Category: Rants & Rambles
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Wicked Smaht(tm) idea of the week
My dishwasher is running. There are knives in it. With wooden handles. Back home, this would have been a good way to get howled at. Or possibly get one’s hide tanned. Apparently dishwashers are bad for wooden silverware. Now, being an old-fartass adult, I have a better solution to this quandary. Put the wood-handled knives,…
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Asshole Mirror (drivers piss me off)
A road-doofus encountered on the way back from skiing reminded me of this old newsgroup post I made somewhere, so I dug it up: I want an automatically-actuated “asshole mirror”. I keep one in the center console for those special occasions, but it just isn’t the same. It’s for that asshole, you know the one,…
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Reason #32768 why Myspace sucks: Paranoid session validation gone wild!
Ok, so I figured out (one of the reasons) for my long-held assertion that “MySpace.com doesn’t work in any browser”. Short story: On first visit, the site records your browser version and other information. If any of this information changes while you’re surfing, they kick your ass out! Naturally, due to some fun toys on…
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My_beloved__do_you_know.doc.prn.ps.prn.ps.pdf
My dearest MS Word, Thank you again for a wonderful day. You know I’ve always loved your little quirks, like having to ADelete all but the first character of a paragraph I’m replacing, then when I’m finished go back and delete the first character, because as punishment for deviating from this sequence you will change…
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The Electric Slide: Considered Harmful
So, today I make myself some lunch after some mildly off-pissing car stuff, and figure I’ll read some Slashdot while I eat. Anyway, just idly following links, next thing you know I’m buried deep in PDFs of legal filings. Lawyers nuking security sites by going after their domain registrars with DMCA threats (they can’t lawyer…
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Modern Bombs Don’t Tick
“The sky is falling!” – City of Boston If you haven’t heard the news, today the City of Boston ground to a halt as streets were blockaded, the subway’s Red Line was shut down and bridges were closed for hours. The cause? Turner Broadcasting, as part of an advertising stunt, placed magnetic light-up displays in…
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The last few weeks in review
Woo, long-ish hiatus from blogging. Anyway, since last “real” entry (non roommate rant, geeking, meme, etc.) some or all of the following have happened: Did the company Christmas party thing; dragged LE out to it this time to meet these nut-jobs I work with. She humored me, even though we all got toasted and I…
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On tow trucks, Medford MA, and crooked dealings therewith
After allowing myself my one day to stay in and be a code monkey, I came out of my house this morning around 9:30 to find the street eerily empty. Sometime between yesterday and today, Medford’s famous No-Notice Street Sweeping was scheduled for my area. How this works is, sometime on an arbitrarily-selected Sunday afternoon,…
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Happy Decemberween!
So, I was in Tar-Chet last weekend. There were Halloween decorations (actually, have been since before my birthday in mid-September) for sale, and right next to them, Christmas decorations. In September. CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS.
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Tufts: Manic Street Pizzas
I got a chance to test out my antilock brakes yesterday. I was driving to work a different way than usual due to road-closed construction, and came across this. Or more technically, screeched to a halt in front of it as some Tufts freshman chick appeared on the street from out of nowhere behind a…
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Void Where Prohibited: The Phantom Urinator strikes again!
At work today we had a meeting in which we discussed toilets. We talk about toilets way too much. Figure 1: Toilets, and the discussion thereof, are thouroughly appreciated by everybody. Anyway, for at least the last few weeks or so, there has been a problem with leaks in the men’s room. Specifically, somebody taking…
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The Slimeball Shuffle
Today I received my VIP invitation to the Women’s Financial Conference. …uncomfortable pause… Right now, you’re probably wondering a few things. Like, “is there something you haven’t told me?”, or, “did the operation hurt?” No, I haven’t been in for a change of equipment. But at least I know where they got my name*. Fuckin’…
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Protected: All I can do is close my eyes…close my eyes and watch.
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Staatsgevaarlijke
Yeah, I have one. Over 70% of people do, even though the vast majority of these despise them. It’s one of those discount cards from a major east-coast grocery chain. “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a MARK in their right hand, or in their…
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Why you can’t charge your Ipod* while downloading songs
Ever wondered why so few portable USB devices can be recharged from the USB port, even though it provides half an amp of relatively clean power at 5V? Here’s why. * Technically, now Ipods can be charged with USB power, avoiding the patent by using the docking cradle as sort of an electron-laundering middleman so…
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‘Cause waking up is hard to do…
We’re doing this “10-4” thing at work for one week out of every month; this week is the first one (i.e. 10-hr days for 4 days, and friday off*); that’s probably it. And one single specific timecritical project** that I need to have results for by the end of tomorrow (while constantly being interrupted with…
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Life’s a beach, and then…
Einstein’s down on the beach staring into the sand Cause everything he believes in is shattered What you fear in the night in the day comes to call anyway-ay We all get burned as one more sun comes sliding down the sky My folks came out to Boston-land this weekend; dragged me out to Cape…
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And echoes with the sound of salesmen…
Yeah yeah… I probably sound like I’m on some kind of guy-rag lately. But I feel like ranting, so ranting is what I will do ;-) At work some of us got into a random product-ideas-sales-suggestions discussion over email, passing around the @everyone list. I started writing a quick reply with a few ideas, and…
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Compress track by external program
You’ve cared for it, you’ve babied it, you’ve glued it back together a few times, you’ve limped it along, blown the dust out, wiggled and jiggled it back to workingness, and as it went south, prodded ever more carelessly hoping to get back any response, any sign of life, and ultimately, watched it go up…
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Walking (walking away (walking with my back toward the world again today))
I think I’ve been unusually piss-off-able lately, and I’m not sure why. I don’t think Aunt Irma is an issue for menfolk, especially for an entire month, but I’m starting to wonder. I was probably no more irritated / irritable today than any Normal Person given the same circumstances, but for me I considered it…