OK, if you looked in the last few hours, you could see that anyway.
Month: June 2006
An interesting night…
- First, I discover this afternoon that my server has rebooted on an older Kernel and the SATA drives aren’t being recognized. No wonder it’s going so slow; the RAID is running in degraded mode (not inherently slower for RAID0/mirroring, but in practice it’s going to mean that the system does everything much more carefully wrt flushing buffers and stuff.) So I had to rebuild that tonight; the Linux
mdadmtool made that surprisingly easy. - Second, the phone line has gone tonight. No DSL, no nuttin’ – I host my own server, so I can post this now, but who knows when y’all are going to get to see it. And I think I’m going into some minor case of internet-access withdrawal (no dialup backup, since the voice phone is down too, but at least I have my PDA thing… slow though it is at home.)
30 Things You’d Never Think to Ask (Another silly blogmeme…)
This one from Gareth’s LJ (it’s long, sorry):
30 Things You’d Never Think to Ask
1. Have you ever been searched by the cops?
Nope, nor ever arrested. Stopped in traffic a few times, usually for something boneheaded whether I got a ticket or not.
2. Do you close your eyes on roller coaster?
Usually. I’ve got a touch of acrophobia, though the sensations are fun either way.
3. When’s the last time you’ve been sledding?
I’m not sure I’ve ever been sledding. Not even using cafeteria trays, while in college.
4. Would you rather sleep with someone else, or alone?
Depends on with whom, but in general with the right company I’d rather not sleep alone.
5. Do you believe in ghosts?
Nope. Nor souls, nor reincarnation, nor any other sort of life after death.
6. Do you consider yourself creative?
No, and it frustrates me to no end since I’d very strongly LIKE to be.
7. Do you think O.J. killed his wife?
I have no idea, and thanks to the folks who put him on trial screwing up so badly, there’s no way anyone but OJ will ever know for sure.
8. Jennifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie
Jennifer Aniston by default; I find Angelina Jolie to be one of the least sexy famous women this side of Tipper Gore. (As an aside, this same question came up in Russ Lieberman’s recent Interview in GQ –
Okay. Real quick: Jennifer or Angelina?
Jennifer? Jennifer who?
Oh, come on, Senator! Jennifer or Angelina?
Jennifer who?Aniston. [silence] Oh, God. You don’t read the tabloids, do you?
Can I have a third choice? Can I pick Sharon Stone?
…and my own thought was “put as just Jennifer or Angelina I wouldn’t have gotten the question either.” Sharon Stone would not be my pick over Jennifer Aniston, personally but then my tastes run more to Kate Winslet or Roselyn Sanchez.
Much more after the break…
Continue reading “30 Things You’d Never Think to Ask (Another silly blogmeme…)”
So I downloaded the Vista beta/preview…
…and tried it out on my laptop, using a spare hard drive. It installed easily, but recognized relatively little of my hardware. The performance was very poor, despite a decent system; part of that may have been the video, which despite a terribly common video card (Radeon Mobility 7500) was not recognized and was running using the standard VGA driver (VESA, probably). Neither was the internal NIC, despite being a truly ubiquitous 3Com chip (3c920, compatible with the 3c905). The XP driver for the video card would not install; fortunately the NIC driver did.
I am highly undecided on the new UI elements, a lot of which seemed too great a departure from existing Windows UI – I mean, if I have to learn something entirely new, I’m going to just bite the bullet and start using Linux full time and just boot to Windows for video games, and it’s bordering on that big of a change. We’ll see how it looks in final release.
One of those silly blogmemes…
Seems to be broken, putting a break to keep it from cluttering the front page…
Continue reading “One of those silly blogmemes…”
Futurama coming back?
If stories are true, WOO-HOO… via RASFW, we find that the best Sci-Fi TV Series since Babylon 5 is coming back…
ANOTHER ‘TOON RESURRECTED
By DON KAPLAN
June 22, 2006 — ‘FUTURAMA” is officially back from the dead.
The quirky animated show from “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening was canceled by Fox about two years ago, but will return with at least 13 new episodes on Comedy Central by 2008.This is only the second time in television history that a show sent to TV’s trash heap has been resurrected. Curiously, the first was “Family Guy,” also an animated Fox show.
The tale of “Futurama’s” dramatic revival roughly follows that same path that “Family Guy” did.
In both cases, the shows have been successfully airing on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim late-night programming block. They both also turned into hot-selling DVD box sets.
“Family Guy” returned to Fox earlier this year, while last fall, Comedy Central outbid Adult Swim for the license to air all 52 episodes of “Futurama” and whatever new episodes might one day be produced.
This week, deals were inked to secure all of the original voice talent and the production staff of “Futurama,” paving the way for the series’ return to TV.
Woof! Woof!
Too cute not to pass on, from the Washington Post, via RASSF:
A Bite and Bark That Saved a Life
Cellphone Chomp Called 911 for Beagle’s Owner
By Leef Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 19, 2006; Page B01Belle Weaver is flying into the nation’s capital today to receive an award for saving a family member’s life. Before she leaves town, she’ll meet with her congressman, accept a certificate autographed by a football great and bow her head to receive a medal.
Stories such as hers, of heroism and quick thinking, are always inspiring. But this one has a twist, and not just because Belle is 3 years old.
You see, Belle Weaver is a beagle. She used her owner’s cellphone to call 911.
Her owner, Kevin Weaver, 34, was in the throes of a diabetic seizure, lying unconscious on his kitchen floor in Ocoee, Fla., when Belle located his phone and chomped down on the keypad, triggering a call.
I biked to work, once. (so far?)
Have you ever seen the film “Johnny Dangerously”? Not a tremendous film, but a funny one… and the villain in it has this schtick where if someone does something that angers him he says, “You better not [whatever] me, [whoever]! My [family member] [whatever]ed me! …once!”
Right now my back/legs/lungs are telling me “You better not ride to work again, Nate! You rode to the old Kana! …once!” The scary part is I feel about equally beat up now after ~3.5-4 miles (home in Foster City to Guidewire) as I did then after ~10 miles (home in Mountain view to the old Kana building on Woodside in Redwood city.
And therein, I suppose, lies the difference in being 25 and being 30. F–k. I will definitely have to work up to this before doing it again, but I really really am going to try to do it again and repeat until it’s relatively routine.
And on a much more serious note…
My congratulations and best wishes to King Bhumibol Adulyadej and to the Thai people on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of his ascension to the throne.
(I’d meant to post this earlier; as I write, it’s already the 10th in Thailand, but it’s still the 9th here.)
See also the congratulatory resolution passed by the US House of Representatives.
re: Kiss the wawa
On RASSF, Karen Lofstrom wrote:
Latest hottest Arab pop video!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4559854674036497542&q=Haifa
I’ve never seen anything like it — a music video featuring a sexy singer,
a toddler, a kitten, lots of chocolate and pink fake fur.
That was … interesting.
I was trying to figure out what the heck she was singing about, and found
this article on TNR, and this excerpt:
The shoot is for her recent single, notoriously known as the Wawa song. Supposedly, it’s meant for children–a “wawa” in Arabic is what we would call a “boo-boo” in baby talk. “See the wawa, kiss the wawa, and help it get better,” Haifa sings, dressed as various fetish archetypes like Little Red Riding Hood and a naughty schoolgirl. You don’t have to be a member of Al Qaeda to think this is a little too kinky for kindergarten. But, as I return upstairs to attend to my personal grooming and file my interview for People, I wonder if perhaps that’s exactly what all the lost boys of this lost region need: a beautiful woman with fantastic tits to kiss them where it hurts.
It answers the question of what the video was about (partially made clear by the title, in retrospect) but this was just too weird/interesting to pass on. I have no particular comment on (or endoresement of) what the author on TNR had to say (although she – Haifa – is awfully cute.)
(Un)holy numerical coincidences, man!
As many of you have likely already noticed, today’s date of 6 June 2006 is in short form 6/6/06… awfully close to (for those supersitious or zealously Christian out there) the “number of the beast” from Revelations.