable Mr. Allen a “c—sucker”, at which point the Honorable Mr. Allen allegedly attempted to give Roig-Franzia high cause to seek out a periodontal reconstructionist.

This story has been covered here and here; in addition, Gene Weingarten of the WP (and a writer whose work I have a complicated relationship with) weighs in here. It comes as no great shock that Weingarten weighs in on the side of

Hooray that there is still enough passion left somewhere in a newsroom in America for violence to break out between colorful characters in disagreement over the quality of a story.

I understand Weingarten’s point of view. I grew up on Mencken and Liebling. There’s a big part of me that supports the whole “Break it up, you two, we’ve got a newspaper to put out. You can settle down at the pub after deadline.” side to this story.

But. I work for a company that’s close in size to the Washington Post empire. I’m pretty passionate about my job. I’ve had disagreements with people in other departments, too; disagreements that were serious enough for me to consider inviting them down into the parking lot for a frank and open exchange of views about the nature of the social contract. The key word there is “consider“.

If I called one of my co-workers a “c—sucker” (or, for that matter, a “bony-a–ed b—h”) I would expect to be fired. I would consider myself lucky to get merely a serious reprimand from HR. If I took a swing at one of my co-workers, I would be fired. Our visions of Hildy Johnson aside, why should newspapers be any different from any other business?

(I also wanted to call this out because Allen apparently called the story in question “the second worst story I have seen in Style in 43 years”, leading to much entertaining speculation about what the worst story was. The official answer appears to be something about Paul Robeson that was so error-ridden it was never printed. However, there’s lots of entertaining speculation at the links above, including multiple mentions of Sally Quinn.)

Posted in Media | Comments Closed

Random notes: November 3, 2009.

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

You’ve probably figured out by now that I’m something of a connoisseur of failure. This leads me in many directions, including savoring Broadway flops. (And that, in turn, reminds me that I need to replace my copy of Not Since Carrie. But I digress.) So, of course, I have to note the NYT‘s navel gazing story yesterday on what went wrong with Brighton Beach Memoirs. (The linked comments seem to me to be more perceptive than the article; in brief, people are saying they don’t want to pay $100+ a ticket plus expenses to see something their kid’s high school produced last year.)

I also wanted to note the LAT obit for controversial rocket scientist Qian Xuesen. Xuesen is a prominent figure in George Pendle’s fascinating biography of fellow rocket scientist and genuine freaking weirdo Jack Parsons, Strange Angel, a book which I strongly recommend. (When I say “genuine freaking weirdo”, I mean it. Parsons did seminal early work on rocketry; he was also a leading follower of Aleister Crowley and an active practitioner of thelmic magic. He also lost one of his lovers to none other than L. Ron Hubbard, and died under rather bizarre circumstances.)

Posted in Books, Explosives, Geek, Loser, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Your loser update: week 8.

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Well, well, well. It looks like the hapless Rams actually managed to pick up their first victory against none other than the hapless Detroit Lions in what should have been called the “Who Cares? Bowl”.

Also, in somewhat less amazing news, Tennessee actually managed to win a game against Jacksonville, even with Vince Young quarterbacking. I’m dubious about Young in the long term; we’ll see next week about the short term.

Tampa Bay had a bye this week, so…NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Tampa

Posted in Loser, NFL | Comments Closed

Steam engine time.

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Last Sunday, a blood relative of mine was rear-ended while driving their Toyota Avalon; the force of the collision was sufficient to total the Avalon.

This Sunday, I was rear-ended while driving my mother back from San Antonio in her Toyota Avalon. Fortunately, it does not look like this Avalon is a total loss.

If you drive a Toyota Avalon, or are related to me by blood or marriage, please be careful on the highway until further notice.

(As a side note, Trooper Seth Fry of the Texas DPS was kind, polite, sympathetic, and made a stressful situation somewhat easier to deal with. My thanks to him.)

Posted in Cars, Thanks, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

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