My matzoh came as part of a larger shipment headed for Cleveland together with the other Detroiters who ordered from the same place. A driver was dispatched to pick it up, but 5 boxes of special (raichayim shel yad) order (2 for me, 3 for my sister) was missed. Instead, we got the regular (chabura) matzo. So, i decided to drive to Cleveland myself on Sunday. As i told my sister, "i have a need, i have a Sunday, what the heck".

In general, i drive to Cleveland once a year to go to Telshe for the high holidays. I know the road well (Southfield->75->280->80/90->90->Euclid->Sun). This time, however, i needed to go to Cleveland Heights, and going through Wickliffe would have been out of the way. Knowing this, i went to Google Maps for the way. My sister couldn't find her GPS device, so, i just went with the GM printout.

The directions say to go from Coventry to Cedar Glen. Cedar (didn't see the Glen) was closed in that direction. Not knowing where to go, i called a friend in Wickliffe who directed me. It didn't work, and i ended up driving up and down that part of Euclid for an hour or two before i realized it. Eventually, i got through again, and they told me to go up Mayfield. I found it on my second pass, and go to my destination shortly thereafter. It would have been faster for me to go "the long way" and go to Wickliffe, then just take Euclid to Taylor. Me and my bright ideas.

I am terrible at following directions...any directions. I was on a team with a friend, he being a programmer (doing Java at the time) and me doing the database. As the database needed to process something and he knew how, he started explaining to me the step-by-step instruction that would have to be followed. Completely bewildered, i stopped him, and tried to explain to him i cannot understand that step-by-step directions. He though i was pushing him off or something, and i explained it to him again. He relented, though i don't think he ever believed me. I need to know the overall picture and only then the small details.

Anyway, i got more LotR goodness, in Book 2 Chapter 4 now.

Sometime after the movies came out, i downloaded and watched them. I just didn't follow the story at all, and gave up before finishing them. Sometime later, i picked it up again and watched it again getting the entire story. Well, the movies' version that is. The movie is all about action and perhaps some reluctance. The book is all about wavering and perhaps a little action sprinkled about. The story is so much easier to follow as everything is explained and it is easy to get into.

I have my own thoughts on Tom Bambadil now, glad i finally "read it" in the original.

.. a match 3 game featuring buxom blondes, clubs, and baby seals.

I call it...

Scandi Crush Saga.

A poorly written, informative rant on post-period spacing.

Hop History:

1. Google search for some grammar rules.
2. Grammar Girl's article on the subject.

Ping! I love that duck!. Considering i see "15,295 of 15,772 people found the following review helpful", it looks like the comment has been around the block a few times.

Hop History:

1. PerlMonks' cabal group
2. merlyn
3. itenerary
4. homepage
5. books
6. The Story About Ping (on Amazon)

Perlmonks has polls, switching mostly one a month. Wasting time, i posted to the currently current poll thread (and many others as well, which strangely enough became a live poll.

On good old greenie, i trolled not too successfully, but realized people seem only read the first line of the post, or gave up when trying to make sense of the second.

It's like Slashdot is more of a playground. I'm trying to enjoy it before the beta destroys the last vestige of normalcy here.

Edit: Changed title from "Silliness" to "Chronicle". I should have followed my own advice and written the title after the entry.

Just now came across an informative article from over a decade ago. My favorite part is the URL. :)

Comcast is my ISP (again), and i have been receiving copyright violation notices.

Evidence:
Case ID: (removed)
Work Title: Maid to Obey
Copyright Owner: Froytal Services Limited DBA Brazzers
Unauthorized File Name: Jessie Andrews And Joslyn James - Maid to Obey
Unauthorized Hash: d48d521f033c2fb816c7dbf13753f5dcbe9dab0e
Unauthorized File Size: 497576269 bytes
Unauthorized Protocol: BitTorrent
Timestamp: 2014-03-27 06:12:08 North American Eastern Time
Unauthorized IP Address: (removed)
Unauthorized Port: 20036
The following files were included in the unauthorized copying and/or distribution:
File 1: Jessie Andrews And Joslyn James - Maid to Obey/ham_jessie_joslyn_jd020713_480p_2000.mp4

I use qbittorrent on my mac, but never downloaded that. And this isn't the first infringement notice for similar movies (guessing by the names).

Maybe it is from one of the people using my connection, as a couple neighbors and a few friends have the password. I just want to get rid of the problem , i don't really want to know who it is.

I mentioned to my neighbors and one friend that i have been getting the violations, yet they still come. I may have to block access, but i want to let these people use it, if possible.

Any ideas on resolving this?

Recently, an Anonymous Coward (but I have a couple of guesses as to who really wrote it) accused me of being racist because I am pro-life.

The AC's argument was: You say you want to ban abortion, but what you really want is to ban abortion except for the type that rich white people can afford, therefore, you're a racist.

The logical leaps in this argument are almost breathtaking in their stupidity. I'd be surprised, but I've had this account for probably a decade now and as such liberal stupidity is, quite frankly, nothing new.

Here's some pseudocode that explains my position on abortion:

bool MayHaveAnAbortion (Mother m)
{
if (m.LifeAtRisk() == true)
{
return true;
}
else
return false;
}

Please note, dear liberals, that in this example there is no consideration for race, socio-economic status, or any other victim groups that you like to place people in.

(Yes, I am aware that the method could simply be "return m.IsLifeAtRisk()" but let's face it, the liberals around here aren't smart enough to handle that and would only get confused.)

So to sum up: Yes, I am absolutely opposed to all forms of abortion for all women except in cases where the life of the mother is at risk.

Furthermore, the logical errors required to somehow twist that into calling me a racist are exceptional in their stupidity, and proves (yet again) the intellectual dishonesty of the "progressive" movement -- showing the "progressive" movement to be nothing more than a secular humanistic death cult.

In the elevator today, on my way to the sixth floor, a man and woman were talking. She told him that she had a new phone, and after he asked, she explained (iirc), "It's a 5s....my old phone was a 'droid", putting on a more serious face, "it was three years old".

Luckily the doors opened an i got off. I might just have burst out laughing...youngsters.

With a 20 to 30 minute drive to and fro the office when traffic is light, i might as well listen to something. Being too lazy to read LoTR, maybe i can listen to it.

The 98 Honda Civic has a radio, though not much else in the way of audio. A friend lent me an FM transmitter, and then we realized it only transmits but does not play mp3s. An external device is required for that. And they seem expensive, until i found this item, which a number of sellers have for varying prices, but seemingly is the same product. There are many negative reviews on it, though one review which appears on top, really does set the record straight. So, for under five bucks, which includes (free) shipping, i gave it a shot.

I ordered it on 2/20 and got it last week, probably about 3/20. The plastic container was crushed, i didn't see any instructions, i set it to 87.7, and it works nicely. A day or two later i remembered to get the correct USB stick into the car, and started listening to LoTR.

LoTR, the book, is quite enjoyable (who woulda thought?) And the reader is pretty good too, changing his voice for the different characters which makes me giggle as i listen. Usually i change the speed to get the information faster. For example, i'm watching in anime at 2.55x (VLC is really strange sometimes). It's an anime aimed at teens so they speeeak veeerrrrrry sloooooooooooowly and........................pause..............a....lot.................in.................between.................words. I watched DBZ, iirc, at 1.7x, It's all a matter of how long the subtitles stay for, or in English, how long the pause in between words is. It can be sped up until just before the point where there is no pause. Regardless, i am enjoying this audiobook too well to want to speed it up.

But there is one issue. While the MP3 player does remember the track it is up to (by ordinal, that is, change the thumb drive or the tracks and it'll pick up a different track at that ordinal). So, i heard a lot of repeats for things before chapter 1. But chapter 1 itself is over an hour long. What to do, what to do...

Duh! Split it at every five minutes, or maybe just every one minute. Okay, but that sounds tedious, and what about splitting on silence. Enter MP3Split. On the "Batch & automatic split" it has an option "Silence - split with silence detection." "Threshold level (dB)" is set to -48.00, so i set "Minimum track length (seconds)" to 60 and gave it a shot. There were very few splits. Guessing, i set threshold to 0, but that resulted in no splits.

Giving up on the silent treatment, i set to split every 60 seconds, and got 3209 files (starting with Book 1). That is hard to manage and the player only has three digits for the ordinal. So, i set it to 200 seconds, resulting in 988 files. It splits words, but that seems ok, there's just a small click or something as it switches tracks. I wonder how it will sound in the car.

Why do i see people using Header & Trailer records? It is Header & Footer! Get it, the head is opposite the foot. If it is a Trailer record, the former is a Leader record. Head is the top of the body, foot is the bottom; lead comes before, trail comes after. Sheesh, some people just don't think! When should one be used over the other? It is a matter of paradigm. Are the records "part of" the body or not?

It's not limited to that. I see people using Start & End. It is Start & Finish or Begin & End. Like Lead & Trail, Start & Finish are outside the process, Begin & End are of the process. I get frustrated because i am starting to think in their stupid terminology! (The antidote to that sickness is to rant about it. :) )

When naming a COLUMN storing a process's start & finish times, Start & Finish are when they are set to start and finish. If it record the actual times of when it started and when it finished, the names should be Started and Finished.

Are these idiots turning their brains off before they name things or have they just not have brains to begin^H^H^H^H^Hstart with?

Still moving slowly along in trying to read Galen's De Temperamentis in English, Distributed Proofreaders started a project for it. Those Type-in Addicts are awesome.

The project state currently is Proofreading Round 3: Waiting for Release. Although Round 2 finished on December 12th, 2013, The Project Manager put a Hold on it which prevents it from proceeding through any further rounds.

On January 11th, 2014 i sent the PM a message

What is the status of the project De Temperamentis?

It seems it has been waiting for the proofread level 3 for a month now. I'm asking because i do not know how the process works here.

Is there anything i need to do to help move the project along?

Can i see the entire text as it is right now? The project page lets me download "Concatenated Text Files" but it does not seem complete to me.

I hope i am not bothering you with these questions. I really don't know the process.

but have not received a response. So yesterday (3/18/14) , i posted to the project's thread asking "What is the status of this project?" Perhaps someone will respond in the next week or so.

A few hours after i posted that message to the forum, someone emailed me

Hey!

          I saw your post on Slashdot looking for an English translation of Galen's De Temperamentis. I wish I had one for you, I'm actually looking for the same thing and curious to know if you found anything in the six months since you posted your question, or if a kickstarter ever got started, or anything else.

Cheers!
(name removed)

http://beta.slashdot.org/journal/505829/looking-for-galens-de-temperamentis-in-english

After wondering how he found the JE and where he got my email address, i saw that googling for "de temperamentis english" has the JE high (third, to me, right now) on the list. Link is to the ugly beta though. Well, i responded with information about the project and

the entire Latin text can be downloaded from the project page, but will have page lines in between.
Google translate will translate most of it. Some words it won't translate can be split into to.

(Last word should be "two".) That seems good enough for him.

As it so happens, he is working on "the history of the four humours for a personality documentary", which is somewhat related to what i am working on.

I am amused.

Well, it's Friday, Pi day, as i'm sure you know.
But next year will be even so much more so
And a year after that, you can feel rounded
Anyone else wish to hear this expounded?

I was sneaking around slashdot before, and now the front-page and journals all sow up in the beta. Removing "beta." from the URL is of no help. It reminds me of Windows 8, which made me switch away from Windows and to the Mac. Perhaps, we are now entering the Third Age of slashdot.

I have 5 moderator points, and prefer to spend them in JEs. But, i can't seem to find the moderate button in the old interface. Wondering if it was the date of the JE, i started listing JEs, but most seem like advertisements and there do not seem to be too many with comments.

The more i use Slashdot, the more i dislike it.

A friend asked me how to change top-post/bottom-post in Thunderbird. He intentionally uses a strict white-listing ISP, so searching is difficult (and that is pretty much how he wants it). That ISP offers excellent service and support to those who want exactly that type of service. Nonetheless, the time comes when you have to ask someone else to find something out for you. A simple search finds the answer. Easy enough.

He responded:

Thank you! Whats the best email program to install? Nothing against Thunderbird but I heard that its not so popular. I once went to a Microcenter to transfer my emails to a different comp. They said that they have no experirence with it!

Popularity (and possibly good sense) aside, he simply wants a popular email program, one that he can go into a place like Microcenter and get support.

Personally, i use GMail. I would recommend that to him, but, it can be hard to allow only one of Google's services.

Any recommendation?