No matter how paranoid you are, you're not paranoid enough.
OK, I deserved this:
Thanks, Dave.
Ride update
The ride home was much easier than the ride in; it was mostly downhill. I think once I'm in a bit better shape I can manage to do it twice a week. Also, let me just reiterate: I see what you're searching on. You know who you are.
Here comes the new Mozilla, same as the old Mozilla.
Mozilla.org yesterday released their updated roadmap for their browser, email, etc. Seems to me that most people seemed to be pretty thrilled by the news (my favorite is News.com.com.com.com.com, who was probably just dying to use that "Phoenix rises from Mozilla's ashes" line. They're a bunch of hacks over there, but that's a different post entirely), but I'm a little apprehensive. Here's why: While Mozilla is certainly smaller/faster than the average browser, it still is "bloated" and "slow". Why? Because everyone (collectively) wants all the (collective) features that are in Mozilla. It started out as a great idea; a way for Netscape to escape from underneath the boot of AOL, and take their browser with them.
But something happened. Although it took them far too long to release their initial browser, when they finally did, people started using it. And wanting more features in it. So many that it started to become a joke. And now people are complaining that Mozilla has become the same bloated piece of crap that Netscape 4.7 was. And there's cute, lithe Phoenix in the corner. Isn't she pretty? Phoenix was the same sort of escape pod for Mozilla that Mozilla was for Netscape before it, and my fear is that the same sort of feature creep is going to come into Phoenix, because consumers will demand it.
"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."
"Puff, puff" *gasp*
Maybe it wasn't _that_ bad, but I did ride in today. It winds up being about a 14-mile hike up Mt. Royal Blvd, which is a bit of a roller coaster, but I only had to stop once or twice to recover along the way. I'm not sure which way will suck worse, coming or going, but I'm sure I'll find out this afternoon. Oh, one other thing: Mapquest sucks my butt, because they don't allow you to easily add intermediate destinations. Maps On Us rules.
April + Fools
Little suprise birthday wing-ding for April last night. The SLF(Special Lady Friend) and I first went to that yummy Italian place. I'm not embarrased to say that I had exactly the same thing I had last time, it was _that_ good. Last night was the first night to really check out the new camera. I even got a short movie of April talking about holding her b(.)(.)bs! I'm sorry that the full-size images are so huge; I didn't have time to Photoshop them down smaller. But look at how nice they came out:
New Job, Day 1
Just a free minute or two on my first day, so I thought I'd do an update. Had a very nice weekend in N.J., although my friend Jen had a run-in with her landlord that I'll have to update further on. Highlight of the weekend? I was talking with my dad about my new camera lust, and he suggested that I should perhaps have his "old" camera, an Olympus C-3030, which is basically the precursor to the one I was looking to get anyway! My dad is probably as big of a gadget geek as I am, so of course he has it already all pimped out with extra memory cards, an external super-long-life battery pack, and other various stuff. Yay Dad! I just have to figure out how much money I should give him for it, but I don't think he wants much.
Work so far is cool, just getting VS.NET installed on my machine, which took an extrodinarily long time, and now just familiarizing myself with the app I'll be working on before I dive in.
American, Idle
Out in lovely N.J. this morning, after a mad dash the last few days to wrap stuff up at the old job. This morning I went and had my standard naughty N.J. pork roll sandwich, and then I was planning on dropping by my old high school and visiting my former French teacher (I wonder if she teaches "Freedom Class" nowadays). Alas, she was in the middle of teaching a class, so I wasn't allowed to barge in and visit. I dropped a note on her car instead, so we'll see if she emails me.
Right now I'm sitting at a free terminal in the Sussex County Library (Louise E. Childs branch), because I was a stupid-head and forgot that my stepmother was actually working today when she normally has Fridays off (long story), and I forgot to bring my key to get in. So, just wasting some time until lunch, when I'm going to try out some new sushi place in Byram with Jen, so that should be fun.
Ouch.
This just sucks. At least he's in good company. And why am I not "Mr. Internet"?!?!
All things feral
Because I don't like to pass up anything with a "feral" reference... from today's Non Sequitur:
Tip o' the hat to Pat for finding it.
My so-called life.
Man, so much stuff going on I don't even know where to begin. * First off, as Brian alluded to, I have indeed found new gainful employment, and I'll be finishing up here this week. Tons of stuff left to do, lots of little projects to clean up, documentation to write, knowledge to transfer, paradigms to shift, etc. I'm pretty stoked about the new position. It's a pure .Nizzle development job, although they work mainly with VB.Nizzle (ick.) Pehaps I will convince them of the beauty and love that is C#. * One of the cooler things about the new job is that it'll be a longer bike ride, up to about 14-15 miles from my current 8. That will be a nice healthy run... I'll probably do it just once or twice a week and feel great about it. I was worried that the roads I thought I'd have to go on were too dangerous, but various people have told me that there's ways I can go to get there without getting my brains splattered all over the road, so sometime soon Dave and I will probably do a dry run in the car. In order to get ready for the longer ride, I'll be picking up a mini-pump ("This sort of thing ain't my bag, baby"), a spare tube, and a patch kit. * I've gotten it in my head recently that I'd like to have a new digital camera that actually takes half-decent pictures. I've settled on the Olympus C-4000, partly because it gets really good reviews, and partly because my current camera is an Olympus, which means my SmartMedia cards will work in that one, too. I really don't want to spend the money on a new one, so I'll just sort of troll eBay and see if I can find one for around $200-250, or a little more if it comes with a case/SmartMedia card/NiMh batteries/etc. * One of the features of MT(Movable Type) that's turned out to be the most interesting has been the Activity Log. One of the things it shows me is what people are searching on, in a more real-time way than my weekly stats. It's neat to see what people are looking for, whether they're trying to find out info about my best friend, or just doing some straight narcissurfing (Hi Paul Fontana! :-P).
War, Redux
I saw this morning that Jason Kottke has written a synopsis of the war that sums up my general feelings much more eloquently than I did. Give it a read. Speaking of war news, Gawker has a good post about where to get up-to-the-minute war updates, if you care.
Vampire-Free Zone
I would just like to apologize in advance to my pod-mates at work. The SLF(Special Lady Friend) and I went to Gullifty's last night, and stuffed ourselves at their bi-annual Garlic Fest . We had a roasted garlic spread appetizer, and for dinner I had the 20 clove garlic chicken hoo-hah. And today you'll know it. There's been pure garlic coming out of my butt since first thing this morning. I also rode in, so I'm probably sweating it as well. Forewarned is forearmed, and all that. It's Chic to Reek(TM)!
Mary Timony
Brian has a good writeup of the show we went to last night. Besides, I'm so damn hungry right now I might pass out if I don't eat, so I'll do that instead of posting.
Allll we are saaaaaying, is aaah-nevermind!
Protesters rattle rush hour I happened to catch the tail end of the march. It's nice to see some level of activism in such a blue-collar town, but I decided yesterday that regardless of my ambivalence about the war on Iraq, that I really don't like people that are irrationally deep on either side; from pro-war rallies by ClearChannel (need a war to help your ratings, perhaps?), to pacifists that would be content to do nothing until it was already far too late. I just think of Lili Taylor's fantastic character on Six Feet Under sitting on the floor of her kitchen, pleading with the ants that have invaded her home to "please leave." Just a little bit of moderation and understanding on both sides, people... is that so hard?
War (deja vu)
War has started, and it all feels strangely familiar. I remember when the US-led coalition attack on Iraqi forces in Kuwait started. I was downstairs at Ryan's house, sitting on the floor with Ryan and his folks around the tv watching the news. We had just launched about 300 Tomahawks, and the air raids began in earnest the next day; 3000 sorties a day, if I remember correctly. Looks like we'll be doing the same thing all over again, for good or ill. I think that if the "decapitation strike" from last night had actually worked, everyone would be awfully happy today, but now we're left to see just how crazy Saddam is, and how willing he will be to use Baghdad's citizens and his 50,000 or so loyal soldiers to stand between himself and the incoming storm. I hate to draw parallels between Saddam and Hitler, but it would be quite helpful if there was an assasination attempt that actually worked. Might save many thousands of innocent lives.
Duh (or, is that my Final Answer?)
My co-worker Amy and I got grabbed on the walk back from lunch by one of the local crappy news outfits for a "man-on-the-street" interview. They asked "what countries border Iraq?', obviously to point out how useless America's educators are, and further to prove that we probably have no business bombing the shit out of a country that we don't know their borders, mean elevation or average rainfall. I'll admit it, I choked. I could only come up with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait. Pat of course was able to rattle off all six when we got back to the office. I hope I don't show up as one of those "yokel" Americans on the 6 p.m. I did however manage to say that I was "uninformed, but highly opinionated". I'm sure that'll play well.
Flush, Part II (or, I really mean it this time)
Not flushing the urinal is slightly annoying, but today was worse. Went into the Executive Washroom (i.e. the handicapped stall) to throw on shorts for the bike ride home, and had to pee while I was in there. Lifted up the seat (so as not to make a mess, you see...), and saw that someone had a horrible ass-splosion in there, forceful enough to splatter all over the underside of the seat (although thankfully not where I grabbed it to lift it). Ok, if you have that big of a "paintball" (as Pat so eloquently put it), you're gonna feel it on your ass, which means you're gonna know that it's all over. You're gonna be washing your hands afterwards anyway (at least, I hope you are you sick bastard), so just grab a big wad of toilet paper and wipe that shit up! Sheesh!
Various (mostly nerdy) bits.
# The whole Puma ads thing has taken on a life of its own (much like a certain oversized snack food), with threatening letters from lawyers flying around. Gawker seems to be following it most closely.# This post is the first one that I'm trying to format with Brad Choate's MT-Textile plugin. It's basically just a way to use shorthand to do your formatting. The thing that got me was the shorthand way to handle those crazy abbreviations, which is handy when you're talking about CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) and XHTML(eXtensible HyperText Markup Language) all day long. MT-Textile is the new black, as far as I'm concerned. # It looks like Wrox Press is taking a dirt nap. Unfortunate, because I always thought their books were the best of the bunch. Maybe they'll open up all their content on ASP Today, although I've had a subscription that's been expired for at least 6 months now, and they haven't gotten around to turning it off. I have been wondering what will happen to stores of paid content when the company that owns them goes under. I guess we'll see with Salon soon enough. # They had been hard to find before, but it seems like .Nizzle-centric weblogs are finally out there. It's a good place to see people swapping info, and working on some cutting-edge stuff, as my older standbys seem to be updating less frequently than they were. # Looks like someone found a way to easily accomplish my Music listing using Trackbacks in MT.
Climbing game (or, something you won't see anytime soon)
Found this neet-o info about a climbing game in development by Chris Hecker. As you can see in the picture, it is an actual picture of an indoor gym wall, and then there's an animated figure that you presumably have to guide up to the finish hold. Of course, this is a game that has a mass market appeal index of approximately zero, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to play it. I was imagining if somehow it could be turned into a competitive online game, with clans and tournaments, etc. Maybe you could combine it with something like this, where your opponent would set a really hard route, and you'd have to climb it, but if you fell off, they would have to do it.. sort of virtual climbing HORSE, as it were.
Eeek!
Just randomly wondering why my pagerank had gone up to 5, so I check my stats and see I have a new referrer, Technorati. I go to their site, and see they have this "Link Cosmos" thing, so I check out referring webblogs, and I see that Tankek has linked me in his "now..." section. I mean, this is _the_ Tantek (as opposed to the other ones)... the Box Model Hack guy. So now there's all this pressure to, like, uh, be funny or something. Well, maybe not tonight. How about tomorrow I promise I'll write something funny, mmkay? I will say this, having my pagerank go up to 5 kinda makes me feel like partying.