I have a Google spreadsheet called "Unintelligent Design" to which I'm freely giving edit access.

The reason? I'm wondering what will happen with no controls over deletion, editing or content. Will people leave crappy poetry? Goofy graffiti? Countless goatse links? Will whistleblowers from Roswell surface? Will those who hate our freedom use it against us?!

You can view, edit, modify or delete cells. Think chmod 777!

Go for it! Mail grieder at gmail.com or put your address in this JE for access.

NB: You'll need a gmail account, mail me for an invite. Once you get your spreadsheet invite in gmail, logout and back in. Once logged back in click the link to share the spreadsheet. From then on just go to http://spreadsheets.google.com Note that these invites are a 'backway' into Google's spreadsheet service, no need to go to their signup page, very much like a gmail invite.

Little Anna is due on July 5. This morning Kim wakes up full of energy and wants to go swimming right out of bed, very odd. While we're doing that ~8:30 AM, she's looking around the backyard and talking about what to do to the gardens and yard. Then gets out, pops up an umbrella and lounger then chills for a while. [fast forward ~7 hours] She's gone through all of the wee one's clothes, washed everything and is filing it (by size) in the closet. Also told me that I have to put the car carrier base in her car soon. And during this, has been packing the suitcase to bring to the hospital with stuff for all 3 of us.

She's crazy right now, I hear her upstairs working in the baby's room. Is this the 'nesting instinct' people have been asking me about? ("has she started nesting yet?")

(whoa, while editting something I see the new CSS layouts have kicked in... that freaked me out) ah.. I see the [i] tags are broken.

This is fun!

Stolen from Nizo who stole it from heliobacter...

1. Think of the first word that comes to mind when you think of me.

2. Go to: images.google.com and search for that word.

3. Reply to this post with one of the pictures on the first page of results* (but do not tell me the word).

4. Put this in your own journal so that I can do the same.

If you've read any of my postings on downloading music, movies or warez, you know I'm a big believer in test driving things so long as you're somewhat honest and buy what you enjoy.

Last Thursday after reading yet another glowing review of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion I recalled that the ISO with crack was sitting there waiting for install (I'm a degenerate collector of warez, that goes back to ~1980 and the Apple ][+.) So I installed the game that night with the crack. Friday night at home Kim was busy doing something so I had a couple of hours to blow. Off to the game.

I was blown away. Amazingly rich environment, wonderful storyline and plenty of action. Off to bed. Fast forward to Saturday morning and I was back to Oblivion. Sunday morning was like Saturday morning, in Oblivion with a steaming cup of tea at my side.

It was then I decided the game was going to be played a lot and that it was worth my money. I bought the Collector's Edition of Oblivion for CA$69.95. Not cheap but if the game were to end now with the ~8 hours of play I've got in it, then its been worth every penny. Best bit, though, the reviews all claim between 200 and over 300 hours of play if you go on all the various side missions.

If you would like a D&Dish style RPG, selectable first or third person view, good combat, lush environment, immersive storyline you must check this game out.

That said, I have only one real gripe so far: the damn copy protection! I haven't installed the real game from DVD yet as I already have a working copy with a crack and no disk check. If I install software I've bought off the disc, I still run a crack. Software vendors won't replace damaged discs so the safest place for them is in the package, not in your drive slowing down the game loading as the checks take place.

Get it through your heads, software makers, protection makes it harder for legitimate users to use your stuff. The people who want your stuff for free will always get it.

In the story "Is Coffee the Persuasion Bean?" I suggested that people PayPal me a buck and I'd post the results later in the week.

Of course I meant it as a joke but I had three people take my advice! Thanks to N.H., D.B. and K.L. I have, after PayPal's fees, a CA$1.86 balance in my account.

It'll go towards a mega-large Dr. Pepper or Pepsi Slurpee this weekend.

CHEERS! :)

(Pardon typos, I'm not in the mood to correct much)

I'm officially wisdom tooth free today. Had an appointment at the oral surgeon's at 8:45 this AM.

My mouth is sore even with the Tylenol 3s (codeine, baby!) and Advil. I can only imagine the pain without.

To avoid laughing and the associated pain I'm watching cheese sci-fi and horror movies at home today. Just finished Event Horizon What a sad rip-off of (Alien|Hellraiser|the genres as a whole).

Cheese Moment #1: the heroes are put into liquid-filled tubes to survive the G-forces of the ion drive (I guess the ion drives of the future will accelerate much faster than the ones today...) When they exit the tubes, their coffee cups and other junk are still on tables around the ship rather than being debris crushed along the back walls.

Cheese Moment #2:On the Event Horizon there's a long tunnel separating the main ship from the spooky gravity drive. Along the tunnel are loads of explosive charges so the ship can separate in case of an emergency. "Right. Those will come into play later." I thought. Later on Lawrence Fishburne is able to run around the spooky ship setting those explosive charges by opening a cover and hitting a button. Wouldn't such devices have some safeguards for people going postal or sabotage?

There's more but I'm tired of typing and am going to watch The Off Season Judging by the reviews I'll have another JE later...

Cheers.

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)

My posts of tonight illustrate that.

blahhhhhhhhhhhh....

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?

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...

So I went the Wimpy Route and started mucking about with the stuff on blogger.com. It's sftping to the server.

Not much there yet but have fun: I Rule.

"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.

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)"

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.

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!