All posts by rbowen

Dude, where’s my wallet?

The excitement of today is that I have misplaced my wallet. And to make it more exciting, I have no idea when this may have happened, as I have not had a use for it since Tuesday evening. Or perhaps even Monday evening. So, while I assume I had it since then, I have no clear memory of seeing it since then. So I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time looking for it again and again in the same places, and wondering where it could have gone. Needless to say, today had been less than productive. I don’t think that it was stolen, as it was in a bag with other items of much greater value (my GPSr and my PalmOS device, my checkbook, my paycheck, and various other things) which were not taken. I expect it fell out of the Jeep while I had the roof off.

So, I’ve just cancelled my credit cards, which, if I’m lucky, will ensure that I find it in the next 10 minutes.

The wallet itself was purchased in Paraguay, and is thus very hard to replace, as the chances of me going to Paraguay again in the next 5 years or so seems very slim. 🙁 And it contained some wonderful pictures of Sarah which I don’t think I’ll be able to replace. All in all, I’m very very bummed about this.

So, all day, I have been very gloomy and grumpy.

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Note: This was SIX YEARS ago, and I have long since found the wallet. I think I’ve gone through two wallets since then. I’m going to close comments on this post now. Thanks for the encouraging sentiments.

CGI::Lite

Just shows how much I’ve been paying attention.

I’ve been using CGI::Lite for a number of years. It does some of the things that CGI.pm does, but not everything. CGI.pm does *waaaay* more than I ever need. I just want some forms parsed, thanks very much, not a OO thingy to generate HTML. Anyways, I just discovered that CGI::Lite has been unmaintained for more than 3 years, with an “emergency” release in February of 2002 to fix a severe security bug.

So, perhaps I need to look for something else, since I really don’t want CGI.pm, unless there’s a lightweight subset that one can use.

Evidentally I have not done any CGI stuff in aeons, having been doing mostly mod_perl stuff. I consider this a *good* thing.

clue-by-four, clue-by-four, clue-by-four

There Is No Cat – Adventures in The Trademark Zone

I received a note from the clue-by-four folks also, asking that I refrain from using the term on my domain BoxOfClue.com which is a joke, in case anybody missed it.

At first, I was inclined to just quietly comply, but, fortunately, the page above was mentioned to me.

For those of you who missed the story, the basic idea is that somebody trademarked the phrase “clue-by-four”, and wants to stop everyone else from using that phrase.

I first heard the term used when I was in grad school, which was in the 1992-1994 time period. While I’m not anxious to get sued about it, I’m not about to stop using a phrase that has been in common usage for a least 10 years, just because somebody says that they own the phrase.

And, if you wonder why I’m not referring to them by name … well, I seem to have deleted the email message. I can’t find it anywhere. So, if you’re reading this, mr clue-by-four, you might want to send it again, so that I can respond and say no.

I’m sorry that the trademark office was negligent enough to take your money and think that you can trademark a phrase in common usage. That was wrong of them, and you should request a refund. While you’re at it, you might also want to trademark the phrase “get a clue” and “without a clue” and “utterly clueless”, just in case.

I’m not trying to be disrespectful or unkind, but you can’t dictate the way I use the english language by sending threatening email. If you want to send it registered mail, you have my address. However, I can’t imagine I’ll take that any more seriously.

Sleeping in

Turns out I am incapable of sleeping in. I intended to take today off, sort of – at least to sleep in, have a big breakfast, and then do either some writing/editing, or perhaps even some coding on Maneggio, which is finally interesting to me again.

So I slept in.

Until 7.

Apparently that is as late as I am capable of sleeping in.

That’s really pathetic.

Atmospheric changes …

Scars of pleasure
Scars of pain
Atmospheric changes
Make me sensitive again

(Rush, “Scars”, Presto, 1989)

Today was an important day. Fortunately, nobody saw fit to commemorate it. Certain times of year, and the associated “atmospheric changes” tend to make the old war wounds tingle.

And, please, if you didn’t get it, don’t ask.

Logging email?

I got a call today from the FBI. The person I spoke to was very nice, if not particularly tech-savvy. She was trying to track down an email message that was forwarded through my server in December of 2001, and would I possibly have a copy of that? She really didn’t give me very much information, so I can only surmise that somebody relayed a message through my server in a moment when it was misconfigured, and so the message had been traced back to me. Apart from that, I can’t figure out what it had to do with me. I suppose I could get all paranoid about it, and try to figure out who is trying to get dirt on me, but, then, I’m not sure what dirt anybody *could* find on me. Still, it kinda freaked me out, and I’m not entirely sure why. Very unpleasant.

But, seriously, does anybody actually log email messages that pass through their MTA? And if so, why, and how?

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Clarification: I’m not quite so clueless as to be unaware that most MTAs syslog that a message was received or sent. I’m talking about logging the *body* of the message. That seems like a recipe for a DoS. Just send a few dozen multi-megabyte attachments, and fill up the log volume.

Congo, continued

Continued from earlier …

The French troops have arrived in the D. R. Congo, and are complaining that they have been “caught in the middle” of the war there. Um. Am I missing something? Aren’t they supposed to be peacekeepers?

Seriously, can *anybody* explain to me the purpose of having 2000+ “peacekeepers” who “do not have a mandate to intervene in the conflict?”

What, exactly, are they supposed to be doing there? Either be peacekeepers, or stay home. By being there, they are further complicating the situation, and spending insane amounts of money for no benefit.

It really makes me ill.

Meanwhile, the death toll is up to more than 500, thousands have fled the area, mostly to refugee camps in other places that aren’t much better off, and although the people there rejoiced at the arrival of the French troops, it’s not clear to me that they would have if they understood what role those troops would play – essentially overseeing the slaughter, but not interfering.

Also of great interest to me are the dozens of morons willing to share their uninformed opinions on the situation. I suppose I’m not much better than some of them, but the bulk of the folks commenting would apparently be hard-pressed to find find Bunia on a map, let alone have a chance of understanding the realities of the situation there.

New job

Starting today, I’m a Linux System Administrator and Security Consultant at System Design Group. It is somewhat bittersweet, leaving a company that I started and tried to make work, but going to something that I’m sure will be challenging and interesting. Time will tell. More on this as the time passes.