Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned SourceForge

I enjoyed the heck out of this site long ago. I'm sad that it has come to this.

Well, my dollar store water bottle had a black dot in it, in spite of all my efforts to drain it and leave some air flow every day. In the garbage that went; i ain't playin' with that sort of stuff.

So, it was down to the cafeteria to get a styrofoam cup, which lasts a good few days before coming up with specks. At 15 cents for the cup, lid, and straw, it's not bad. I'm guessing i am allowed to take ice as well, but i'd feel silly asking the cashiers, who may not even know official policy, and worried if they act like they do. Stealing is stealing no matter what the item is. Regardless, i splurged and got Coke Zero, which clearly means i can take ice. Not much though. I want to keep it cold but not water down my drink.

At the register i saw a smallish bowl, half-full with pennies. I was thinking it was one of those win-win, give-a-penny-take-a-penny dishes, but at half full, looked a bit unused. So, i wondered aloud at her, "Pennies...does anyone use those?" She laughed. I was perplexed. Walking away, i felt silly.

I am a widely unreported minority called a 'xenosexual' i am very attracted to foreign women. xeno means alien and of course many xenosexuals want to have sex with aliens from another planet. of course i'm not exclusively xenosexual but i'm not pansexual either (loving all types) as boys/men are ugly to me. the internet for all it's glory has so far hidden the xenosexual to obscure groups even more obscure than 4chan. even though japanese anime has had demon sex and alien sex it is still an obscure offshoot of an obscure media. 'please my teacher' is one such xenosexual anime (which i have copies of)

I am tired of all the persecution and ignorance towards xenosexuals i couldn't even find a page on facebook for xenosexuals, despite there being anime for it.

As if Some puns wasn't bad enough, i shall here continue my plagiarism, brevity, and literary destruction:

Mick Jagger's dog asked his friend, Patricia Whack, for a loan, offering a small item as collateral. Puzzled, she asked her husband what it was. "It's a knick knack, Patty Whack. Give the dog a loan. His old man's a Rolling Stone."

Sixteen sodium atoms walk into a bar followed by Batman.

Did you hear about the man who got cooled to absolute zero? He's 0K now.

An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first orders a beer, the second orders half a beer, the third orders a quarter of a beer, and so on. After the seventh order, the bartender pours two beers and says, "You fellas ought to know your limits."

Pavlov was sitting at a bar, when the phone rang. Suddenly he gasped, "I forgot to feed the dogs!"

Three logicians walk into a bar. The bartender asks, "Do all of you want drinks?" The first logician says, "I don't know." The second logician says, "I don't know." The third logician says, "Yes."

How can you tell the difference between a chemist and a auto worker? Ask them to pronounce "unionized."

What's the difference between an etymologist and an entomologist? The etymologist knows the difference.

At a hotel, the bellhop asked a photon if he had any luggage. "Nope." he answered, "I'm travelling light."

He's more classless than a Marxist utopia.
She's so mean she has no standard deviation.

That taxidermist really knows his stuff.

A grizzly without shoes is bear foot.

A lighthouse, rose trellis, windstorm, dune, and Halloween costume got together for a beacon, lattice, and tornado sand witch.

What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?

I really want to like libressl. But it pretends to be openssl badly. They refused a patch that would have mitigated this whole RAND_egd problem by simply returning that it doesn't work when someone tries to use it, which means that you commonly need a patch to use it at all. If it's not going to work like openssl, then it shouldn't occupy the same space in the filesystem.

I'm reading Learning Java, which i recently purchased, and was typing in the examples from the book. As the book is a monster to hold, i ended up upgrading the ebook for $4.95. Dual screens with one for the PDF and the other for the IDE make it oh so much easier to type in. I also have been reading it on the macbook while in the tub. Nothing like cozying up with a language manual, eh? :)

It's hard enough to learn Java itself. I remember it from the 90s when it was slow, clunky, crashed browsers, and promised way too much. But, it's matured, and for better or worse, it's out there. So, i'm now learning it despite my own prejudice, and now an then mentally mumble, "oh, how stupid."

The stupidities seem to have more to do with preference, and by no means is it language specific. For example, calling an offset an index, leading to the 0/1 bugs that foil so many, camelCasing, and repeating context inside the name. I'm likely to do my own thing for my own code, to keep it enjoyable. I'm even tempted to declare all arrays with one extra element and just starting from 1. Though, some array methods start from 0 regardless, so, i may not be able to hold onto that fantasy for very long.

This is also my first language where i'm learning proper inheritance. One rule that i wondered about is, if class B is a subtype of class A, a variable of class A can refer to an instance of class B, but not vice-versa. I thought that was backwards because B is A plus other stuff. The box isn't bug enough! If anything, i thought, it should be exactly the opposite. A variable of type B should be able to point to an instance of type A, because it fits, though there may be some defaults required.

But now, i finally got to an explanation from the book, albeit about casting, "Casts in Java affect only the treatment of references; they never change the form of the actual object. This is an important rule to keep in mind. You never change the object pointed to by a reference by casting it; you change only the compiler's (or runtime system's) notion of it." Aha! The reason a variable of type A can hold an instance of type B is that from a usage standpoint, B has everything A has, so who cares about the rest. Conversely, a variable of type B cannot hold an instance of type A because it does not have everything required. To use MBTI terminology, Java is for Ps, i am a J. (I just wish they keep away from databases, which is clearly J territory.) I almost feel enlightened. And from Java, no less.

Now to continue reading. I've been successful int trying to do one chapter a(n office) day. Currently in chapter 6.

This is not news to most people, but I just tried it for the first time on my first-ever normal Debian Wheezy install (I've always done minimal, netinst etc. and built it up from there for a purpose) and wow, GNOME3 is amazingly horrible. It makes Unity look usable. If that was the idea, mission accomplished, I guess.

As late as last year, I remember Net Neutrality being a libertarian free market concept- preventing a crony corporate takeover of the Internet. Now that it is being implemented by the FCC, it has suddenly become a crony corporate (Democrat Brand) takeover of the Internet, that all good libertarians should oppose.

I haven't had political whiplash like this since the Catholic Church went from those nice monks doing AIDS research and running hospice care centers to those bigots who want to keep THOSE people from marrying.

After last year's Sample Sale i was very excited to go to this year's. It was $10 promptly asked for at the door, and no real $1 table.

I got:

• Linberg Hot Canary T which seem to sell for about $100.
• Kyosho Radio Controlled Mini-Z Racer MR-02 MM (not cup) Ford GT. A similar item (RM instead of MM) seems to go for about $130.
• NKOK Raging Racers Radio Controlled Ford F-150 SVT Raptor A similar item go for ~$34. ebay has similar vehicles, perhaps only different in color, for ~$25.
• Toy State Road Rippers R/C Ford F150 Raptor (no music, sound, or lights). Similar items seem to go for $25-$30.
• Greenlight Hollywood Series 1 Car Collector Case. Which goes for $55.
• A Hoodie
• A bag.

The canary was $20, the bag $5, All the rest went for $10 each. Had i realized what these were, i would have skipped the Toystate wired(!!) car, and just bought more of the Kyoshos. I really did not give the boxes the attention they deserved.

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"Plain Old Text" doesn't seem to like HTML anymore. </LI> elements are being treated like new <LI> elements. A blank line after <OL> is treated the same way. The new guys just like breaking stuff, don't they.

I have tried two more brands of contacts, both hydrogel and toric, with little success. The first pair had the right eye not so bad, but the left was blurry. Ultimately, my appointment was for Sunday, and when i was late i received a phone call. Oops! I guess i've been relying on those reminder calls a bit too much.

He looked at them and they seemed ok, though he caught the left contact being off (rotationally). He mentioned he could correct for it by getting me a lens that would (mostly) work at that rotation, but it sounded a bit to risky. Math is good and all that, but it sounds risky to rely on the contact being off.

So, second pair. That was weird. When the light was on i saw better. And, he didn't see anything wrong when shining the light in my eye. Ostensibly, when my pupils dilated, the contact moved and my vision was worse. I was able to see that difference easily. Ultimately, i was seeing double vision on that second pair, with a shadow of each letter to the right, slightly up. I thought i was funny when i could position my head at the right angle (no pun intended) to see the letters without the shadow to the side.

He had one lens from the third pair, the other being on order. It was no better.

He said i was the worst case he had ever come across. Aside from being happy about the title, it looks like contacts are not for me. He said maybe there is a curvature of my eye too slight for the machine to pick up. Or, possibly, all the contacts had defects. Whatever the case, he suggested i was unlikely to find a good pair, and we agreed that i would just give up. I know the doctor from the community, and i trust his judgement. I'll just have to suffice at feeling special. :)

Okay, first came Take Our Daughters To Work Day, which was implemented as Take a Child to Work Day, now "officially", Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, but personally i consider it Take Our Cuties To Show Off Day.

Ostensibly, the original reason was to encourage the young ladies about the work place. Or was it to let mothers be known. Regardless, this well intended practice was aimed at women, for women, by women. In a sense, (good) discrimination to fight (bad) discrimination. Adding boys to this messed the whole thing up, right?

If the purpose was for the girls, that would mean the girls should be tweens. Old enough to understand, yet young enough to not have angst. 70 years ago, the participants would have been teenagers, but times have changed. Teens are the real tweens. They're young adults we treat as children, regardless of so much evidence otherwise. But, i digress.

Now, it seems the (average) age group here is 3-5. Parents spend half their time taking care of the children, and the other half attending events for the children. The only benefit seems to be showing off the children. And even that is discriminatory. They only show their children to friends, and seem wary of anyone else.

Just before, i heard one mother ask if child if he went potty already. Seriously? This is the kid you bring to work? Though, i guess it lets us see the more motherly side of these women (few men seem to take the option, and the ones who do, rarely show off) and they probably don't want to bring older children, for fear of what they might say.

Next up, bring your mom to school day. Wait, they already have that useless thing too...

I love books. Well, i love reading them. There are people who do love books, such as an erstwhile coworker that told me she cried when they were lost or damaged, or something like that. She convincingly conveyed to me that she was emotionally attached to her books. She also no longer works here.

I used to work at OLDE, which put me close to John King Books which has over a million books. Though he's just one match away from retirement, i visited a lot during lunch. It was under 10 minutes each way, leaving me over a half hour of perusing each day. Too bad i was only there a few months.

Regular bookstores seem to be going away. Also, there price of a new book at a decent bookstore is high. And, with the advent of online bookstores, the brick & mortars are even less attractive. Well, until i tried looking for a book on Java. There's a bajillion book's on Java, each with its own target audience. Then there's a bunch of versions of Java, how well the target audience is hit, and we have confusion. Even Amazon's reviews were to no avail.

So, off i went to the bookstore. Well, actually, off i went to Home Depot to get new drip pans for my range. I asked someone where to find drip pans, he pointed and gave me the aisle number, asked a second person when there. Minutes late i was checking out. Awesome.

So, i decided to go to Border's, which used to be close by, and found Books-A-Million in its stead. After some initial hesitation i walked in, walked around, didn't seem to be what i want, and left. Eventually, my sister called me back and found a Barnes & Noble not too far away.

Walking in to B&N had some (very) slight nostalgia, and had i had enough time, it'd feel like a candy store. I did have a half hour or so, so i walked around before asking for help. So many books. So many topics. So much variety. And people just sitting and reading. On closer look, they're not holding the books nicely. And look at all the bent covers. Don't you people know how to hold a softcover book? Hold the binding in one hand, possibly pinching a little above it with the thumb and forefinger, then gently push apart the pages. Otherwise, the binding breaks, the cover bends, and you just helped make a book unsalable at normal price. Part of doing business, right? Perhaps, but it still isn't right.

Ooh! What's this, toys? What's a book store without toys? And half price! I came back on my way out and got an Extreme Thumb Wrestling Kit for $5. List price is $9.95 and the big red sticker meant it was half price. There's no ring and only one cape, but who can resist your own mask and mask holder?

But where were the computer books? Ah, ask the man at the information kiosk. I was mildly embarrassed when he pointed to the next bookcase over, and was soon perusing what they had. I settled on Oreilly's Learning Java, 4th Edition, which seemed right, even though it's a version behind. The $50 is more than i would pay online, but i knew that i would be paying more for the pleasure of holding it in my hands before purchase.

I got in line to buy my new candy. In front of me were a couple teenagers. One wearing those pajama pants people call clothes, with a boy with two earrings. It's noting new, but i still find it remarkable. Eventually i was up to bat, and the twenty something asked me if i wanted to join the club. I knew i would hardly ever buy books at the store, so when i found out it is usually $25 a year, it was easy to say no. I told her i usually purchase online. I mentioned Amazon, she mentioned bn.com was comparable, i mentioned they (used to) filter their comments, she said she would look at it or something. It was goodbye at first fright. Well, she asked.

On my way out, i finally found the car which i had parked directly in front of the building. And while looking to back up, my younger brother drove by. I stalked him until he parked in front of the next store, said hello, and left. All in a day's work.

And now the paperweight is on my desk. It's about time i stopped posting and started reading.

After a whole bunch of Somalis decided to pile on me for actually answering a series of questions, I can see why they have few friends.

Seriously, Somalia has been starving since I was a baby, and the US and Russia dropped mil equipment in Africa that destabilized the region, and now China and Saudi Arabia are going to ensure nothing good ever happens there.

But, sure, yell at me. that will do you good. Not.

The punchline for this week's story line arc at Userfriendly is significant to any slashdotter with less than a seven digit UID.

Just reviewed tearablepuns.org. I laughed, i cried, they were tear-able.

Here's the ones i liked, some reworded:
  (Yes, i reviewed all of them.)
  (I rejected some because i've heard them before.)

The number 13? Not on my watch!!
The two crows that tried to start their own flock were charged with attempted murder.
If attacking clowns, go for the juggler.
I gave away my dead batteries free of charge.
I'm still working on a construction joke.
You can't explain a pun to a kleptomaniac. They take things, literally.
I tried to make a belt out of watches. It was a waist of time.
What do you call a herd of giggling cows? Laughing stock.
What do you call a sleepwalking nun? A Roaming Catholic.
I know a guy who is addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop anytime.
Secretary, please tell the invisible man I can't see him today.
She got fired from the hot dog stand for putting her hair in a bun.
A boy swallowed some coins. The doctor checked him out and said, "No change yet."
This book on beating gravity is great; i can't put it down!
After surviving mustard gas and pepper spray, he was considered a seasoned veteran.
My flashlight died. I'm delighted.
C, E Flat, and G walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Sorry, no minors."
It was nice when i let my fingernails grow a little. But now it's getting out of hand!
I _would've_ kept off the grass, but I don't understand sign language.
A guy stayed on a merry-go-round for three days. He set a whirled record.
No one seams to like my jokes about patch work! I've tried sew hard...
When the shoe salesman offered me Velcro shoes, I said, "Sure, why knot?"
Two silkworms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
Male deer have buck teeth.
That was a very emotional wedding. Even the cake was in tiers.
Did you hear about the guy who lost his left arm? He's all right now.
She gets her way by pretending she's sad. She's an expert in sighcology.
She applied at the post office but they wouldn't letter. They said it's all mail there.
The roundest knight at the Round Table was Sir Cumference. He had too much pi.
What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta.
Witches' parking only: All others will be toad.
That theatrical performance about puns was just a play on words.
When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
Without geometry, life is pointless.
I dyed my hair today. It was the highlight of the week.
About Rosh Hashana: shofar, so good.
My doctor told me to cut down on sodium. I took his advice with a pinch of salt.
The paint catapult won the competition with flying colors.
Never trust atoms. They make up everything.
I can have dinner at a native American restaurant. Who needs reservations?
A pun at maturity is fully groan.
As a couple, oxygen and potassium make are OK.
I used to have a fear of hurdles, but I got over it.
Noone laughed when i fell while skating. But the ice sure cracked up.
Pinning pictures on a bulletin board seems a bit tacky.
A man drowned in a bowl of muesli. A strong currant pulled him in.
The man who fell into an upholstery machine is now fully recovered.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
The calendar's days are numbered.
He drove his expensive car into a tree and found out how his Mercedes bends.
He often broke into song because when couldn't find the right key.
What's the difference between a democratic system and a feudal system? In one your vote counts, in the other, your count votes.
The best way to communicate with fish is to drop them a line.
She was only a whiskey-maker's daughter, but he loved her still.
No matter how much you push the envelope, it will remain stationery.
Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.
Hungry? A boiled egg is hard to beat.
A gossip is someone with a great sense of rumor.
Corduroy pillows are making headlines.
The egoist took revenge on another, I for I.
I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
Dreaming in color is a pigment of your imagination.
A pessimist's blood type is B-negative
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Submitted a couple:

Bobby told Billy he stopped a stampede. That's was the biggest bunch of bull he ever herd.
Useless people online are e-feckless.