Baxil [bakh-HEEL'], n.

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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Baxil" journal:

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July 21st, 2008
05:28 pm [Link]	A radical thought The hippies used to say "Don't trust anyone over 30." But, being hippies and not computer programmers, they left a surprising amount of syntactical ambiguity in that statement. Even if we don't challenge the assumption that "thirty" refers to the number of Earth solar years since the target's birth, this still leaves the question of what the exact cutoff is, and to hold any sort of rational discussion about the topic, it's necessary to find a rigorous answer. Linguistically, "over" implies strictly "greater than"; if "greater than or equal to" were intended, a phrase such as "at least" would have been more appropriate. So if we were writing pseudocode for a trust routine, it should look like: `if ($person.age_in_years > 30) then { $person.trust = 0; }` Even this doesn't answer the question: What is the precision of the comparison? Is someone "over" thirty when they are 30 plus a month? 30 plus a day? 30 plus an hour, a minute, a second, a nanosecond? Tests of arbitrary precision could easily be constructed and executed, but this would then create a secondary dilemma: platform differences would not guarantee consistent trust results across runtime environments. For full RFC compliance, and to prevent security exploits in applications implementing trust webs, we must ensure that all interpersonal relationships are calculable in replicable ways regardless of native hardware. Removing the question of precision is recognized as the canonical response to this issue: `if ( int($person.age_in_years) > 30) then { $person.trust = 0; }` Which is a lengthy way of saying that, as of yesterday, you can no longer trust me. -- Edited to add: No, I didn't just turn 30. ];=8) If `int(baxil.age_in_years)` needs to be strictly greater than 30, then `30 > 30` fails. Besides, I already turned 30 last year. Current Location: ~spiral Current Mood: older Current Music: "Spy", Cowboy Bebop OST 'Vitaminless' Tags: birthday (22 comments \| Leave a comment)
July 5th, 2008
10:40 am [Link]	Reminder Just a heartbeat post to let you know that kadyg and I (and a very statuesque friend) are chronicling our road trip over at wallyontheroad. Thrills! Chills! Extreme statue photography! Already we've visited several major landmarks, had an (extremely lucky!) run-in with the law, and failed to capture photographs of prairie llamas. (Next time, Gadget. Next time ...) Journal: wallyontheroad Photos: gallery (remember that it's multiple pages) Video: Coming soon ... Current Location: Hays, KS Current Mood: content Tags: misc life updates (7 comments \| Leave a comment)
July 1st, 2008
10:34 am [Link]	Gone: July 1-12 Just so y'all know, I don't expect to be updating my LJ much during the road trip. You can keep an eye on my new friend Wally's blog, though, for updates: wallyontheroad Current Location: ~/Brainstorm Current Mood: devious (Leave a comment)
June 30th, 2008
08:37 pm [Link]	Fish no more Came back home tonight from necama and Kathryn's wedding (which was lovely) to an unpleasant surprise: What could literally be described as a bloodbath in our f33shtank. Corpses everywhere. The entire school of neon tetras dead, several guppies, and two of our five clown loaches. After getting over our shock, I took some water samples and we whipped through a quick cleaning and water and filter change. Forensic ichthyology revealed a giant spike in lethal nitrates, so I ran down to the fish store and bought some chemicals to neutralize them. Hate going for the quick fix, but we're leaving again tomorrow morning (for the road trip to Kansas to visit kadyg's family that we've been planning for months). The emergency work seems to have stabilized the remaining fish, but the loaches are still swimming oddly and I really don't know what's going to happen after we leave again. (UPDATE: Nitrates still ~15 ppm, will do 50% water change and one more round of chemicals before we go ...) To compound the issue, most of the ammonia (that bacteria turn into nitrates; and subsequently into nitrites, which the plants filter out of the water) comes from either fish waste or uneaten food. The culprit was probably a combination of heat plus the zucchini I left for our pleco to munch on in our absence: looks like the vegetable disintegrated much faster than expected, and rotted into waste material that hit the tank all at once. I added some beneficial bacteria, which will only have a delayed effect, but I guess we'll just have to put the fish on a starvation diet until either I or a roommate can monitor the tank more closely. That'll be at least another three and a half days. I'm not sure how many of them will last the week. What a time for this to hit. Current Location: ~/Brainstorm Current Mood: worried Current Music: "So Deep (Perfect Sphere Remix)", Silvertear Tags: pets (4 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 24th, 2008
11:59 am [Link]	The state, the state, the state is on fire Visibility's a quarter-mile in town today. "EVERYONE SHOULD AVOID ALL PHYSICAL ACTIVITY OUTDOORS." There's talk of evacuating the tiny town of Washington, about 15 miles east; and that's not even the fire that's pelting us with smoke. And it's like that in pretty much the entire northern half of California. It's not a good time to be a firefighter. My thoughts go out to everyone on the front lines. Current Location: ~spiral Current Mood: worried Current Music: "Beyond All Fear of Doom," Souls in the System sndtrk Tags: misc life updates (13 comments \| Leave a comment)
12:32 am [Link]	Perspective on atheist believers I've seen the statistic cited a few times today that 21 percent of (American) atheists believe in a higher power, which is roughly as absurd as saying that 21 percent of vegetarians eat meat. It's pretty easy to make more out of a statement like that than the data really implies, and people have been rightly skeptical. But in chipuni's discussion thread (friends-locked), symposiarch links to the original study [PDF], and so we have the opportunity to unpack it a bit. Is it statistical trickery? ( No ) Is it linguistic trickery? ( Maybe ) Does it show that atheists are stupid, crazy and/or hypocritical? ( No ) * * * * * Also, apropos of nothing: props to hafoc for utterly out-Frosting me in the tech support poetry thread. -- * The PDF has four pages of cover, credits and index; I'm following the numbering scheme of the document itself. In order to immediately locate any reference, jump to (page number + 4) in the PDF you download. Current Location: ~/brainstorm Current Music: The Wingless, "Super Metroid: All The World In One Girl" OC Remix Tags: geekery, polls (17 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 20th, 2008
12:52 pm [Link]	Let's see YOU work "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" in there :-p Newest addition to the ticket queue, based on a phone conversation with "FROST ROBT K ": 6/20 TR - Robert Frost called in and needs some computer support. After a long time being Acquainted With The Night, his computer went Out, Out, and now turns on with great Reluctance. Before he gives it a Home Burial, or retires it out to The Pasture, he wants to drive The Road Not Taken (from Sierra City into Nevada City) and run it by The Mending Wall. Now, we're Stars of the internet fixing world, but the problem with The Code of his operating system is Neither Out Far Nor In Deep in our specialty. If he were to Come In to us, we might be here until October reinstalling Windows XP. I referred him to The Black Cottage across the highway and gave him Clientworks' number. They have Good Hours and the Dedication to fix his failing-to-boot problem. -- Some say his OS will end in upgrades, Some say in bugs. From what I have seen of Windows I hold with those who favor woes. But if equipment is replaced, I've seen enough of Plug and Play To say that endless hardware hacks Will make him bray And buy a Mac. Clearly, I am far too bored today and need to find some billing to enter into the system. Current Location: ~spiral Current Mood: trying to be good Current Music: "Do It Now!," Killer Instinct soundtrack Tags: wordplay, work (10 comments \| Leave a comment)
11:20 am [Link]	memesheepage What the hell is this about? There's a blog collecting examples. (Edited to add: This made me laugh hardest.) If you want to make one, I don't think all of these have been done yet. (ROFLBot FTW.) \\|\|\|/ (o o) \|------------------------------oOO--(_)--OOo------------------------------\| \| I am aware of all Internet traditions \| \|-------------------------------------------------------------------------\| Current Location: ~spiral Current Mood: amused Current Music: Rick Astley, "Never Gonna Give You Up" Tags: meme (7 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 19th, 2008
07:03 pm [Link]	Renee Decart, white courtesy phone* Google gets closer to DWIM every day. It all started with an innocent typo. I mistyped Lewis Carroll as "Lewi Carroll" in Google while looking for his birthday. ... And Google cheerfully returned the results for the author without so much as acknowledging the misspelling. This struck me as unusual. After all, with most errors -- such as Nancie Kerrigan for the figure skater Nancy -- Google will pester you with a little "Did You Mean:" line at the top of your results, showing you what you probably meant to type but returning the searches best matching your exact wording. But search for Louis Carroll, and the results go straight to Lewis' Wikipedia page and several repositories of his works. None of the results' sample text even quote "Louis" until at least halfway down the page. A little experimentation with other writers confirmed this wasn't a fluke. For example, the immortal words of Bill Shakespeare stand atop English literature. (Note, however, that Billy Shakespeare is someone else.) Nor is it confined to the prose disciplines. Actors? Larry Olivier. Artists? Peter Mondrian. Musicians? Axle Rose. And of course philosophers, like the suave and enigmatic Renee Decart. Found other interesting "canonical" misspellings? Submit your own in comments!** -- * DEAR GOD, the PHILOSOPHICAL MONISTS. </ObInJoke> Rules: Name has to 1) NOT produce a "Did You Mean" message; 2) NOT contain top references to a different person; 3) return substantially similar top references as the original. Current Location: ~spiral Current Mood: better Current Music: Bob Neuwirth, "Winter in Berlin" Tags:** wordplay (12 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 17th, 2008
02:47 am [Link]	A moment of channeling Morford The phrase "culture jamming" has popularly come to mean something like (per Wikipedia) "turning away from all forms of herd mentality." That definition would have it be an individualized act, a personal opting out. But today's weddings in California are culture jamming in a much broader sense. Jam, v.tr.: To block, congest, or clog. To cause (moving parts, for example) to lock into an unworkable position. Culture jam, v. tr.: To bombard with conflicting cultural signals in such a way as to threaten or break societal conditioning. Even as a gay marriage supporter, seeing this photo -- of two men in tuxedo shirts, black leather jackets and cowboy hats, standing at the altar -- caused me some cognitive dissonance. For three decades I've been bombarded with images of what "marriage" is. Being thrown these contradictory images leaves me feeling ill at ease. Unsettled. There's a little Archon inside me whispering that accepting these images means a terrifying loss of order. But. Pictures are funny things. You see in a photograph -- more so than real life, anyway -- what you want to see. Your brain seizes on the contradiction of the image; glosses over the little touches that make it real. The tender glance, the gentle hand-holding. And you miss the world of your other senses. The laughter, the scent of roses, the taste of chocolate, the hugs of well-wishing friends, the vibrant joy and exultation of a love long suppressed, stepping out tentatively into the world as if it can't believe the sun still shines after a lifetime hidden in the basement. You can't be there for a wedding, gay or otherwise, without feeling it.* The love. That's what this is about; that's why this is the right thing to do. Expanding marriage is about love versus fear. It's about confronting that dark dissonance of unquestioned social convention, letting it flay your unquestioned expectations and strip your conditioning raw and naked ... and still being willing to let go and wander, unprotected, away. "Something big is indeed being lost here, and we will be better off without it." When convention protects love, friendship, community, happiness, guard it with your life. When convention stands in the way of these things, dance in the rubble. Convention is not all we have: people are all we have. -- And besides which, this means George Takei** has finally gotten married. By all accounts, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. -- * Okay, some people can. Those people should be treated as a case of brain damage and gently guided away to sulk in their corner. ** You remember his total pwnage [video] of Tim Hardaway's "I hate gays" comment. Right? Current Location: ~journal Current Mood: happy Tags: wedding (10 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 11th, 2008
01:44 pm [Link]	Greatest. Unix. Command. Ever. So we were writing some shell scripts here at work today, and while debugging a delete command that wasn't working as expected, the following sentence in the man page for rm caught my eye: The interactive mode used to be a dsw command, a carryover from the ancient past with an amusing etymology. Which led me to Google, and thus to a bit of history on dsw, the Real Programmer's way to delete files. The acronym itself turns out to be boring, but what a backstory! Current Location: ~spiral Current Music: "Coconut," Reservoir Dogs soundtrack Tags: geekery (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 10th, 2008
02:20 am [Link]	Sharing and caring I saw a license plate on my way to work today that, had I not been driving a vehicle, would have made me stand up and cheer. There were no bumper stickers or other meaning clues on the tan minivan. Just a simple California plate: "ANESTE". And I was immediately struck by the subtlety and the power of the message. Now that, I thought, is pitch-perfect evangelism. * * * ( On responsible evangelism, and the context of the plate ) Current Location: ~journal Current Music: Sting, "Fragile" Tags: draconity, greece, struh won niarb ym (10 comments \| Leave a comment)
12:31 am [Link]	This icon is strangely, wrongly appropriate I swear, sometimes it feels like I'm writing headlines in an alternate universe much cooler than our own: "Quake lake growing despite military action" Yes, soldiers are in fact attacking a lake. With anti-tank weapons. waywind suggests via IM that "All it needs is to have a face on it like in your icon. And make aggravated Godzilla noises when they attack it." Well, sure. But why stop there? Clearly, this entire phenomenon is a campy monster movie come to life. Humans play god with nature; nature rises up in force; humans try ineffectually to stop the now-invincible threat; most of an Asian country gets leveled as lots of people run around screaming. And then, giant robots. And theme songs. Mizu-ra! Mizu-ra! Randa banunradan Tounjukanraa!* -- * I am so going to hell for this. The whole post, I mean. What with the joking about natural disasters and all. Although when I get there, the devil's probably going to cite that one line as the deciding factor. Current Location: ~journal Current Mood: silly Current Music: Wolfstone, "J-Time" Tags: wordplay (4 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 8th, 2008
03:21 am [Link]	That was the week that was Well, that's seven days over with. A mere 64 hours on the clock! I sure am glad I managed to trim my schedule down to a sane and reasonable two jobs. </sarcasm> I really am looking forward to the "two-week" journalism gig ending. It's good money and pleasant work, but I literally don't know the last time I was able to take two days off in a row without working. (Baycon doesn't count. Busman's holiday.) I want to write again. To hike. To feel the magic around me again instead of stumbling through life in an overgrounded haze. At least the end is in sight. I've told jobs #2 and #3 that I am, in no uncertain terms, unavailable after July 1. Which, conveniently, is when my wife returns home from cooking school, just in time for our two-week celebratory road trip. And after that I'll try to assemble a more sustainable life. Current Location: ~/brainstorm Current Mood: tired Tags: work (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 7th, 2008
11:56 pm [Link]	That explains so much George W. Bush clearly grew up on a diet of endless John Wayne movies. Then he became president, and put us in one. Mission accomplished. -- Also, on a completely unrelated note. I'd just like to say that while I am: 1) An Obama supporter; 2) a "not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual" person; and 3) a person who considers himself nonhuman in some essential way; I still have absolutely no idea what Mark Morford is going on about in labeling Barack Obama an "attuned being ... who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet" (italics his). I like Obama and I like his ideas, but as bradhicks rightly points out, Barack is more likely to be a closet atheist than a closet Buddha. Not that this is a bad thing; the nation (and the world) could use some sane, enlightened secular human leadership for a change. I do think Morford nails it a little further down, where he says: "[I]t's not even about Obama, per se. There's a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that's been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama's candidacy." It's not necessary to posit Obama as some sort of posthuman in order to explain any observed gathering of positive energy around the man. In fact, I would argue that having the man himself be some sort of superhuman would hinder that sort of change. In my urban fantasy setting TTU, this is exactly what happens with Dennis Redwing: He unites nonhumans, focuses them as a community, stands up just long enough to make one big change -- and then promptly sees the larger part of his work undone and his personal life and credibility ripped into shreds as he starts having to deal with the consequences of his show of power. His early leadership crystallized nonhumans together in a way that addressed an early and dire threat, but the sting of the inevitable disintegration also guaranteed that nobody else would be able to do the same for a decade or more. Focusing too much energy, too much credibility, into a single source means that if that source is disabled, the entire buildup can be wasted. Structures united around a cause have longevity far beyond those united around a person. History may be influenced by leaders, but it is made by movements. Current Location: ~journal Current Music: Splashdown, "Karma Slave" Tags: magic, politics, ttu (8 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 4th, 2008
03:00 am [Link]	Political news Oh, and also: Just in case you didn't hear -- I know, it's easy to miss these things -- Barack Obama is the Democratic presidential nominee. Which makes it all the more important to file this David Brooks gaffe away in your brain, close to the top. Lock and load, and be ready to fire some savage mockery at a moment's notice when the inevitable attacks about Obama being "elitist," "out of touch," "not folksy," etc., come up. Because it's been a standard canard of the right and their witless concern trolls in the mainstream media for literally decades now. It's long past time to bury the idea that ~~someone~~ Democrats who dare to show any intellectualism are "too good" to be president, or insufficiently manly, or otherwise deficient in character. So please, do this nation a favor. The next time -- hell, every time -- that some well-dressed and highly paid pundit gets a bug up their ass about Barack not being the salt of the earth, roll your eyes, and loudly and sarcastically announce: "I know! Obama's never going to fit in at all of those Applebee's salad bars." I recommend adding the hyperlink, too. Though how to insert one into a voice monologue is left as an exercise to the reader.* -- * Hint: It does NOT involve speaking the words "bracket aey aitch-ref equals ..." Current Location: ~journal Current Music: The Band Formerly Known As Yes, "Birthright" Tags: politics (10 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 3rd, 2008
07:28 pm [Link]	Non-political news In among the barrage of Obama/Clinton coverage today, you might have missed a quiet piece of interesting news: GM is going small. They're closing four pickup truck and SUV factories; throwing brand weight into their smaller and more fuel-efficient cars like the Cobalt; talking seriously about their battery-operated Volt; and -- shock -- may drop entirely the line that has become America's icon of small-penis compensation. Yes, that's right, they may mothball the Hummer. This is one of those baby steps that's likely to get lost amid the shouting and screaming and running, but we'll be feeling its effects for decades to come. And it's a hopeful sign. Current Location: ~journal Current Mood: hopeful Current Music: "My Omelette," Dragon Half OST Tags: technology (23 comments \| Leave a comment)
May 24th, 2008
02:30 am [Link]	First impressions I've been at BayCon for about 24 hours now. This convention is like an old friend to me. I've been attending for a decade and a half, and I know it inside and out. But this is the con's first year in the ~~San Jose~~ Santa Clara Convention Center, and that's meant adjusting to some changes. ( Details, details; and context for the fire footnotes ) Which brings me to the most singularly awesome scheduling snafu in the con's history. Check it out: The Santa Clara Convention Center's so big we can't completely fill up their event space. And one of this weekend's other guests is ... You can't make this stuff up. The Northern California Charismatic Catholic Association. Not just a church gathering. A charismatic church gathering. A charismatic Catholic church gathering. Charismatic Catholics? ... I think I broke nolly when I mentioned this to her. So, yeah, we're sharing the building with a church group. Isn't it awesome? I know, I know, the goal here is not to "freak the mundanes." I laugh with a little sympathetic wince. I blundered into their area of the convention center while exploring the con space, and I felt just as awkward wandering through their land of Sunday suits as they must have felt with a jackal-eared man in black passing through.^[4] Bad enough that they're using the same parking structure we are, and the same skyway over to event space. But what really makes it classic is that tonight, they were holding a concert-slash-worship-service over in their event space ... their door literally within line of sight of our Charity Casino, where brightly costumed heathens were engaging in convention-sanctioned dancing, drinking and gambling. BayCon's booked this hotel through at least 2010. It's going to be an interesting few years. -- [1] I know it was a false alarm because a sharply dressed hotel employee with an earpiece hustled over to our (convention staff) area and told us we didn't have to evacuate unless we wanted to flee the annoying klaxon. Someone had hit a fire button in one of the elevators.[^] [2] I would just like to point out that I CALLED THIS. Five minutes after unloading my gear in our hotel room, I walked around the corner to check out the stairwell, opened the door, and did an immediate facepalm. Fire system pipes, valves, and wheels were all over the place. No chains, giant locks, or any other visible deterrent. I started offering $5 bets to any comers, with me betting that we would have at least one fire evacuation over the course of the weekend. I got no takers.[^] [3] This is, one must admit, something of a BayCon tradition. There's a filk out there called "False Alarms At BayCon," about an infamous (2002?) incident where a half-hour cascade of erratically spaced apologies followed a single alarm. It stopped being funny about the third or fourth time the intercom crackled to life.[^] [4] I will admit to a tiny twinge of regret that I wasn't wearing horns.[^] Current Location: ~hyatt/newsletter Current Mood: amused Current Music: Counting Crows, "American Girls" Tags: conventions (15 comments \| Leave a comment)
May 21st, 2008
10:52 pm [Link]	Busman's holiday, part XIV I'd like to cheerfully announce to my friends list that I'm going offline for BayCon, but the sad truth is that I'll still have more free time on the Internet there than I've been getting at The Jobs. Current Location: ~/Brainstorm Tags: conventions (Leave a comment)
May 19th, 2008
11:34 pm [Link]	Doing it wrong No no no ... You're supposed to cover breaking news events, not break newsmen covering events! (Link is worksafe, though contains photo of javelin injury.) Current Location: ~journal Current Mood: morbidly amused Current Music: Fatboy Slim, "Rockafella Skank" Tags: newspapers, wordplay (7 comments \| Leave a comment)

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