So I served a guy a restraining order today. He'd beat up my friend a couple times, gave him a concussion the last time. So my friend got a restraining order, but he's a waiter and this is the dead time of year for that in Santa Fe, and he doesn't have the money to pay the sheriff to serve the papers. So I volunteered. This guy is a punk ass gangster wannabe who hangs out with a crowd of (snicker) Santa Fe toughs. But they kicked the shit out of my friend in public a couple times, and they are cracked out of their heads a lot of the time, so yeah, I was a little scared. But it was the right thing to do, and the fact that you have to pay someone to serve a restraining order sucks balls, so I had to do it. I had to track the fucker down, too, because he didn't show up for work tonight. He was off at some bar with his friends. I walked right up to him, made sure it was him (I've never met the guy), handed him the papers and walked out, calm as you please.

My hands are shaking a little bit now, though.

Pancreatic cancer. You just don't recover from that one. This last year has been pretty hard. I'm the only child of a single mom, so this has all been on me and my wife. And of course, being my mom, she had to go die oversees. In a little tiny village outside of Peterborough in England. Well, she actually passed away in a Sue Ryder hospice in Peterborough, Thorpe Hall. The building is older than my country. She was staying with her old friend Marianna and her husband in Nassington. So there we were, my wife and I, in a foreign country experiencing the snowstorm of the decade, staying with virtual strangers in a tiny village with all of 20 or so buildings, for Christmas. I'll just say this, my mom died like she lived: weirdly.

I'm looking to start working with Android. I found this tutorial. Basically my thought is this: cellphones are going to go boom. The last time I saw this kind of hype storm and positioning it was around this silly thing called "the internet" and if my pattern matching software is working right we're getting ready for a new boom in the next decade or so... this time fueled by whatever the cellphone is about to become.

I like the German term "Handi"

I'm sorry to have been away for so long, but I have returned! Now that unpleasantness is over I can read over all my emails, and such. Hmmm. Nothing here? WHAT?

Nobody missed me, nobody cared. It was like a million voices continued on while I was away from Slashdot. I suppose being on a spec in the middle of a sandy beach of specs in the floating massiveness of universialitude, I could not be missed had I evaporated and rained all over the prairies. Alas, some things on Slashdot have changed.

What is all this Javascript? Looks good! Things appear to be much more interesting! Hey I've got achievements!!! LOL

.. ..

I stopped writing in my journal regularly because over the last few years I've moved to using my blog more. The blog has even lead to me contributing to several articles to an industry magazine. Now, maybe my writing is better... or maybe that would never happen in a journal.

Why? Why aren't journals more like blogs? Why doesn't journal publication naturally lead to the kinds of connections that blog entries do? Is slashdot just like facebook in that respect? Is /. a walled garden?

Not even you.

1. 3D cube. "Spaces" just ain't it.
2. Flaming window effect... (oh man that was so cool)
3. the vast application selection in aptget
4. ability to use VIM/gvim/kvim ubiquitously
5. telinit
6. simple script based init system was easier to manage
7. ability to change file to program associations from a text editor
8. virtual terminals
9. hackable keyboard macros/keys (although the mac defaults are pretty damn good)
10. custom keystroke to lock screen

What do you (or would you) miss most about your Linux desktop?

I got a new box on Slashdot this afternoon, thanking me for my 'positive contributions' and letting me turn off advertising because of them. Wait, there's advertising on the Internet now? When did that start?

If you've known /. for a while, you've certainly noticed all the recent changes. The front page articles auto-load-extend (presumably through AJAX code), the link to get to your own page has moved twice, and now there are two (that both look alike - your username - but work differently), and checking if anyone has replied to your comments has been a two-click journey instead of the old one-click for a while now.

Then there's the annoying inline popup (so it's not caught by popup blockers) that tells you that "Firehose is paused due to inactivity". Whatever that means, it doesn't seem nearly important enough to interrupt my reading.

Quite frankly, from a user interface design standpoint, the "new" slashdot sucks. Badly. Maybe I'll try disabling all javascript for slashdot.org and check if that improves the experience.

So, what is your position on property ownership?
1.) Personal Property
I think, you work for it, it's yours. I help defend what you worked for from those who would take it unfairly, you do the same for me.
2.) Real Property
Natural resources should not be owned. If you are working an area, I'll ask if I can help and what the terms are before I help myself. If you claim an area you aren't working, I won't respect that unless you and I have made a personal deal to that regard. If someone tries to drive you from their land, I'll try to help you stop them, if you are willing to do the same for me.
3.) Intellectual Property
I'll always say where I got my ideas from. I'd like it if I could get some recognition for my good ideas.

Cooperation versus competition?
I think cooperation is almost always in an individual's self interest. Competition, of the form where some people have to 'lose' in order for others to win, is usually not in an individual's self interest, if it can be avoided.

Taking care of others?
I think desperate, frightened, hurt, or angry humans are the most dangerous thing on the planet. Making sure no one feels that way unnecessarily is in everyone's best interest. I resent people getting a free ride on the work some of us try to do making sure people aren't a danger due to desperation.

The free market?
A really good idea, in theory. However, a hybrid system where competition is balanced with cooperation is better for everyone. The benefits of such cooperation should be limited to other cooperators, and not extended to the ruthless and selfish.

That's a start.

I just love trolling libertarians. They are so easy to work up into a frothing rage. Like flat-earthers and creationists, they have to shut off all logical parts of their minds in order to go on believing their patently untrue and counter-factual ideology. This makes them easy pickings for trolls. Now, unlike most trolls, I actually believe what I'm writing. But that's beside the point. The point is, watching stupid people get angry is fun.

From this comment by gringofrijolero, I got the idea to do a whole 'wiki-dickory-sock' song, I figure 8-10 verses would do. So, first verse, taking gringofrijolero's verse and making it more Wikipedia specific:

Wiki-Dickery-Sock
Rules lawyers ran out the clock
We all got bored
"Yeah, you're the lord."
Wiki-Dickery-Sock

Then the verse I came up with:

Wiki-Dickery-Sock
Deletionists erased 'River_Ock'
The river's not notable,
Its water's not potable,"
Wiki-Dickery-Sock

Now to expand on the examples I came up with in the thread:

Wiki-Dickery-Sock
The vandals defaced 'Iraq.'
They said it was good
When Saddam got wood
Wiki-Dickery-Sock

Hmm, the original rhyme does end with the same nonsense line it begins with, but Andrew Dice Clay uses the last line for the punchline to good comedic effect, perhaps I should here.

Wiki-Dickery-Sock
The vandals defaced 'Iraq.'
They said it was good
When Saddam got wood
So we banned their whole IP block.

But then there is the difficulty in coming up with twice as many relevant and funny '-ock' rhymes. Cock and block only go so far.

Wiki-Dickery-Sock
Deletionists erased 'River_Ock'
The river's not notable,
Its water's not potable,
Put it on the chopping block!

Wiki-Dickery-Sock
Rules lawyers ran out the clock
We all got bored
"Yeah, you're the lord."
(of making us sleepy, you cock)

Thought for latter 'Trekkies aren't quite as logical as Spock.' Work it in somehow. 'Puppet masters brought out every sock' will make a good last line somewhere.

A few of you have often noticed my signature, in which I mentioned that my current ISP offers 100 mbit fiber-to-the-home for $65/mo, no installation fee. Recently, I've discovered that while they do not filter, they do have a 20 gig/mo cap, alongside a vague policy about "more than five hours of video per week".

Of course, they sell a TV service, also. I would bet that is where this limit is coming from -- to prevent YouTube, Netflix, etc, from competing with Lisco TV.

Being unemployed, and as this is a small town, I would not mind relocating to find a job. The question is, where to? Is there anywhere which has similarly priced Internet, unthrottled, and uncapped -- or at least, with a significantly higher cap? (Alright, there's Japan. Anywhere in the US?)

The fact that this post I made is marked troll has opened my eyes to something. It genuinely wasn't a troll. I remember doing work with Perl and Python in XML and it really didn't work that well. I remember working with django, rails, and several Perl frameworks... and being wholly unimpressed.

The fact of the matter is. If I want to get taken seriously I need to learn Python and Django and I need to learn to like it.

It really wasn't a troll. I just didn't think Python, Ruby, or associated technologies were all that great. Obviously, this is a problem with me. No. Really. I can't see it yet. I need to spend some more time learning so I can get over my misconceptions. I've obviously missed something.