Antarctica, Winter 1982

11:34am: Bacon-roasted Garlic

2:10pm: Be kind to your fair feathered friends



The Bird•B•Gone Difference...

"It's More Than Just Bird Control Products... It's FAITH, FAMILY & FRIENDS!"

Jesus wants you to electrocute birds!

2:05pm: Today's Special

2:08pm: Get your damned ugly art off of my beautiful city
I am getting so incredibly sick of seeing Frida Kahlo's ghastly bearded-lady visage on every light pole and bus I pass:



The Mikado can also bite me.



AND GET OFF THE DAMNED LAWN

11:25am: We get up early to beat the crowds


Denver cops get T-shirts that mock DNC protesters



Denver's police union is facing criticism for printing a commemorative T-shirt that makes light of the use of violence by police, particularly in the wake of 154 arrests during the week of Democratic National Convention this past August.


"We get up early, to beat the crowds," the shirt reads, followed by "2008 DNC." The words flank a grinning police officer holding a baton and wearing a hat with a crossed-out number "68," presumably making reference to activist organization Recreate 68, which staged several anti-war demonstrations during the convention.


"The people of Denver were assured by the city that it would respect First Amendment rights during the DNC, and that that police officers were being trained to do so. The actions of police during the DNC, which involved numerous violations of people's right to freedom of speech and assembly, put the lie to those promises," said Recreate 68's Glenn Spagnuolo. "And now this appalling, tasteless t-shirt shows why. The members of Denver's police union clearly have no respect for the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution. The Denver Police Department Operations Manual includes a Law Enforcement Code of Ethics, which begins, 'As a Law Enforcement Officer, my fundamental duty is to serve mankind, to safeguard lives and property, to protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation, and the peaceful against violence or disorder; and to respect the Constitutional rights of all men to liberty, equality and justice.' The creation of this t-shirt makes a mockery of that statement."


Detective Nick Rogers of the Police Protective Association said that the union predicts sales of about 2,000 shirts in addition to the ones given free to Denver police officers, and also told KMGH that he hadn't received any complaints about the shirt.

2:58pm: They call me the "early adopter"
Upgraded my fileserver to a 2.6 kernel this weekend. Previous kernel? 2.4.mumble, compiled on New Years Day of 2004.
Upgraded my laptop to Leopard 11 scant months after it was released.

(this is part of the "get on top of the backups initiative of 2008".)

8:32am: It's Caturday, bitches.

8:48pm: Fails
It occurred to me tonight that the half-assery involved in the average Rails component is a multiplicative rather than additive property.

For instance, if you use four half-assed Rails components in your project, you project doesn't have two asses, but rather a sixteenth of an ass.

I remember when writing software didn't make me want to say "you want fries with that, d00d?" when I committed to version control.

8:34pm: They've been testing since before I moved to SF.
Sent from JawaFone

9:52am: Wankery
So I'm scanning through the table of contents of an anthology of short fiction that I'm currently reading when I see, about 2/3 down the page:

"... by Harlan Ellison ®"

The man has made his own name into a registered trademark, and insists it be listed that way.
What a douche.

4:01pm: ah-hah!
Mystery of the random Russian livejournal accounts friending me solved:

http://nympholept.livejournal.com/tag/russian+bots

9:50am: Pyrex: no longer oven-safe
Three Years Later: Pyrex Dishes Still Go Boom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borosilicate_glass

After Corning Glass Works introduced Pyrex in 1915, it became a synonym for borosilicate glass in the English-speaking world (however, since 1998 Pyrex kitchen brand is no longer made of borosilicate but of soda-lime glass[2]).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda-lime_glass
Soda-lime glass, also called soda-lime-silica glass, is the most prevalent type of glass, used for windowpanes, and glass containers (bottles and jars) for beverages, food, and some commodity items. Also Pyrex brand kitchen glassware manufactured since 1998 (when the brand was spun off under World Kitchen) is made of soda-lime glass[1] (previously, it was made of better quality, thermal shock resistant borosilicate glass).

See also:

7:40am: I am *not* okay with this.
October. SURPRISE!



Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1 [army times]

3rd Infantry’s 1st BCT trains for a new dwell-time mission. Helping ‘people at home’ may become a permanent part of the active Army
By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Sep 8, 2008 6:15:06 EDT

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.
Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.
Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.
It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.
But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.
( martial law ... )

1:39pm: Jason?
JSON: every week, some other motherfucker has to go reinvent s-expressions.

5:06pm: I could survive for 1 minute, 25 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

... but zombies? Zombies fear the fuck out of me.

9:18am: iPod


Peapod


peePod?

11:18pm: Really outstanding MP3 tagger
I downloaded Jaikoz a couple of weeks ago, and registered my copy today. (Registration allows you to operate on more than 20 files at a time.)

Outstanding. It's written in Java, and has installers for OS X, Windows, and Linux. It's smart enough to interact with iTunes. Drag a bunch of MP3 files into it, set it to work, and it figures out what they are, backed by Musicbrainz and other data sources. Finds proper tags, lyrics, artwork. Truly outstanding piece of work.

Well worth the $30. I'm rediscovering bits of my MP3 collection that I haven't listened to in years, and coupled with iTunes 8's new Genius feature, I'm sure to get reintroduced to a lot of good shit that I'd otherwise overlook.

4:43pm: Right Now Picture Meme

4:37pm: Is it so hard?
fork();
setsid();
fork();

May the ghost of W. Richard Stevens come back to taunt all of you.

Punks.

11:49am: Market Street
I support a fully-funded War on Tourism.

7:57pm: what a difference two days makes
3 miles in 29:11 tonight, and I didn't feel like I was even pushing too hard.
Feels good. Getting my badass back.

10:33pm: Dear God the HORROR
I went to a pub near work for lunch to get a sandwich. Tasty cheese steak, which had both cheese and steak, and was therefore quite tasty.

At the bar were a group of what presumably happens to fratboy rapists after they pupate.

Picture this: a group of men, anywhere from 35-55, wearing brown leather shoes, identical pleated khaki slacks (WHO THE FUCK LOOKS GOOD IN THOSE? NOBODY.), brown leather belts, button-down shirts in various patterns of baby blue, and identical haircuts that had approximately the same relation to actual human hair as what is found on a Ken doll, in shades of brown to grey.

Standing around in a nice pub that serves any number of high-quality domestic microbrews and imports on tap, drinking Budweiser out of bottles.

Talking VERY, VERY LOUDLY. At 1:30 on a friday afternoon.

I really wanted to get out a machete and start chopping. The zombie invasion has begun, and it wasn't at all what we were expecting.

10:33pm: I went to see the hippies with my cousins
A couple of weeks back I went to Hopland, CA to see Solfest Hippies.

I took pictures, of course.

Leaving SF


Spooky Old Tree


There were sheep.


And hippies


And ducks


Here's a tip, Hogwarts Hippiez: Don't show up to flying lessons stoned.


Hippies hate sanitation and want to give you cholera.




Hippies drive big black SUVs???






And then we went back to the fog.

10:53pm: Lifted tonight, and ran
2.75 miles in 30 minutes.
Pathetic.
But I did run. That's something, at least.

10:57pm: Shozu test
Phone blogging lives in future.