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Journal Journal: Rants and Celebrations 2


I love my anti April 1 rants last night, very thought out and well said [rolls eyes].

Anyhow, I had some excellent news at work on Thursday and Friday, probably the best news of my entire 20-ish year working life, hence the celebrations last night. :)

It's still under wraps, will share later.

G (who can't wait to get back to work on Monday)
User Journal

Journal Journal: I'm in the bag 1

My posts of tonight illustrate that.

blahhhhhhhhhhhh....
User Journal

Journal Journal: A Slashdot Zeitgeist? 3


Has /. ever published a statistical breakdown of visitor stats? Something like Google's Zeitgeist?

I think it'd be interesting to see how many visitors to an "open source friendly" site were actually using open source and non-monopoly OSs and/or browsers.

Granted there are things like proxies and agent modifing software but I think those would only skew the stats by a very small amount.

Taco? Anyone?
User Journal

Journal Journal: SLAYER!!! 6


Slayer!!! I haven't seen them since 1984! My ears will be pounded to mush.

Oh yes, my little girl is due on July 5. You're never too young to start banging your head, right? Maybe I'll get a discount on a ticket for a 4-day-old...
User Journal

Journal Journal: blogetty blog blog blog blog blog 9


"Blog" I hate that word, it sounds as stupid as it looks.

Any suggestions for "blogging" software? The world needs my input. Has to be Open Source, I plan to run it on OpenBSD or (less likely) FreeBSD.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Help me find this comment! 13


My geek-days become a little more complete when I read a funny slashdot comment.

Ages ago I recall a trollish comment about open source. The author wrote about making an open source leather jacket from scratch. It was a bit gruesome and ended with something like "I'll be leet!" I laughed like hell at the time and didn't save it (yep, I save a lot of funny /. stuff) It's bugged me for a looooong time. Slashdot's search engine is lacking for this and google wasn't much help.

My challenge to you, good Slashdotter, is help me find that post! I'll give a US$10 Amazon gift certificate to the first person who replies with a link to said post.

Certain words that stick out in my memory are "open source", "leather jacket", "decomposing", "leet (or l337)"
User Journal

Journal Journal: Election Day, no Diebold in sight. 6


Canada is having a federal election today. For my non-.ca journal readers I'll fill you in on how it's done here.

Every eligible person gets a voters card in the post. If you don't have one (lost, recently moved, etc) it's not a big deal if you have proper ID. Head off to the polling center, ours was at a school gym a short walk away.

Walk into a gymnasium at the school. Inside was a table for people needing directions and ~10 polling stations scattered around the perimeter, each numbered.

Walk to your designated station as printed on your voters card. Each polling station is a simple table with two (or more) people at each one, those people are witnessness for different parties (my area had 4 candidates (Conservative, Liberal, Green, New Democratic Party). They stroke your name off the list, hand you a paper ballot pre-folded with the simple verbal directions "Mark your choice with an X in the circle."

Walk behind a screen, open the ballot. You see a list of names, black on white with the party name and to the right a large white on black circle for your mark. Make your choice (who sucks less?), fold it back, hand it in. Every witness at that station watches the handoff of the ballot and the deposit into the ballot box.

Apparently the public can watch the actual count of the ballots although I've never done it. Right now on CBC TV they have live updates of the count, to the vote. ie.: a poll which just started the count here had just 8 votes counted when I started typing this.

Within ~3 hours from now they have tallied the ballots and a country of ~30 million people will have a completed election.

Is is that hard? Why do people insist on electronic voting? Because they can doesn't mean they should.
User Journal

Journal Journal: December 24, 1965 17:33 16


I will be 40 years old tomorrow (Dec 24) at 5:33 PM. I thought to write this now as I will probably be senile with broken hips and diapers by this time tomorrow.

It's been good knowing you all, I hope I can remember some of you... eh? what's that? Speak up! Get off my lawn, miserable hooligans!
User Journal

Journal Journal: Wooo -=# Daddy Grub #=- 29


Kim is pregnant!

I'm pretty sure I'm the dad, too! The fruit of my loins is due July 5 according to the doc. That still seems so far away but they said she's through the first trimester (how do they calculate these things?)

Fear my offspring! Unless, of course, it's a 'tard[0]. Then it won't do much but wear a helmet, drool, and ride in a short school bus.

[0] - In reality if the tests show signs of 'tardism, she's going in for The Scrape. We've already decided that. In years to come I can show the wee one this entry and remark "You came this close you know...." ;)
User Journal

Journal Journal: "I am not a number, I am a free man!" 8


I just received my DVD megaset of The Prisoner! If you have no idea what The Prisoner is, google away and catch up. I'll wait here.

Back? Good. Well, our research facility closes down for the week between xmas and new years every year. Kim works during that time so I'll be a paranoid, unshaven mess by January 3rd as I relax with a load of books which are queued up, The Prisoner and a nice bottle of wine or 3. . (oh yeah, xmas eve is my 40th birthday too! Old, eh?)
User Journal

Journal Journal: ID believers don't need vaccine. 5


An interesting and humourous letter to the editor in the San Luis paper (?). The forward I received was, unfortunately, unattributed.

Some don't need vaccine

Recent news about the avian flu virus has raised concerns from main street to the White House. There is the possibility, even likelihood, that the virus will mutate into a form that can more easily infect humans.

As the president pointed out, a vaccine cannot be made until this evolution occurs.

This raises the concern that it may be impossible to create enough vaccine fast enough to protect all our citizens. But there is hope.

Gallup polls tell us that up to 45 percent of Americans don't believe in evolution. Since random mutation is the engine of evolution, these same people must believe that the virus cannot mutate.

Therefore, there is no need to waste vaccine on folks who believe there is no possible threat to themselves -- thus leaving a sufficient supply for the rest of us. Perhaps the president, given his doubts about evolution, may wish to demonstrate his leadership by foregoing vaccination.

This approach has added benefits. Polls also tell us that disbelief in evolution is more pronounced among the less educated, the poor and conservatives. If the anti-evolutionists among these groups were to opt out of vaccination then, through immediate deaths and natural selection, we would reduce poverty, raise educational attainment and become a more progressive society.

[addendum] Someone sent me a link to this article which claims Rumsfeld stands to make a lot of money through his biotech investments thanks to the flu-panic.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Typical "Ask Slashdot" Whining... 15


This is what Ask Slashdot is starting to read like:
-----


I'm, like, a 19 year old high school dropout. I can hax0r up my own Linux kernel and, like, hate Window$!

My boss wants me to start working, like, 30 minutes earlier in the day and won't pay me the, like, $90K I know I'm worth. And he has the balls to give me crap if I take a long lunch. HELLO? I'm leet and have been using NMAP since like V3.1 or something.

Stupid fag boss with his gay degree thinks he's so smart. I've been hax0ring for 6 years when he was still in school BEFORE HE HAD HIS DEGREE!!!!!! In fact I networked, like, 20 PeeCees together with a couple of hubs and a leet DSL Router for my parents' neighbours' business (they paid me cash-ola under the table!) when I was 16!!!

My boss is a TOTAL dink. And I can't get the corner office because I'm, like, a threat to him. So I sit in a cube with 3 other guys who are stupid because they think Windows is OK.

Most of my time is spent reading /. and bitching to the secretaries because they're the only ones who will listen. I told my boss we should get rid of the lame Ci$co PIX firewalls and install Linux boxes with IPTables but he's old and st00pid and said something about reworking infrastructure is expensive. Like... HELLO? I'm here already, I can do it! And if I *evar* use BitTorrent he comes runnign complaing that "bandwidth costs money". HELLO?! There's loads of unused bandwidth, how can it cost money? I download Linux kernels thru my parents' l337 DSL all the time and no one sends me a bill!!!

And my st00pid boss has these gay "managed switches" that cost lots of money. Like, HELLO?! Why would you need to ssh to a switch? Totally GAY! And, like, "Spanning tree" and "VLANs"? That's gay, like my parents' DSL router doesn't even have them, whatever they are.

So my question to slashdot is this: What would you do if you were underappreciated and deserving like me?
User Journal

Journal Journal: I'm not happy. 10


~15 years ago I found a wee kitten abandoned in an elevator at an old girlfriend's apartment building. GF's cat didn't like the kitten so I stayed on the couch with her that night. I never liked cats much but that night I just melted as she slept curled up beside me.

"Baby" (how original) would follow me around wherever I went, not as much now that she's older. She has her own pillow on the bed that she curls up on. Here in my office she has a pillow on a spare chair beside me that she sleeps on, in fact she's here right now.

Over the past couple of years she seems to have forgotten where her litterbox is and it's getting worse. Tonight she walked beside the TV where we had a movie playing, squatted down and pee'd right there. She was watching us while doing it, like she's just senile and forgot about the protocols of using a litterbox. Kim, my lovely lady, is an "animal nurse" (Animal Health Technologist is the title) at a vet clinic here in town. She's had Baby in for tests and everything is coming up fine. So I asked point blank: "Will this get worse?" She knew why I was asking, "[pause] Probably, yes."

So tomorrow she's going to bring Baby into work and euthanize her.

This cat has been with me through thick and thin; 5 apartments and now this house, a bunch of girlfriends, no money, lots of money, happy, sad, depressed... you name it she was always just Baby and she was always there. And in about 12 hours this little cat that's curled up beside me on her chair will be gone.

I'm so upset. Goodnight.
User Journal

Journal Journal: slurpees_kill_keythingees 12

I_bought_one_Slurpee_on_the_trip_home.
30_minutes_or_so_previous_to_this_entry_some_spilled_on_my_entry_unit.
Now_I_seem_to_be_short_some_working_keys.

I've_succeeded_in_writing_this_without_using_even_one_of:
tilde_key
the_number_"one"
the_letter_to_the_left_of_"w"
the_letter_to_the_left_of_"s"
the_letter_to_the_left_of_"x"
the_long_thing_which_puts_the_empty-bit_between_words.

I_suck._This_is_poopy.

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