A movie is being filmed just up the street from me. Yesterday Jon Heder, FKA Napolean Dynamite, walked right by me. I saw kids taking off hellbent after a golf cart with Adam Sandler in it. Rob Schneider was tossing a baseball around. I shook hands with Dennis Dugan. Pretty neat. Details and pics on my blog.

spell your name backwards: Smada Sacul Bej.
have you ever had a song written about you: No
what song makes you cry: Philadelphia by Neil Young
what song makes you happy:She Don't Use Jelly by The Flaming Lips
what's your all time fav. song?: Where is My Mind? by Pixies
what do you listen to before you go to sleep:Silence.
height: 5'8"
hair color: red
piercings: formerly left ear lobe
tattoos:None

RIGHT NOW
what color pants are you wearing: blue.
what song are you listening to: The Immortal Dog & Pony Show by For Squirrels
what taste is in your mouth?: Sesame Sticks
whats the weather like?: bout 65F or so.
how are you?: Bored (obviously)
get motion sickness?: No
have a bad habit?: Nailbiter.
get along with your parents?: Yep
boyfriend/girlfriend: A wife
have a current crush: Nah.
have a big regret: Sure. I live in a world of regret. Everyone wants to be better.

FAVORITE...
tv show: Nova. Arrested Development is good.
conditioner: It's built right into my shampoo.
book: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
non alcohol drink: Schwepps Lime Seltzer
alcohol drink:I teetotal. If I have to pick I'd say Bartenura Moscato Di Asti.
things to do on the weekend: Daven. Play some games. Watch my daighter grow.

HAVE YOU EVER...
broken the law: Shoplifted in 8th grade. Got caught. (See regrets, above).
snuck out of the house: No need. I was good and my folks were permissive.
ever gone skinny dipping: Yeeeah. I think so. No clear recollection though.
made a prank phone call: Sure.
tipped over a port-a-potty: No. That's disgusting.
use your parents credit card: Nope. My Mom is poor and my Dad lives in a cash economy.
skipped school: Not til college--does that count?
fell asleep in the shower/bath: Yep.
been in a school play: Yep--King Arthur in the DPJHS rendition of Connecticut Yankee in [My] Court.
had a boyfriend/girlfriend: Lemme see: Amy, then Shelley, then Toni, then Hadar. Married the last one.
had children: Yes: The Noosh!
been in love: Derf.
have a hard time getting over someone: Oh hell yes. See regret, above.
gone out with someone you only knew for 3 days: Nay.

RANDOM...
have a job: Yes.
your cd player has what in it right now: Probably some Israeli Children's disc.
if you were a crayon, what color would you be?: burnt umber.
what makes you happy?: Learning. Teaching. Wondering.
the next CD you're going to buy: Likely none. I've embraced ITMS.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME...
you got a real letter: Yesterday--it's Holiday season.
got an email: 22 minutes ago.
thing you purchased: groceries.
Tv program you watched: Hmm. I saw a Frontline two weeks ago. I don't watch much TV.
movie you saw in the theaters:The Incredibles.
kissed:This morning.
hugged: See above.
song heard: Here Comes Your Man by Pixies.
place you were [besides home]: Work.
phonecall: 10 minutes ago. Someone in FL wants Rose Petals--STAT!
you were depressed: Beats me. Am I supposed to self-diagnose now?
you were in the hospital: When my daughter had to get a jaundice test--10 months ago.

WHAT COMES TO MIND. . .
car: I got nothin'.
murder: That creepy Minority Report girl saying it as she slips into the milky brew.
cape: Cod?
penis: Vagina.
cell: virus.
shoe: Docs.
fun: Katamari Damacy.
crush: cans.
music: I'm listening to a song right now, so that kind of took over.
chalk: hopscotch.

NUMBER. . . :
of time you've been in love: Once.
of girls you have kissed: 4 in a hot way. I have a zillion relatives though.
of boys you have kissed: Many European relatives and friends. None in the hot way.
of times your name has appeared in a newspaper: One time, I think. Street Interview after college graduation.
of scars on your body: 6 or 7. Chicken Pox, a head gash, some growths nicked out, some old one on my wrist I don't recall, etc.
of things in your past you regret: Whole bunch. See regret, above.

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE . . :
pretty: No.
funny:I'm waaay funnier than you, for sure.
hot: No.
friendly: Yeah, I have manners too.
ugly: Yeah, I guess.
loveable: Mmm. Tough call. I can be standoffish.
caring: Yeah.
sweet: Probably not. Maybe.
dorky: Cripes--do you see where this is posted?

FAVORITE...
actor/actress: I've got a newfound respect for Buster Keaton
least favorite day: Tisha B'Av.
flower: Morning Glory.
jello flavor: Jello's not kosher--it's made from horses feet.
summer/winter: Summer.

PERSON WHO LAST . . . :
slept in your bed: My wife and I.
saw you cry: Wife.
sent you an email: Some client.

HAVE YOU EVER
said i love you and meant it:Yes.
went out in public in pjs:Yeah. They looked legit though.
kept a secret from everyone: Yes.
been to new york: Yes.
to california: I live there.

WHEN WAS :
last cigarrete: sophomore year.
last cry: The first blessing I said over my daughter. Friday, February 20th.
last book read: Working on one now. Finished the last about 6 days ago.
last curse word uttered: Maybe an hour ago?
last beverage drank: Current.
last food consumed: 30 minutes ago.
last phone call: 17 seconds ago.
showered: 6:50 AM.
last shoes worn: Beat-to-shit Skechers on my feet.
last cd played: two days ago?
last thing written: Email, maybe an hour ago.
last word spoken: "Brainerd? I think that's in Wisconsin."
last sleep: 6:47 AM.
last im: Weeks ago.
sexual fantasy: 6:52 AM.
last ice cream eaten: Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt two days ago.
last time wanting to die: Not yet.

I get the moderator points, I read at -1 when I have them (normally I read at +4 because I am an elitist shit), and I wonder in amazement at the "fp" phenomenon. It's something I'm really not getting. At least trolls seem to have a purpose in life (to annoy others), but the motivation for an fp is beyond my comprehension.

The Wikipedia has an article on "First Post" here, but it doesn't really go to motivation. Is it just boredom? Is it a troll-by-any-other-name? Are these folks actually proud of the accomplishment? I have to admit, I "Foe" anyone dumb enough to FP with an actual UID--is that what they want?

I wonder what the first "First Post" entry was? The first entry at Slashdot to consist solely of "fp" and "first post" as its subject and body, or any combination thereof. I would search OSDN but I think the Internet would stop.

I think far more interesting would be "Last Posting". Somehow sneaking in and getting the last comment before the discussion becomes archived. Maybe that's trivial--do the stories all archive at a set time? What if posting meant the comments stayed open a a little longer? Then getting last post would be a real challenge.

Actually, it's still buying it. I work for a supplier to Wal-Mart. I'm a little conflicted. I like Mom & Pop stores and stuff, but I'm employed solely because Wal-Mart buys about a zillion dollars worth of stuff from my boss. Why just on Tuesday they purchased four times my salary from us. They purchase 4 times a week. So, the reason I can make my mortgage payments is because Wal-Mart overwhelmed my boss enough to hire an account manager for this behemoth.

What do you think?

Wow--I'm so thrilled. I don't have much to go on by way of excitement these days, so this is news for me. Slahsdot accepted my Oyez.org story. And the tech lead of the site is in the Comments--many times. It's nice to see an admin not explode and/or cry about the traffic generated by a Slashdot post. Yes, the servers melted, yes, he was suprised at the amount of hits, but he was also very happy and thankful. He even encourages people to download the MP#'s and host them on as many P2P sites as possible--trying to get those files -out-. Amen!

Sigh. Hadar and I are having a tiff about where we rent DVD's from. We recently downgraded our cable to the $12/mo. plan, as we just don't watch that much TV. I thought it would be cool to spend this "extra" money on Netflix. Hadar is happy with the rental card from Blockbuster. Bear in mind that Blockbuster is on to our hax0ring, so we're just getting the $2/rental rate now, not the obscene-asymptotically-approaching-$0.00/rental rate we had before.

Unfortunately, Blockbuster does not have Rififi. Or Waiting for Guffman. Or Stalag 17. Or Diva. They -do- have 400 copies of Catch Me If You Can. One more month of Netflix and it's back to picking out the gems in a store of sand.

I might start managing my own little venture here. There's a market for small-job HTML work and a lot of good HTML programmers looking to get experience so they can land the next $95k position that opens up (in 2007). I will be the middleman, setting up NPO's and othe tiny outfits that don't have a legit web development budget with the experience hungry or altruistic programmers that want to help them. It benefits the business, as they get a nice website, and it benefits the guru, as s/he gets experience and soul food. It's also for people that can't program under a gun--no deadlines here. You want a website for free, you might have to wait a little bit.

The pay's for shit--at BEST. But it's a living, and we're doing okay on Hadar's salary.

Pesach (that's Passover to ye olde English speakers) is a crazy holiday. Craaaazy. So crazy, the rabbis forbid you to make fun of how crazy other people get about Pesach. You can smirk at yourself, though. We cannot own, benefit, or even see (if we can help it) chometz. Chometz is leavened flour made from these five grains: wheat, oats, barley, rye, and spelt (buckwheat). Because it written in the Torah that we can't screw this up, we are extra super mega duper tnt guns-of-navarone careful to clean the chometz out of the house and sell anything we want to keep and nullify anything we didn't find. What does this entail?

• Boil water over in all the pots we want to use.
• While boiling the water, drop any utensils we want to use into the boiling water as well.
• Don't use anything that has anything plastic on it--even a handle--plastic cannot be de-chometz'd.
• Pour said boiling water over any exposed counter top and the sink.
• Seal the counters, tables, rangetop with aluminum foil.
• Have the stove blowtorched until it's red-hot. (If it's self-cleaning, you can just run a cleaning cycle--twice).
• Wash all the towels, dishrags, etc.
• Wash the floors, search the other rooms of the house for any bits of food--crumbs even!
• Seal any cabinets that have not been cleaned.
• Clean the cars (we ate in there).
• Seal off the dishwasher (plastic inside).

There's more, but this gives you an idea. Also, we aren't very strict--some of our friends won't eat here over the holiday.

Chag Kasher v'Sameach!

Sigh.

I'm still out of work, things still look bleak on that front (I am avoiding the grocery bagging route), and I'm trying to keep my mind from frying. What I -should- be doing is waking up early, working out, going to minyan, and studying Talmud. Back at the house for 11 AM when I can bone up on Perl, hack my OS X box, make dinner and watch a movie with the wife.

Instead, I roll out around 8 AM, check Maddox and Homestar Runner for new material, play GTA3 all morning (though I finally beat the bastard, maybe its grip will lessen), and forget to eat. Hadar calls before she comes home, so I know I have 30 minutes to make it seem like I was busy all day. It's a little sad.

I'll shake it off soon, we're getting ready for Pesach here, which is going to be maaaadness! I gotta get out there and get some local friends too--man, I'm an introverted freak. Shake it off shake it off! I am making some Sherlock channels. Once I figure out my hosting, I'll put them up.

So, Hadar and I have been in CA for about a month now. We have closed escrow on a house in Agoura Hills, a sleepy suburb of LA. There's one thing we've noticed more than anything else about the neighborhood: everyone is white. I'm not really one for White Man's Guilt or anything, but man, EVERYONE IS WHITE. It's a little weird. I've been referring to the area as the Unicultural Center. Ever seen Night at the Apollo, where someone makes fun of white people? It's really like that here. I see klatches of Moms making changes to the Swim Team Regulations, I see kids with $200 of protective gear waddling around trying to play street hockey, I have to move out of the way of horses from time to time. Stepford, here we come.

So, the wife an I are off! So long cold Chicago winters (it was 9 degrees today. Good old hard-to-understand Fahrenheit degrees. NINE. I pay good money to live here and that's what I get: NINE.)

The weather in Thousand Oaks is a balmy 66. That's worth paying for. Hadar accepted a job at Amgen, or as I like to refer to them: Soylent Industries.

We're getting the royal treatment, moving is covered, career assistance for moi, signing bonus, etc. Smoov. An added bonus: even more rentals on my broken 10-Rental Blockbuster card (up to 22 so far).

Browser of the damned

I work at a company that makes web apps that have to spec back to v4 of IE and NS. Let me tell you: development is 50% NS4.x, 50% EVERY OTHER BROWSER. We're in the education game, so there's still about a berjillion NS 4.x installs out there, but DAMN. Spent all day acting as guinea pig for some bizarro-world NS timing issue. Apparently, the CSS Auth call is not completed by the time the next request comes in (this is an issue only at dial-up speed--not a problem broadband). This next request sees that we are not AUTH'd, so it kills the session--boots back to login. Grr!

The wife and I have broken the bank at Blockbuster:
Discover, The Card the Pays You Back®, paid us back. We spent $20 of our cashback bonus on a 10-Rental card from Blockbuster. The last time we did this, we seemed to notice that it rented a lot more than the number of movies the card supposedly got us, but we didn't pay close enough attention. The card eventually did not work, but only after it expired.

There's all kinds of info the store is supposed to put on the back, and all kinds of supposed restrictions; but they never fill it out and they never look at the restrictions. We've rented more than one at a time (forbidden), we've rented from more than one store (forbidden), and we've rented on more than one account (forbidden with extra not-allowed-pants on). We're now up to movie #14 on our 10-rental card. I think it no longer works on my wife's account-store relation, but I think we'll prove successful with it at account-store#2.

UPDATE It's true. Account_store_rlt #2 resets the card. We are up to movie #16, with a ceiling of 40 rentals. There are at least three more stores in the area, making a potential rental tally of 100 rentals. Not too shabby.

I'm loving my new job. Working for Edison Schools [insert anti-corporate rant--whatever], making decent scratch, supporting technology and quasi-educating at the same time. karma modded up!

My wife is now my doctor-wife. Not medical, but she has a PhD in Chemical Engineering and is being wooed by some heavyhitters in the industry.

As of March 02, I am new to Slashdot. That's not really accurate. I actively avoided it as a haven for 1337 shitheads until they made apple.slashdot.com. Now I read that page regularly. Check out As the Apple Turns for more Mac info, and Ars Technica for generic geek news. Update: As the Apple Turns is barely updated anymore. Guy had a kid. Good for him. Visit MacOS X Hints for some poorly laid out, yet still handy Mac info.