I’m pawing through old IRC logs, to see if I can find useful recipes for the book I’m working on. I say some really strange things on IRC.

Here’s some samples:

(Someone asking for help with Linux on a Sparc. Don’t ask me why.)
<DrBacchus> ok. I don’t use Sun stuff. I hardly even ever see the sun. I’d make a bitchin vampire. I would not have to change my schedule …

Regarding someone who wanted to write an IRC bot in PHP:
<DrBacchus> A php bot? That’s just wrong. That is evil. Sick and wrong. You’ll go to hell for that. Writing a client/server application in php is, I believe, mentioned by Dante in one of the levels of the Inferno.

And then, later …
<Drizzt321> hey Gunnsi, what would you say to the person that created a php irc bot?
<DrBacchus> Hint: They are going to hell for it. It’s like writing a web server in Word macros

There’s more, but those particularly caught my eye.

It also occurs to me that it would be very nice if MT had something built-in so that I could paste in IRC things, and have it format them correctly.

After a little more reflection, and particularly after reading Ken’s comments, I’m still feeling a little distanced from what happened, but I can certainly see that this is more than just the death of some people I didn’t know.

Indeed, every man’s death diminishes me. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. And in that sense, I tend to feel much more affected by the horrible disasters that happen in Africa every day and are a bullet point, or not even mentioned at all, in the western press. On the day that the WTC fell, killing more than 3000 people in the worst disaster on US soil, more than 5000 people died in gas line explosions, and subsequent fires, in Nigeria. One was not worse than the other at the time, but one has clearly had wider repurcussions in the lives of every living human being.

So when a space vehicle crashes, what are those wider repurcussions? Last week, I was doing Apache training, and one of my students was connected with NASA via her work, and she remained confident that the space program will not lose funding, and will not lose steam. Accidents happen, and this is not the end of the line. Finding out why it happened, and not letting it get in the way of future discovery, is the goal of the moment, as evidenced by the detail being given to going through the evidence even at this very moment.

The death of one individual is not more tragic, or less tragic, than the death of another. Every time an individual dies, be it spectuacularly, or quietly at home, we are all affected in some way, and those close to the person will grieve whether the person was a prince or a pauper. But some events, like this one, are genuinely tragedies of national, and perhaps international scale, because of the lasting effects that they will have on policy, discovery, and our future.

Ken, thanks for your comments, and for putting things into a sensible perspective.

We went to Gatti Town last night, to celebrate Sarah’s 5th birthday. What an awesome place! I had never been there before, and it was a blast, as long as I could suppress thoughts about how darned expensive it was. Sarah, having misheard me the first time I mentioned the place, then insisted on calling it “Daddy Town” the rest of the evening, much to my delight. They had a truck simulator, and let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like driving a 18-wheeler with a 5-year-old! Also, she never quite got the notion that, in the taxi game, we were supposed to stop and pick up the passengers, not run them over.

Two thumbs up to Gatti Town!

Just a few quick comments before I fall into bed.

I just got back from the Pikeville Professional Linux Group, where I gave an “Intro to Apache” talk for their Sunday afternoon meeting. Of course, to get there, I had to drive about 3.5 hours each way. And by some strange trick of geography, it was all uphill, both directions.

Most of the trip was on the Mountain Parkway, which was beautiful on the way there, and terrifying on the way back, by which time it was pitch dark and snowing.

To add to the fun, I ran out of gas on the way back. At least, my gas gauge fell as far below E as I have ever seen it, and seemed to be trying to go through the pin at the bottom end of the scale. But, since this was way up in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, there was not a gas station, or a town, to be had for many miles. Somehow, I managed to go more than 20 miles after I was sure I would run dry, and found an exit for Campton. I still had to go about 6 miles from the exit to find a gas store that was open. I was absolutely convinced that I would be stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no idea where I was. But I made it. I always thought that my gas tank was 15 gallons, but I put 17 gallons of gas in it. Very unnerving.

Pikeville, which is roughly 100 miles east of Lexington, has a really impressive technology center, where I gave the presentation. The room that I was in had a 6×8 screen at the front of the room. That is, a 6 foot by 8 foot monitor, into which I plugged my laptop. It was very impressive. The turnout was a little disappointing, but several of the folks that were to come were sick with the flu.

I’m glad I agreed to go do this, but now I am utterly exhausted.

Yesterday, the space shuttle Columbia broke into pieces as it approached for landing, at a height of about 200,000 yards above Texas, raining debris over a huge area of land. I mention this purely so that there is a historical reference to it in my journal. However, at the risk of seeming unfeeling, as the newspapers trumpet the idea that the whole world is in mourning, I find myself earnestly wishing for a life so simple and idyllic that I could find it in me to mourn a vehicle crash killing 7 people I don’t know. Yes, obviously the implications are wider than that. Their families. The space program. The people in the path of the debris. But, the same day, there was an explosion in Lagos that killed between 25 and 50 people, and this seems no more remote to me than the shuttle accident.