Tag Archives: general

Thank you

I have been using a boarding pass from a recent flight as a bookmark, and just noticed this on the back of it:

Well, I thought it was funny, anyway.

No tasks


This morning, my Palm calendar announced that I have no tasks due. I actually found this quite alarming, rather than being pleased. I wonder what that says about me. I can’t remember any time that it has said that since I first got it.

Tech support

This morning I had to put a new battery in Rocinante. It’s at times like this when I feel what folks must feel when they come into #apache for the first time.

From the condecending look on the face of the expert (that’s the same everywhere), to asking whether Apache 1.3 or 2.0 is better (“Is there any difference between then $80 battery and the $30 battery?”) to asking if they can set two different DocumentRoots for the same server (“Does the battery come with an initial charge, or do I have to have you guys charge it”) to asking where they need to put that directive (“Ok, so where do I put this thing?”) to finally figuring out what different settings on Options *really* does (“Oh, I didn’t need to take that nut all the way off. I just needed to loosen it, because this thingy goes into that whoogit!”).

So, when people ask me how I can be so patient on #apache, it’s really quite simple. I know that I’m far more ignorant than the folks asking the questions, it’s just about different things.

Fujitsu-Siemens to pay fine for selling product

Fujitsu-Siemens has been ordered by a German court to pay a levy every time one of its computers is sold in the country, as part of a “tax on piracy.”

Ok, go read the article, then ponder with me the ramifications of such a ruling.

The assumption appears to be that if it is *possible* to use a product to commit a crime (even if we accept that it’s a crime, which I will skip for now) then we must assume that the the product indeed *will* be used to commit that crime, and fine the manufacturer for making the product.

Taken one or two more steps, we must assume that every sale of a pen should generate a fine to be paid to publishers, because the pen could be used to make copies of copyrighted materials.

Or, how about this. Why should that fine go to VG Wort? Isn’t it just as likely that those computers may be used to violate my copyright? Haven’t I, in fact, found bootleg copies of my own books, on various websites around Asia and Europe? Certainly I should get some compensation from that?

Anyways, I find the precedents in this ruling to be very troubling. Particularly if you extend the thinking to non-technology arenas. That, in fact, seems to be the problem with technology law. The courts *NEVER* seem to extend their thinking to non-technology arenas, and so they don’t see the fundamental problems with their rulings. Somehow, they think that laws should be completely different if technology is involved, and that’s very troubling.

New tunes and old thoughts

I’ve been listening to “How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” from U2 pretty much since it was released. As usually happens with a new album, it seems very strange at first, then slowly grows on me. And along the way I start picking up on the lyrics and picking out the various songs that I like and those that I don’t.

This album, strangely, reminds me more of “War” and “October” than it does of more recent stuff, although it is certainly a more mature sound, and less of the raw unpolished energy that was in “War”.

When I’ve not yet read the lyrics, little snips jump out at me, making me wonder about the rest. I hear the phrase “The girl with crimson nails has Jesus around her neck,” and that then becomes:

They know that they can’t dance
At least they know
I can’t stand the beats
I’m asking for the cheque
The girl with crimson nails
Has Jesus around her neck
Swinging to the music
Swinging to the music
oh oh oh

(From Vertigo)

Looking back to college and beyond, I remember a lot of girls with crimson nails and Jesus around their neck. It’s the sort of verbal picture that immediately makes a lot of sense to me, but which would be rather complicated to explain.

U2 always reminds me of a particularly embarassing incident in 10th grade. Sitting on the bus, next to a girl that, if the truth be told, I had a crush on. She’s listening to some music. I ask what it is. She give me the headphones, and I listen to a little bit of Joshua Tree. And, in the inevitable lull in general conversation, I exclaim loudly, “I *love* U2!” This is followed by dead silence, and the girl blushes deeply and doesn’t speak to me for a week.

Speaking of having Jesus around your neck, I had an interesting experience this week. I went to a “Christian” bookstore, in search of a liturgical calendar. For those of you who do not have a Christian background, or who have a Christian background that was, shall we say, light on the historical aspects of the faith, a liturgical calendar is a calendar which lists the seasons and feasts of the church, including the saints’ days from the various Christian traditions. If you didn’t know that, you’re excused. You probably have good reasons. However, the boostore staff is not excused. When I asked for a liturgical calendar, or a calendar of the church year, they didn’t know what I meant. The owner/manager said that he had never heard of such a thing, and then led me over to leather-bound planner books for pastors, complete with inspirational saying from prominent authors and politicians. When I more carefully explained what I was looking for, and having received the wrinkled-nose-we-don’t-talk-about-that look when I mentioned “Saints”, I was assured that they didn’t carry anything like *that*.

Wandering around the store afterwards, I was wholely unable to find anything particularly Christian about the store. Sure, they had Bibles. I gotta give them that. They also had inspirational books by Chuck Norris, and seemed to be pushing a lot of Bushy republican political books. Oh, yeah, and a bunch of Precious-Moments-y cherubic figurines. Most of the stuff there was wholesome values trashy novels (yes, there are “Christian” romance novels, God help us) and materials for entertaining sunday school classes. Apart from the Bible, I didn’t see any printed volume published prior to the Kennedy administration. Last time I checked, Christianity is a religion of tradition and history, and of prolific writers, and it seems very odd a Christian bookstore would be devoid of any of these writings. Christian writings from the last 50 years form little more than the foam on the cappucino. Or, I suppose Martin Luther would say, the foam on the beer. 😉 Unfortunately, I’m reasonably sure that the folks running that particular store would not catch that allusion.

Have you heard about Haiti?

This morning I woke long before my usual Saturday time, and ventured forth into the tundra. I almost crawled back into bed when I saw that it was 28 degrees (F) outside. But, I perservered, and headed out to Keeneland for the “Have You Heard About Haiti” 5K run, organized by the Episcopal Dioscese of Lexington.

The race started at 9, and I had a pretty good start, followed by a realization that I had started to fast, and there was no way I could maintain that pace for more than a half mile. If that.

After about a mile, I thought I was going to die.Terrible cramps. It was getting hard to believe that I used to win these things almost every weekend. Of course, that was almost 20 years ago.

There was a boy there, about 10 or 11, who passed me pretty early on. I used to be that kid. And there was a girl there about the same age. When I used to be that boy, that girl used to be named Michelle Jernigan. She was at every race I ever ran, and she always finished ahead of me. It got to the point where my goal for those races was to beat Michelle, since I already figured I was going to win my own category. I don’t think I ever did beat her. I wonder if she got old and out of shape like me.

So, I finally finished, a mere 6 minutes slower than my worst time *ever*. (27:57, for the record.) It took me at least 10 minutes just sitting in the car before I could breathe normally without feeling like I was going to yarf all over the place. I walked around a little, ate a banana in teensy bites, and had some water to drink.

Since it was a walk as well as a run, it took about another 30 minutes for everyone to come in. And I was starting to get pretty cold, so I had just decided to go ahead and leave when the awards started. It came as a complete surprise to discover that all the other men my age have also allowed themselves to get old and out of shape. I placed second in my age group (the “old and bitter” age group).

Who knows, maybe I could actually get back into decent shape, get my mile back under 7 minutes, and win myself a trophy or two. Or … not.

Exit Stage Right

I just received Exit Stage Right, a string quartet tribute to Rush. I’ll try to say nice things about it, but I was really disappointed. They picked, mostly songs that rely pretty heavily on Neil’s drums, and, as such, missed the opportunity to really shine with strings.

There are two kinds of pieces on the CD. There are those where they are merely playing an existing score, transposing the voices to strings. And there are those where they actually try to interpret a piece into a classical style. The former are largely failures, and the latter are great.

YYZ, in particular, was amazingly well done. I can’t quite put my finger on what they did, but it reminded me of the Hungarian-inspired stuff by Bartok and Brahms. Really great stuff. And I think it’s because they went a little beyond the score and tried to adapt it to their instruments, finding stuff in there that perhaps Rush wasn’t even aware of.

I suspect that a tribute album is most satisfying to the original artists when it finds nuances in the music that they didn’t know where there, rather than tributes that are simply covers of the songs trying to sound like the originals. The latter is shallow praise, the former is deep praise.

Xanadu was pretty good. Several other pieces had really good moments, but mostly just seemed to be elevatorized versions. If a piece relies pretty heavily on the drums, then they needed to fill in that space with something else. Mostly, they failed to do that.

Changes to arguments

I *hate* it when utilities change their command-line arguments between versions. Hate, hate, hate. Things with icky command-line arguments, I *always* script. So, rather than typing cdrecord -dev=0,0,0 speed=8 foo.iso I just type burn foo.iso.

So, of course, after upgrading to Fedora, burn doesn’t work any more.

Much experimentation later, it seems that the dev has moved elsewhere and requires -dev=ATA:1,0,0 and several other new command line arguments.