News You Can Bruise for 2000 September

Whenever people find out that I like Python, they always ask me the same question: "Is that your real hair?" No, wait, that's not the question. The question is "Don't the whitespace restrictions cramp your style?" THE ANSWER IS NO. It's something which you get used to. Every language has such things, and at least Python's whitespace restrictions serve a useful purpose. By the way, you know what bugs me about Perl? The damn brace restrictions! Every time you want to do any kind of conditional, you have to type a curly brace. Then you have to match it up when the conditional is done. C and Java have this problem too.

Crummy is back up. Until next time, go to the real site.

Ego roundup for the time crummy was down: Celeste and I were briefly mentioned in a LinuxWorld story, and my polynomial Segfault story follows up its mention in Crypto-Gram with a featured appearance in RISKS Digest. Plus, I just got confirmation that it's been reprinted on Usenet in the rec.humor Canonical List of Math Jokes. I have no way of verifying this, unfortunately, as I never use Usenet and Deja doesn't show the post.

This is probably not the best venue for this thing, but I don't really have anything else. Mike: I sent you the new version of the top-secret app this morning, but then got a "could not be delivered for last 4 hours". Tell me if you got it; otherwise give me a number I can call you at tomorrow so we can arrange a pickup.

Other people: you never saw this entry. I'm not allowed to talk about this program. Only Mike and JoeM and Celeste can know about it.

My greatest polynomial triumph yet: a reprint on J. Orlin Grabbe's home page! Truly, that article has something for everyone.

Hi. I'm working today.

Thieves make off with rare snake. A more catchy headline would be "Thieves make out with rare snake".

I like the mental image I get of Richard Stallman saying "Go get 'em, gnomes!" This is not a good day, and a funny mental image like that cheers me up some.

The Free Software Pattern is brilliant! I'm glad I get to publish stuff of this caliber.

Last month I said that I wouldn't want to work at Scour. Now, it turns out that I couldn't if I wanted to. Wow.

I got a fabulous fan mail about my Texas travelogue from Jim Dunn, who lives in Wichita Falls and, somewhat strangely, identifies himself using his eBay username. This mail really cheered me up, partially because he wrote another "Ribeyes of Texas" song!

The Ribeyes of Texas are upon you,
All the live long day
The Ribeyes of Texas are upon you,
You cannot get away.
You know you cannot escape them,
Rise up so early in the morrrrrrrrnnnnn,
The Ribeyes of Texas are upon you
Til Gabriel blows his horn.....Tah dah dummm...

Send me your "Ribeyes of Texas" songs and I'll do a Ribeyes of Texas charity album. Yippee! (See The appropriate section of the Texas travelogue for more information about the Ribeyes of Texas)

My car was vandalized on Monday. Someone stabbed two of my tires with an icepick or something. After many trials and tribulations, my tires have been replaced.

Manoj wanted this story, so here it is: RSA Move Sets Happy Precedent: Corporations Pledge To Monopolize Vital Technologies For Only 16 Years, 50 Weeks

On the flap of the box of microwave shepherd's pie I bought:

After the birth of our daughter Amy in 1987 we found there was little time to prepare the wholesome nutritious food we normally ate. Realizing there were others like ourselfves we set up Amy's Kitchen to produce delivious, nourishing frozen meals for health conscious people too busy to cook.

Yes, they didn't have time to cook for themselves, but they had time to set up a company that does the cooking for a whole bunch of other people.

Also, there's a bus ad for the Volkswagen bug that says "One more gear and it's a time machine." For heaven's sake, put in that extra gear and sell it as a time machine! I don't want to tell them how to do their jobs, but man.

Everyone is in shorts because it's been so hot lately. We have the radio on and Madness is playing. I'm setting up Helm on our pre-production machine so I can test my new servlet. Life is good.

The Moral Minority linked to my Segfault story. That looks like a site with some promise.

An article by Terry Jones on... uh, not much, but it's a fun read.

From my 401(k) booklet: "But if you're like most people, you may be in a lower tax bracket during retirement." Putting two hedges in the same sentence pretty much makes that sentence meaningless.

Foaf on travel:

I definitely recommend seeing your own country - although it is a hell of a lot easier when your country is roughly the same size as one of the smaller American states.

I bought some gummy bears (not Gummi Bears) yesterday. On the bag it says:

2/$3.00
Reg. $1.75

Yes, they printed the "regular" price on the package underneath the "discounted" price. I've decided to assume that the designer of the package was really stupid and thought people would fall for that, since that's more parsimonous than the assumption that everyone in the world is really stupid and would actually fall for that.

I remember a furniture place in LA that, when I was a kid, had a "CLOSE OUT SALE!" banner hanging permanently on the side of the building. This banner was not intended for years and years of constant use, and I remember it being old and tattered. It's probably still up there, although between then and now it may have been replaced by a similar sign in Korean.

It occurs to me that the gummy bear package might be intended to fool little kids. I can't see little kids buying these huge packages of gummy bears, though.

Kevin Maples sums up our current problems with a Futurama quote:

I had this awful nightmare - there were all these ones and zeros all over the place ... I think there was even a two.

It's odd to see praise of LyX on a page as poorly-laid out, stuck in the newspaper metaphor, as this one is.

Has anyone ever purchased and eaten a sopapilla within the state of California? If so, tell me where. I find it very strange that I've been unable to find sopapillas anywhere in California, but that you can go five miles into Oregon and every Mexican restaurant has them (they're terrible, but they have them).

Every weekend I use my newfound wealth (still my interpretation of a regular salary) to buy books. This week I got more David Brin (Brightness Reach, I think--second Uplift trilogy, first book), Ringworld, Interesting Times, and the literary equivalent of one of the things in the "1000 Things You Never Knew Existed" catalog, Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before. I had no idea he'd written another novel.

I'm going to get some books at the used bookstore in Bakersfield when I go there next week, and then I'm going to hold off until I finish all these books.

Listen up. I'm only going to say this once. Nature is not your friend. Nature wants to see you dead. The best you can hope for from nature is total indifference.

That's all for now.

I like the rhetorical device at the end of this article. I don't think I've ever seen it before:

And when members of Congress recognize the constitutional flaws in a bill like the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 but vote for it anyway--in the expectation that the Supreme Court will clean up their mess...

Slightly updated Jake Berendes West Covina, adding a footnote and changing a URL. "That's him, officer! He's the one who sold me tasty New England confections at an unbeatable price!"

JBWC is #1 on a Google search for "jake berendes". SUCCESS!!

I know this isn't as funny as it sounds to Americans, but I laugh anyway.

"As Australians we've got a proud tradition of taking the piss to uphold."

Andrew Leonard was at the CollabNet office (I'm assuming he didn't just look at pictures of the kitchen) and I didn't meet him? That sucks.

Mike points out that that Salon article and the distributive law allow me to put "'[Leonard Richardson is] almost too cool' - Andrew Leonard" in my .sig.

Don't Trust Everything You Read, Even on the Internet. What's this "even" business?

Two processes enter! One process leaves!

Senate blasts 'culture of carnage'. Looks like a job for Dan!

This is probably the meanest Segfault story I've ever written: _descramble_.mp3 "Inappropriate"; pissing_in_the_ladies__sin.mp3 "Okey-Dokey"

Joe is leaving for Christchurch to catch a plane to San Francisco. I'm picking him up at the airport Saturday morning and then driving him down to Bakersfield so he won't get a bad impression of America during his time here.

Our time in Bakersfield corresponds to the timeframe of a project in which people with weblogs (whose numbers I have de facto joined by Cam's inclusion of Crummy on his list of weblogs) take pictures of their boring, worthless lives. [0]

It costs me no effort to join this project, since I'll be taking lots of pictures during that timeframe and putting them on the web anyway. The problem is that the site refers to this activity as a "shoot" and the resulting product as a "virtual gallery"; not exactly actions I want to encourage.

So, I've made it into a poll; vote on whether I should take part. Or take all, for that matter. The deadline for entering is the 17th, so the poll will probably run until tomorrow evening.

(By the way, the name of the weblog is "News You Can Bruise", not "Crummy", which is the name of the whole site. But I won't complain because "Crummy.com" is closer to the top of Cam's list of weblogs than "News You Can Bruise" would be.)

[0] Lives may not actually be boring and worthless.

FHW: Odor sickens 33 in Texas

As the guy who gets mail addressed to editor@segfault.org, I have to be understanding. I get Japanese porno spam, stupid press releases, offers to make Segfault part of some extremely minor new media conglomerate, offers to give other sites free advertising, and the occasional letter pertaining to something published on Segfault. But sometimes I get a message that was addressed to a parallel universe version of me and was somehow misdelivered to this version of me. I got such a message today, from an AOL account:

Nowadays everyone are profiteering pigs. The only site that i knew of that had any good downloads and info was shut down. Do you know any sites that you don't have to vote 25 times to download something. any assistance would be helpful. thank you

Our AOL friend comes from a parallel universe dominated by proprietary Unices, in which segfault.org is an underground newspaper for those who illicitly copy and configure software. I don't understand the voting 25 times thing. Since I don't know anything about the URL namespace of his universe (except that segfault.org and aol.com exist), I can't really help him. Perhaps freshmeat.net and happypenguin.org correspond to underground download sites in his universe. If you're from that universe and you're reading this, please help this guy.

By unanimous popular demand, I have signed up for the BTC project. Now I have to think of a different poll.

Kris did a thing for Adam's birthday that cracks me up. It's like a live-action Pokey the Penguin starring Adam! YES!! Happy birthday, Adam! And thank you for being on appendectomy drugs, Kris.

Susanna (my sister, for those not in the know) suggested the new poll. I should put in a disclaimer that the poll is for entertainment value only.

I'm now on the list of participating BTC weblogs.

I guess I've been in weblog denial. I don't like being in groups of people that Jon Katz writes articles about. Being a geek is okay, because I'm not the teenage Quake-playing goth from Nebraska that is the Jon Katz archetypal geek. But I've been in denial both about my running a weblog and about my presumed unpopularity in high school. I honestly don't think I was unpopular in high school. I was very depressed all the time, but not unpopular. Of course this just goes to show how deep my unpopularity denial is.

Call me dense, but I just realized this. Thom Wood, whom we hired to work on CVS and Subversion (the best software project name ever), wears tie-dye to work every day. Every day. I thought he just wore it a lot, but he wears it every day.

The astounding thing is not that Thom Wood wears tie-dye to work every day, but that it took me three weeks to realize this.

Okay, I'm off. The next entry will be from Bakersfield with neon Joe in tow. Probably tomorrow evening.

This entry exists only so that Joe can take a picture of me typing it for the BTC project.

Dropped Joe off at the airport today. My windshield was really dirty and the thing that's supposed to spray water on the windshield so you can run your wipers apparantly didn't work. So I drove there and back with terrible dirt glare.

Spam I got today: "Your internet shopping can help us elect Republicans to the White House!" Reaction #1: Oh no! Reaction #2: I didn't know the White House had multiple vacancies this year.

In Bakersfield I bought 8 MST3K tapes. So many episodes I haven't seen for years, and three (The Atomic Brain, Catalina Caper, and The Unearthly) I hadn't seen at all. The only Comedy Central MST3K episodes I haven't seen are The Human Duplicators and The Painted Hills. Does anyone want to trade?

Sorry, Dave, that I didn't get to meet up with you while I was in Bakersfield.

In my mini-AIR today I was pointed to an incomparable comparative review of the Institute for Creation Research's "Bomby the Bombadier Beetle" and the Harry Potter books. "Bomby has to learn everything from older male family members through oral history, and appears to have no instinctively hard-wired behaviors (definitely a higher vertebrate trait)."

Breaking news from PC World: THIS IS A TEST STORY--PLEASE DELETE ME.

My page has been linked from the BTC site. The actual pictures are linked on the little buttons to the left of people's names. The real pictures site is at /articles/travelogues/2000/foaf/, but I had to do a symlink to /btc2000/ because the real URL wouldn't fit in the little box I was given. And I can never take that symlink down. Bleah.

A very useful article: Variable Mangling in Bash With String Operators.

FHW: Deadly Hot Springs. I say, it's deadly hot!

I finally got around to rotating the graphics properly in the BTC gallery.

This unrepentant monopolist abused its power. This unrepentant monopolist stayed home. This unrepentant monopolist had roast beef. This unrepentant monopolist had none. This unrepentant monopolist cried "Wee-wee-wee!" all the way home.

"The truth is that nowhere in any published D&D material ever has there been a rule that states you must kill yourself if your character dies." I'm glad we've cleared that up.

Has anyone tried the AD&D third edition yet? I still have all the first edition books... uh, somewhere.

My latest Segfault story, DOJ Cracking Down on Freedom to Innovate, is rated a 2. Ouch.

Tomorrow, the project that has taken up all of my free time for the past two months will be done. Just in time for me to have no free time whatsoever.

The fruit of my efforts will be publically avaliable on the 2nd. Which is Monday. I had to look that up.

This site is weird. My eyes just seem to skid off it. It's like there's a force field around the page.

You're going to go there xpecting something really cool, but it's not particularily cool. It's just weird.

Jupiter: America's dairyland!