Ramblings of a Martian

Shared Posts from 07 July to 08 July

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:00:07 GMT

Items shared from Google Reader:

Pundit Kitchen: Lol News and Lol Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden and more - Be the worst president of the States - Be the worst president of the States, invest in war and in destroying other countries and you'll be okay.. But if you invest in you own country, you're a communist? WTF!? (Barack Obama) Picture by: dunno source. Caption by: Marts via Advanced Lol[...]

Boing Boing - Collecting dead souls in social media - Guestblogger Marina Gorbis is executive director at Institute for the Future. Yesterday I posted an essay on Socialstructing--creating organizations around social connections rather than against them. I believe these types of organizational forms a[...]

MAKE Magazine - How-To: Make your own Montgolfier ram - A Montgolfier ram, also called a "hydraulic ram pump" or "hydram," is an arrangement of valves and reservoirs that can, without the addition of external power, raise downward flowing water to a point higher than its source. It does so, essentially, [...]

Schneier on Security - Court Limits on TSA Searches - This is good news: A federal judge in June threw out seizure of three fake passports from a traveler, saying that TSA screeners violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. Congress authorizes TSA to search travelers[...]

Lifehacker - Pandora Caps Free Streaming at 40 Hours per Month [Pandora] - The good news is that music streaming site Pandora, previously under threat of closing entirely under stiff internet radio royalty rates imposed in 2007, will remain open, after signing over 25 percent of its revenue to the music licensing firms. The[...]

GraphJam: Music and Pop Culture in Charts and Graphs. Let us explain them. - Silverware in Conjunction - Silverware in Conjunction Graph by: imdamoos via Graph Jam Builder

Lifehacker - PetMD Supplies Pet Health Information in a Pinch [Pets] - When a pet starts acting funny, it can throw you into panic mode. Web site PetMD aims to help by supplying pet owners with the health knowledge they need for the pets they love. The information is supplied via the health library, which has multiple s[...]

Shared Posts from 06 July

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:00:10 GMT

Items shared from Google Reader:

Boing Boing - Sarah Palin, via Twitter: God told me to sue the internet - Wonkette has a post up about @AKGovSarahPalin's crazy late-night twitter bender. She's gonna have to give up that handle, no? Anyway, after you slog through all the crazy ungrammatical Palinglish rambling, the point seems to be that a "higher calling[...]

MAKE Magazine - Day planner clock erases itself - Il-Gu Cha's Trace of Time clock incorporates a whiteboard-esque erasable face and an eraser built into the hour hand - See a video of it in action here. [via Tinker.it] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

Seattlest - Runaway Shopping Carts Plague Bellevue Streets - Shared by Marty While I don't generally side with business over consumer, the businesses here ARE the victims. The carts have been /stolen from them/. So, you're punishing the victims of a crime for the thieves' behaviour. WTF. "Safeway Cart" by t[...]

Boing Boing - Justice Department to review wireless carriers for anti-competitive practices - The DOJ is reviewing large American telecoms including ATT and Verizon over concerns the companies have abused the increasingly centralized market power they've gained in recent years, according to an item in the Wall Street Journal today: The revie[...]

Lords and Ladies of Leisure - 5 things to do before you get a job - Get a freaking tan. The sun is out (or was) and a good dose of Vitamin D will improve your mood. Men - your super white ass upper thighs need to see the sun for once in their life. Strap on a Speedo. Grab [...]

Lifehacker - Repel Flies with a Bag of Water [Summer] - We've featured many, many, many different ways to deal with mosquitoes using DIY solutions. But what about the even more common household fly? Turns out all you need to deal with that is a plastic bag or two. Photo by brookage. RickyC wrote in to tel[...]

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:52:03 GMT

So, I haven't been doing the whole get-my-free-credit-report-every-four-months thing like I'd planned, since I don't use the task manager I'd been using to remind me of it anymore.

But, having been reminded by I don't remember what, I went to go get them.
TransUnion won't let me have it yet, because it hasn't been a year since the last one. Oh, that was August. Ok.
Experian says "For security reasons, we are unable to provide immediate access to your personal credit report.", and wants to send me a letter and I can't be bothered.
So, Equifax it is.
And, because I like numbers that don't mean anything to anybody who actually contributes to society, I paid them for my credit score as usual. 721. Down from August (836) but higher than last April (698).

And there's an account showing as open, with $0 balance, which should be closed.
Interestingly, the credit score says "You have a relatively high number of consumer finance company accounts being reported". It doesn't care that all but one of them are closed, nor that two of them were opened by mistake and never used (window company contacted loan company about financing the windows, and they wouldn't give us enough to pay for it, so we didn't use them. but they (the loan company) opened the accounts anyway, because they're apparently asshats). But, whatever.

Still need another kilobuck a month. Or five.

Twitter posts from 28 June to 04 July

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 07:00:14 GMT

From my Twitter stream:

sun 11:51am	@dreamingcrow so THAT's why you needed the spare!
sun 01:00pm	Sitting at the edge of the farmers market with the dog while L shops. http://twitpic.com/8p0ax
sun 05:16pm	Please throw money at the geeks too lazy to get it themselves: http://tithonium.com/721080
mon 11:38am	I'm procrastinating starting on a week-long rewrite of major functionality (15 days before beta, I'll note) by fighting with linux kernels.
mon 11:42am	For some reason, 2.6.28 won't boot on Vanth, a dual P3 network engines blazer. But 2.6.27 works great.
mon 11:42am	I miss the days when linux Just Worked on any hardware you chose to throw it at.
mon 01:44pm	@westseattleblog But you make them so easy to steal, of COURSE you meant them to be stolen!
mon 01:45pm	@westseattleblog I think it's more that the people who steal them would steal the others too, if it were as convenient.
mon 04:06pm	The ruby interpreter that textmate goes to on %R doesn't mind unicode variables. The command line one barfs on them.
mon 04:09pm	RT @dresdencodak: First ever solid state quantum processor: http://bit.ly/Hv106
mon 04:54pm	@icebluenothing Thanks. 'cause I wasn't feeling particularly depressed yet today.
mon 06:10pm	@westseattleblog well, the list on my profile is visible to me and not-logged-in. but the full list throws an error for me.
tue 12:10am	@TwitterFon make it optional and get rid of the arrow when it's off.
tue 10:40am	Wacky. Watching last night's Countdown, and they're talking about Jackson's will, and @cnnbrk comes up saying they found one.
tue 10:45am	@dresdencodak that's what twitter's good for.
tue 11:08am	Is it bad to find a project in your workspace called 'Muninn' and be unable to remember what it was going to be?
tue 11:15am	@GeekGirlsRule aw, you make me love humanity all over again. no, wait, that other thing,
tue 11:18am	three pure-spam follows in 18 hours, two in the past 7 minutes. a new personal best.
tue 12:25pm	Have played with a Kindle DX. Must own a Kindle DX.
tue 12:26pm	@mcmoots oddly enough, I am not.
tue 12:48pm	Fire boat on the bay http://twitpic.com/8vjn9
tue 01:49pm	Awesome. A box colo'd here just got me /eight/ copyright-violation notices in 12 minutes. Mostly for porn.
tue 02:06pm	@firesign3000 Not so much, no. ::/
tue 04:03pm	two phone spam today.
tue 04:51pm	@mcmoots I find that hard to believe.
tue 09:13pm	If I'm gonna use brightkite, I'm gonna hafta remember to check back in at home when I get here.
tue 09:15pm	Really, I just need to get my auto-tracking code working again, and tie it to brightkite, fireeagle, etc. sigh
wed 03:10am	Spent most of day unable to focus on code. Have spent evening trying to make up for it. Decent success. Grid good, headers broken. Sleep.
wed 03:19am	Dear job description: no, you do not 'peak' my interest.
wed 10:48am	@darkmane you may have gone to far there. No human being, no matter how douchebag, deserves to be Rush Limbaugh.
wed 10:53am	I think maybe this weekend I need to spend time reorganizing my office. I really need to put the window fans at opposite ends.
wed 10:53am	It gets too warm with the fan blowing right on me, but too hot without. circulation is the key.
wed 11:23am	@darkmane I suppose that's a reasonable point.
wed 03:33pm	@vixy just 'cause we're old enough to remember them doesn't make us right.
wed 03:34pm	@vixy no, wait, I'm wrong. it /does/ make us right. nevermind.
wed 05:56pm	making myself soup, and trying to figure out which containing div's preventing scrollLeft from working.
wed 05:57pm	Out of carrots. out of celery. potatoes and onion and turkey and noodles. waits for boiling
wed 06:30pm	Soup finished. Tasty, but too hot to eat. Waiting is.
wed 10:25pm	damnit damnit damnit. I had everything working, I thought. but the vertical scrolling is still broken.
wed 10:26pm	ok. enough. I've been working on this for 12 hours now, give or take, minus the hour or so I spent making dinner. I'll finish this tomorrow.
thu 08:36am	@vixy could be worse. Could be two steps forward, fall flat on you face, drown in your own mucus.
thu 08:36am	My, I'm cheerful today.
thu 08:44am	@vixy hrmph.
thu 09:00am	@vixy I disapprove of such things. But I fear the day I take the same position I did on ebay sniping.
thu 09:19am	@GeekGirlsRule how's your advanced Javascript?
thu 12:31pm	@vixy I know you love my mucus stories.
thu 12:31pm	@GeekGirlsRule Well, I've got it mostly finished. So you just fix this one bug in Safari and I'll work on ... forcible candy-extraction.
thu 12:45pm	@GeekGirlsRule reads post I'm very concerned about your wait. It's gonna kill you some day. That or the bus.
thu 12:58pm	for some reason, in safari, deleting a column moves all the appointments WAY left. why why why why why?
thu 01:04pm	@darkmane sorry, with which? puns about drawbridges, threats about javascript, or reminders about piñatas?
thu 01:09pm	@darkmane oooh. maybe too subtle? or have we become too accustomed to people who can't/don't differentiate weight/wait? text is hard.
thu 01:15pm	@GeekGirlsRule just try it, and I'll tell everybody your underwear doesn't match your outfit!
thu 01:17pm	@icebluenothing I get the last one any time I drive. or leave the house. or watch the news. or am awake.
thu 01:23pm	@GeekGirlsRule I'll post it to the internet. Everybody will believe me!
thu 01:34pm	Yes, yes, let's corrupt the system for our commercial purposes. Let's make /everybody/ into a spammer. growl
thu 01:35pm	@GeekGirlsRule Hrmph!
thu 01:35pm	@jonathancoulton see, that I could almost support.
thu 03:09pm	@GeekGirlsRule ... your psychic powers don't work if I'm not at my computer. I was busy watching the guy.
thu 03:11pm	@westseattleblog suspicious person(s) in sunrise heights. green ford pickup, apparently scavenging. stole a bit of detritus from my alley.
thu 03:14pm	(just a bit of chainlink fencepost that was holding up the wooden rear fence, but still)
thu 03:16pm	@employeeze Wait, there are amateur porn stars mass-following people? Do we get free samples if we follow back?
thu 03:28pm	Hm. Went downstairs to check. Green pickup still there, cop car was parked outside. Looked again a minute later, cop car gone. shrug
thu 03:29pm	I hope they didn't knock. I'm upstairs and wouldn't've heard them.
thu 04:05pm	Ok. I feel /really/ stupid now. The problem was cumulativeScrollOffset instead of positionedOffset. Old code that never got updated.
thu 05:06pm	Ok. It works in firefox and safari. I said it would take four days to rewrite. Thus ends the 4th day. Tomorrow, I should poke at week view.
thu 09:37pm	Tired. We re-installed the yard lights. Need to reinstall the power block and bulbs tomorrow.
thu 09:56pm	@employeeze Just replied on that job you forwarded, thanks. Feel free to toss anything else you think I'd be good for at me.
thu 10:57pm	@drakemonger url please.
thu 11:06pm	@drakemonger for the calculus, that is.
thu 11:09pm	@employeeze Ah hell. The job is actually in pittsburgh.
thu 11:12pm	@drakemonger no, i'm just trying to be funny.
fri 11:42am	@westseattleblog you're there? oh, you have the maximum amount of sympathy I'm capable of generating.
fri 12:16pm	Oh, yay. Experian can't authenticate me. Idiots.
fri 01:42pm	@caladri something she can actually cause damage with, I suspect.
fri 02:33pm	80deg at Nerdvana. 80deg IN Nerdvana, 1st floor. Ceiling upstairs?100deg. Dying.
fri 06:30pm	@mcmoots I'm from Kansas, for christs sake, and I still think it's too hot. Know why? In kansas, they've heard of Air Conditioning!
sat 11:18pm	Neighbors setting off big loud bangs now. Much more annoying than the little stuff. Would call the cops if I thought it would do any good.
sat 11:33pm	@westseattleblog or noise laws for that matter. sigh
sat 11:34pm	Looks like the big stuff in my neighborhood is mostly coming from the park a block north of here.
sat 11:56pm	Damnit! I just mark-all-read'd in greader, when I meant to click the Folder Settings button.
sat 11:56pm	Had some unread items from a week or two back. I'll never find them in the read pile.

Shared Posts from 02 July to 04 July

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 07:00:10 GMT

Items shared from Google Reader:

TaoSecurity - NSA to "Screen" .gov Now, I Predict .com Later - In my Predictions for 2008 I wrote Expect greater military involvement in defending private sector networks. Today I read a great Washington Post story titled Obama Administration to Involve NSA in Defending Civilian Agency Networks. It says in part[...]

Lifehacker - RunPee Bathroom Break Tool Releases iPhone App [Downloads] - iPhone/iPod Touch only: Remember previously mentioned RunPee.com, the ingenious website that tells you when to head for a bathroom break during a movie so you don't miss any good parts? The site has released its first mobile version for iPhone users.[...]

Lifehacker - RunPee Bathroom Break Tool Releases iPhone App [Downloads] - Shared by Marty Ok, so, I paid $0.99 for this app. And every suggestion for when to go during UP is WRONG, except "at the end of the credits". ::P iPhone/iPod Touch only: Remember previously mentioned RunPee.com, the ingenious website that tells y[...]

Boing Boing - One-ton manta cyclonic feeding frenzy - Marilyn sez, "Pretty cool photos from July National Geographic. These manta rays in the Maldives have a 12-ft-wingspan, and the photographer Thomas Peschak was right in among them during feeding frenzies to get these shots. I especially like the la[...]

MAKE Magazine - A PAC for geeks? - Introducing Syn/Ack Pac, a Political Action Committee for "SysAdmins, Tinkerers, CodeMonkeys, Makers, Technologists, Warranty Voiders, and Geeks of all types." Why Do Geeks Need a PAC? Non-profit groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Publ[...]

The Red Ferret Journal - Riversimple Hydrogen Eco Car - not just green but awesomely open source too - The Riversimple car may look a bit like a Batmobile that's shrunk in the wash, but this tiny vehicle may well change [...] 308 words | permalink | No comments | digg this

It's depressing as hell. And not because of the book.

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 04:59:18 GMT

Red Mars was originally published in hardcover and trade paperback, simultaneously, in 1993. It was brought to my attention by an excerpt from Green that was publish in Asimov's or Analog, both of which I was subscribed to at the time. I'd never heard of KSR before that, but this excerpt was great, and so I picked up the trade paper of Red at one of the family's frequent trips to BookStar. I read it, I loved it. I bought Green and Blue in hardcover, and spent the next decade trying to find a first edition hardcover of Red, until loree finally found one at Powell's and bought it for my birthday.

But I've never re-read it since then. It's been 16 years, and it's still arguably one of the most influential books I've ever read, in terms of shaping my outlook and view of the universe.
The Mars trilogy was one of the first things I bought (again) when I get my Kindle.
I just haven't actually /read/ them since doing so. I just needed to own them, so I could.

Well, I started re-reading Red a couple weeks ago. I'm about halfway thru it.
It's stirring up intense feelings that can only be reasonably described as homesickness.
And it's made much, much worse by the near-certainty that I'll never see it.

It's really not enjoyable to know that the one thing you want more than anything else, at all, ever, is as close to Absolutely Impossible as makes no odds.

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:22:19 GMT

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=rain-zone-moving-north-09-07-02

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:50:34 GMT

tithonium: Wanna go drive by the house?
loree: No.
tithonium: The car has air conditioning. Wanna go drive by the house?
loree: Stop stalking the house.
tithonium: No! I love the house, and the house loves me! I know it does! If it would just see that we could be happy together, forever!

I've clearly been working too hard.

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:13:26 GMT

I rarely dream about work.
Even rarer are dreams about code. I can think of /twice/ it's happened before.

Last night, I was having /nightmares/ about code. I kept waking up, heart racing, because this one div would render /completely/ differently depending whether I hard-coded it into the page or send it in an ajax request. Like, /entirely/ differently, and I Just Couldn't Get It To Work, and it was driving me completely insane.

Very clearly, I've been working too hard. This week has been spent rewriting a schedule grid from a series of divs inside tables inside divs inside tables, with columns all set flloat:left, to a series of divs inside divs inside divs, with the inner grid divs all absolutely positioned inside the outer relatively positioned divs, so I can have the entire thing scroll around inside its container while keeping the rest of the page stationary. That's been my entire week so far. I'm almost done with it. I still have a problem where the innermost container of the grid is scrolling internally and being cut off within the outer container that is supposed to be the one that scrolls. I think I've just got it setting its height somewhere it shouldn't, but will need to track it down.

And then this morning, I'm woken up WAYTF too early by loree yelling at the dog for puking on the bathroom rug. And I'm Awake, and there's no way I'm getting back to sleep. While I did go to bed around midnight, and would normally be able to function just fine with 7 hours sleep, it doesn't count if you're waking up every ten minutes.

So, today, everything and everyone can die in a fire.

Shared Posts from 30 June

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:00:09 GMT

Items shared from Google Reader:

Boing Boing - Michael Jackson and the "Zombieconomy" - Snip from a Harvard Business blog post by Umair Haque on the digital-age business lessons to be learned from Michael Jackson's death, and analysis of the purported revenue from his career over the last three decades: Want to know why we have a zomb[...]

MAKE Magazine - Transforming robot - Kevmag 2000 posted this YouTube vid of his transforming robot, apparently built for a robotics class. Pretty cool. I couldn't find out much else about it. Kevmag 2000-Transforming Robot [Submitted by Chris Brent. Thanks, Chris!] Read more | Perma[...]

MAKE Magazine - Keeping their cool - Over on GeekDad, Dana Bostic came up with this simple backyard cool-the-kids "hack" -- a hose sprayer set to "shower," zip-tied to a tall step ladder pouring down onto a trampoline -- so the kids can work up a sweat and cool off at the same time! Ke[...]

Shared Posts from 29 June

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:00:09 GMT

Items shared from Google Reader:

Cool Tools - Gorilla Gripper - I have the Stanley Panel Carry, previously reviewed on Cool Tools, but greatly prefer the Gorilla Gripper, which works with panel widths from 3/8 to 1 1/8 inch. It is about six times more expensive, but it works significantly better for moving large [...]

Boing Boing - Fertility interprets regulation as damage and routes around it - Here's the results from the first-ever survey of European fertility tourism: Hundreds of women over the age of 40 are travelling to fertility clinics in Europe to try to get pregnant because NHS clinics in the UK will not take them, the first-ever E[...]

Flickr Blog - Yesterday, a rainbow over Brooklyn -                          &nbs[...]

Bad Astronomy - Headless skeptic - My evil twin, psychologist and skeptic Richard Wiseman, has another winner: a video playing with your blind spot. Very cool! I love illusions, and so I used to do all the blind spot tests when I was a kid… but I never knew this about it. I ha[...]

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:13:49 GMT

[REDACTED]: you know what I just realized?
tithonium: hm?
[REDACTED]: there are all these people using the Internet to get laid.
[REDACTED]: And those people owe us. You and me, especially.
[REDACTED]: But do they thank us?
[REDACTED]: No they do not.
tithonium: they don't.
[REDACTED]: I think we should demand... what should we demand, Marty?
tithonium: hm
tithonium: enough money that women would throw themselves at us.
[REDACTED]: that's way better than my idea, which was just to demand that women throw themselves at us.
[REDACTED]: because that gives us flexibility.
tithonium: exactly.
[REDACTED]: okay. so I expect I'll see this demand on your LJ or twitter stream soon.
[REDACTED]: because I'm too much of a wuss to write it up myself.
tithonium: I'll see what I can do.

So, if you would, please send checks, cash, or paypal. Make checks payable to "Adam Smyth"; use my primary email address for paypal.

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:06:24 GMT

So, loree and I were out looking at open houses, as we are wont to do from time to time, and we found the absolutely *perfect* Nerdvana 3.0. It's got sound views, 400 amps total power service, a shop in the garage (including, frex, a single 50A240V circuit labeled 'welder'), and a separate apartment in the basement on the back. We'd have to rearrange the back yard a bit to put the hot tub in, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Now I just need to get a non-contract job, and we need to find somebody willing to pay ~~$2k/mo~~ $1k/mo rent for the apartment.
Or I could go win the lottery. That would work too.

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:47:40 GMT

So, I wrote a research slash opinion paper, at the end of what must have been college. This was at Wichita State, tho the campus didn't look anything like the real one, and nearly everybody I knew there was from my high school. But, I wrote this paper, which basically explained, in exacting and - importantly - /correct/ detail exactly why certain kids end up going on rampages in their schools. It was a little broader than that, examining longer-term badness that can result, etc, but that's the important gist.
I received significant acclaim for this. A movie was being made based on it.
I'm wandering around campus on the last day of classes, and at some point, while I'm in the library, someone I know - NOT based on someone real, I think; in fact she mostly looked like a young Reshma Shetty - handed me a notepad and pointed out some things she'd written. I couldn't read it in there, because it was too dark, so we went outside. By the time we get out to where I can read what she wrote, there are several other people I know hanging out with us. Basically, she's written snippets of what would likely end up as an op-ed talking about how spot-on brilliant my paper was (I simplify for brevity). We, the group we're now part of, talk, sometimes animatedly, about various things regarding the paper. Somehow, the school pool is relevant to the discussion, and I note that I've never actually been in it, and I'm going. So we all head down there, and stop off in the little library next to it to pick out books to read while we're swimming. I make some joke about the pool being smaller than I expected (the room is maybe 10' square, with bookshelves and a dozen people standing in it), and the reshma-like one made some entendre-and-a-half to which I peer at her and ask if she's coming on to me. At this point, I wake up.

Twitter posts from 22 June to 27 June

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:00:14 GMT

From my Twitter stream:

mon 09:16am	It's a sad - and annoying - day when graybar doesn't have what I need.
mon 09:57am	XKCD just taught me of the existence of something I really didn't need to know about.
mon 10:05am	@GeekGirlsRule please stop making me shop for shoes. I have work to do.
mon 10:54am	I have: a handful of M6 cagenuts. 25 sets of 12-24 cagenuts. I need: a handful or more of 10-32 cagenuts. And I don't want to pay $50. ::P
mon 10:58am	DeepSurplus.com will sell me 25 for $8.72+$6.64. $15.36. Acceptable. Would prefer somewhere local so I can go get them.
mon 11:09am	@gabrielcain in the right size?
mon 11:11am	looks like there's an ace hardware in burien. and seatac. and renton. and renton again.
mon 11:36am	@JosieNutter That sounds uncomfortable. ::)
mon 01:01pm	Success. Ace did have them. $1.35 per tho. Ouch.
mon 02:46pm	Now I need to find somebody who'll give me an APC SUA5000R5TXFMR, and I'll be set.
mon 02:46pm	@vixy You /assume/ she will. Best bring cupcakes, just in case.
mon 05:06pm	Is it wrong to be tempted to tell my apt cache server to route thru comcast to reach ubuntu's servers? it /is/ dual-homed...
tue 09:26am	Yay Ultrasn0w! Now I can upgrade MT&T!
tue 10:51am	@maggim don't do it! then they'll know your email address is valid and will send you week-enlagement spam!
tue 11:22am	@beaq PRETTIES!
tue 11:22am	@beaq Thanks, now I need a saltwater aquarium.
tue 11:54am	BWAHAHA: http://apestyle.livejournal.com/1136015.html
tue 03:14pm	@vixy naw. cosmonauts are cheaper. they're the HFCS of space.
tue 03:43pm	Banging my head against warning-display logic, like I should be, instead of upgrading my phone, like I want to.
tue 04:19pm	Ok. committed my changes. going to take L some food, pick up dog, then upgrade phone. Then more work, likely.
tue 06:14pm	It's become clear that I wasn't: upgrade my iphone from 2.2 to 3.0, not changing phones. ::)
tue 06:22pm	Ok, upgrading now. don't try to call my cellphone.
tue 08:41pm	As usual, first attempt to upgrade failed. Wouldn't reboot after restoring third party software and updating. Gonna try redsn0w.
tue 09:31pm	@CupcakeGoth I believe "pictures or it didn't happen" is appropriate here.
tue 10:29pm	The worst part of this is waiting while it restores things. Next time, I need to unsync all media and any apps I can. This takes FOREVER.
tue 10:34pm	ok. pwnagetool is producing restores that don't work. this one, all 3rdparty apps crash on launch. sigh. What did I do wrong here?
wed 10:03am	Keychain dies with a forking error. Winterboard has lockwidget transparency problems. Ikeyex doesn't work at all. But, upgraded.
wed 07:19pm	So, the server farm in the basement appears to, at the moment, be pulling just a tad above 11 amps.
wed 07:39pm	@tommusic well, shit.
wed 11:39pm	hm. mobileterminal is refusing to execute backticked commands from .profile, apparently. sigh
wed 11:40pm	Shoulda waited a couple more weeks before upgrading, I think.
thu 10:40am	Madison could barely handle its own traffic. Olive detour makes it so much worse.
thu 12:33pm	New doctor eval: Verrilli. Taken back 25min after 11am appt. Doc pops head in 7m later to say he'll be in soon. In to see me after 5 more
thu 12:34pm	Very form-filling-out focused at first; off putting. After exam, became person. Okay, but may see bushyhead to compare. Labwork and EKG now.
thu 12:46pm	Blood work needs fasting, will do later. Maybe tomorrow before work. EKG was fine.
thu 01:24pm	classmates.com is THIS close to getting reclassified as spam.
thu 01:26pm	@robotcoop you tempt me.
thu 01:32pm	@Jenk3 I've found I'm unrealistically forgiving of sites that I actually have accounts with.
thu 02:54pm	@westseattleblog I think this would be the third, Ice should be fine, no?
thu 02:59pm	Voting in @despairinc's caption contest. This is a hard choice.
thu 04:15pm	@darkmane Yeah, it's weird to see /twitter/ apparently more stable than LJ.
thu 04:21pm	@dresdencodak it is not. And we do, yes, zomg, yes.
thu 05:06pm	@firesign3000 no, they really can't.
fri 08:34am	@TwitterFon getting rid of favorite star in list, ok, I understand. But does this caret need to be wasting screen space instead?
fri 08:01pm	Looking at details on the aerotecture wind turbines, I'm disappointed that they probably won't work for Nerdvana.
fri 08:07pm	I need to get a weather station set up, so I can see what sort of wind speeds we average here.
fri 08:24pm	http://bit.ly/RCyJs
fri 09:09pm	ZOMFG, Michele Bachmann is completely, totally, utterly, batshit insane.
fri 09:20pm	Huh. Hulu desktop suddenly has a EULA. That wasn't there yesterday.
sat 11:25am	@westseattleblog morning! You at Westwood yet? We're just finishing up at Eats; will swing by and say hi if so. ::)
sat 12:46pm	@westseattleblog was good to meet you in person finally. I hope patrick brought you back samples! ::)
sat 12:54pm	@westseattleblog "Viaduct Closed" signs aren't working. Bridge backed up to midspan from last-minute merges. (from L)
sat 01:28pm	Is there a game or something? 4th ave is nuts. http://twitpic.com/8logi
sat 01:28pm	Hm. Just northbound. People finishing the marathon maybe?
sat 01:53pm	@beaq ooh, could be.
sat 04:02pm	@mcmoots Would /I/ enjoy owning it?
sat 05:11pm	Babylon 5 CGI scenes look REALLY BAD when upsampled to HD.
sat 05:12pm	@mcmoots That would require I manage to keep up with LJ.
sat 05:20pm	@mcmoots I'd take the boiler, and we're always happy to give books homes.
sat 05:21pm	@firesign3000 no, but it's kinda sad.

Shared Posts from 25 June to 27 June

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:00:13 GMT

Items shared from Google Reader:

The Red Ferret Journal - Desktop Factory 3D Printer - small scale 3D printer - This Desktop Factory 3D Printer is priced (and sized) to please. For US$4,995 you get a rapid prototyper the size [...] 159 words | permalink | No comments | digg this

Boing Boing - Junkyard workers enshrine tree that grew to lift a car - James of Japan Probe reports that a Japanese hackberry tree, which sprouted from a seed in a junkyard 25 years ago, has managed to lift a car in the air. "Workers at the junkyard have built a small fence around the tree, and are protecting it as it c[...]

Seattlest - Nature Litterers, A Special Kind of Scum - We're seeing this shit all the time. Gets really old. Photo courtesy of the print from the Seattlest Flickr pool. Ron Judd recently wrote that laws targeting litterers need to be tougher. We agree, litterers are lazy scum who probably screw society o[...]

Kindle 2 Review - Kindle DX Review, Books - Blind Groups sue ASU for using Kindle DX - The Wall Street Journal is reporting that two Blind Groups are suing Arizona State University for using the Kindle DX. They have also filed complaints with federal agencies against the 5 universities using the Kindle DX in[...]

Quotes of the Day - Lord Brabazon - "I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it."

Hack a Day - Carnivorous robots - Artists [James Auger] and [Jimmy Loizeau] have put out this display of carnivorous robots. Pictured above is a clock that is powered by a microbial fuel cell. The clock is equipped with a scroll of sticky paper for catching the flies which it then sc[...]

Kindle 2 Review - Kindle DX Review, Books - Kindle giveaway - 10 Free Kindles - Reader's Digest have a contest with 10 free kindles (and a $40 gift certificate with each) up for grabs. Its hilarious that they're calling it the $4,000 online giveaway. However for the people who win a free Kindle 2 it'll be cool. Note: Official [...]

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:40:22 GMT

Oh yeah, and another episode of young women opening up to me, as the lab tech was telling me about how she's thinking of leaving for Harborview, in between talking about Star Trek and Transformers.

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:01:29 GMT

My day so far:

Wake up and wonder why the alarm, which was supposed to wake me up at 845 so I could get up and get ready to go to the dr's office, hasn't gone off. Is it really that early? No, it's 9am, and the alarm isn't set to go off on thursdays, only tuesday and friday. oops. Get up. Take shot. Take shower. Put clothes on. Dog hides in bedroom. Have breakfast. Read email. Cage dog, drive to doctor's office. Get stuck in wrong lane at wrong time, loop around, get to office, get parked. Sign in, stamp parking ticket, pay copay, fill out new patient mini-form, since new doc. Wait, read. Get called in, 25 minutes after appointment. For an 11am appointment. Not as late as I was used to with Dr P and my 430pm appointments, but still kinda late. Vitals taken. Doc pokes head in 7 minutes later to say he'll be with me shortly. Is with me 5 minutes later. Am impressed. Doctor starts asking questions, going over some of the data that's in the system, like drugs, and some as if I were a new patient. Comes across very focused on filling out the form, not really paying attention to me. Gives me backwards robe and leaves. Disrobe, lie down, wait. Doc comes back in, apologizes for being so long, does physical exam. Asks about past experiences with doctors. Finishes exam, continues asking about historical experience. Decides that maybe I don't see my doctors enough and don't test my blood sugars because of bad previous experiences with doctors, such as being forced to get a flu shot when I was little (earliest specific doctor-visit memory I could think of). Makes suggestions for blood sugar testing less often than previously told, but better than not at all, and orders blood tests and says get them done whenever I'm comfortable with it. Explain, no, it's really just the part with the needle that bugs me, and I just look away and think happy thoughts. Well, whatever. Do what works, so I actually do what needs to be done. Come back in a month, and see Dr Enzmann soon too. Take paperwork, go to lab. Get EKG - all is well. Some blood work needs fasting, do later. Will put me into the computer, I walk in any time and we do it. Maybe tomorrow morning on the way to work. Leave. Get lunch. Get home. Whiny puppy. Eat lunch.

And that's the first 5 hours of my day. For a 1 hour doctor's appointment. Now I need to get some work done. Oy. And I think I'll make an appointment with the next doctor on the list. This one's fine, but maybe others are better.

Shared Posts from 22 June to 24 June

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:00:08 GMT

Items shared from Google Reader:

Coolbuzz - Fishing 50ft under his kitchen makes Li Huiyan a rich dude - People go extreme places for fishing, but have you heard of someone fishing right inside his kitchen? Well, a man named Li Huiyan, from China, hired 30 villagers for six months to dig a 50ft (16 meters) hole in his kitchen. He believed that the river[...]

Boing Boing - The Pyramid of North Dakota - Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer. In the middle of the expansive North Dakota landsca[...]

Dev-Team Blog - Ultra's Now! - Ultrasn0w for iPhone 3G is ready! Ensure you have upgraded to iPhone OS 3.0 Jailbreak your iPhone 3G using redsn0w or PwnageTool (this will also install Cydia/Icy) Run Cydia or Icy Please add the repo repo666.ultrasn0w.com to Cy[...]

CHS Capitol Hill Seattle capitolhillseattle.com - Little hot dog cart, big drama: Wandering Wieners struggles to get back on track - We made kind of a big deal about Wandering Wieners when we first found out about the Cal Anderson Park hot dog cart. It hit all the right spots. Independent, affordable, street. But you may have noticed WW hasn't been in the park much lately. Owner [...]

The Red Ferret Journal - Thinergy Micro Energy Cells - the worlds most powerful micro battery - Infinite Power Solutions have come up with a range of tiny, thin film rechargeable batteries called Thinergy Micro Energy Cells. [...] 249 words | permalink | No comments | digg this

Boing Boing - We Want the Public Option, a novel approach to online petitions - Adam sez, "Online petitions are a dime a dozen these days -- it takes something special for the citizens to break through and get the attention of politicians. The folks at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (founded by Reddit co-inventor Aar[...]

Hack a Day - EVIC engine - The EVIC is a computer controlled internal combustion engine, utilizing a cam less solenoid actuated valve system. In addition to intake and exhaust valve control, the processor also handles ignition timing. With dynamic valve timing, it is possible [...]

Boing Boing - The "Whatever" Economy - Writer and periodic Boing Boing guest-blogger Susannah Breslin spotted this funny/desperate real estate sign. Whatever.

Boing Boing - DOE loans Tesla $465M to build "Model S" - Ford got $4.9B, Nissan $1.6B under same program - Via Wired's Autopia blog: The Obama Administration will lend Tesla Motors $465 million to build an electric sedan and the battery packs needed to propel it. It's one of three loans totaling almost $8 billion that the Department of Energy awarded tod[...]

Tumblr posts from 23 June

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:00:09 GMT

From my Tumblog:

23 June 3:48pm

Scott Berkun on Why and How to Speak (at Ignite)

Doctor followup

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:24:09 GMT

Called M&J to make my appointments. Turns out, they'll only make one at a time. If you don't like the doc, you get to call and make a separate new appointment. Lame. BUT, it's okay, with the way the scheduling worked out:

* Bushyhead - first available is friday, and I'm working at Garr's friday. No good.
* Hodges - first available is 15 July, and he's consistently an hour late.
* Efird - Not available until 2 July
* Smyth - only takes two new patients a day, and first available would be "way out there".
* Leahy - not available until august
* Verrilli - Available thursday. I'm seeing him at 11.

Based entirely off their profile videos on the M&J website, Verrilli is my second choice from attitude and style, and would be first if I wasn't afraid he was gonna badger me about exercising more. Bushyhead is first choice, and will be my fallback if things don't work out with Verrilli. Smyth and Leahy are out, 'cause they're obviously too popular for me. When I want to see my doctor, I want to see them /yesterday/, not two months from now. Hodges would be my third choice, then Efird.

We'll see how well the profile video preshadows in person interaction.

Shared Posts from 18 June to 22 June

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:00:08 GMT

Items shared from Google Reader:

Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger? - I read sum wares dat drinkin - I read sum wares dat drinkin is bad fur u So I qwit readin altho i recommend dat ur frendz stop drinkin… Picture by: Dawnie. Caption by: wonphatcat via Advanced Lol Builder » Recaption This » See All Captions

Boing Boing - Clear, aka the "TSA fast pass," shuts down - Clear, Steve Brill's second baby turkey (the first being "Brill's Content") flops: [Clear] rolled out with great fanfare July 18, 2005, in Orlando. Travelers initially paid $99 a year for a card that was supposed to target those who posed a minimum[...]

High Performance Web Sites - Simplifying CSS Selectors - This post is based on a chapter from Even Faster Web Sites, the follow-up to High Performance Web Sites. Posts in this series include: chapters and contributing authors, Splitting the Initial Payload, Loading Scripts Without Blocking, Coupling Asynch[...]

Boing Boing - US Department of Defense classes protests as "low-level terrorism" - A US Department of Defense training manual describes protest as "low-level terrorism." This is part of a broader trend of state agencies characterizing protest as a form of terrorism. The first question of the Terrorism Threat Factors, "Knowledge Ch[...]

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:36:33 GMT

Using niac and the internet's help, I've got Hylonome routing nerdvana's network. Haven't tested inbound port forwarding yet, and it doesn't seem to fall back to routing global traffic out thru the speakeasy connection when the comcast connection is down, like I /think/ the configuration should have it doing. But, it works for now. I can connect to the world via comcast, and I can connect to my servers without leaving the lan. All is good.

Now I just have to wait for the dhcp lease to expire so I can make sure the scripts to maintain the nat rules work.

edit: Oh, and Hladolet, the faithful netbsd-running Cobalt Qube 2, has been retired and relocated to the South Nerdvana Museum of Computational Antiquities.

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:31:09 GMT

Does anybody have any experience with any of these doctors? They're all associated with Minor and James, and all operate out of the first hill medical building. These are the ones I'm considering as replacements for Dr Pollock as my primary care physician, what with Dr P's retirement from internal medicine. I'm planning to call tomorrow and make appointments with several of them, but figured I'd see if anybody had an opinions about any of them. Feel free to send friends in to comment, if you know anybody who has, as well.

* James B. Bushyhead, MD
* John L. Verrilli, MD
* Wallace R. Hodges, MD
* Alex C. Efird, MD
* Cynthia M. Smyth, MD
* Jennifer M. Leahy, MD

Twitter posts from 14 June to 20 June

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 07:00:13 GMT

From my Twitter stream:

sun 01:55pm	trying the t1 move again.
sun 02:23pm	success. new jack with screw terminals for the win
sun 04:51pm	yay! hulu without annoying buffering times!
sun 07:37pm	@squishable demon sounds better
sun 08:18pm	Watching Colbert from last Monday, the first day in Iraq. I have to say: we have the bitchin'est president ever.
sun 08:49pm	I think I just unfollowed something like 40 more accounts. Mostly inactives and organizationals.
mon 10:56am	ok, it's official. iphoto's flickr integration is crap. total crap.
mon 12:34pm	@drakemonger yeah, but I like flickr.
mon 07:12pm	Wow, ok. Google-as-calculator has impressed me.
mon 07:14pm	http://tr.im/oC6j
tue 12:27pm	I love it when code works the first time. (We'll ignore the -3rd thru 0th times)
tue 12:28pm	Thank you, btw, to whichever DOT smoothed out the 175th St exit from I-5N. My twice-weekly commute thanks you.
tue 07:19pm	I was thinking about exactly this at dinner: http://danmeth.com/tagged/popculturalcharts it's almost 2010 and we still lack 2001 tech.
tue 08:27pm	Tweetdeck for iPhone is pretty nice.
tue 09:55pm	Has anybody out there had an apple remote that didn't eat batteries? Of the two or three I've got, they all burn thru a 2032 in ~ a month
wed 08:15am	You know it's time to get up when you toss and turn, trying to get back to sleep, for half an hour, and then find only 6 minutes have passed
wed 08:15am	@girlpirate Yes, it's normal.
wed 04:08pm	Useful hint: if you can't, for the life of you, figure out why the outer rescue is catching a weird error, try debugging your inner rescue.
wed 07:58pm	Alrighty. I've downloaded 3.0 for both Monkeyphone (L's 2G) and MT&T (my 3G). Now to wait impatiently for ultrasn0w.
wed 08:03pm	@JosieNutter no pants is always a good thing.
wed 09:06pm	"From your 174 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 5,981 items, starred 6 items, shared 71 items, and emailed 13 items." Whew.
wed 10:36pm	L has been watching 30rock S1 via netflix today. now I'm being subjected to it. and falling in love with tina fey. or at least her character
wed 10:46pm	@joeytrimmer tell her I love her. or that she's invited to my next party. whichever comes out less creepy.
thu 04:26pm	@mcmoots I'll send you my finances.
thu 04:29pm	Now /I/'m watching 30rock S1. The more I watch the more I love Fey. Also: lefty. swoon
thu 05:05pm	@mcmoots hey. you said you wanted boring spreadsheets. you didn't say there'd be a trade involved.
thu 05:20pm	@mcmoots Of course you can. That's what family is all about. What's mine, that i want you to have, is yours!
thu 08:21pm	At olive garden for dinner.
thu 08:44pm	It has taken a decade of rigorous research, but I have finally found the meaning of "too much" garlic. It overpowers my dinner. ::(
fri 06:13pm	The green userpics are useful. I can just scroll rapidly by.
fri 06:14pm	At Chang's for dinner.
fri 10:08pm	@wootshirt I'd totally buy that, but ... lemon? no. I can pull of the cranberry, barely. Not lemon.
sat 08:29am	@drakemonger The one in Renton. It wasn't as good as usual, but still tasty.
sat 06:32pm	Last two Countdowns have had siundbites that I thought would make good ringtones, but when I cut them down they didn't work. ::/
sat 10:11pm	Why would voice control be restricted to the new 3GS hardware? Sure, it might perform poorly on the slower phones, but I DO NO CARE. Grrr.