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GRAFFITI -- August 17, 2009 thru August 23, 2009>> Link to the Current Week <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message. |
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August 17, 2009
2145 - Harvesting cucumbers, tomatoes, hot peppers of assorted varietys. Writing the checks to pay the bills. Trash, recycling collected, put out for tomorrow's pick up. Made a gallon of salsa. Ran the backups for the networked machines. Heated red sauce ... OMFG, Ponies! This is definitely the best red sauce I've ever, ever made. And with mild italian sausage, over penne, with fresh cracked black pepper and freshly grated parmesan ... um, I licked the plate clean, as I had no bread. Now working on some work stuff. Ciao!
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August 18, 2009
2221 - Hmmm. iPhone sans signal. A portent? In other news, I picked up my supportive copy of Do You Want To Date My Avatar on iTunes, and then went and watched all of The Guild season two in one go. Fun. Spoiler for the three people who haven't watched that yet: Zabu gets the stupid tall hot girl. Or she gets him. Or something. Okay, power cycling brought the iPhone radio back to life. That and a bit of on-call system work filled the evening. I actually was going to do much more work-related stuff tonight, but today totally didn't go as planned, and I didn't get the prep done that I wanted to do for tonight. So, an evening of wave-off ... could be worse. while (1) { sleep; work; eat; } Ciao!
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August 19, 2009
2143 - Yay, off-call! In other news, @mkapor brought the campaign against Glenn Beck to my attention this evening. It strikes me that Internet flash crowds are an awful lot like an army: Really good at breaking shit, knocking people down, and kicking them in the nads. To build things and be positive is a much more difficult and special thing. You'll notice the same effect in crowds. Crowds turn into riots; riots rarely in my limited experience turn into crowds. It'd be like going to a boxing match hockey game, and having the players shed their pads and jerseys and start playing Mozart for the crowd. Not impossible, but very, very improbable.
Of course, people are very good about being angry at things as a group activity. Usually people like things (and bond in a positive sense) in set sizes ranging from 1 to something less than a thousand (pulling a number out of my ass). The larger the crowd, the more likely that something or some meme will happen that everyone can dislike together, and the bonding through anger grows by leaps and bounds. Go sit in the wrong endzone at a football game. Worse, go to a European soccer match - the reporters are there not for the soccer but for the nearly inevitable crowd melee. Cricket is, by contrast, a clearly sedate and safe activity because there are just 22 total players and three actual spectators - well down in the bonding through shared likes set size, with little chance of a dangerous anger outbreak. There may be more watching on the telly, but they're effectively alone in a room with the box on (who's watching with them, really?), and have no influence on the other set members of distance spectators. One angry mutter can set a physical crowd off ... but not when that crowd is onesies in their dens.
Of course I was trying to be funny while making a point. And there can be rowdy crowds at well attended cricket matches ... my point entirely. But on the Internet, especially in the age of Twitter, an angry mutter RT's around the world at IP speed. Yikes! Do y'all remember the phrase, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."? Well, it's not clear there's ever been a time in history when that ever applied except as a theoretical maxim of behaviour only to be observed by its absence. But seriously, OUTRAGE is not always (or even very often) the best reaction. Sugar can indeed get better results than sour, sometimes. And outrage gets retweeted a lot more often than happy, friendly tweets. And isn't that a shame?
So, make an effort to retweet something good, more often than you feel the urge to RT something unsavory. Sometimes the unsavory needs to get around ... but we have the Mainstream Media for that. And that's all I have for you today. Ciao!
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August 20, 2009
No Post....
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August 21, 2009
2111 - How do you know you have a dog that suffers from ADD? Well, if the dog walks towards you for a head scratch, gets one and a half of those, flips around to get her butt scratched so that she can dance, dance, dan... hey, is that food over there on the empty patch of carpet? Yeah, ADD + OCD == our Molly Sue!
Well, there's good news and bad news. The initial bad news, two days ago, was that the three day shipping of my order from Newegg had been announced by UPS to be six day shipping on their status page. Harumph! #brownfail says I! Ah, the good news, they catch up somehow, and delivered it to the front porch this afternoon ... three day shipping, hurrah! Ah, crap ... not our front porch - the package, she is gone! The final good news, filing a claim for a refund took about 10 minutes of online chat with a very helpful Newegg rep, "Ruby". Refund because Ruby said I'll get my stuff faster if I do a refund for this claim, and reorder. OTOH, if the deals aren't the same, I'll call them up tomorrow and ask for pricing to match my original order. I've been a fan of Newegg for a long, long time, and while this is a small bit of pain, it isn't their fault, and they're handling it very professionally and courteously. Newegg is a class act, and I'll continue to do most of my online electronics purchasing with them. Recommended.
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August 22, 2009
1732 - Today is formally the last day of my Perl class. I've been done with classwork for three weeks, and took the final a week ago. I can't really comment on the instructor, because she was largely absent, and didn't participate in class discussions more than a few times over the 12 weeks - I know that I helped other students a lot more than she did. Yeah, I'm paying for my 'A', but what about those poor saps who sign up expecting instruction? They sure didn't get it from the instructor. Bummer. Fortunately, this has been the exception, rather than the rule, in these online classes.
Rain and more rain ... not in huge quantities, though, yet. Now we're under flood watch, though. So I did a couple of hours of work remote to the office, and roasted three batches of a Yemen Mocha for next week's coffee happiness. And tomorrow I'll pick up a new coffee maker, since our old one gave up the ghost on Friday morning. Now, to think about supper. Ciao!
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August 23, 2009
1930 - Let's see ... two power outages here today, one adverse retail experience, one gallon of salsa made, the lobster pot of red sauce refreshed, a few rounds of Chromium played, and pizza in the oven (and going to be putting myself outside that very shortly, before this is finished, I think).
It's important that as pollsters and politicians and the media manipulate public opinion on our engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, that there are real consequences to cutting and running, both there and here. Those that supported us will just be killed, if they're luckyb to make prior sacrifice meaningful, finish the job to make the world a safer and better place. . And those places will be filled with people who've always hated us, compounded by the addition of people abandoned, who will hate us freshly, and with great fervor. So, aside from finishing the joIt might have been better yet had we never gone, but that was long ago, now. Choices are what we live with, as individuals, as communities, as nations, and as a world. Get used to it. And to our valorous folks in uniform - I salute you! Our condolences to the families and units of the fallen.
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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
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