The s/n ratio's dipped too low, so I'm hiding AC's by default for the first time since I started reading this site in late '98. Some days, honestly, I'm not sure why I keep coming back.

If anyone cares, my foes list is made up largely of two groups:
1) Climate-change deniers, the sort for whom nothing will change their minds.
2) THE STATE IS ALWAYS WRONG AND EVIL fringe libertarians, ditto.

Wow... it's just hard to believe. Really.

Logging in.. posting. Wow, this is just as exciting as I remember! Now if only all the old gang was still around... spork_testicle for example.

No, really. I don't.

Cripes, I have not posted on or read /. in ages. And guess what? I think it will be another year before I post again. So, who's still here?

Wow. I've only got 3 entries, and I haven't written in my journal for almost 2 years. I guess I'd better not start a blog, eh?

Long story short, I've got 7 weeks to go before I finish my first year of teaching HS science. 2 courses away from my Master's in ed, and $1200 and a pile of work away from getting certified to teach. For someone only lacking student teaching (but having work experience 2x or more that) they make it damn hard to get certified without student teaching.

Anyway, I'm empolyed, and in a field where nobody gets laid off, or outsourced, and people are still getting signing bonuses. And I get summers off. I have to say, as much as I love programming, I'll take a job like this over it any day. And I still have summers to program whatever my heart desires.

What a nice change from the tech sector...

Something really strange is going on.

First, let me state that j0nkatz a complete fraud. Do not be fooled. Only Bone-O-Rama is capable of Automated First Post Goodness (c). Bone-O-Rama is quality software, written in Visual Basic.Net and released under the GPL.

Included features:

* Completely configurable
* GUI or character based interface
* Use the included database of clever first post comments or add your own!
* Post unattended or at a pre-determined time.
* Login and post via anonymous proxy.
* Duplicate story check option. If enabled, it will verify whether the story
    is unique and modify the post accordingly. Additional features that the competition does not offer.
* PostStalker: Enter the user ID of someone you wish to stalk and every post that user makes will get an automatic response!
    Choose Civil or Flamewar.
* StoryQueStalker: Submit stories that are mined from Google, Yahoo and CNN as legit stories with links. Automatically!
* KarmaStalker: With this feature, your account can be tracked and karma calculated. No more Positive/Negative silliness.

If you, or your friends would like in on the first post lifestyle, there is no better way than to Bone-O-Rama your way to the top!
This post created using the magnificent Bone-O-Rama © 2004 cyborg_monkey LLC

If you haven't figured out by now I'm pretty fickle with my friends and foes list. Here's my very strange comment options (at the moment):

Threshold: 1
Highlight Threshold: 1
Reason Modifier:
Insightful: -1
Interesting: -1
Funny: -2
Informative: -1
Offtopic: -5
Flamebait: -6
Troll: -6
Redundant: -2
Friend: +2
Fan: 0
Foe: 3
Freak: 0
Friends of Friends: +1
Foes of Friends: -1
Anonymous Modifier: -1
Karma Bonus: 0
Subscriber Bonus: -2
New User Modifier: percentage: 2% modifier: -1
Long Comment Bonus: modifier: -1

Man, it has been a long time since I posted last, nearly a year. Athough I read /. from time to time, I mostly stay away.

Any of the old gang still hang out here?

I've been noticing more often lately a problem with the generic Comment Threshold slashdot has. While it's great for main page articles, it doesn't work so well with some of the lesser trafficked areas of the site.

For example, I bask in the magic purple of games.slashdot.org on a regular basis. But I have my comment threshold set at +4 for the main page, which I read most often. On games.slashdot.org, there aren't a lot of comments, and there isn't a ton of moderation. I read it at somewhere between 0 and +2, since that lets me see a decent amount of comments.

Although it would be nice to be able to set thresholds for each section, it would also be more crap in the prefrences to wade through. At the same time, when a games.slashdot.org story makes the main page, I generally view it at +4, since I only want to wade through 50-100 comments on average.

I guess what I'm thinking about would involve a fairly major rewrite of slashcode...sigh.

I guess I'll go play around with my preferences...

Since it's been quite some time since I posted anything at all, I figured I'd make a token journal entry. So here it is:

The recent history of my life, part 12:

I got laid off in January, after 2.5 years of slavery at a shitty company, programming and doing dba work, on 15 minute "holy shit, someone fix this or I'll be fired" deadlines. Our parent company, (rhyme-rhedia, in scooby-speak, and which I'm not allowed to say anything bad about since I signed their damn severance papers) had had us on a salary and equipment freeze for 2 years, and had pruned benefits to just about nothing. As most tech depts are, we were understaffed and underfunded, and desperately needed some major hardware upgrades.

But not only were they too broke to give us what we needed, they couldn't even pay everyone the promised company-wide raise after 2 years of suffering. The solution? Lay off a bunch of the company, myself included, and give the remaining people the long-promised raise. (benefits still non-existent)

It took me a few months after I was laid off to learn this, but as far as I can tell, nobody was willing to have the "sorry pal" talk with me. Apparently my direct supervisors thought I was too valuable to let go in their "we need to get rid of 5% of the company" random victim selection, and they (our parent company) had to call in some people from nyc (the parent company hq) to actually lay me off. My boss didn't work that day in protest.

So I feel good, knowing that nobody at our location was willing to sack me, although it does nothing to fix my unemployment issues. And with the average unemployment length in the US tech sector around 9-10 months, I'm not looking at a rosy future.

Well, I wasn't. After 50-60 applications, all but 4 going into a black hole and disappearing forever, I've decided to call off my job search. I've applied to a few local schools to go back for a Masters in Education, and in the fall, I should start on the road to becoming a teacher.

It's not a real stretch for me - I majored in astrophysics, and while doing that, TAed physics and astronomy labs, and senior year I taught my own freshman physics lab. I've pretty much been teaching most of my life, so it wasn't a hard decision. The fact that I saw mainly teaching and nursing jobs listed during my 6 month job search didn't hurt either.

So Yaaaay! I'm going back to school. Granted I may be a poor grad student moving back with my parents and living off their crappy dialup, (out in the sticks) but I think I can survive for a few years. At least I hope I can....

Warm outside, no tornados this weekend (hopefully) and my loins are moist for a cat.

It appears that all the good exploits of Slashdot are over. No more multiple posts, page widening, ASCII art, URL redirects, hidden sids are happening. I guess taco locked down Slashdot, just like he said he would.

So where do you guys hang out now? Since the post cap, I mostly gave up Slashdot because the only real thing of interest here was the trolling. Sure, I will occasionally post on SRU or GiZ, that too is mostly dead.

Guess it's time to move on....

By JONATHAN JENKINS, TORONTO SUN

Get that crimefighter a cape. A naked vigilante in Hamilton -- who interrupted a midnight break and enter in the buff -- is accused of stripping the teenaged burglar to his underwear, tying him up and whipping him with a belt on June 1.

"The accused was sleeping and he was surprised by the intruder," Hamilton police Det.-Sgt. Tom Andrew said.

"If it had stopped at that point, then he would have used enough reasonable force." But he had a reason not to call cops -- he's wanted for alleged criminal activity in 1998 and 1999.

BANDIT DUCT-TAPED

And police believe the 17-year-old was trying to get at the remnants of a hydroponic marijuana grow operation in the house on King St. E. in Stoney Creek.

After the teen was stripped, tied and whipped, he was duct-taped and held for about five hours, police say, then driven to Queenston Rd. and let go.

Cops got a search warrant for the home and allegedly found the teen's clothes and keys, hydroponic equipment and a small amount of drugs.

Jeremy Stephen Ramey, 25, is charged with robbery, possession of stolen property, assault, assault with a weapon and forcible confinement.

He's also been charged with failing to appear, uttering threats, mischief and assault from 1999, and possessing stolen cars from 1998.

The teenager, who suffered some bruises, has not yet been formally charged, Andrew said.