The elusive fuzzy bunny

Sarah saw these Sushi Pyjamas last week when I was in St. Louis. They must be expensive due to the fact that Buffy the Vampire Slayer wears them on the show [ The guys from London.pm are sure to be snapping them up now :) ]. I am quite fond of the Snow Globes and the Pulp Fiction patterns.

I went on a mission for a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers that these pyjamas beg for but, damn, there must be an embargo on bunny slippers these days! :) I searched high and low with Google and found cute duckies and baby bunny booties which wouldn't fit me, fuzzy wuzzy slippers and, finally, a pair of adult bunny slippers from Orvis but they won't be shipping until July. *pout*

permalink Ω 31 March 2002, Helsinki

Mayor MacCheese's homies

Well, I thought Space Ghost was the only cartoon I am clearly not stoned enough to watch but I saw Aqua Teen Hunger Force tonight which made me wonder if maybe something stronger might be in order. It's like scooby-doo only with fast food. Where's Rod Serling when you need him?

permalink Ω 31 March 2002, Helsinki

It's the Easter Boobie!

This weekend, those of us non-theists are left wondering what to do since almost everything is closed and family is several thousand miles away in either direction. Well, I stayed up late last night drinking Bailey's and heard an odd noise that sounded a lot like Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" in the kitchen where I had left the peeps out to dry for Sunday's peep-o-rama. I got off the couch, saw what was going on, grabbed my camera and captured the following shocking peep porn on digital film.

One overzealous peep was going at another female peep who seemed rather bored with the entire process. Then I saw two bunnies in the butterfly position and a bunny sitting on anothers face. Holy Cow Batman, who knew Peeps got it on! After they saw me with my camera, I think they started hamming it up a bit.

More peeps came to the scene. "We're fat free and not a significant source of vitamin c!", they cried. The flew out of the box and got right into the 69 position where even my dog got in on the action.

"My peeps are pervs!", I giggled wickedly, but they were just warming up. A threesome of bunnies and a peep duo were doing it ...well, you know. Some other bunnies were into the hot wax and candle fetish. When I thought it couldn't get any more disturbing, I caught the timer chicken watching peep bondage.

Honeybear started really digging the sweet bunnies and peeps. Soon, he had spawned an entire family of sugary goodness ensuring a ready supply of peeps for easter next year!

I'm going to have to keep these perverted holiday treats away from the kids from now on and I just can't wait to see what the Halloween ghosts and Christmas trees do when I leave them alone in the kitchen :)

permalink Ω 31 March 2002, Helsinki

Chemist Porn

Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements is as close to porn for chemists as it gets. Each element is treated to a section on its name, cosmic qualities, human uses, foods containing it, medical uses, history, uses in war, economic value, environmental impact, main properties and curious trivia. My only lament is that there isn't a diagram of the element showing the electron configuration and shell structure nor is it as lick-a-licious as smell-o-mints, but that is just a nit in such a fine work. In the introduction the author quotes a song written and sung by Tom Lehrer [ an mp3 version is also available ] to the tune of "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance:

There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium,
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,
And gold and protactinium and indium and gallium,
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.

There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium,
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium,
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium and barium.

There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
And phosphorous and fancium and flourine and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium,
And lead, praseodymium and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium,
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.

There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium,
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium,
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium,
And chlorine, cobalt, carbon, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium.

These are only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others, but they haven't been discarvard.

permalink Ω 30 March 2002, Helsinki

PSA: Pudge has Spawned!

Pudge and Jen spawned, on Good Friday no less, March 29, 2002 at 8:06 p.m bringing forth an 8 pound and 6 ounce, brown hair, blue eyed Riley Utahna Nandor. [ Utahna is also a native american indian name for 'woman of my country' which is a nice touch :) ]. Naming is a tricky thing, did you know that Naomi is 'I Moan' spelled backwards? Kids are so cruel :)

Congratulations! :)

permalink Ω 30 March 2002, Helsinki

It's so bad...but not bad enough

I had driven by the Bugaboocreek Steakhouse a number of times but was finally coerced into going by someone at work offering to buy lunch. By the looks of the outside and the imagined inside [ above ] I thought it would be a lot like me shopping at K-Mart...very, very improbable while cheap and tacky at the same time. But, other than the talking moose above the bar that startled me and the other animatronic junk scattered throughout the dining room, the food was actually pretty good and thus I experienced the dreaded scheissenbedauern.

scheissenbedauern [SHY-sen-BUH-dowrn] noun - "the disappointment one feels when exposed to something that is not nearly as bad as one hoped it would be." literally translates as "shit regret".

permalink Ω 30 March 2002, Helsinki

Janeane Garofalo in Big Trouble

I've always been a big fan of the ascerbic comics like H.L. Mencken, Joe Queenan [ the book white trash had me howling with laughter :) ] and Janeane Garofalo. Janeane was on Conan last night promoting the new movie she's in, Big Trouble, based on the Dave Barry book.

I love Janeane for her cutting wit and her refusal to dress up like a barbie doll to fit the hollywood mold. As I sat on the couch with my hair all grody, wearing sweatpants with fuzzy wookie legs I got the impression she could actually hang out in my living room. If fashion means looking like Gwen Paltrow, Janeane keep on holding your own :) I must also note that she has fabulous taste in eyewear with a nicely styled tortoise cateye frame.

permalink Ω 30 March 2002, Helsinki

More than just a picture book

Oxford University Press has announced a new translation of the Kamasutra. Apparently the authors have combined their talents to rend a completely new translation of the Sanskrit text and they have found, unsurprisingly, that Sir Richard Burton's translation published in Victorian England was subjected to quite a bit of editorial censure and ignorance. It will be released in the UK this month and the US in June so I'm sure all the men in the UK will be running off to the nearest Waterstone's for a copy :)

permalink Ω 29 March 2002, Helsinki

Billy Wilder R.I.P.

Billy Wilder you were missed before you were gone. :( I hope they have better movies where you are than what's at the theatres this weekend.

permalink Ω 29 March 2002, Helsinki

Every sperm is sacred.....

Once upon a time, before you
were born, two cells collided,
one bigger than the other. The
bigger cell (the egg) and the
smaller cell (the sperm) became
one very special cell...

Having been raised Catholic, in spite of recent scandal, most of us were left to figure out sex on our own without the benefit of books or parental guidance. I received a shipment of books from Amazon the other day and a mistake in the packing made me the lucky recipient of Cells Are Us which covers almost everything but the actual coital act in cartoon fashion. It's a biology book for children on how their body was created and works at the cellular level. The publisher, Lerner Books also have Cells Wars, DNA is Here To Stay and Amazing Schemes Within Your Genes.

I'm thinking that maybe I should buy Dr. Ruth Talks to Kids: Where You Came From, How Your Body Changes and What Sex is All About, The Encyclopedia of Sex and, her most recent masterpiece for pre-schoolers, Who Am I? Where Did I Come From? since I may have missed something along the way. Although...maybe I'll wait for the audiobook version so I can hear her say "Penis" and "Vagina" and giggle. :) There is hope for future generations who won't have to call their Mother after they graduate from university exclaiming that they just figured out what "Afternoon Delight" means!

permalink Ω 29 March 2002, Helsinki

Props to my Peeps

It's that time of year again where you give in to the sugar craving, buy a bunch of Marshmallow Peeps and surf the net late at night looking for the Peep FAQ, Food Chemist thesis research, take a tour of the Peeps factory, chuckle at the Blair Peep Project, get annoyed by the cliche' Peepdance, see an American Peep in Paris and view the creatively limited Peeps artwork. I especially love this weeks Dr. Fun Peeps series.

I like to leave them out for a few days so they get hard and chewy. :) I'm going to sleep all weekend and eat lots of chocolate and Peeps.

permalink Ω 28 March 2002, Helsinki

Revenge of the pencil pushers

The Unix 'team' has a telephone conference every Thursday. Joy. Well, after this week of having the 'storage management manager' pull an '/bin/rm -rf *' in the wrong directory and my finally figuring out after we tried serial consoles on 4 servers with no success that these guys have monitors and keyboards on every damned server, I thought that there was little more that could irritate me. I was wrong. I piped up at one point when one of the guys was talking about some security issue:

<ME> You telnet to boxes as root, how does your concern for security jive with that?
<PencilPusher> Well HP has a policy...
<ME> Telnet should have been abandoned 5 years ago so this must be an old policy, especially considering that encrypted filesystems and boot passwords are SOP on laptops. I install SSH as standard on my servers and don't allow root login via telnet.
<PencilPusher> SSH is not part of our security policy so you probably shouldn't be using it.
<theboss> It's better to follow the policy than beg forgiveness later.
<ME> [ silent disbelief and a desperate wish for termination ]

I still don't quite understand how people can talk about security then have every bit of traffic on a network, including root passwords and everything else, unencrypted. How do people like this get these jobs, keep them and get promoted?

permalink Ω 28 March 2002, Helsinki

Sayonara Mr. Methane

A cure for flatulence is being touted in the news. In my years of infiltrating the male dominated world of engineering I've found that humour centers mostly around farting and poop so half of the joke material will vanish if this cure really works. Will Mr. Methane be able to claim hardship in the face of this cure for his livelihood? Will the company that makes Beano file for Chapter 11? Aren't there more pressing problems to cure in the world than a little gas?

permalink Ω 28 March 2002, Helsinki

In space noone can hear you scream

I found these sticker pictures on the bottom of my desk drawer this morning and got all nostalgic. Sarah had these taken at Blueberry Hill [ pub ] in 1996 by a machine that took your picture then put it with a wacky background and made stickers.

permalink Ω 28 March 2002, Helsinki

Gold Foot

Sarah has been sending me the best postcards lately and I didn't get the one above until I returned from my rocket round-trip to Missouri but I still giggle every time I look at it. I wonder if this god guy is a state trooper as that would explain a whole lot :)

permalink Ω 28 March 2002, Helsinki

All you need is toys

Sarah had a bunch of Beatles Yellow Submarine action figures in her apartment when I visited that were really interesting. The Beatles Yellow Submarine Series 2 includes the snapping turk and the bulldog. Disturbingly cool :)

permalink Ω 27 March 2002, Helsinki

Darwin: 10 Theists: 0

I was listening to an interview on NPR where the person was asked what she thought of Andrea Yates, the women who drowned her 5 children, and she responded with "I believe she was a good christian". I thought about this for a while and it occured to me that I've never heard anyone say "He was a good Jew" or "She was a good Buddhist" or "She was a moral atheist".

Similarly I haven't ever heard of an "Atheist Militia" or "Buddhist Militia" so I'm wondering what's so good in being a 'good christian'. How many wars have been fought over or due to religion, even in these modern times? Religion and salvation allegedly drove Yates to kill her children in a desperate attempt to save them from the fires of hell. If this is a good christian then I'd sure hate to see a bad one.

permalink Ω 27 March 2002, Helsinki

Greetings from America

I collected first day covers on cachet envelopes when I was a kid and I remember especially liking the 50 states pane. This morning I went by the post office and noticed that the USPS is issuing the first 50-stamp pane in 10 years, the Greetings From America series.

The stamps are in the large letter postcard style from the 1940s and each will have state-specific information on the back of the pane such as capital and date of incorporation. Massachussetts has Motif #1, Missouri features the Gateway Arch and Montana has a bucking bronco that caused Wyoming to grumble a bit. New York displays Niagara Falls instead of 2 smoking towers and Utah just has sandstone instead of a mormon temple or a guy with 5 wives. I miss the wacky postcards with a sense of humour here. :)

You can purchase everything from mugs to mouse pads with each of the state designs on them from the postal service and enter the sweepstakes to win a dream vacation in the US. The USPS is also allowing 60 days instead of the usual 30 for first day cover requests so if you want to be sure to get yours you can pre-order the stamps by calling 1.800.782.6724 as the web site isn't being completely honest about the 'pre-order' option.

The postal service has one heck of a bad year so I'm happy to see them issue such a fine set of stamps that has rekindled my interest in philately.

permalink Ω 26 March 2002, Helsinki

Eat Here, Get Gas

I'm getting too old for road trips or at least that's what I was cursing under my breath as I hit a blizzard last Thursday night 100 miles west of Boston on the MassPike. It was like jumping to light speed in the Millenium Falcon for 600 miles only I was cruising much slower than light speed pace, 30MPH. The very large and heavy Sparc in my back seat was good for ballast in the near blinding snow. If you ever drive along I-90 in New York you'll notice the 4-6' high orange and white reflectors all along the road which are there just for this kind of weather since I wouldn't have made it without them. It's always a bad sign when the truckers disappear from the road and you find yourself creeping by a giant plow at 5mph and only realise this after you pass it on the right.

I made it through Cleveland but if the guy in the SUV who was riding my bumper in near whiteout conditions without headlights and talking on his cellphone is reading this I'd like to revoke your license without hope for renewal. And to most of the State of Ohio who haven't ever learned that the right lane is the travel lane and the left lane if for passing; passing on the right is dangerous and one of these days cops will be able to give out tickets for driving while stupid that may lead to revocation of your operators license. Really bad passenger car drivers are why I generally like to drive between the hours of 7pm and 7am as the truckers are usually polite and don't hog the passing lane.

Once you reach I-70 you can sleep since it's straight and flat all the way to St. Louis through Columbus, Dayton, Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Effingham and East St. Louis. I've done this drive so many times I know all the exits and which ones have the better places to eat at and get gas.

As soon as I got to St. Louis, I drove over to Webster University since this is where the search engine would call home. Ben Hockenhull valiantly wheeled the system through the door to its home in the machine room. [ note the solstice shirt wasn't planned :) ] We plugged it in, it came up and since it was Friday night went to find Sarah, minus 6 wisdom teeth, at Coffee Cartel in the Central West End. I spent the night over at Sarah's in her cool apartment with Dolemite, Circus Flora and intimate images of body parts adorning her walls and windows :). It's an odd feeling to leave somewhere one night and wake up in another the next day, especially when that other place happens to be the city you grew up in. It is said that familiarity breeds contempt and I have a love-hate relationship with St. Louis in the sense that I miss it when I'm away and when I'm back I'm ready to leave again. Someone please tell Sarah and Ben that they need to move to Boston so I don't have to drive to St. Louis every time I want to see them :)

We wandered around for the day in the CWE mostly and drove over to the Galleria so I could pick out some new eyewear. I'm the Imelda Marcos of glasses and love to buy new frames when I feel like pampering myself. Sarah bought a monkey t-shirt and I bought a dental floss fishie at Dry Ice, a goofy store that caters to the teenage girl set.

I stuck around for the afternoon on Saturday but had to leave for fear of losing momentum, not wanting to go back to work and dreading the drive back. I took a last picture of Sarah on Euclid and drove off into the sunset.

On the way to St. Louis I nearly drove off the road when I saw a giant looming crucifix 200 feet tall and 113 feet wide looking like a cruciform grain elevator. When I drove back, I stopped in Effingham, Illinois to get a photo of it and see what the story was. While I was taking pictures a trucker and his schnauzer puppy named slick came up behind me and said;

"They're building them all over the country".
"Oh, who?", I replied.
"Christians, of course."
"Well, gee, that's a relief as I thought it might have been the secret christian faction of Islam trying to subvert our highway faithful."

Apparently, this is the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere that was built last Summer and displaces the Groom, Texas Cross as the largest.

I managed to miss the snow on the way back and arrived home in time to watch the Oscars on Sunday and get some sleep before facing the joy that is my Dilbertian job at HP on Monday. Next time I go on a road trip it will be one way to the Caribbean and I'll leave the Sparcs at home. Thanks again Sun :)

permalink Ω 26 March 2002, Helsinki

I want a stuffed Popealope

Have to buy a gift for the person who has everything? Get 'em a stuffed Jackalope.

permalink Ω 25 March 2002, Helsinki

Is a hot poker up your bum a 'creative solution'?

or "Would it help if I mimed how to install an OS without a console in my cube?" or "They will never fire me as it would be far too kind."

We rejoin the continuing saga today with the PHBs who managed to get bonuses because they made sure we all filled out our timesheets regularly and cut important things like console gateways from the budget. Today I received an email from the aforementioned bigcheese wondering why the tickets I have on these two systems were allowed to exceed the SLA. WHAT?! I think that popping noise was the dramatic increase in blood pressure making the vein in my forehead throb.

One of the systems had a guy there with enough clue to get a backup of the system on a clean external tape with ufsdump and install the basic system to the point where I could do the rest. The other system, however, is still in progress as I can't teach a monkey to sing like Pavrotti, really. The PHB is concerned about his bonus though and we wouldn't want him to miss his bonuses because he won't buy essential equipment like console gateways for remote sites now would we? He suggested that as a senior admin I should be creative with my solutions to get this job done...and I quote...

"Competence, we are not all as verse with Solaris as you are but all have our own level of expertise and value to the team and organization. If you feel there is a team member who needs some guidance and/or training it is your responsibility as a more senior level engineer in Solaris/UNIX to help them along or communicate to me, so we can define training/education appropriately. But do not be surprised if you see such need for another team member, when I assign you as their mentor.

As for physical hardware to complete the tasks, a dedicated terminal/console box would definitely be nice and we will possibly have one in the future, but again as a senior level engineer I expect for you to be creative at getting tasks done, and/or working with the resource available. If you can not figure out a substitute for the console box let me know, cause I possibly know of a temporary resolution that has worked on other UNIX based systems and have communicated such to monkeyboy."

My response was that monkeyboy can't tell the difference between serial and parallel cables or ports so this isn't a 'training' issue, at least not for me it isn't and we don't have 2 years to wait for him to get a clue. Furthermore, the console gateway isn't a nice option, it is an essential piece of equipment. Monkeyboy was creative with the parallel cable which clearly didn't work so this isn't a matter of creativity it is A MATTER OF GIVING ME A CONSOLE GATEWAY, FUCKTARD. What part of "Essential" wasn't clear?

I set the WPHB onto Monkeyboy on Friday while I was out of town hoping that he could help in getting something workable together but today I was told that all of the Bay Area Fry's are currently out of serial cables as are all the CompUSAs. Bollocks. He probably just doesn't know what he's looking for. *sigh*

It was a long week today and I just can't wait until tomorrow.

permalink Ω 25 March 2002, Helsinki

Thar It Blows! Arrrr!

Pirates and Sailors around the world lamented the loss of sex in their ships as Lloyd's List will refer to ships as 'it' not 'she' henceforth. I guess this means Captain Kirk will have to be edited to say "Take it out, Mr. Sulu!" instead of "Take her out, Mr. Sulu!" in old Star Trek episodes set in the future. Unlike the Finnish language which has no gender, the English language leaves much room for hilarity in this change :)

permalink Ω 20 March 2002, Helsinki

The Wannabe PHB

Yesterday was the shareholder vote for the HP/Compaq merger. While Carly was announcing victory in a close vote and getting boos from the voters I was busy not really caring. It will be a disaster, of course, as yet more diversity in computing dies leaving us with fewer choices until there is only one vendor left. I was sold to this company a few months ago and don't really care, especially since I'm leaving the country at the end of the year.

However, one of my fellow co-workers is a PHB in training who is terribly enthused by the merger. He likes to send me frequent management edicts and updates about the event. WPHB [ as I shall refer to him henceforth ] is an ass kisser as when we were asked in a recent meeting about applying patches to our laptop PCs he replied that he anticipated the need and did it a month ago while I replied that I hadn't read my HP mail in over a month but that I'd get to it eventually.

<WPHB> So, what did you think of the vote yesterday?
<ME> Didn't watch, don't care.
<WPHB> Did you get that article I sent?
<ME> Yes, I deleted it. This merger will suck and 30,000 people will be out of a job, possibly you.
<WPHB> Oh, it will be good for the company, you'll see.
<ME> Any company that employs this many asstards and idiots cannot last for long. I feel for the Hewlett Foundation.
<WPHB> I know you don't care about this company but I plan on moving up the ranks quite rapidly.
<ME> You'll make a fine PHB some day.
<WPHB> PHB?
<ME> You're joking.
<WPHB> Hey, I'm not as ancient as you.
[ ... I contemplate ripping the little 23 year-old fuckers' vocal cords out of his neck ... ]
<ME> Dilbert is well within your age group.
<WPHB> I love Dilbert...what's a PHB.
[ ... again disbelief, sorrow, and a desperate wish for a speedy termination dance through my head ... ]
<ME> [ I make pointy hair motions with my fingers over my head ] You know, Dilbert's boss...POINTY HAIR, PHB, GET IT?
<WPHB> Oh, I never heard of that before.
<ME> Get out of my cube.
<WPHB> But...
<ME> Now.

You know, I just can't manufacture fiction that would be this entertaining. Life is, indeed, stranger than fiction. I might add that I got a bonus...asskisser didn't :)

permalink Ω 20 March 2002, Helsinki

Mme. Strangelove

"How I Stopped Worrying About Getting the Shove and Learned I Could Be a Complete Bitch and Still Get a Bonus" or "I'm Not Helen Keller".

It is very frequent that users expect sysadmins to do the impossible and fix their problems with ease and alacrity in the face of terrible odds. When we last left this drama I was asked to install a new version of Solaris on a box in California without a remote console, media, or local talent. It gets better....

So, the guy in the Cali office goes to Fry's and gets a bunch of 25-pin cables and cheerfully informs me that he has connected another box to the box I need to work on via the "//" port. Now, if you are an SA and I have to explain why the word "console" and the "//" port don't go together, don't let me catch you at a keyboard. I try not to laugh, sob and leave my resignation on my desk. While this is happening I get another box out in California with the same scenario; no console, no local talent and no media. Terrific! I will add here that these are backup systems as well which are usually considered 'critical' in any organisation. The following email exchange happens between myself and the 'storage systems manager', we'll call him Bubba;

<ME> Bubba, I'm not Helen Keller. How in the hell did these systems get installed without console servers or local talent?
<BUBBA> We've been lucky. They were installed a few years ago by "x-company" and haven't needed much work.
<ME> Lucky? Is that what they call slacking nowadays? Look, someone either needs to be on site or install a console gateway. I am not a miracle worker.
<BUBBA> Yup.
<ME> I can't log on to the box in SoCal.
<BUBBA> Oh, it has always been slow to give you a prompt. Just wait about 15 minutes. I've been meaning to open a ticket with the network guys about that.
<ME> Is this some kind of sick joke?
[ ....I log onto the system in question....]
<ME> Giving a box a class B subnet mask with a class C address would cause the problem you are seeing....didn't anyone bother to look?
<BUBBA> Oh, well, should we open a ticket for a reboot?

At this point I'm pissed off enough to call the top of the food chain of this miserable ship of fools...so I do.

<ME> Hello, this is Elaine.
<BIGCHEESE> I know. I have caller ID.
<ME> Excellent. Look, do you have a minute?
<BIGCHEESE> Sure and I need to talk to you about something else too.
[ ... right here I get excited at the thought of being fired :) ... ]
<ME> I'm not Helen Keller, what gives with the lack of console servers in places where we have no local talent?
<BIGCHEESE> [ long spiel about budget crap ]
<ME> Well, backups are important, some would say even critical and I can't do this job without something to go on here so...either I get a console or I walk away.
<BIGCHEESE> Would a PC hooked up via a serial cable and PC remote control work?
<ME> Is that the best we can do?
<BIGCHEESE> For the moment, yes.
[ ... while visions of a glorioius resignation dances through my head ... ]
<BIGCHEESE> Oh, and I wanted to talk to you about something else...
[ ... me hoping for the 'you're fired part' ... ]
<BIGCHEESE> We're giving you a bonus.
[ ... Long pause ... ]
<ME> Well...that's unexpected and generous.
<BIGCHEESE> You should see it this week.

So, here I am wondering why in the hell I can't get a console gateway and why they are giving me a bonus when I wanted to be put mercifully out of my misery. I keep expecting to wake up with a striped rep tie that defies gravity.

permalink Ω 20 March 2002, Helsinki

Weird science

I love Henry Petroski and his books like The Evolution of Useful Things, The Book on the Bookshelf, Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering and The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. He has a new book, a memoir since he won't be outdone by Oliver Sacks, Paperboy: Delivering the Press in the 50s which I'll have to read because anyone who can write an entertaining book on something as mundane as the pencil has to have had an interesting childhood.

The MIT Bookshop, a dangerous place I only dare enter a few times a year at the behest of my wallet, has a new book to interest Petroski fans, Inventing Modern America: From the Microwave to the Mouse. It's filled with 35 profiles of inventors and their inventions like Stephanie Kwolek the DuPont chemist who invented Kevlar and was an inspiration to me when I studied chemistry. I am a bit disappointed that Wozniak is named inventor of the personal computer since he simply created something that J.C. Licklider had laid much of the foundation for years earlier [ the biography is one of the absolute best computing history books I've ever read....read it if you haven't already ].

Inventors and their inventions are terrific reminders that being in the right place at the right time is sweet serendipity:)

permalink Ω 19 March 2002, Helsinki

double-humped fission

In yet another reason to love the web for making access to oodles of stuff we'd never see otherwise trivial the Oregon State University Library has made Linus Pauling's research notebooks available online. Treasure such as his double humped fission reprint can be found if you have the interest to wade through the collection.

permalink Ω 19 March 2002, Helsinki

My burqa is sexier than your burqa!

Another reason to celebrate adulthood is escaping the new post-911 terrorism slang in schools. While I understand humour is a way to work around grief, it's very unsettling to read about kids tossing these words about so casually.

permalink Ω 19 March 2002, Helsinki

Moof!

Yea, and if It will be done, even in spite,
Then lend Thine hand to the masses,
Lest It be done incorrectly or woefully worse
By those not versed in the ways of the Dogcow.

Now that I'm booting into OS X more often than OS 9 I've begun to notice little differences in getting around the system as well as noting that the 12.1" screen that was fine in OS 9 is a wee bit small in OS X.

I miss Clarus the Dogcow though. Designed by the legendary Susan Kare, whose work is on nearly every computer in the world, the dogcow has a loyal following and there are quite a few who just cannot abide the loss of Clarus in OS X. One guy hacked his iBook and there is a ClarusX hack. Moof! t-shirts are still available and you can add Cairo to your typeface collection too. Clarus makes me wistful for the days of my old SE/30, 2400 baud modem, Fool's Errand and Microphone pro but I have my own DogCow to moooofff! for me. :)

permalink Ω 18 March 2002, Helsinki

Who needs green when you have black?

Finally! There's a brigade I could feel good about volunteering for, the Black Berets! God is dead and pass me a cafe latte!

permalink Ω 18 March 2002, Helsinki

shopping mall schlock

If you have been to a shopping mall in the US you've probably seen the work of Thomas Kinkade. There is a store in the Burlington Mall that I've never dared enter but at the entrance there is a fake fireplace and a carboard incarnation of Kinkade to entice you into his non-challenging pastel world. It's the ugliest crap I've seen since my sister started collecting the precious moments atrocities inspired by the infamous sad puppy.

He is, supposedly, "Americas most collected artist". I don't know a single person who owns, collects or displays this stuff in their home. I'd consider buying it for people I didn't like but it's really expensive crap that just looks cheap. I mean, this is the kind of wall covering you see in Motel 6, trailer parks and white trash movies so why are people paying $400 and up for these, these, crimes against art?

Kinkaid, not happy with just polluting interior landscapes of middle-class america, has just released a new novel Cape Light. I'll bet you'll never guess who did the jacket artwork. A "modern-day Normal Rockwell"?! Right, and I'm a new age Mother Theresa. The reviews are fun reading though :)

permalink Ω 17 March 2002, Helsinki

Number 13

Number 13 speaks volumes as I know the subject of the picture. He has tattoos covering nearly all of his visible skin and supposedly much of what isn't. The "13" is his lucky number. I remember him always being drunk but, then again, I saw him while I was working in the bar he lived above. He is a bartender by day at the airport and hangs out at the pub at night. Every bartender gets to know their regulars and we could count on him being there almost every night. The "CRAP" t-shirt evokes his personality quite well as he gulps the Jaeger shot. It makes me homesick. :)

JC Thorpe is the artist who did the CPAN logo and works for Osborn and Barr Communications. If you have seen an ad for Monsanto or Cargill, then you've seen some of his work.

permalink Ω 16 March 2002, Helsinki

Gonzo Airport Porn

My mother always told me to wear clean underwear in case I wound up in hospital or otherwise be in a position to have others inspect them. Well, now airport security screeners can zap right through them and note every pimple on your ass without ever having you drop trou! Excellent! Yet another reason to dislike airports and flying. Maybe we'll just start travelling in the buff to ensure that everyone stays in their seats. I just can't envision anyone looking tough and hijacking a plane while passengers scrutinise their family jewels flopping about the cabin..can you? :)

permalink Ω 15 March 2002, Helsinki

Wardrobe under Siege

Ever since I spent most of my formative years attending schools requiring a uniform I have had a difficult time buying clothing for myself. There is something very liberating about waking up in the morning and not having to guess what to wear. I still have a complex about wearing anything without a collar such as t-shirts but 20 years seems to have softened that to the point where I can actually go outside in a t-shirt and not feel completely odd. It's a pity that Garanimals are not available for adults as this would alleviate my problem.

The current crisis is that the staple of my wardrobe, the Gap's black womens size 6 regular classic fit jean, is apparently being discontinued. Discontinued?! How can the Gap do this to me?! What will I wear? The uniform of my adult life has been black jeans, doc maartens, turtleneck and sweater or polo shirt. When we were in Kayenta, AZ waiting to go on a tour of Monument Valley the tour guide thought we were German as, I suppose, only furriners would be dumb enough to wear black clothing in a desert in the summertime. No, Mr. Crawley, it's all I ever wear since my legs haven't seen sunlight in 10 years and I'm not about to start wearing shorts now.

I'll just have to settle for a pair of mens black jeans and hope they fit.

permalink Ω 15 March 2002, Helsinki

Behold the Power Of Cheese!

permalink Ω 15 March 2002, Helsinki

The bunny cometh

permalink Ω 14 March 2002, Helsinki

Imaging the past

I casually collect postcards and stationery, anything that catches my eye and I've found my latest favourite time sink of a web site Found Image. They have a rather impressive collection of vintage postcard images that they can print onto notecards, journals, and just about anything else you would like. I should hide my credit card.

permalink Ω 14 March 2002, Helsinki

World Book Day

Today is World Book Day so go buy your kids, someone elses' kid or even yourself a book today :)

permalink Ω 14 March 2002, Helsinki

You want to what, biznatch?

I have come to accept the fact that maybe I'm not overpaid, I'm just undercolleagued.

Upgrading a production Solaris box has never been a first choice or even a good choice but I was asked today to help a guy out in California on our ship of fools. He has a Solaris machine running the backups, an E450 running 2.6 32-bit, and they need it to be running 2.8 64-bit as the limitations in 2.6 are becoming a problem.

One of the guys who is a 'Sr.' Unix admin down in Dallas informs me cheerfully that he has opened a ticket with Sun and that Sun doesn't think it will be a problem. It is immediately clear to me he has never dealt with Sun as noone who has endured the pain of 10 years with Sun support would buy that line in a minute. Right. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely owned by Sun, I'm their #1 Biotch but I know a raft of shit when I see it go by zooming for the falls. You don't do a production upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit skipping a version or two in the process. Ever...well, you can but don't be paging my ass at 4am wanting my sympathy or help. My evil unsympathetic cackle will be free of charge after 11am though.

Finally after I wheedle an important detail, "Oh, it was hung for a week and noone noticed it", out of the lead backup engineer I got them to agree to a clean install, especially after taking a look at the filesystems on the existing machine. *sigh* Where do people go to learn how to fuck-up systems this amazingly? Now I'll just have to wait a week for them to find the Solaris 8 media and somehow manage to get a serial console that I can use as they turned down my request for Cisco console servers and are still arguing over which brand and model to use. I've been sucked into the Dilbert Zone.

permalink Ω 13 March 2002, Helsinki

Salty Camel

In one of my former lives I worked on a large botanical taxonomic database back in the days when anything over 25mhz was a supercomputer. Wired featured an article about The Whole Critter Catalogue where scientists are trying to identify and classify every species in the next 25 years. Taxonomy makes DNA look like a walk in the park. As a chemist I was completely amazed by how disorganised and unsystematic taxonomy methodologies were when I was working with the database for just one flora and I can only imagine the mayhem and difficulty involved with a flora of the entire planet.

Coupled with the biodiversity mavens like E.O.Wilson, this is precisely what technology should be used for in order to catalogue species before they disappear and, hopefully, help keep them from disappearing. They recently found a new species of Camel that thrives on salty water but is in danger of extinction. I'm not sure if knowing about the species we humans manage to erase from the planet is better than blissful ignorance, but I sincerely hope the planet wins in the end.

permalink Ω 13 March 2002, Helsinki

Perl, Preening and Pendantry

For those single and thinking that maybe winning a Nobel will help your chance to get laid James Watson shows that it doesn't help a whole lot in his memoir Genes, Girls and Gamow:) Rest easy.

I thought reading an account of a famous scientists struggle to be a social entity in addition to his scientific self would be interesting but it lacks an intimacy you'd expect from a guy who's telling you about his horny salad days. Reading it won't get you laid but it will give you some solace that even a guy like Watson had a hard time getting a date. :)

permalink Ω 12 March 2002, Helsinki

Radar Riccardo

I have few users left here but what few there are make up for the dearth at times. One has been dubbed "Radar Riccardo" as he has an uncanny ability to call at the most inconvenient moment or when I'm in the least pleasant mood to deal with him. He especially likes to have a crisis when I have decided to take the day away from the office. He's a Type-A kind of user; a programmer who hasn't slept in the last decade who knows just enough Unix to be dangerous. His boss rolls his eyes and twitches at the mere mention of his name. Today's crisis came in at 7:05pm just as I was taking a shower and contemplating dinner. I decided to call him back for some clearly insane reason;

<ME> Yes Riccardo, what is it?
<RR> whumma whumma deleted files wumma wumma....
<ME> OK, let me guess...they weren't on the filer?
<RR> bee bop whoopdy no wumma whoop
<ME> How did you manage to delete 5 files of 40GB in size without noticing..this takes some time and talent Riccardo.
<RR>wub wub wooby whoop boo bap wrote a script beep boop poopy doopy overwrote the files...
<ME>You didn't test the script before randomly using on your production data?
<RR>wumma wumma under stress wumma umma uamm it's really importante ummma umma wumma need them restored tonight...
<ME>Riccardo you can do this yourself with the nwrestore command.... <RR> umma...15 minutes pass with him speaking out every command letter by letter
<ME>Stop, stop! Look, just send me an email with the exact name of the files you deftly removed with the path and the approximate timestamp and I'll just do this myself. Also, the next time you use -f on any command I won't answer my phone and I'll leave you to the help desk in Dallas...
<RR>ummma umma great let me know when they're restored umma umma umma <ME>Riccardo, this is 40GB on tape...go to dinner, watch some TV, get a nice long refreshing sleep tonight and it may be done by morning if you're in luck.
<RR>but..but..
<ME>Bye Riccardo.

He likes to go into long elaborate hostility generating detail about nothing. I could ask him a question like 'what command did you use?' and 20 minutes later I'd know all about some random unimportant detail about his boss but I'd still be waiting for the answer to my original question. I could open a ticket and get Wally the whistler whose job it is to mind the backup tapes and do restores but he usually moans about 'don't know much about unix' in spite of the fact that networker is all about the gui these days. It's just a lot less stress to do this myself and I'm the most highly paid tape jockey on the planet.

Users are good for reminding me why I smoked and drank heavily at times to maintain sanity. I haven't killed a user...yet.

permalink Ω 11 March 2002, Helsinki

Think of the kittens

permalink Ω 10 March 2002, Helsinki

Chilling, Indeed.

I've always been a big supporter of Banned Books Week as burning, banning or otherwise censoring books is ignorant, uncivilised and downright stupid. I'll keep this stance on the matter until I'm struck by a bolt of lightning which, if my guess it right, I'll go to my grave saving books from being burned.

Similarly stupid, we have trademark and patent warriors on the net who will actually take you to court for parodies, fan fiction and a myriad of other offenses if they don't like what you have published. Surf on over to Chilling Effects and start reading. It's so important that I'm putting it in my list of links. The EFF helped me out of a bind in '92 and they are the closest thing we have to a Ralph Nader on the Internet.

Don't believe me? Remeber the dancing hamster site? Well, they sent a bigfoot letter to the owner of the satanic parody. Stupid.

permalink Ω 9 March 2002, Helsinki

Subjected to SPAM

Recently I received an email with a subject 'Concrete Vibrators' that was actually about concrete vibrators. I immediately imagined a very different product with a slogan like "highest quality, dependable flexible shaft, pneumatic, high cycle" and wondered what kind of batteries were needed. Bummer, concrete gets all the luck :)

The most recent issue of Verbatim Magazine had me giggling as I read the article Bogus E-mail Subject Lines about how spammers try to 'trick' you into reading their email containing, usually, pornographic web site invitations.

I'm especially fond of subject lines relating to "personal finance" since people who use credit cards or have mortgages are apparently, in the worldview of these folks, likely to be heavy users of pornographic web sites.

Well, Jim, if #perl and other geeks are any measure then the porno industry has studied the target demographic well since guys with a mortgage are likely married and seemingly more rabid consumers of porn than their unmarried brethren. There's nothing like the unattainable to fuel demand for the surreptitiousness of on-line porn.

Some of the best picks in the article are;

• Here Are The PICs Of Me Naked That You Wanted
• Guess who, bought a puter.
• Re: Hey
• Did you send this?
• Does it still hurt?
• You are giving me a complex
• hey :#@$
• ...and a number of others...

It is a disturbing trend that spammers are getting more aggressive and more creative. Did you get that email recently with "Sorry I missed Lunch" addressed to "Mike"? It most likely was an email address ping in the guise of a seemingly innocuous message.

Remember when there weren't ads at the beginning of a movie you just paid $9 for? or product placements in the movies? in just about every nook and cranny of available space? The internet will fill up just like the physical world has with a constant barrage of adverts and product placements. Get used to it.

permalink Ω 8 March 2002, Helsinki

Frost on the Gates of Hell

All too often people have nothing but complaints and rarely take the time to say something nice in any situation much less the little backwater of the internet. I would like to enshrine the following thank you note we received today at CPAN from a guy named James in some large US government institution. I'm going to smarten it up a bit in Pagemaker, print it on good acid-free paper with the Phaser and frame it to remind us daily that not all perl people are whiny assholes.

"I was just surfing around CPAN looking at stuff, and I read your sig at the bottom of the page and chuckled happily (I too am a Pratchett fan), and then it just hit me, out of the blue. I have been using CPAN for years to find new tools, solve problems, and generally make my job easier - and I have never bothered to stop to say "thanks".

My mother would just slap me for such rudeness. As the curator of several Web sites myself (it doesn't matter which ones), I find it nice to be appreciated once in a while, just so I know someone out there actually SAW what I did, and found it useful.

So, I don't want anything from you, or have a complaint, or even need a reply of any kind. I just want to offer you and anyone else who gives of their time to make CPAN work a great big THANK YOU for providing this excellent resource, that I have found so useful on so many countless occaisions. Have a great day, and may all your dreams be of bananas. ;-)"

Thank you James for engaging the power of Thank You and making our day by dropping the temperature in hell a few degrees. :)

permalink Ω 7 March 2002, Helsinki

Tally Ho!

An amusing account of fox hunting in Salon.com today illustrates well the madness we who love horses contract at an early age and never seem to recover. The detailed description of the dresscode for the hunt had me smiling with the reverie of nostalgia for my own equestrian wardrobe.

Fox hunting is an amazing sport. I would haul my arse out of bed long before the sun rose to ride with the local hunt since I knew the staff and most of the barn crew. The description "all thrill of battle and only 25 percent of the injuries" is a very astute observation. Hunting is at the center of controversy again in the UK since many find it to be a barbaric sport even though most hunts are 'drag' hunts where no live fox is hunted but the scent of one dragged along the ground ahead of the hunt. Like the author of the Salon.com article I haven't seen anyone 'bloodied' at a hunt and suspect many misconceptions about the sport can be blamed on the movies.

I came out of the womb wanting a horse. I would wait by the post box for the weekly copy of The Chronicle of the Horse to arrive and pester my patient father for Thelwell books while dreaming I would one day ride for the United States Equestrian Team. I started taking riding lessons when I was 8, gleefully offering to clean tack and shovel stalls every day. The pinnacle of excitment arrived when I was asked to be the gatekeeper for the dressage ring at the next show. I eventually got my own horse and bought my own saddle, a saddle I still own in a stubborn hope that I'll again have a horse someday. My original plan for college was to attend Lake Erie College on a substantial scholarship for equestrian studies, but my parents said no and I gave in fearing that I'd live a life on the streets if I didn't get a 'real' degree. If I have but one regret in life, it will always be not taking my first choice even though I probably would be working at Home Depot wondering why I didn't listen to the wisdom of my parents.

Oh, now I'm going to have to go and get a copy of International Velvet to wallow as an armchair tourist in my childhood long since past.

permalink Ω 6 March 2002, Helsinki

Captain Obvious

<yrlnry> Thanks! As a professional writer, it's my job to make the obvious clear.
<clintp> Then why man, for God's sake, do you program in Perl? :)
<yrlnry> Because I'm naturally lazy, and in Perl, the realm of the obvious is so small that I have little to do.

It's funny because it's true :)

permalink Ω 6 March 2002, Helsinki

Curators of the esoteric

Jarkko and I will be moving to Helsinki at the end of the year and I have been giving some thought to making sure he sees a bit more of America before then. Since he can't seem to bear to leave home for more than a few hours on the weekends I started looking for interesting sights here in New England and found a small collection of Little Museums. I love boutique-like museums as they have a lot more flexibility to be creative and serve a niche that would be overlooked by the mainstream art and history world.

The Museum of Dirt. It seems absurd at first but it's interesting and certainly a labour of love to catalogue all of the vials. It's only on-line so it saves a trip out of the house right there. :)

Higgins Armory Museum is the only museum in the Western Hemisphere solely dedicated to arms and armor and even the art deco building it is housed in is a historic landmark. This museum would go well with the Hammond Castle built by the eccentric father of the remote control.

The American Sanitary Plumbing Museum so we could see what the plumbing in my house really looks like since I doubt any of it has been replaced in the past 80 years.

The Museum of Useful Things is right around the corner from Harvard.

The Museum of Bad Art is just down the road in Dedham in the basement of the local theatre. Nothing can quite prepare you for the depth and the breadth of this collection of truly awful art. I envision the curators visiting only the finest dumpsters in Southie and yardsales in Medford to enhance their permanent collections.

Hopefully we'll take the long road to YAPC this summer and see the Jack Daniels Distillery, Mammoth Cave, Graceland with Memphis, and Chicago before heading for the tundra where reindeer roam.

permalink Ω 4 March 2002, Helsinki

Due to popular demand

Since noone can type, speak, or spell "Hietaniemi" I have changed the URL for the Axis of Ævil to axis-of-aevil.net. Hopefully your puny hoooman brane can handle the storage issue. :)

permalink Ω 4 March 2002, Helsinki

Roadside Brobdingnagians

Driving to St. Louis from Boston Christmas week of 2000 the roads were fine until we arrived just South of Buffalo to find the thruway had been closed due to a 30+ vehicle accident earlier in the evening. Shunted off the highway and onto a side road I pulled over to fill the gas tank and ask the attendant what the weather forecast was looking like for the evening. They're predicting 2 feet of snow just for tonight, she said. I knew this was lake effect snow and didn't want to get trapped in Buffalo so we decided to take the detour along the lake front in a blinding 3" an hour snow.

We passed a giant cartoonish girl in a spotted frock outside a nursery and kept creeping along what appeared to be a road hoping to make it back to the thruway south of the accident. We must have made a loop at some point since we passed the same giant girl and I knew we had taken a wrong turn somewhere. I still think of that giant roadside freak girl and am grateful for her showing us the error of our direction.

I feel as though I should give something back to the Huge Beings of the Roadside and have decided to help catalogue their kind in the Huge Being List Project. The next time I go on a road trip I'll have to take the road less travelled, a list of beings from the HBLP that need a photograph, a camera and a gulliverian lust for adventure.

permalink Ω 3 March 2002, Helsinki

A Dollar Short

I ran across another MT Blog called A Day Late and a Dollar Short. I'm in love as it looks beautiful and the entries are entertaining and interesting. *sigh*

permalink Ω 3 March 2002, Helsinki

When were your eggs laid?

As I poured milk into my coffee this morning I pondered the familiar 'SELL BY' date on the carton. What exactly does this really mean? The grocery store has to unload it to a consumer by that date and then what happens? How long do you have until it turns into a sour gloopy mess?

What about eggs? I usually buy eggs to keep handy but I never know just how old they are. My mother used to say that if, when you cracked the egg open, the membrane in the end of the egg was larger than a penny the egg was stale. Well, now you can scientifically Date your Eggs! and for some of you it'll be the best date you've had in a long while :) Take the eggs out of your fridge and look on the end of the carton and you should see a number between 001 and 0365 which will tell you what day the eggs were laid. The eggs are good for 45 days from the date of lay!

permalink Ω 3 March 2002, Helsinki

This is your brain off nicotine

As a kid I remember getting all of the Wacky Packages stickers. I think I managed to cover my banana bicycle seat with them but the Hostile Thinkies was my favourite. Amazingly people pay several thousand dollars for the set of these now as they are rare and collectible. Suddenly, I feel old. :)

permalink Ω 2 March 2002, Helsinki

Nicotine Monkey

Quitting smoking is hard. The Zyban has done wonders for the actual physical craving side of the addiction but it is an addiction to be reckoned with. I can't sleep, I'm hungry but nauseous, I've got the sweats, I'm jumpy, I'm exhausted but pensive and most of all, I'm Grumpy. Zyban is supposed to be a happy drug to help mediate the effects of the withdrawl so I'd probably be out buying a carton of smokes by now to avoid the homicidal urges I'd possibly follow through on.

One of my coworkers is named Howard. Howard has an even more irritating habit than smoking, he whistles. Today, he's particularly fond of If I only had a brain from The Wizard of Oz. While you would have to know Howard to appreciate the humour in this just imagine him as Wally from the Dilbert comic strip. I'm having a hard time deciding whether to kill him and hide the body in the server room under the raised floor or to laugh at his choice of music. The forces seem to be equally strong so I'm glued to my chair and doing neither.

Anyone who says quitting is easy was either never a smoker or never really addicted to nicotine. Nicotine is a seriously addictive substance and I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I will never, ever be able to smoke even one again if I really want to quit. It's funny how all the little rituals we build around the addiction are harder to kick than the smoking. I've got about 2 hours of time a day free now....

permalink Ω 1 March 2002, Helsinki