I have a new job. I'll be the computer dude in residence for the horse feed company I worked for 5 years ago. Since they are located in Versailles, in the middle of horse country, I'll be living in Lexington and moving this weekend. One definate positive aside, other than the paycheck, will be getting DSL instead of this crappy dialup.
December 2002 Archives
One of my parent's next door neighbors, John, is in need of an organ transplant. His liver stopped working last week. Now things get a little worse see, in Ohio in order to get on a liver organ transplant list one has to have been in Alcoholic Anonymous for at least 2 years on top of the fiscally able to pay for the procedure and anti rejection medication for the rest of his life and proving that his imedate and extended family will provide enough support for long term survival. Now in John's case they think the liver problem was not caused by alcohol but is heredity, which also means that family partial donors are probably a no go, regardless the 2 years of AA is required.
Given it all John's options don't look good so the family has asked me to look around for more options and I you. I have been doing some net searching but if anyone has or finds more info please comment, mail me or say a prayer.
2003: Oil and War, makes alot of sense. Also makes Gore's enviromental and alternative energy stance even more in the right. And now we know why the auto industry is doing the hybrid car models, they know that even in the short term oil in the US is in trouble.
Camel and Oasis (not appropiate at work) now for a Perl project to use it as a logo.
Uncle Bill's Helicopter, kinda an engineer's chicken soup kinda thing.
THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS'Twas the night before Christmas,
and all through the train
Not a creature was stirring,
save Blackadder in pain.The shotguns were hung
by the chimney with care,
In hopes that Cthulhu
soon would be there.The investigators were nestled
all snug in their bunks,
Arm, chest and leg
packed away safely in trunks.And Betty in her kerchief,
and Higgins in his cap,
Had just settled down
for a long winter's nap -When out in the lounge
there arose such a clatter
We all sprang from our beds
to see what was the matter.Reggie tripped over Baldrick
with his usual panache,
Tommy fell onto William
who threw up in the trash.Blackadder burst into the room
and started to shout,
fell over the trunk
and knocked himself out.When what sight to our
wondering eyes should bring
but a miniature sleigh
and eight tiny squidling.With a cephalapod driver
so slimey and blue,
we knew in a moment
it must be Cthulhu!More rapid than Elders
his spawn as they came,
and he squealed and screeched
and called them by name."Now, Basher! now, Rancid!
now, Cancer and Xixen!
On, Vomit! on, Putrid!
on, Spawner and Blitzen! -To the end of the train,
spread your horror and fright,
do it quickly and well
or no manflesh tonight!"As dry leaves that before
the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle
mount to the sky,So down to the train
the squidlings they oozed,
With a sleigh full of Deep Ones -
all part of the ruse.And then, in a twinkling,
as we witnessed this spectacle,
we heard the slithering and sucking
of each tiny tentacle.As Blackadder sat up
and William gave a huge belch
Down the chimney Cthulhu
came with a squelch:He was covered all in slime
in his eye an evil wink,
And his tentacles all covered
with ashes and ink.A bundle of lawn gnomes
he had flung on his back,
And he looked like Hell's Peddler
just opening his sack.His scales, how they glistened!
his eyes, how merry!
His cheeks were all rotten
his nose grey and hairy;His cavernous mouth
was draw up like a bow,
and the blood on his chin
had an unholy glow.The stump of a leg
he held tight in his teeth,
And the blood, it encircled
his head like a wreath.He had a broad face
and a big moldy belly
That shook, when he laughed,
like a boat full of jelly.He was laughing and screeching -
a right jolly old squid:
And I laughed when I saw him,
in spite of my dread;A wink of an eye,
and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know
we might soon all be dead.He spoke not a word,
but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings
with the Lad, Lass and Turk.Then, curling a tentacle
around Baldrick's nose,
And giving a nod,
up the chimney he rose.He metamorphed in his sleigh,
to his spawn gave a shriek,
And away they all went
with an ungodly reek.But I heard him exclaim,
ere they oozed out of sight,
"Merry Christmas to all,
and to all a good night!"
A Cthulhu Christmas, I too had to share.
Ben Hammersley has done up RSD support for Movable Type as a Templage. In case you were wondering RSD is for Really Simple Discovery a way for Blog Clients to figure out the settings and what not to talk to one's blog backend.
Russell has some observations on the U.S. after hos 1+ years spent on Spain. Lots of good things both good bad and indiferent, Cars big TV much cooler.
Futurama and Family Guy finally get some respect from Fox
(December 12, 2002), it will probably disapear soon.
Two programs on The Fox Network have long been ignored to the point of cancellation; the fresh if always envelope pushing The Family Guy and the surrealistic Futurama. Finally, both shows will be getting released on DVD as Season One box sets this Spring.
The Futurama set will contain all the episodes from the first season as well as many extras which bear a resemblance to the Simpsons box sets which come from the same creators. Audio commentary from various sources will accompany every episode. Also included are some deleted scenes, a featurette (which if like other Fox featurettes, will be part of a larger documentary), animatics, scripts and storyboards for the first episode "Space Pilot 3000" and a still gallery.
The Family Guy will also contain all the episodes from the first season and as well as television spots for each episode and audio commentaries on the episodes "Death Has A Shadow", "The Son Also Draws", " Peter, Peter, Caviar Eater", "Holy Crap", "Fifteen Minutes Of Shame", "Let's Go To The Hop", " He's Too Sexy For His Fat" and "E. Peterbus Unum,".
Although these sets will not be remixed in Digital 5.1 like other series sets, they look to otherwise be of pretty high quality. Futurama will arrive on March 25th, and The Family Guy will arrive the first week of April. Both will be priced at $49.95.
Woot, Woot, Rock On!!! I just love Futurama the Family Guy. A couple of more to add to my DVD wishlist.
Make a Teen a Millionaire! or take the college fund and invest it til the child retires. Seriously not a bad idea replace that 10% that everyone is soposed to invest a year and just make 10% less but retirement is handled by the invested college fund.
Tim O'Reilly has a good one on Piracy, Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution. And the observations also apply to software.
Memigo intresting news aggregation/mining site. From the About page:
Memigo is a website for news junkies. Technically, memigo is an intelligent news agent: it goes out on the internet and it finds news articles, stories and editorials from "trusted", high quality sources.[via ScriptingNews]
.NET Application Server or maybe more appropiatly Mono Application Server.
And time to add a .NET category.
What did predict economic success was a willingness to take risks. By contrast, the success-failure standards of most schools penalized risk takers.From the book Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins: The Paradox of Innovation, by Richard Farson and Ralph Keyes. Sounds like an intresting read.
[via Tiger Cafe]
Stole an idea Eric Kidd over at RandomHacks uses for his RSS feed. By adding a CSS reference after the inital XML version one gets stylled RSS.
The trick has been applies to the 3 syndication types RSS2, RSS 1.0/RDF and XSS for fozbaca.org. The trick worked on the IE and Phoenix/Mozilla running on my box. Just comment if you have any problems.
JavaIndex.org a directory of Open Source Java apps, libraries and such.
For some reason Fark seems to love me. Check the
Top 10 of 367 Total Referrers and there are over 8,500 from the forums and almost 450 from the voter comments are something. The traffic seems to all be on December 4th. Since I don't follow Fark anyone care to enlighten me on just why some are visiting?
Just a glimpse why government sucks from the soon to be former CIO of Utah.
Similarly I have heard the same thing from those in large corporations, becoming if not already governments unto themselves.
Here's the deal: to achieve results, you've got to do something. If you do something, you'll make mistakes. Mistakes are, by definition, a process violation. So the only way to reverence process at all costs is to do nothing or, at the very least, proceed with the utmost caution. You've probably wondered why government service is so slow. This is the reason why: people are being very careful. They have to be, because any misstep can be deadly.Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog
Similarly I have heard the same thing from those in large corporations, becoming if not already governments unto themselves.
Plug in Your Command Processor Now
This article details the implementation of a tool called the Command Processor. This tool takes a Java object and creates a command-line interface to its public methods.Intresting idea. Wonder how it would fit into engel's java shell idea from a couple of years ago?
mt-rssfeed v1.0, is a MovableType plugin that provides a series of tags for retrieving an RSS feed and inserting it into a MovableType template.A nice MovableType plugin that I don't have a use for yet.
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.Henry David Thoreau.
Java look and feel Graphics Repository, damm they sure look like shit. Me thinks than Sun needs to talk to Apple about how to make an icon.
WebGrazer an OS X app for browsing pr0n. So engel how is it?
Genecast provides RSS via NNTP, News Groups. Very cool, hope it goes somewhere.
Old and In the Way an intresting read on Europe and U.S. relations and where it is all heading. Not sure if the dude gets it right or now but as engel is fond of saying, "probably 10% of the problem/situation."
BTW, don't remember where I found the link but the blogger had something resembling the following quote, "Europe keeps calling the U.S. the toilet seat, but I'm beginning to think they are what is inside the bowl."
