Ron Barry

%20090625
permanant link
What a week.  What a freaking week.

I got back from the river trip to find that foodini.org had gone offline.

Sorry about that.  Under Doran Barton's regime, this was a smooth and easy
process with no downtime that I was ever aware of, other than the times that the
hardware was being upgraded.  Recently, a combination snafu of my bank and 
knowledgeblue.com meant that people weren't getting paid and I wasn't getting
the notices to that effect.  When knowledgeblue emailed me about the situation,
they contacted an address that they well knew had long ago been a massive spam
target.  Somehow, they figured that I'd still be reading it, despite my having
told them many times in the past that this was not the case.

They have since claimed that they couldn't contact me directly.  Somehow, they
must have missed the fact that my email and phone contact information are
clearly published on my home page.  They're the ones hosting the damn thing.
You'd think they might figure that my PERSONAL web site might contain PERSONAL
information.

So anyway, after a full third of my life with a single provider (Doran's
business was bought up by knowledgeblue,) I've switched over to bluehost.com. 
We'll see how that goes.

So in addition to being incommunicado due to the river trip, a ton of incoming
email was lost.  This was followed by the most cruel form of layoff process I
have ever endured.  I did survive the process, but it took twenty-four hours to
go from 'the company is in bad shape' to 'you do/do not still have a job.'  I
think that the longest I've ever seen that process take was under a minute.

I headed home Tuesday to a sleepless night, wondering if my company was going to
close, lay off, or drop salaries.  Wednesday night the fire alarms in my
building went off - twice.

On top of all of this, I've been transferring all of the foodini.org bits,
trying to get it all running, editing the 700+ photos from the river, and trying
to figure out when I'm going to have time to get the new photo browser up.  I
_REALLY_ dislike the look of it (take a peek,) but I'm not sure what to do about
that at this point.  I'm open to suggestion.

    -rbarry

%20090613
permanant link
I have just spent the evening watching 10-year-old videotapes of myself, Brian
Carver, Nate Packer, and Mika Marumaya fencing in tournaments in Utah - a
century ago.

Other familiar faces were there: John Daley, Mike Mercy, Matt Nikols, Clief...
whose last name I can't remember.  And Max Callao.  

I've just found out that Max passed away a while back, and in that one moment,
I somehow lost a connection with that time - that feeling that it all happened
just so recently.  Max was in his 50s when I knew him, but I dare you to find a
single human being more youthful and alive than he was.

To the family of Max and to Salle Boise, your loss is deeply - if from afar -
felt.  I was just moments ago watching video of he and I joking around on strip
and working our asses off for every inch of strip and every point made.  For me
his loss was just a moment ago and I heartwrenchingly regret not having tried
to look him up before now.

I tell stories of Max to everyone who hears about fencing from me - which is 
just about everyone.  While the rest of you are still here, I wanted to say
that everyone mentioned in this post, and Chris Oversby, Katrina Farrow, you
were all gemstone quality souls to me and there isn't one of you that I don't
think of and miss regularly.  

I remember Max telling a story of drinking too much Courvousier on a flight to
Japan.  I don't have any Cognac, but tonight I'm drinking to Max: a friend, a
teacher, blessed lunatic, and an explosion of character wrapped in a thick
application of Ben Gay.

    -rbarry

%20090612
permanant link
If I may continue to harp on a point (it hardly seems worth linking my last
post, but what the hey) it would seem that Intel has stepped up to make
Linux the first operating system to support USB 3.0.  If you're of the ilk
that compile your own operating system kernel, you can get it any time you
like...

The point I wish to harp upon is that while Linux may now support the data
interface to get bits from your devices to your computer and back, your
devices aren't going to work with Linux anyway.  So, congratulations on the
press coverage guys, but how about having a chat with Canon and getting 
some support for my camera?  Until you get the device support, you've built
the digital equivalent of an 18-lane freeway to Coalville, Utah.

    -rbarry

P.S.  Don't miss the comment at the bottom of the link: "No hardware ...
      but Linux supports it!"

      Linux... hardware.  Okaaaay.

%20090518
permanant link
Linux.

Love it or hate it, there it is.  Even the most uninitiated of internet users
have probably stumbled across the name somewhere, though most are unlikely to
have any idea what on Earth it refers to.  It's been only the last few years 
that the world at large has become aware of the idea that there is something
unique about the software that their computer runs before they ask it to do
anything else.  With the growth of Apple's market share, users are slowly 
maturing in their comprehension: they have noticed the operating system.

Poor Linux.

And I mean that both as an expression of my sympathy and a description of 
quality.

You see, Linux and all the related software are developed by volunteers.  When
it comes to that, 'volunteer' is a poor word for what any developer of free
does.  When I hear the word, I think of the pre-veterinary student at the pet
hospital who 'volunteers,' and is directed to clean cages, walk the clients'
pets (and pick up their poop,) and mop up hairballs.  He shows up and is told
what needs to be done.

A free software developer does whateverthehell he feels like working on.  Sexy
technology gets attention from these guys.  What you have to understand is that
there is a society of fame within the free software world.  If you work on the
next big project and everyone in the Linux community starts using it - people
know your name.  You get a Wikipedia page.  People pay you to talk at their
conferences.  It's the geek brand of fame.

What this has brought to the free software world is an abundance of geeks with
plenty of time on their hands, all eager to tackle the next sexy project.  Many
of these guys use Linux exclusively and cannot fathom the unwashed masses who
would resort to using Windows or Apple's OS series.  Off they go to write their
new programming language, protocol stack, or hack away at the Linux OS to
squeeze a few more points of performance out of it... without ever stopping to
really attack priorities.

With insufficient altruism in the Linux and free software world, the poop never
gets picked up.

What are the priorities of Linux and free software?  Well, the one dream I have
heard from free software developers more than any other is this:  "Free Software
will take over the world."

Bull Excrement.

Microsoft has spent billions of dollars studying how people interact with
computers.  Billions.  Most free software developers slap an ad-hoc
configuration mechanism on their software and call it done.  If you have
problems setting it up, they are likely to be caused by a situation that the
developer was unable or unwilling to test.  You're on your own.

This does not work for the home user.  It never will.  Ever.

I speak in brutish terms here because I'm an ex-Linux user myself.  Ten years
ago, my list of complaints with Linux had grown long enough that I gave up and
switched to an OS that I knew would just work.  Yes, Windows software pukes on
me from time to time, but my hours lost to fixing those issues has been trivial
compared to the time it took me to manage my Linux machines.  And, if I need a
piece of software to do something..... I know I can find it.  Linux: unlikely.

The nail in the coffin for me with Linux as a desktop system was brought back to
my mind just a few minutes ago, plain as day.  A post on slashdot.org (a blog
for geeks, though thoroughly tilted in a pro-free-software direction) pointed to
a writer who enumerated his chief complaints about Linux as a potential entry
into the everyday desktop world.  The issues therein have been the same since I
gave up Linux a decade ago.  In other words, Linux has made little progress in
this domain in ten years.

Despite my home use being entirely Windows, I have run a number of distributions
of Linux during these last ten years.  The best stride they have made so far,
that I can see, is that they do run a Graphical User Interface right out of the
box and many configuration options can be tweaked there.  I applaud the effort.
Unfortunately, the last time I found myself using it, I was informed that I 
would have to get beneath the covers and edit configuration files to solve my
problem.  This is not acceptable to a home user.  I'm a geek, I had a job to do,
I got dirty and edited.  Is I said, this is not home-user-caliber software.

I'll close my argument here with an address to the opposition view.  The most
popular web server in the world at the time of this writing is 'apache.'  It is
a free project, in development since the mid nineties.  It has been the most
heavily-used web server in the world since 1996 and until 2006 showed no signs
of flagging popularity.  BUT apache peaked out at about 70% of the servers
online, but has dropped - in just three years - below the 50% mark.  Who is
stealing their thunder?  Microsoft.

I've dealt with apache servers before.  They're fine for simple applications,
but expert-level familiarity is required to get it to accomplish many tasks.  I
once spent two hours on a plane trying to get an apache server on my laptop to
simply serve CGI applications (a trivial task with most servers.)  My battery
died before it was working reliably.  I have since done the same task with three
other web servers.  None took me more than 5 minutes.

If apache wants to maintain its position, it needs to appeal to the new 
generation of web administrators.  It is unfriendly, unwieldy, and difficult to
debug when failures occur.  This has been an axiom of free software for too 
long.


The free software community needs leadership that isn't afraid to set the
priorities in unpopular directions:  fix the sound system, fix the UI, fix
package management, fix X (the window manager - it's damn slow.)  Provide a 
unified front with which large corporations can negotiate so you can get first-
class drivers, and, GAMES.  Most computer users play games now.  I work in the
games industry and have no associates who do Linux games or would even consider
it.  (Ask me for the details if you're interested.)

    -rbarry

%20090508
permanant link
When I was working at Sun Microsystems, one of my projects involved the use of a
database of crytographic hashes of all the software Sun had ever released.  It
was an interesting enough project and quite easy to implement, really.  I sat
down one weekend, frustrated as hell with all of the red tape that was binding
my hands from the keyboard, and wrote the whole thing in Perl.

One of the crimson straps hampering my metacarpals was was the fact that the 
hashing algorithm in use - md5 - had seen recent weakening at the hands of a 
pair of brilliant Chinese PhDs.  The project to which I was assigned had been 
amassing md5 sums for years and the powers-that-be were paranoid that they (the 
cryptographic checksums) were not going to provide the security they (the 
powers-that-be) had hoped.  I was told to start looking into moving in the 
direction of other hashing algorithms.

This is where things got dicey.  Mathematically illiterate factions of the
department wanted to wait to release the project until "The Next Hashing 
Algorithm" was adopted.  You know, the one with no potential for collision.
Other members wanted to archive everything Sun ever created so we could just
release modern-algorithm checksums for everything as the new hash mechanisms
became available.  This scheme was objectionable to many because much of Sun's
old bits had been lost forever - or at least the authoritative ones had.  (Why
we were clinging to the idea of providing cryptographic hashing security on
files nobody had seen in a decade and had no hope of hashing with a new process,
I'll never understand.)  Most of all, there was objection that no now algorithm
would ever be 100% secure and the entire project essentially lay in crumbles 
under the feet of these Bible-beaters.

Assuming that the thing ever released, whatever they adopted in the end, I'm 
sure that last week's EuroCrypt news is going to rattle a few people.  Sha has 
seen another, serious collision attack.  The worst of the lot so far.

From day one of the arguments about algorithms, I was trying to press the idea
that in perpetuity, Sun keep a pristine copy of every file we released from that
day forward and provide a hash string for every one of them that is the
concatenation of every crypto hash that had seen official use over the years.

So the md5 sum of foo.txt might be:
aabc843f86320750995d6b9a1dec2d3c
(despite the strange string in the first 4 letters, that is a legitimate hash.)
...and your sha1 sum might be:
c1b80463ab9662ae4a82d4983dc57bfd339710a8
(and that is the same file.)
...and your sha512 sum might be:
e75bcc0fc2008a6bfffacab227c3940557c44279312175659a7d2c4585683bd89d7d7993ebb03bf\
12a05bc980b52e60db105322517c026c9d8a402fe3e2c21d0

So the secure sum would be:
(aabc......)(c1b804....)(e75bcc...)

For those who see the 'obvious' 'flaw' (separately quoted for good reason,) I
congratulate their awareness, but consider: every one of these checksums is 
vulnerable to attack individually, but finding a collision in one still leaves
you with a mismatch in the other hashes.

Given the difficulty of analysis, the likelihood of the combination attack ever
succeeding is extremely low and - given the time it would take to find such an
exploit - a new, trickier, more complex algorithm would have been concatenated
to the end of this list when that analysis was done.

Yes, this is the hashing algorithm I am suggesting that the cryptographic
community adopt.  Every n years (for whatever n you like) another m bits (...)
will be added to the end of the stream by a new algorithm, designed to be the
state-of-the-art in secure hashing and as different from its predecessors as
possible.

    -rbarry

%20090429
permanant link
Ruby has it's moments.  Someone has to have done this before, but it was a good
way to kill five minutes.  The wording was designed to incorporate the string,
the conditional, commas, and, or, the boolean, ()s, and the exclamation points.

class HelloWorld
    def self.method_missing(id, *args)
        "#{id.to_s} #{args[0]}"
    end

    def self.run
        #Note:  the following is not commented out.
        I can't let this go by - consider the full impact upon our childrens'
        lives!  If you had gone your whole life without seeing it would you
        have believed it to be true?  All of this code parses, compiles and
        executes with the ruby interpreter without complaint, warning or
        failure!  When you can invoke this:  (brace yourself)

        puts hello world

        all bets are off!
    end
end

HelloWorld.run

%20090427
permanant link
Digging around on a number of ruby-related threading posts, I came across this
chunk of example code:

    x = Thread.new do
        compute_ultimate_question
    end
    vogon = Thread.new do
        Thread::kill(x)
    end



%20090424
permanant link
In a flurry of unusual activity today (that is to say that the natures of the
activities were unusual, not that activity is unusual) I found myself in need of
the services of people from all over work - most of whom I rarely find myself 
accessing.  The blizzard of email went out and... triggered a nearly
instantaneous snowdrift of responses: Out of Office Autoresponses.

Shrugging my shoulders as I put the tasks at hand on the back burner 'till next
week, I went looking for another unusual target in my hit list for the day.

She was gone, as well.

Ambling back to my desk, I ruminated on the fact that my very need of a person
today triggers their absence.  This Heisenburgism was entertaining enough to
share with a coworker, whose cubicle I was just passing.  Making a left into the
tornado shelter (we shelter ourselves from the tornadoes of hardware and
paperwork by stashing them in his office) I declared:

...

"Now where've you gone off to?"

Heading back to my office, noticing that I had vaporized Drew, I shrugged again
and decided that he didn't really need to be bothered with something so
frivolous.  I closed the book on the whole affair and gave it up as a typical
Friday afternoon at the office.

And that very instant, Drew walked in.

    -rbary

%20090423
permanant link
I've been listening to Car Talk off and on for years, but being within range of
of a Public Broadcasting station at the right hour of the week - on a regular
basis - is a bit of a challenge.  Even allowing for the fact I can stream most
radio stations to my computer doesn't cover the major challenge:  The computer
is in the living room and weekend mornings I am - uh - not.  As in, the
horizontal and unconscious version of not in the living room.  Oh - or I'm with
the offspring, who hasn't been attentive to anything for longer than 5 seconds
in his entire life.  Asking him to dedicate an hour to car repair and 
automotively-induced interpersonal relationship issue counselling would be as
futile as trying to convince me to petition for George W. Bush's third AND
fourth terms.  

Car Talk has moved into the modern age with the Podcast (TM, C, R, BYOB,) which
means that I finally get regular access.  Well.  I download it every week and
let it languish on my iPod until I've run out of anything and everything else
that I could possibly listen to.  Then I'm reduced to catching up on the
Tappets.

If you were following in Februrary then enjoy.  If you weren't paying
attention then you're outta luck because I'm not going to offer explanations:

UPDATE 20090518:
    I've removed the image from the main page to save on load times.  If you
    want to see it, you'll have to follow the link.

    -rbarry



Batteries.

In 1963, it was "Plastics," but now it is emphatically: batteries.

How many battery dependant devices are within arms reach of you now?  Wireless
mouse, cell phone, camera, laptop, mp3 player, flashlight, camera flash, and
that's just my usual moment-at-the-office sort of day.

Batteries are expensive and they are environmental disasters of their own sort.
And like so many other things in life, you have choices and compromises to make
when you select your encapsulated metallic cylinders of electrical potential.

Rechargeable or Alkalyne.

1.2 Volts or 1.5 Volts.

Reusable or Disposable.

Democrat or Republican.

Some devices are harder on batteries than others.  Parker's camera blows
through them at the rate of a full set of 4 AAs in about 30 pictures.  I swear
I'm going to get him a real (rather than a 'toy') digital camera just for the
battery savings.  His Leapster, on the other hand, seems to turn your common
AA battery into a damning counterexample to the Law of Conservation of Energy.
They last for EVER.  But neither device can live on 4.8 volts.

Most devices that want 4 AAs arrange them in a rectangular array in exactly the
same way.  Parker's Leapster does this, his camera does not.  It would seem to
me that the best of both worlds could be achieved if someone would make a six-
volt battery pack by using FIVE Nickel-Metal Hydroxide cells in a form factor
that exactly matched the standard four-AA-cell configuration.  Devices that
require that layout could take rechargeable batteries and suck them dry in
nothing flat and I'd happily throw the pack in the charger and slap another six
volts in the device: rechargeable, reusable, democratic, cheap and easy.

As with all the ideas that I truly love: contact me to license the idea.  =]

    -rbarry

%20090420
permanant link
If you haven't played^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HBraid^H^H^H^H
It's like this, ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HTime after^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
When I bother to sit down and t^Htw^H^Hwrite something, I'm us^H^H^H^H^H^Hit's
usually because I've found myself at one of the extremes of emotion versus
resa^H^Hason.  As as ^H^H result, I either end up writing reams of garbage
about a topic which has occupied my cognitive functions for quite some time (and
frequently, has pissed me off to no end for an undue period) or I'm simply
venting about somtee^H^H^H^H^H^H ann^H annon^Hyance... e^HThere is a rare
occasions^H where I bother n^H to rant properly.

I'm a few levels into Braid so far, and I"m ^H^H^Hm ^H^H'm hger^H^H^H^Hhere to
rant properly.^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgushingly.^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htremendously.

Download this game.  Even if all you do is play the demo, do it.  The taste
you'll get in the free download is more that^Hn enough to convince any
intelligent player that this is a great concept.^H: you are playing a 3D
platformer... where only two of the dimensions are spatial.  Time is as much of
a medium through which you travel at will as you are accustomed to doing with
space.  At times^H^H^H^H^H^H^HThrough the course of the game, the roles of time
and space o^Hare those of dependant dimensions,^H - with one flowing as a
function of the other, and.... 

Nobody reads this crap anyway.ESC:1,$d

Braid rules.  Play it.

    --rbarry

%20090417
permanant link
One of the biggest annoyances of vim is the color scheme.  Come to think of it,
ls in cygwin gets into some reading difficulty where color is involved.  But I
found this beauty recently and thought I'd share.  It can go in your vimrc as
individual lines or it can be punched in at the : command prompt:

set hls
:noremap <F1> :set hls!<CR> :echo "hilight search (hls) =" &hls<CR>
set noic
:noremap <F2> :set ic!<CR> :echo "ignore case (ic) =" &ic<CR>

(The last line isn't a color issue, but it's handy and related so I'm including
it: it swaps between case sensitive and case insensitive searches.)

Make sure you enter the lines as they appear here.  <F1> and <CR> are vim's way
of letting you let in know that you want it to interpret those keys.  Clear as
mud?  Good.  I try not to be too easy to follow.

The advantage is that when you search for text and are blinded by the obnoxious
color scheme vim uses to hilight the hits, you hit F2 to turn off the colors,
then turn F2 again to turn them back on.

Minor annoyance: if you forget to turn them back on, you'll have to do so when
when you do your next search.  I'll work on that.

    -rbarry


%20090402
permanant link
It occurs to me that there is a certain lack of wisdom inherent in the
combination of decisions; allowing my girlfriend to be my personal trainer and,
having her on my life insurance policy.
    -rbarry

%20090318
permanant link
I'm trying.  I really am.  I'm looking at netflix, I have my finger on the
button, and I see the first season of Babylon 5 right there in front of me.  I
just don't think I can go through it again.  It would be like facing the loss
all over again.  All the pain of the destroyed fifth season relived?  I'm not
sure I can do it.

    -rbarry

P.S., Chronological order, anyone?  B5 didn't air in the order that the units
tell the story, so....
0. "In the Beginning" Movie (IFF YOU CAN HANDLE THE SPOILERS!!! See #10)
1. "The Gathering" Movie
2. Season 1
3. Season 2
4. Season 3
5. Season 4 through "The Illusion of Truth," (Episode 8?)
6. "Thirdspace" Movie
7. Season 4 through Episode 22 (full season?)
8. Season 5 through "Objects at Rest"
9. "River of Souls" Movie
10. "In the Beginning" Movie  (Not in chronological order, but SPOILERS)
11. "A Call to Arms" Movie
12. Season 5 final episode, "Sleeping in Light"
13. Crusade - if you dare.


I found myself perusing some of the dustier parts of my brain last night,
pulling the tarpaulins off of the kind of junk that we all keep in the attic.
It's fluff, trash, filler, and its taking up space that should be dedicated to
family relics and antiques.

Instead, science fiction.

That's right.  We're not talking The Foundation Trilogy here, either.  (By way
of confession, Foundation bored me to tears and I'll likely never suffer myself
to pick it up again.)  Move over Asimov, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Clarke.  No
room for the A.B.C.s here.  I'm pining for Babylon 5.


When I was about 12 - setting the wayback machine for 1982 here - the local
station was doing Star Trek reruns.  That show was a little over a dozen years
out of the gate and showing a bit of age, but I'd never really seen Science
Fiction television before.  I liked it, I watched it, I absorbed it, I became
a Trek fan.  Never a Trekkie, but I enjoyed it.

When The Next Generation hit the airwaves, I watched.  I even watched weekly
for years, but as college wore on I had to stop.  The show ended and I felt a
slight pang of remorse about it, but I've never put a finger on why I hated to
see it go.  It had a great run - 7 years or so - and I enjoyed it, but... well,
it had had a great run and deserved to retire while at the top of its game.  My
greatest regret was that I had to watch the last episode having missed most of
the preceeding two years of the show.

Star Trek Generations (I promise this will get back to Babylon 5) was FIFTEEN
years ago now.  It makes me feel so old to want that kind of creativity in my
television again.  Well, invoking Generations means I should expand that to
movies as well, but you know what I mean:  I want my TV shows to be creative,
epic, and emotional.

This lands us squarely in the court of Babylon 5.  I watched as closely as I
could through the whole series.  I felt completely betrayed by the fifth season,
as Turner Network Television's 'creative' control got out of hand and destroyed
the franchise, but I still love the first four seasons.  And here's the main
difference between Babylon 5 and any TV show I've ever kept up with...

I miss it.

There.  I said it.  I actually miss the characters.  As Star-Trekkie, do-goodie
as the ending was, leaving most of the characters alive, somewhere in the back
of my mind it still seems that they had a life... and have died.  As Babylon 5
has gone through a few jump-start attempts over the years, I've been able to
pretend that it would rise from its ashes.  I'm only now coming to grips with
the fact that it won't.


I make chainmaile, for some reason that I've never understood.  It's fun to
hold and to play with.  It is a hobby that demmands nearly none of my attention,
so over the years I've watched Babylon 5 while I worked on it.  I think I may
have been through the show 2 or 3 times (I tend to skip the last season) in my
years of chainmailing.  I did some math last night: my very last piece of 
maille ever - I'm quitting the hobby for personal reasons - will require a block
of time from me that almost exactly matches the entire run of Babylon 5,
including all 6 TV movies and the hated 5th season.  It'll be a long, fond
farewell to two things that have occupied me in an obsessive way for some very
rough bits of the last 15 years.

Now this is just getting sappy.

    -rbarry

%20090304
permanant link
A couple, friends of mine, were having a ribbing back-and-forth about which
should get laser eye surgery first.  Standing by watching this, I couldn't help
but to comment that this was an issue upon which they were unlikely to see eye-
to-eye.

    -rbarry

%20090226
permanant link
    This goes out to Richard Feynman,
    He was not a Simple Simon
			- Jeff Coffin, "Ah Shu Dekio"

At PlayFirst, I'm in the process of a very lengthy installation of packages on
a Mac Mini.  I'll skip the details, but the short version is that I must add
a dozen or more systems to this machine, most of which aren't entirely stable
in their installation processes yet.  Documentation is scarce - and very poor.

Part of this process involved installing the mysql gem for Mac OS.  I've marched
this trail of tears before - thrice - on the PC.  For whateverthehell reason,
you have to install a huge chunk of MySQL itself in order for the PC install to
even get underway.  From there, you're still up a crick.  You'll get to the
ocean eventually, but you'll want a couple spare patch kits.

Having been through this nightmare a couple times before, I heaved a sigh and
pulled up google.  Finding a step-by-step for the Mac was not turning a profit,
so I heaved another sigh to properly bracket the attempt and fired up a Richard
Feynman blurb about bad science I found online (maybe someone sent it to me.)

The entire article was a lengthy read and looped through paths of thought
which didn't seem to progress in a steady direction, but I got through it.  I'm
used to such meanders, being a regular reader of my own blog, so it was an 
enjoyable game of intellectual hide-and-seek.  The article eventually made the
point that before a scientist tries the new experiment, the old one must be 
repeated.  Always.  My paraphrase does it no justice, but you can read the thing
yourself if you feel the need.

The point was that Feynman spent a long time addressing his readers/listeners
about the virtue of trying the knowns before the unknowns; that there is 
integrity in open self-deprecation.  At this, I thought to myself, "Feynman
should have been a computer scientist.  He might easily have missed this 
observation in our field... debugging is nothing but the iterative process of
hypothesis, test, hypothesis, test - and usually the subject of this iteration
is our own work.  The observation would, to a computer scientist, be so
obvious as te be self-evident and unworthy of note."

Well.  Maybe it wasn't so obvious.  I did leave the article thinking that there
were nuggets in it that I could apply to my own work.  I looked at my Mac and
thought, "Maybe I'll get a clue on how to start on this if I see the error
message again."  Keep in mind, I'd seen errors a-plenty in the days I was doing
this on the PC.

> sudo gem install mysql

You're thinking it worked, aren't you?  Well, it didn't.  But at least I have 
more crap to punch into google to push this further toward completion... and
I've managed to get you to waste another 5 minutes of your life suffering at the
expense of ruby, gem, and mysql.  Welcome to the club.  =]

    -rbarry

%20090213
permanant link
The time.gov website has taken stating the obvious to global proportions:

    "Sun is shining in light region.  It is night in dark region."

    -rbarry

%20090212
permanant link
My record made another step toward 'perfect' status today.  The following is the
complete list of companies I have worked for to date and their current 
operational status:

Sorenson Vision: 
Their website is still up, but the most recent date on it is 1999

Evans and Sutherland: 
Still technically in operation, but would have long since been delisted except
for the recent changes to such rules.  Anyway, the business units I was engaged
with have long since been disintegrated.  I hear the CEO was escorted out by
armed guards when he came under SEC investigation.  I can only hope it is true.

Acclaim Entertainment:
Dead.  Fishy, fishy, Fisch.

Shaba Games/Activision: 
Still in operation, I gather.  In the same office where I was working back in
2001.

Midway Home Entertainment: 
Filed for bankruptcy today.  The studio I worked in shut its doors long ago.  We
did warn them that John Romero was going to be a net loss and we were painfully
correct.  I wonder if the lawsuit was ever filed.

Sun Microsystems: 
Also still in operation, but as Brian Scearce put it recently, they are pretty
much in the business of laying people off - and they're very good at it.  The
acquire and fire and that's their way.

Perpetual Entertainment: 
Dead.  Who the hell hands $20-$30 Million to a couple of morons who have already
lost ten times that figure?  Seriously, it was high comedy from day one.  If you
ever have a chance to work for the clowns who founded this disaster - run.  They
see engineering as a plugin business module that works by magic.

Stormfront Studios:
Dead.  They still owe me $15,000.  You probably don't want to go work for the
Lazarus version of this company either.  I prefer to think in terms of Zombies,
though.

%20090205
permanant link
The United States, a nation in crisis divided by war, racial hatred, spiraling
personal and governmental debts, growing trade imbalance, and an ever growing
dependence upon foreign oil - placing the nation's economy in the hands of OPEC,
rather than holding it as our own destiny.  And I was six years old.

If you have never read or heard Jimmy Carter's speech of July 15, 1979 [1], you
should.  If you just rolled your eyes, swallow your blind conservatism for a few
minutes and you might just learn something for once.

"We can't go on consuming forty percent more energy than we produce.  When we
import oil we are also importing inflation plus unemployment."  I have news for
you.  It's not forty percent anymore.  His talk that day wasn't just precient,
it was also deeply moral - far more so than I have heard from any politician
since.  This is why the U.S. failed to re-elect him.

There is something deeply troubling in that the party of big business is the
same party that the religious conservatives espouse.  The goals of business and
of piety are in conflict.  But it is the way it is, and I'm not going to change
any minds with what I write here today.  This entry is pointing the finger at
more than just the parties.  I'm pointing it at, well, you.

Just stop and think for a moment.  In an election year, a President asks his
people to examine their greed and decide what is best for everyone - in the 
present and for the futue.  And he was defeated in a landslide.

Everyone has heard J.F.K.'s "Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You" quote,
but who takes it seriously?  People vote greed.  People vote for the spread of
the homogenization of their own ideology.  (Think Prop 8.)  Franklin D.
Roosevelt was quite clear on this point: "The moment a mere numerical
superiority ... for their own selfish purpose or advancement, hamper or oppress
the minority ... that moment will mark the failure of our constitutional
system."

It will be 30 years this July since Carter's speech.  He spoke of a failing
confidence in government, a growing self-indulgence, and a "growing doubt about
the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose."  I often
find myself writing blog entries and not knowing where to take them - there is
too much material to cover and so little time to cover it.  (Nobody reads these
things past the second paragraph.) 

So what am I trying to say? 

Your government is huge because you voted for the guy that made it huge.  You
voted for the guy that helped you keep your car and avoid public transit.  You
voted for the guy that built roads instead of trains.  You voted for the larger
military.  You voted for the guy that backed the US Patriot act.  You still vote
for the guy that inflates Homeland Security.  What's more, you failed to act
after the mistake was made.

You voted Carter out of office when he told you to wake up and smell the Carbon
Monoxide.

I actually remember that election.  My mom was in the basement - wearing a
shirt with a huge, pointy collar and a green suit... I think.  On a little tiny
television, I remember some anchor droning on about something that didn't make
sense or seem important to me, but it obviously disturbed my mom.  I think she
was knitting.  Common as the night may have seemed, I wonder how many people
would go back to that day and change their vote.  It seems to me now that every
president since has been part of a single file of men who came from the 
electoral bifurcation of that day.

[1] Jimmy Carter, July 15, 1979

%20090203
permanant link
I dedicated myself to refactoring some code today, got the skeleton written, and
THE VERY INSTANT I was about to hit delete on a big block of code and start
rewriting it, I hear my shuffling iPod start in: "O Fortuna velut Luna statu
variabilis," the opening lines of Carmina Burana.

This is going to be an interesting day.

By the way, if you've ever been interested in what on earth O Fortuna is all
about:  Check out the Libretto

	-rbarry

%20090202
permanant link
Republican 2.0

It was bad enough to see John McCain - a man I held in greater esteem than any
other Republican in the last two decades - flipflop like a landed trout during
his campaign.

Let me return to the respect point for a moment.  I would have considered 
voting for McCain in his first Presidential bid.  If you know me, you now 
undestand the gravity of the situation here.

But he flipflopped.  And we're not talking about a billion for education or a
couple billion for the space program - we're into what Senator Everett Dirksen
called 'real money.'  The bailout programs that have been flying around our
government like so much material in the chimpanzee exhibit were the objects of
love of both parties.  I was shocked to see them in anything remotely
approaching agreement.  Bipartizanship when more than five bucks is on the line
is just unheard of.

McCain's flipflop was from: "No, I do not believe that the American taxpayer
should be on the hook..." to the rhetoric of "But there are literally millions
of people..."  Remember: these two quotes are gapped by less time than I am
consious for a straight run.  And I'm not talking about my grad thesis years,
either.

Seeing a single politician cave is one thing.  No-one in their right mind denies
the kind of money that gets thrown at these guys, and it isn't surprising that
a percentage of them would take, well, a percentage.  Seeing a presidential
candidate flip - well, he probably read his contribution numbers that night and
realized that sticking to his guns on this one was going to mean sticking to
his senator's seat.  So - no surprise.

But the ENTIRE F-ING REPUBLICAN PARTY?!?!?!  These are the same guys that were
standing in one line to hand your money to billionaire CEOs who came flocking to
Washington to stand in the other line.  Where was their voice of dissent then?
If you'd told me in October that the Democrats were going to be fighting the
Republicans to give money to big business, I would have laughed in your face.
It was the only thing the two sides seemed to be agreed upon.

Governments are supposed to spend to curb recession and save to curb inflation.
Unfortunately, that means that you have to operate as close to debt-less, on
average.  I think that a $10,000,000,000,000 (count the zeroes) debt, along with
the kind of economic shrinkage we saw in the last quarter of the Bush
Presidency, is absolutely crippling.  We got here by planning from election to
election.  As long as these assholes are still more concerned about their own
jobs and their wallets than they are about the well-being of 300,000,000 human
beings, we're stuck in this mess.

This country has little left to export but military power.  If we have to 
rebuild our economy on borrowed money, make damn sure that we can see a return
on that investment.  It's your money.  Actually, if you pay US taxes, the US
debt after the Bush Presidency (I always choke on the phrase) is over $30,000.
That's not your family, that's not your houshold, that's YOU.  The slice of the
pie for the average US family (3.14 people) soars over $100,000.

No, really.  The $10 Trillion is gone.  We're talking about upping that ante by
another 10%.  Make sure it's a good one.  Make sure it is done wisely.  Don't 
hand it to CEOs who've already shown they can't be responsible.  Build.  Learn.
Teach.  

TEACH!  By the time the current classes graduate, over 90% of the world's PHDs
will be in Asia.   (Former Singapore ambassador to the UN and government
minister, Professor Kishore Mahbubani)


%20090123
permanant link
I'm suffering from a level of musical lassitude, a condition brought about by a
total emotional investment in music until I hit the age of, say, 32.  Back then
(all of 4 years ago) I was a pretty solid fan of the Clumsy Lovers, and still
really enjoyed Bela Fleck at a deep level... but I'm stretching to find the
next thing for me.

My musical interests as a kid were pretty out of whack.  I could play the 
piano and the Saxophone, but until high school it never became clear that the
point of playing was to actually sound like you knew what the hell you were
doing.  Until that point, I was still playing because it had been a requirement.

Then I discovered Miles Davis.  It turned out that the first CD I ever bought
was a random Miles selection from the shelves of Quimper Sound in Port Townsend,
Washington: Kind of Blue.  I bonded with that album and to a degree with more of
Miles' stuff.  High school continued through Dave Barduhn arrangements and The
Cound Basie Big Band, Ellington, Kenton, Goodman, etc.  (Thanks, Mark!)

College was Pink Floyd, more Jazz, Paul Simon's work of the time.  I discovered
Bela Fleck in there somewhere.

Each of these musicians kept me emotionally committed for a great span of time.
I just can't find anything that seems to fit anymore, though.  The Clumsy
Lovers and Bela Fleck continue to do good work, but other than the technical
accomplishments I see in them, I'm just not invested.

I realize that I often ramble without really saying anything.  Today is one of
those days.  I recently saw the Clumsy Lovers perform again and it was very much
a different band than the one I fell in love with at The Blues Bouquet.  Most
of the members have left and it seems clear that the ones who are left aren't 
really invested in their own music anymore, so I think my brain blew a fuse that
night that said "...then why should I care?"  I went to the show out of habit.
I've always gone when they were in town, but their last two albums have seen
little of my attention and the new one sits in my car unlistened to.

So if anyone out there knows of a band with a firm grip on the single-father-
ex-floydian-saxophonist-engineer demographic, I'd be quite interested to hear.

I did my top ten games list, but that's a different story.  I tried doing top
ten albums, but I am neither John Cusack nor Nick Hornby, so I abandoned the 
effort.  But it did give me appreciation for Rob's dilema when he attempted the
same thing in High Fidelity.

	-rbarry

%20090121
permanant link
Bulk emailing drives me nuts - mostly because its existence hinges on a single
fault in the standard email delivery system - the Simple Mail Transfer
Protocol (SMTP.)  That fault is that you can communicate with a mail server
anywhere in the world and convince it to deliver to your intended target.  It
really is quite easy.  In college, I used to send rebuttals in my religious
debates to rabid believers... with the 'From' line showing God@heaven.com.

In Utah, I was convinced that heaven had to be a .com.  Anyway, I digress.

Anyway, one minor change to the protocol would fix the problem.  I'm not
talking about authentication or any other crypto-heavy solution - just the
simple requirement that you MUST provide a From line and the email address
listed therein MUST be capable of accepting email in order for the message to be
delivered.  It's that simple.

A bulk emailer will do anything to avoid having a valid target in the From
field because they know that they would have to handle an insane number of
bounced messages - as well as people who (and I used to do this) would send
them back the entire text of Monty Python's Holy Grail as punishment for
wasting the time of the recipients.  In other words, if sending 100,000,000
email messages meant that you had to (potentially) handle 100,000,000 queries
in return, you'd probably not be able to send spam so economically.

Your email server probably already requires that an address be provided in
the From line, but this is not sufficient.  As I said, you can use whatever
you like there.  But what if the receiving server were to periodically contact
the sending server and ask "did you really send this message?" ...until such
time as the recipient showed up to read it?

An example, using client.me.com (my workstation, where I read my mail,) 
client.you.com (where you read your email,) mail.me.com (my mail server,) and
mail.you.com (your mail server.)

The servers come up trusting nobody.  You send me mail, and our servers kick
into action.  mail.you.com contacts mail.me.com and hands the message off. 
Until I show up to get that mail, mail.me.com will try to contact mail.you.com,
checking to see if it is still there.  (If mail.you.com is consistently there,
mail.me.com will lengthen the delay between checks.)  When I connect to
mail.me.com to get my mail and read it, I mark your email address as 'trusted'
and my mail server will be much less rabid about validation in the future.

If a spammer sends email to me, their server has to stick around and service all
queries until I check my email.  Otherwise, it will never actually be delivered.
They cannot pretend to be someone I trust.  Why?  Because when mail.me.com
contacts mail.you.com, they will positively establish that the email was not
sent by you.  My server will simply delete the message.

If a source of email were _really_ suspicious, I could take the negotiation one
step further.  In addition to asking mail.suspicious.com if s/he sent an email
message, mail.me.com could send one back - holding delivery of the _received_
email until the verification email message triggered a "did you send this"
query back.  =]


Clearly, there is an issue here: the server that sends the email has to remain
available.  It is an inherent part of the protocol.  If your mail server is
offline 10% of the time, then one tenth of the email it sends will be dropped
by recipients.  I feel that this is an acceptable compromise.  If your mail
server is offline 10% of the time, you have a problem with your ISP and someone
needs to do some serious, professional ass-kicking.

At first blush, there is another drawback: bandwidth.  If receiving a 1k email
address triggers many more communications with the sender to verify that the
message is valid, the data cost of that message increases dramatically.  If the
process works, however, I'd not have received hundreds of megs of junk mail in
the last 3 months.  My total useful payload of email in that time is probably 
a couple of megs at most.  If verification were to increase legitimate traffic
ten-fold, it would still cut overall traffic by double-digit percents.  It
would also mean a LOT less wasted corporate and personal time wasted reading
the crap.

    -rbarry

%20090107
permanant link
Yet another _very_ slightly useful script... I stick these things here because
it's the only way I'll know where to find them.

UPDATE 20090217: It would probably be more useful if people knew what it did.
Anything passed to the script on stdin will have groups of digits broken up with
commas into triplets:

1234567890 => 1,234,567,890

===== comify.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl

while($line = <STDIN>)
{
    $line =~ s/([0-9])([0-9]{3})$/$1,$2/;
    while ($line =~ s/([0-9])([0-9]{3}[^0-9])/$1,$2/) {}
    print $line;
}

%20090106
permanant link
One of the most useful scripts in my cygwin arsenal (other than the one that
titles my bash windows - see below) is a quick .pl I whacked together a few
years ago and saw a happy alteration into the land of brevity earlier today:

===== win (.pl)
    #!/usr/bin/perl
    
    $path = $#ARGV >= 0 ? $ARGV[0] : $ENV{"PWD"};
    
    open (IN, "/usr/bin/cygpath -wp $path|");
    
    $dosdir = <IN>;
    chomp $dosdir;
    $dosdir =~ s/\\/\\\\/g;   
    $syst = system "/C/ronb/bin/win.bat \"$dosdir\"";
    
    if ($syst)
    {
        print "system (/C/ronb/bin/win.bat \"$dosdir\")\n";
        print "syscall returned: $syst\n";
    }
    
===== win.bat
    @cd %1
    @start .
    
When I type:
bash> win

...I get a Windows Explorer window of the current directory.  If I say:

bash> win /C/foo/bar

...I get c:\foo\bar in an Explorer window.  By the way, I do link /C to
/cygdrive/c, /D to /cygdrive/d, etc.  Trust me, it's worth it.

    -rbarry

%20081223
permanant link
I guess the guys at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have not been seeing enough
traffic to the site where they (used to) update the status of the mars rovers on
a daily basis.  In late October, Spirit went into a serious power crisis and
they stopped updating.  Through other sources, I kept up with the news and -
just as everything was coming to a head - we went into solar conjunction.  The
beleaguered little 6-wheeler wasn't going to be able to talk to us for about
two weeks - give or take.

Spirit and Opportunity are one of the greatest engineering accomplishments of
our time, but they aren't things.  People ascribe personality to their cars,
but the Mars Rovers are the equivalent of vehicles that have clocked six to ten
million miles; they were designed for a 90 day stint and have been in near-
continuous operation for thirty times that long.

So Spirit and Opportunity are my team.  No baseball, football, soccer, 
basketball, thanks.  Just give me my Martian Chronicle Sports Page every day
and I'll be happy.  The last couple months have been hairy and I understand that
the blog isn't a high priority, but we - the armchair engineers - need it.

	-rbarry

UPDATE 20090613
    While the updates are currently weekly, at best, they are no longer
    months behind.  Given the current situation (Spirit high-centered on a
    rock in soft soil,) I check the thing for news compulsively.  I'm still
    wishing they were doing updates daily, but I am at least happy that the
    site is seeing some activity again.

%20081218
permanant link
I HATE MY HEWLETT PACKARD LAPTOP

Come to think of it, I hate every Hewlett Packard product I have ever owned. 
Why do I keep buying them, then?  Because they keep reviewing well on Consumer
Reports, which always figures heavily in my purchasing decisions. 

The long-toothed liability of HP products in my life is causing me to question
my loyalty to that otherwise excellent publication.

HP does manage to make it through the paces that CR puts them through, but
there is something about the everyday use of HP products that makes me want to
throttle someone.

Back to my laptop.  From day one, it annoyed the bejezus out of me.  The clips
that hold the device together (when closed) are spring-loaded so they snap into
place, but the design leaves them hanging loose when not engaged.  Every
keystroke causes them to rattle.  I feel like I'm typing on a joy buzzer.  All
the time.  Seriously.  When I use this thing, I run the dishwasher, loud music,
a DVD of random crap - just so I don't have to hear my laptop rattle like one
of Parker's baby toys.

I'm not exagerating.  It's that bad.

Next on my list for this machine.  MASSIVE heat issues.  If I try to run
anything that utilizes the 3d hardware, I have to have the laptop proped up on
a book or other spacer.  If it rests - even on a hard surface - it will
overheat in about ten minutes and do an emergency powerdown.  You don't want
that to happen when you're in the middle of a timed job interview.  I've had it
happen.  I wonder if I have the same crappy NVIDIA chip in this thing that has
caused Apple to repair so many MacBooks?

While I'm on the subject of heat - when the cooling fan kicks up to maximum,
the power drain kills the wireless hardware temporarily.  Now, let's see.  If
I'm running 3D hardware (and it's not for job selection purposes) what might I
be doing?  Playing a game online maybe?  Not the best time for the net
connection to drop, maybe?  Yeah.  It happens.  Constantly.

Still on the subject of heat: you only put this laptop on your lap if you want
your privates medium rare.

Off of heat now, I've owned it for juuuuuust longer than the warranty period -
and the battery suddenly goes from being good for 90 minutes of conservative
use to dying in 10 minutes.  If I power it down completely and unplug it from
the wall, in two days, the battery will not be enough for it to even boot up.

Don't get me started on HP printers, scanners, or monitors.  I've used them
all and God willing, never again.

"The PC - It's Personal Again" is their new motto.  Oh, yeah.  It's personal.

	-rbarry

%20081212
permanant link
Bumping around online today produced an interesting find: an ear training
applet:

    http://www.iwasdoingallright.com/tools/v2_23/ear_training.aspx

This is something I started working on quite some time ago myself and never
finished, so I was glad to see that someone else had tackled the problem.  I'll
have to see if I can run the thing on my phone.

	-rbarry

%20081205
permanant link
I've been doing a bit of reading today, and it turns out that while the
limerick's birth seems to have been benign, it matured into immaturity:
'clean limerick' is a contradiction in terms.

Thinking this through, I imagine groups of (Irish, and I admit I am one)
men (I'm one of those too) hanging out in bars trading limericks.  Sooner
or later, Irish Ale being what it is and having the effect it does, these
gentle(?)men eventually start improvising limericks for the purpose of
tossing insults across the divides between tables.

This is likely to be a rowdy event in any case.  If you happen to be in
North Ireland, the man from Donegal may start:

        A fat drunk from the county of Derry...

...and it's all downhill from there.

The thing is, if you are from Limerick - the city and county - you are
essentially immune to this sort of thing.  Any fourth-beer brawls of
poetic wit in which you may find yourself engaged are dominated not by
your muse, but by your syllabic immunity: I can't think of a single
proper rhyme for Limerick. 

	-rbarry

%20081111
permanant link
Long, long ago, when I was still young and wore - almost without exception -
tshirts that were carried strange and wonderful messages and put me in the
position (or so I have been told) of 'swimming around in...' a 'shirt too big
for the three of us.'

One of those lovely devices bore an obfuscated work of code, forever lost, which
I often wish I still had these years later.  As far as one can be considered the
author of a piece of couture, I was the author of this shirt.  Ever since its
disposal (an ex got hold of it before I could transcribe it,) I've often wished
I'd been more proactive about getting some record of the device.

Last night, I re-wrote said shirt, though I believe much of the art has gone
from this incarnation simply because this can only ever be an ersatz layout.
The original is gone forever, lost in the mists of OCD SOs.

C Your Brain:                     See Basic
int fib(n)                        10  
{                                 20  Back then, I took the time to
    if(n<2) return 1;             30  work out a 4-line version of this.
    return fib(n-1) + fib(n-2);   40
}

Brain Your C on Basic:
int s[999999];
int fib(int i)
{
    _1: int t=0; s[t++] = i; s[t++] = 0; s[t] = 0;
    _10: if (s[t-2] < 2) { s[t-2] = 1; t-=3; }
    _20: if (t < 0) return s[0];
    _30: if (s[t] == 1) goto _60;
    _40: if (s[t] == 2) goto _70;
    _50: s[t++]++; s[t++]=s[t-3]-1; s[t++]=0; s[t]=0; goto _10;
    _60: s[t-1]=s[t+1]; s[t++]++; s[t++]=s[t-3]-2; s[t++]=0; s[t]=0; goto _10;
    _70: s[t-2]=s[t-1]+s[t+1]; t-=3; goto _20;
}

%20081107
permanant link
I'd like to introduce into the lexicon:

MMOment: em-em-OHM-ent (n) When connected to a Massively Multiplayer Online
(MMO) system, the actual period of time that follows a delaying statement like,
"Just a moment, I need a beer."  An MMOment can be a time interval of exactly
the time it takes to get a beer from the fridge or go to the bathroom, but it
may extend - for the gifted MMOmenteer - to the length of time it takes to run
to the supermarket after a keg and get a high colonic.

	-rbarry

%20081027
permanant link
The fantastic element that explains the appeal of games to many developers is
neither the fire-breathing monsters nor the milky-skinned, semi-clad sirens;
it is the experience of carrying out a task from start to finish without any
change in the user requirements.

	-Thomas L. Holaday

%20081024
permanant link
I got myself a schitzophrenia alert dog.  Whenever I see him, I know I'm having
an episode. 

	-rbarry

It's one of those I-really-*&(ing-hate AT&T days.  I have no idea how many 
purveyors of iPhones I asked how much difference it would make to my bill if
I switched.  I was told, unequivocably, every time, without exception, that the
only difference would be the $30 data charge per month.

I just looked at my bank account.  My bill hasn't increased by thirty bucks.  It
has doubled.  Now I'm going to have to spend an entire day on the phone with the
bastards only to be told that there's some charge that they don't have to tell
me about when I sign up.

	-rbarry

%20081021
permanant link
As I slowly lose my hair, it is becoming more and more difficult to manage.
There was a point in my life where I had shoulderblade-length hair (where was
my camera in those days?)  Back then, I would get up - maybe pull a brush
through it, and be off to class in blissful ignorance of the days to come.

I seem to be asymptotically approaching a day when I will have but a single hair
remaining to me, but on that day I will look like some mutated bastard child of
Don King or Albert Einstein and Telly Savalas.

	-rbarry

%20081016
permanant link
Of course, the Java buzz has been present since I was an undergraduate student,
but being in the games industry I have been so happily insulated from it that
the buzz has always maintained such a low signal-to-noise ratio in my attention
that I never really registered it.

Frankly, the only thing I ever use java for is when I write something that I
want to put on my website where the load involved in hosting the required CPU
cycles would be prohibitive, so I whack it together in Java and push it out the
door.  I think I have only one surviving project like that, and I'm here to
tell you, Sudoku puzzle creators are a pain in the ass to debug in any
language.  (As I type this, Internet Explorer has completely frozen up on me
trying to run the thing.  Firefox is fine.)

But Java enjoys a growing popularity.  I've never understood it, really, though
some of the more recent developments are really quite interesting.  But I will
say this: if Java ever does take over the world (no language ever will, but for
the sake of the next wishful thought, we'll enter the Land of Make Believe)
then I'll never have to look at another Gawd-awful line of template code again
as long as I live.

Templates are the realm of the worst code I have ever seen.  A company I used
to work for would require multiple inheritance - 10-20 typenames wide and 2-3
deep - to create a single object.  Whoever came up with that crap was never
an engineer, they were just a programmer.  And a laughable one at that.  He
developed his - for a lack of a better term - "skill" by inflicting his 
experimental contraptions upon a professional world.  He cost that company 
ten to fifty times what they paid him.

I've decided that we teach programming the wrong way around.  We hand people a
computer and have them write their own code for years on end before they ever
have to really grok - at a fundamental level - any appreciable body of code
that was written by a stranger.  We give budding engineers years to develop
their habits and foibles... then turn them loose upon the world.

It seems that the way to go would be to teach software engineering, the art of
coding, as a passive art for a while.  Learning by doing imprints syntax,
semmantics, and algorithms, but it does not teach style.  More importantly, it
does not teach one speck of how to write readable, flexible, extensible code.

A good software solution is like any invention, in that when you see it laid
out before you the idea is obvious.  Your mind skips over it and only ends up
focusing on that which requires your undivided attention to decypher.  By
letting novice coders run amok in their own little protected worlds, writing
code that only they will ever read, and failing to expose them to some serious
crap, some software bereft of thought, we set them up for failure in
professional life.

Think about it.  How many programmers do you know that fell out of the faith
after their first job?  There must be something fundamentally different between
the education they received - at great expense - and the professional life.  For
me, the largest difference was simply... I never, ever, ever, had to look at a 
large body of code, or even a small body of bad code.... until I was a 
professional.

I still see this in every junior programmer I meet.  I see it in every proud,
"self-taught" hacker I bump into.

We don't ask English majors to start writing their novel until they've read,
digested, disected, analyzed, and absorbed hundreds or thousands of authors.
It is so obvious that you wouldn't do it any other way that it would be
ludicrous for me to even suggest that authorship should come before readership,
so why on earth do we take this path with programmers?

Software is not getting smaller, it is not getting simpler, languages are not
going to minimize in any conceivable future.  The shock factor of leaving 4-7
years of personal projects and getting dumped into a 100 man-year swamp isn't
going to get any more pleasant.  If we want another generation of bit-heads,
this is a problem that must be addressed.

	-rbarry

%20081009
permanant link
Conversing with Brian Carver about a wedding I will attend this weekend, I
mentioned that "one of the brides is pregnant."  

Now, Brian lives in - and has lived in - Utah most of his life, so his next
question was totally reasonable.  But I missed its subtlety: "Is this a Utah
wedding?"

I thought he was being glib about the pregnant bride - as such things are not
uncommon in Utah.  I have attended many shotgun weddings there.  I pointed out
the phrase "one of the BRIDES" again and he replied so as to make clear the fact
that the difference between a multiple-brides wedding in Utah and a multiple-
brides wedding in California is the presence or absence of a groom.

	-rbarry

%20081006
permanant link
As I work to update the photo browser to something more modern, it occurs to me
that software has reached a new stage in its lifecycle - that of long-term
maintenance of the personal project.  I have software that I wrote in the 90s
that still kicks around and gets my occasional glance, but I don't use it on
any sort of regular basis.  Bugs in these things are simply not a concern.

However, the photo browser has had outstanding feature requests for well, years.
I've quietly ignored a few desires of my own for a number of reasons.  First and
foremost - uploading data is a process that requires direct access to the 
system.  You have to copy the files to foodini.org via a secure copy operation,
which requires a username and password.  After that, thumbnails are manually
generated by way of a script that hasn't changed since.... wow.  July of 2004.
Editing database entries to add keywords is another process, and requires a bit
of specialized knowledge.  I also have a specific request from no fewer than 
3 sources that has been rotting in the background simply because the database
mechanism I created for this project wouldn't be happy to have it shoehorned in.

I could, of course, go through and make the changes.  It would take a lot
less time than the current undertaking - a Ruby On Rails project - but the whole
process has me thinking about what happens 4 more years down the road.  If I'm 
happy with what I have, I'll ignore it.  If I'm not?

RoR is far more complex than the current solution.  The current browser simply
uses perl to process forms, hit the database, and generate html.  It couldn't be
simpler - barring the 'specific request' listed above that would touch almost
every part of the thing in ways that would most likely break lots of stuff I
don't want broken.

So why RoR?  In 4 years, I'll fill you in on the mistake.

	-rbarry

%20080926
permanant link
So why on earth would my blog be a completely featureless black page with a 
mono-spaced font, stretching on into infinity?

As is stated briefly at the top of the page, this thing got its start back in
about '97 - many years sooner, depending upon how you look at it.  The first
incarnations of this blog would have been first seen on a VT-100 terminal
emulator.  If you happened to be sitting in the Agricultural Science Computer
Lab, you might have been using an actual VT-100.  Amber screen and all.

In fact, if you go to the very first posts, some of them were rescued from
tricky little terminal control-code animations that some of us were doing to
take advantage of exactly those terminals.  I won't go into detail here, I'm
waxing nostalgic more than making any real point.

So today, I briefly switched the entire blog over to amber.  I took one look
and swapped it right back.  Maybe I'll try again later if I can find a font
that looks a little more deserving than courrier.  Until then, you only have
to suffer through it for this one post.

	-rbarry

%20080925
permanant link
So McCain is suspending his campaign today, stating that he has to focus on
the $700,000,000,000 payout to people who can't take the fall for their own
poor investment choices.  This means that he won't be showing up for the debate
on Friday.

No surprise.  In an actual debate, he'd have to answer for the fact that he
has consistently voted to protect exactly the practices that got us in this
mess in the first place.  [S. 256, 3/03/05] [S.2338, 12/14/07]
[S.1928, 11/21/03] [S. 2452, 12/12/07] 

Guess who has been voting against him at every opportunity.

$700,000,000,000 is roughly $10,000 for every household in the United States.
That money will end up in the pockets of the investors in those companies - 
by way of their eventual ability to sell their current stake.  This is what
GWB's trickle-down economy has gotten us:  The rich make high-stakes bets, take
home the rewards while they are profitable, and unload the losses on taxpayers
when their luck changes.

	-rbarry

UPDATE 20081021:
	Ever see a British debate?  Hell - ya ever see the PM addressing the MPs?
	It's like a bloodbath.  Fur and blood flying in all directions.  Ripe for
	the beating and our debate format provides such a polite environment that
	you never get to know how much fight is in the dogs.

	"Mr. Holyfield, you now have one minute in which to address Mr. Tyson's
	position on hearing loss."

%20080923
permanant link
I turned 13 on Friday the 13th.  My 21st birthday was a Fibonacci date.

	-rbarry

%20080922
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So two retired San Franciscians sit in Golden Gate Park, admiring the scenery
and talking about their decades of BART ridership.  The first says to his
friend, "Ahhhh....."

The second turns to him and replies, "Did you say something?"

"What?"

"Huh?"

"Sorry, my batteries are dead.  You'll have to speak up."

-----
  I usually wear industrial ear protection on BART - not earplugs, but the
  earmuffs you wear when you use power tools 8 hours per day.  For complicated
  reasons, I had to leave them at home today.  It's 11:30am and my ears are
  still ringing.  BART sustains more than 95 decibels in many tunnels,
  and I've read that it gets up above 120 in the bay tunnel and the South
  San Francisco-to-San Bruno tunnel.  If anyone owns a good dB meter, I'd like
  to verify this.

	-rbarry

%20080919
permanant link
"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.  Instead of
altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their
views... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts
that needs altering."  --Doctor Who, The Face of Evil (Tom Baker)

%20080905
permanant link
It is not my intent to turn this into a Ruby on Rails blog (though by including
the phrase "Ruby on Rails blog" I have almost assured a major spike in Google
Goggles here,) but it has come to pass that I now walk through the valley of the
shadow of this particular beast on a daily basis, so it is at the fore of my 
brain.  (I use the word "fore" here in the golf sense: I consider Ruby on Rails
to be more of a divot in my psyche than an actual skillset.  =] )  If that last
sentence made any sense to you at all, you're one up on me.

Anyway, one of the odd things that I have found about reflective languages is
the incredible utility available from language constructs that tell you what the
hell your environment looks like.  A good debugger will often provide this, but
I use Aptana, so I'm screwed.  The point is, if you've been Rail(s)roaded, you
will like having access to: 

    self.class.class_variables
    self.instance_variables
    self.methods

I usually use these in conjunction with some prettying-up:

    self.class.class_variables.join("<br />")

etc...

    -rbarry

%20080903
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Since there seems to be little information on how to do it, I would like to
present (actually, there's nothing philanthropic about the documentation
gesture here - I just know for a fact that anywhere that I write this down will
get it lost so I'd better put it here) a solution for uploading files through
the form_for module of Ruby on Rails.

Most of the solutions I've seen are for more advanced users than I, so I'll take
this right from the beginning.

I needed to be able to upload an asset to my RoR application.  Most of my
models, views, and controllers were created using the script/generate.  So the
'asset' view that the 'script/generate scaffold' created looked something like:

<h1>New asset</h1>
<% form_for(@asset) do |f| %>
  <% f.error_messages %>

  <p>
    <%= f.label :smURL %><br />
    <%= f.text_field :smURL %>
  </p>

  ...etc...

I needed two bits in the view, the first was to set up the form to do multipart
encoding.  I replace the form_for line with:

<% form_for(@asset, :html => {:multipart => true}) do |f| %>

...and the new entry for the upload browser:

  <p>
      <%= f.file_field :raw_asset %>
  </p>

That's it.  If you cram that into your view, you'll see the upload box.  Now, on
to the controller.  I didn't change anything at all here, but it is worth noting
that, through a convoluted mess of ruby that I'm not about to grok in this
decade, the first line of the create action,

  @asset = Asset.new(params[:asset])

... goes looking for a method called Asset.raw_asset=.  (As a side note, I hate
trying to put technical tokens into English.  It rubs me the wrong way to follow
an = (which is, in turn, a part of the raw_asset method name) with a period.  I
also seem to have a habit of overusing parentheses.)  Anyway, the place to 
handle this is in your model.  In my case, in asset.rb:

def raw_asset=(arg)
    original_filename = arg.original_filename
    data = arg.read

    #now do whatever you like.  The name of the file on the user's machine is
    #in original_filename and the contents of the file is in data.
end

Seems simple enough, but googling was not as productive as one would expect for
simple a task.

    -rbarry

%20080828
permanant link
As I write this, I have a couple facilities guys soldering water pipe in the
ceiling just a few feet away.  My attempt to concentrate with the other power
equipment that has been running all morning has been interesting enough, but now
the situation has been elevated from a distraction of simple decibels to one of
a certain occupational curiousity.

As one gentleman stands five feet up on a ladder with a blowtorch, applying
solder to new joints of pipe, the other stands on the floor holding a garbage
can - a plastic garbage can - as close to the work as he can strectch.  In other
words, his solder catcher is about four feet from the work in question.  He is
wearing no goggles, no gloves, no bib and I'm just imagining the glob of liquid
metal that finds its way past (or through) the only safety measure he has at his
disposal.  Que the pun-related groans. 

    -rbarry

%20080821
permanant link
I received a message from "Google People Analytics" today - which my email
client abbreviated by lopping off the last 5 letters.

  -rbarry

%20080816
permanant link
If you're actually going to try this, you're going to need to be capable of
doing some customization.  I have done everything I can to make this thing work
for every bash prompt out there, but that dream has pushed me through a dozen
or more (I'm not kidding!) iterations.  You are about to see a serious hack.  If
you find yourself thinking, "why didn't he do it this way?  It would have been
so much simpler."  It's because I did try it that way and one configuration or
another puked on it.

                        ==============================

I spend a lot of time in bash.  For the uninitiated, bash is a system that
you'll find on most unix machines and, thankfully, some windows and every
Mac out there.  At first blush, it's no more than a command-line interface,
and therefore off the radar of most users who see such things as an anachronism
they'd rather forget.

I do nearly everything in bash.  I READ MY EMAIL FROM A COMMAND LINE, which is
why I eschew marked-up email.  I navigate directories, edit files, engage in my
daily source code checkout and delivery, search for files, search inside files,
reboot my machine, and even occasionally browse web pages from the command line.
bash is the heart and soul of my digital existence.

The trouble is that I tend to have about 6 bash windows open at a time.  At
work today, I had one running a web server, another fiddling with my database,
a third, fourth, and fifth editing different files, while a sixth was grinding
away through my machine trying to record the names of every file on the system.
Why?  Because it's handy to be able to search through such an archive if you
want to know where to find an object by filename.

When you do this, you end up with lots of windows in your control bar named
simply, "bash."  This is fine if you only have one of them, but its agony when
you have 6 or more.... and two dozen other things going on.  I have three
monitors under the simultaneous command of one keyboard/mouse pair and I still
feel the need for more.  Each of those windows has several bash terminals open.

So I've plunked this together.  First, place these lines in your
.bash_profile:

  export PROMPT_COMMAND='export TRIM=`~/bin/trim.pl`'
  export PS1="\[\e]0;\$TRIM\a\]\$TRIM> "
  trap 'CMD=`history|~/bin/hist.pl`;echo -en "\e]0;$TRIM> $CMD\007"' DEBUG

I went through and wrote dozens of paragraphs on how this all works and exactly
why it is set up the way it is, but you're not really interested.  Trust me. 
There is an entire chapter of a book in why I did "CMD=`...`; echo..." on that
third line.  Many people (including bluehost, where my other domain is hosted)
are still using and old version of bash with major bugs in how it handles traps,
so we're stuck with this.  You can remove the CMD and replace it with
$BASH_COMMAND if you are current on your bash version and feel like doing the
research.

Anyway, the first script I use is here.  It creates a nice prompt that contains
your machine name and directory, chopped down to a reasonable length:

                        ============trim.pl===========
  #!/usr/bin/perl

  #It seems that my cygwin box doesn't have HOSTNAME available in the 
  #environment - at least not to scripts - so I'm getting it elsewhere.
  open (IN, "/usr/bin/hostname|");
  $hostname = <IN>;
  close (IN);
  $hostname =~ /^([A-Za-z0-9-]*)/;
  $host_short = $1;
  
  $preamble = "..." if (length($ENV{"PWD"})>37);
  
  $ENV{"PWD"} =~ /(.{1,37}$)/;
  $path_short = $1;
  
  print "$host_short: $preamble$path_short";

                        ==============================

There's a warning at the top of this blog post that you should read now before
you start asking stupid questions like, "Why didn't you just use the HOSTNAME
environment variable via @ENV?"  Simple:  Because that doesn't work for all the
systems I tried it on.  

Now for the really cool bit.  Remember line 3 of the .bash_profile addition?

  trap 'CMD=`history|~/bin/hist.pl`;echo -en "\e]0;$TRIM> $CMD\007"' DEBUG

It's dumping the trim.pl script output in the same container as before, printing
to both the command prompt and the window title, but this time it's adding the
command that you just typed!  This is why you don't want to be doing all
of this in your .bashrc: any script you run (on my machine, man is one of them)
will trigger this thing on every line.  man's output gets seriously garbled by
what we're doing here.  We're not exactly playing nice with the terminal.

To grab the command you just typed, we take the bash's history and dice it up a
bit:

                        ===========hist.pl============
#!/usr/bin/perl

while (<STDIN>)
{
        $line = $_
}

chomp $line;
$line =~ /^.{27}(.*)/;
print $1;
                        ==============================

So now, I have a bazillion windows going and they say things like:

  castro: /home/ronb blog
  Ron-D630: /C/ronb/rails/depot script/server
  Ron-D630: /C/ronb/rails/depot mysql -u ron -p
  Ron-D630: /C/ronb/rails/depot find . > /C/ronb/system.map
  Ron-D630: /C/ronb/rails/depot vi app/views/cart.html.erb
  Ron-D630: /C/perforce/depot/ p4 protect
  Ron-D630: /C/perforce/depot/ p4 sync -f
  Ron-D630: /C/perforce/depot/

From the happy little bar at the bottom of the screen, I can now tell which is
which at a moment's glance.  And because we've set PS1, as soon as a command
finishes executing, the command name is replaced by just the output of trim.pl
again.

	-rbarry

UPDATE (same day):
  This stuff (the .bash_profile entries) laid all kinds of hell on me when I
  tried it in my .bashrc.  Your .bashrc is executed by non-interactive scripts
  whenever you invoke bash as a language.  I hit this when I was trying to use
  man.  All sorts of garbage (the complete text of my .bashrc, plus escape
  characters) showed up at the top of the man page.  I would suggest testing
  this gem with a quick 'man man' invocation at the command line once you get
  it all together.

  I guess it's time for me to pull the custom garbage out of my .bashrc and put
  it where it belongs...

  Incedentally, I found myself typing 'man trap' at one point in this process.

%20080806
permanant link
If I'm convicted of using a conjunction, will I get a shorter sentence?

	-rbarry

%20080801
permanant link
I'm finding that the common thread for anyone who attempts to get Ruby on Rails
going on a Windows box is that the mysql lib for ruby doesn't build.  By this I
mean that descriptions of the problem are nearly everywhere.  The problem would
be almost trivial to detect at run-time, offering a perfect opportunity to tell
the user where to find a solution.

Granted, the solution varies from configuration to configuration, but it seems
that the solution has yet to be splattered across the net for the poor soul who
tries to setup [sic] MySQL on Win using gem under cygwin - and it's the cygwin
bit that seems to be the headache - is in for a long run.

I'm hoping that my current efforts will close this issue and I'll be able to 
post my solution here so the next unfortunate slob to run into it will have a
way out...

I attempted the local equivalent of:
  gem install mysql -- \
    --with-mysql-dir=/sw/bin/mysql \
    --with-mysql-include=/sw/include/mysql \
    --with-mysql-lib=/sw/lib/mysql \
    --with-mysql-config=/sw/bin/mysql_config

...but that only got me the same errors, dumped into the mkmf.log (in 
/cygdrive/c/cygwin/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.7,) as well as a few new ones:
conftest.c: In function 't':
conftest.c:3: error: `mysql_query' undeclared (first use in this function)

UPDATE 20080801:
I found a blurb on blogspot that seems to attack the some problem I'm
having here.  Quoting and annotating his solution, with shell commands in bash:
  * Add devel -> make + ruby ? gcc ? subversion modules from cygwin
    installation
  * Download gems tgz install package from Ruby Gems download home
  * tar xzvf rubygems-1.0.x.tgz
  * cd rubygems-1.0.x
  * unset RUBYOPT (before installing gems, clear RUBYOPT=rubygems)
  * ruby setup.rb
  * gem install rails --include-dependencies
    (Ron Barry: the --include-dependencies is the default, I believe)
  * Download mysql source tar.gz file from MySQL download page
    (Ron Barry: the link on his page may go sour, so the way to get there is
     probably best found here.  You're after the
     link under MySQL 5.0 Communiter Server - Generally Available (GA) Release,
     where it simply says "Source."  You want the Windows Source found on the
     page this will get you to.)
  * tar xzvf mysql-5.0.45.tar.gz 
    (Ron Barry: well, extract it however you need to to get your stuff.)
  * cd mysql-5.0.45
    (Ron Barry: again, however you get there is your problem.)
  * ./configure
  * make install (or to do it faster, just make install under sub directories
    libmysql and include.)
    (Ron Barry: I needed mysql anyway, so I built the whole thing.  Trust
     this guy.  If you don't need to build MySQL in its entirety, don't.  It
     takes forever.)
  * gem install mysql
    (Ron Barry: It's this bit that was giving me so much hell before.
     and this is the important bit: it's the installer of MySQL that 
     will kill you.  You really, really, really need to do your own build of
     mysql.  If you need the GUI tools, I've no idea where you go next.  I'll
     probably update that bit later.)
  * Change the database server from localhost to 127.0.0.1 in the database.yml
    of your rails app.
  * Install ImageMagick, libmagick-devel, XFree86-lib-compat, xorg-x11-devel,
    libz2-devel module from cygwin installation file
    (Ron Barry: this step is to support the RMagick gem that the original
     author needed.  I include it for completeness.)
  * gem install RMagick
  * ruby script/server. voila!
    (Ron Barry: in other words, done.)

UPDATE 20080805:
  If you've been doing the above, you're likely to be interested in the
  following tidbit:  it isn't worth using the version of mysql that you built in
  the above steps.  I've done an uninstall of mine - keeping it around only long
  enough to build the mysql gem.  I installed the windows version of the db with
  exactly the same version number and have been doing alright with it, though 
  the mysql gem will go looking for database connection info in /tmp/mysql.sock,
  instead of wherever the windows installation provides it.  Keep your eyes on
  this blog entry for the fix when I hit it.

    -rbarry

%20080731
permanant link
So a friend pointed me at pandora.com today - a site where, based upon your
stated musical preferences, you are given their best guesses as to what you
might want to hear.

After having tried a couple different starting points, I created a 'New Station'
with 'Weird Al' Yankovic.  It started by playing an Al tune, moved to 'The
Ninjas' by the Barenaked Ladies.  Somehow, within a few more tunes, I get 
'Another Brick in The Wall, Part 2' from Pink Floyd's Echoes.  When I hit the 
'Why did you play this song' link, it says:

  Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it
  features electric rock instrumentation, repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive
  vamping, minor key tonality and an electric guitar solo.

I'm not being critical.  It was just a touch of a shock.

	-rbarry

%20080730
permanant link
Cubed chicken, browned in the juices of a previous chicken.  Add about a half
cup of yogurt, (AGH!  My net connection is so slow, I'm about 80 chars behind
my typing - I still see a blank where yogurt should be) and about a half cup of
sweet red pepper jelly, a cup of crushied pineapple - maybe more.  Garlic and,
in my case the other evening, a dollop of curry mustard.  Simmer to a thick
consitency.  Holy cow.  This one goes on the restaurant menu.

	-rbarry

%20080729
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#######################bogosort.rb######################
#!/usr/bin/ruby

$n = 7
$comps = 0
$sorts = 1000

def index(max)
    if max==0 then
        return 0
    end
    if max==1 then
        return 1
    end
    return rand(max)
end

def randomize(list)
    $n.times do |i|
        $n.times do |j|
            if (rand(2) == 0) then
                list[i], list[j] = list[j], list[i]
            end
        end
    end
end

def checksort(list)
    (list.size-1).times do |i|
        $comps += 1
        if list[i] > list[i+1] then
            return false
        end
    end
    return true
end

def bogosort(list)
    loop do
        randomize(list)
        break if checksort(list)
    end
end


list = []
$n.times do |i|
    list.push(i)
end

$sorts.times do |sort|
    puts "sort #{sort}:  " + ($comps.to_f/(sort+1).to_f).to_s
    bogosort(list)
end

420 seconds.

%20080728
permanant link
I know that Python was named _after_ Monty Python, but are you sure that it
wasn't written by them as well?  - Joshua Dudley, Playfirst Co-Worker

%20080725
permanant link
I've decided that python, used as a manipulator of large collections of files
under DOS, is less of a scripting language and more of a sparring partner. 

    -rbarry

(I spend about half my time getting backslashes to be handled correctly.)

%20080718
permanant link
My apartment complex left a notice in my doorjamb recently that pointed out that
they'd not received the pet rent this month and that they needed it.

This is fine and hunkey-dorey, but there was an odd qualifier: in order to
ensure that funds clear their account before some deadline or another, that the
payment had to be in the form of cashier's check or money order and that they
would need said payment within two days.

So I had to find time to get to the bank, which meant that they received the
cashier's check barely within the 48-hour deadline.

Had they simply accepted a check, I could have written it and dropped in in the
slot at the office within minutes and they would have had their funds a day
earlier.

Weird.  Though, Archstone is proving to be weird in many, many ways.

	-rbarry

%20080715
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At 10:30 this morning, my boss got up from his desk, went to the fridge, brought
back an alcoholic beverage, and placed it on my desk.  That's the kind of week
it's been and it's only Tuesday. 

	-rbarry

I keep needing, in addition to maps.google.com, an edition that allows me to
choose a date and get the same behavior.  For instance, if you need a current
map, maps.google rocks.  If you're in need of something more intra-world-war,
you're up a crick.  I'm not asking for a major level of detail here - I don't
need turn-by-turn directions from, say, Constantinople to Tsaritsyn (a journey
whose directions should probably indicate that you're in for a LONG trip,) but
even the major political borders and major cities would be nice.

	-rbarry

Brand-new juggling bags are about eight bucks apiece and they aren't nice and
floppy like a beat-up set of mush bags are.  Sitting in the train station with
absolutely nothing to do and $40 in bags in my laptop case and I can't do a
damn thing - simply because you can't stand far enough from the rail to prevent
a bag from giving it's all for the sake of boredom.

	-rbarry

%20080713
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Parker's video game time is limited, but he does get some exposure.  His
favorites are Super Mario Galaxy and Boom Blox.  I went looking for him in his
room a few minutes ago and he was throwing balls at stacks of building blocks
in his room.  I asked him if he was playing Boom Blox and he replied, "Yes.
But I'm not playing it on a real T.V., I'm playing it on a pretend T.V."

Reality.  What a concept.

	-rbarry

%20080707
permanant link
I'll be attending a funeral in Denver in a couple of days, which meant calling
the airlines to talk to customer service reps about what the industry calls a
"Bereavement Fare."  I gather that this is supposed to be a discount for short
notice travel.

United Airlines' idea of a discount was to quote me the gross national product
of a small country.  When I explained that it was 'quite a bit' more than I had
been offered by other airlines, they told me that their special rate included
the ability to cancel or change plans at any time with no penalties.

If not a penalty, what would you call the additional three figures they were
trying to charge me?

Why do we bother teaching ethics to MBAs?

	-rbarry

%20080706
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The first commandment of password enforcement:
	
	Thou shalt not disallow characters.

If there is one thing that will guarantee that someone is going to write their
password down, it's enforcing stupid rules about what they can and cannot use
for a password.  Requiring a mix of case, a mix of characters, numbers, and
symbols is fine.

The second commandment of password enforcement:

	Thou shalt not limit password length.

You're only computing a checksum anyway, right?  If I find a 34-character
password (my current one is about 14, but my record is 23) easier to remember
than the 14 characters you limit me to (you know who you are) than you are only
encouraging your users to write down their passwords or worse - tie up your 
support staff with calls about forgotten passwords.

I won't elevate this one to a commandment, but I'll share the curiosity.  I once
had a pasword rejected because the organization in question thought that 
"Sniggerfardimungus Lives in a Cream Cheese Bagel" contained an offensive
substring.  It does.  Who cares?

	-rbarry

%20080703
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It would be REALLY nice to have a tool that ran behind bash that, upon request,
would list all the directories you've visited recently, sorting them by any
number of criteria.  I only mention this here because I don't have a better
place to write this down right now....

	-rbarry

%20080621
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XPrize for a moon robot.  $25 mil on the line.  Put a few hundred pounds on top
of a rocket with enough stored energy to get it (and a fraction of your fuel and
vehicle) there.  Don't forget to do it cheap.  Does it strike anyone else as
dangerous to be encouraging this kind of backyard experimentation?  All it's
going to take is one idiot blowing up his neighbor's bathroom with an experiment
gone off-course to put the whole private-sector space flight thing on permanant
(federally mandated) hold.

It took the US government the better part of a decade to get from 'go' to 
Neil Armstrong.  I don't care who you are, $25Mil isn't going to get anyone to
the moon before 2012.  I'll chalk this one up to Google going after a bit of
free advertising through social irresponsibility.

	-rbarry

This has been one of those one-thing-after-another days, so.... meh.

%20080616
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Keeping Parker entertained and stimulated on weekends isn't the easiest thing,
sometimes.  Especially over the last few months that have been a constant race
of packing, unpacking, packing, unpacking, and very literally - wading in
sewage.  Keeping him happy and out of trouble can be difficult. 

Despite the massive collection of still-packed boxes occupying nearly every inch
of space at the new apartment, I took Parker to the RoboGames over the
weekend.  I figured there'd be enough there to keep him occupied for an hour or
two, then we'd have to call it quits and go elsewhere.  Nope.  We didn't leave
until the bots stopped ripping each others' guts out.

If you ever get the chance to see this stuff in person, I highly recommend it.
There is a certain shock that you don't get when you see it on television - the
sight of a 50kg robot flying 6 meters through the air to slam into a massive
wall of lexan.  Between the sounds, the flamethrowers, the buzz-saws, the lawn-
mower blades, the exploding battery packs, and the bits of robots flying in all
directions, it's completely unlike anything else you've ever seen.  It's like a
mechanical episode of Jerry Springer.

Anyway, everyone that Parker has talked to about it since has been told about
his visit to the 'robot store' and the robots falling apart and the piece of
robot wheel that they gave him after one of the bouts.  Only he's not quite that
clear about his descriptions with it.  He left his mother and my parents going,
"wha?"

	-rbarry

%20080613
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"Testing the fucking profanity filter..."  - seen today on website with a
presumably broken profanity filter.

AT&T is not my favorite organization.  Of the half-dozen or more different
accounts I've held with them, I don't think I've ever had a happy customer
experience with them, and last night was no different.

First, outsourced tech support.  I will give a certain small level of credit to
"Dominique" for her truly un-American customer support attitude.  In other
words, she was patient and friendly.  This, however is the only benefit that an
outsourced service provides for a customer.  It is, unfortunately, heavily 
overbalanced by the horrific audio quality of the call, the abysmal echo of my
own voice shooting back at me 1.0-1.5 seconds after I say something, and the
unbelievable lag between question and answer.  Guys, VOIP is a bad idea when
you have a ping time of > .5 sec.

It's not the customer service issues that had me scraping my jaw off the floor
last night.  I'm only going to touch on a minor fraction of the issues from
the call, otherwise I wouldn't even expect a man in solitary confinement to be
able to get through this entire essay.

The problem started when I looked at the IP settings they gave me when my 
router connected.  My subnet mask was 255.255.255.255 (!!!!!) and my IP address
and my default gateway had the same address.

Now, somehow AT&T has this all rigged up so that their routing can handle the
weirdness.  My computer wants to send a packet and the subnet mask tells it that
it must go out via the gateway, so it happily addresses a packet to the gateway
with the same IP address in the Source IP field.  Somehow, a response gets back
to me:  every attempt to communicate with the outside world gets me a DNS hit
to the same machine in AT&T's network.

I can't even use my own DNS because my traffic is being blocked - I can't even
ping my venerable 129.123.1.1.  (Without fail, every time I need to now if I
have a live connection, there's no place like cc.usu.edu.  It's where I ping
when I don't trust my DNS and want to know if I'm connected.)  I received no
response.

So I fire up a browser.  I figured that if they were pulling this garbage, all
would be explained through that canonical internet interface.

Sure enough, I get a page telling me that 'there is something wrong with your
connection' (duh) and that I would have to call a 24 hour support line.

To make a long story short, in order to update the software on the AT&T modem,
I had to expose my computer directly to network traffic with no firewalling in
place... for about an hour.  Constant failures of their servers, dependencies
upon popups, an inability to load with cookies from previous sessions, and their
constant insistence that they do not support any configuration except an 
unprotected connection directly to the untrusted network... made for an
exasperating experience.

I would bet that AT&T doesn't operate their own networks with the same level of
obtuse ignorance that they insist that their customers do.  God bless the
hypocrites.

For those of you who are still with me, please note that this is my second major
rant about the same company - on entirely different issues and services - in
less than a week.

	-rbarry

%20080611
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Those who know me know that I am a morning person in much the same way that I'm
likely to announce support for a Republican Presidential candidate.  So you'll
understand that I am not technically alive before 7 a.m., frequently much later,
and mornings are not the time to be annoying me.  Especially not at 5:00 am,
thank you very much, AT&T.

I use my cell phone as my alarm clock, which has provided a certain consistency
over the last few weeks of hotels and residency establishments.  My ability to 
sleep through anything at all means that I have the volume on the thing set to
the maximum level.  When it started blaring at about five minutes after five in
the morning, it took me a minute to come to terms with what the hotel clock was
trying to tell me.  I knew I hadn't mis-set the alarm, so why the hell was it
(literally) beeping an S.O.S. at me?

I hit the end button - something I can do with my eyes closed - and was out cold
within seconds.  Less than a minute later it happened again.  As I hit the end
button this time, it dawned on me that S.O.S. was the sound my phone makes when
a text message arrives.  Still groggy, the beeping started again and this time,
it brought me fully awake.  Whoever was trying to get ahold of me at five in the
morning must have a damn good reason.

It amazes me sometimes how quickly the brain can scan complete ideas.  In the
time that it took me to grab the phone from the bedside table, thoughts of my
son in an accident, of one of my east-coast friends in trouble, or other terrors
that I'm not going to share to the public - managed to claw greedily for my
limited attention.

Wide awake now, I stare in disbelief at my phone:

	"Free ATT msg: ..."
	"Free ATT msg: ..."
	"FREE MESSAGE ..."

What was so important to AT&T that they had to destroy the next two hours of 
sleep for me and leave me pacing an empty hotel room?  They wanted to confirm
that I'd changed my address, deleted my old one, and changed my password.  In
that order.

As soon as the iPhone is available through Verizon, I'm ditching these morons.
Anyone know if you can still free the device from ATT-dedication?

	-rbarry

%20080605
permanant link
Back on to the Java thing again...

nudoku.java:639: incompatible types
found   : int
required: boolean
          if (mask | repeatOfRows)
                   ^
1 error

You're going to have to take my word for it that mask and repeatOfRows are both
ints.  If you know a thing or two about Java, and especially if you come from a
C/++ background, you have seen this error so many times that you know what it
means - even if the authors of the compiler couldn't get their head around the
problem well enough to actually help you with it.

Wasn't Java supposed to be this great teaching language?  Such an assertion
would require far better reporting of errors than this.

If you don't do Java and _are_ a C/++ hound, weep for the future of anyone who
believes that this crap _is_ the future.

	-rbarry

%20080604
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An interesting project idea that may or may not get my attention in the near
future:  An application that simply hits a website for a list of peers, then
sends them requests for responses.  Those responses would just be the current
state of the peers.  The client would pool together all the responses to get
its own state computed.  It would then compare your state to everyone elses
and tell you whether your net connection is 'cool', 'unbelievable', 
'suckage', etc.

	-rbarry

%20080603
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It seems that someone could make good money on a meeting defragmenter.  I have
all this wasted time between 10- and 15-minute meetings that is going into
things like - er - what you're reading now.

-rbarry

Ugh.  Finished a can of Pepsi and grabbed a can of Coke as a chaser.  Ever drink
orange juice after brushing your teeth?  There's a Cola War going on and my
digestive system is the battleground.

-rbarry

%20080602
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I gave up on my Nude Conga business plan.  It was a Cohort Cavort Report Abort.

-rbarry

%20080530
permanant link
Playfirst, my new employer, is a bit cramped at the moment.  Seriously, my cube
is about four feet on a side.  Once you cram six textbooks, five juggling bags,
four calling birds, three computers, two monitors, and a monster-sized
Captain's Chair into the space... well, you get the idea.

But somehow I keep trying to take breather moments to advance my juggling skill.

With five bags.

Brand-new juggling bags are weighty, softish, and very round.  I have succeeded
in chucking one over into the next cube, landing one in the garbage can, and 
ricocheting one off my foot to roll into the CTO's cubicle.

I think I'm going to have to put off unicycle fencing at work for a while.

-rbarry

Further rantings on the stupidity of Java...

There is a quote from the early days of software:
  As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as
  easy to get programs right as we had thought.  Debugging had to be discovered.
  I remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from
  then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs. 
    Maurice Wilkes, 1949

As I said.  The EARLY days of software.

The advance of technology has brought bigger and better debuggers, but in the
end, we still spend the vast majority of our time incrementing our understanding
of the systems we are working with.

A good compiler is a major part of that.  Good error messages make the removal
of the trivial bugs (usually typos, usually very basic mistakes) easy to kill,
and I have gotten used to having this process occupy less than a percent or two
of my overall time.

Back to Java, I did this today (simplified to the test program it took me to
kill it):

public class tmp
{
    static public void main(String args[])
    {
        System.out.println ("null");
    }   // Error pointed to this close bracket.

    public int getIndexAttribute(Node node, int default)
    {
        return 0;
    }
}

Note my comment.  The compiler complained bitterly about the close squiggle
bracket at the end of main, saying I should insert another '}' to "Complete the
Class Body."

The actual error is one of those minor mistakes you make in this business.
All of my C and C++ compilers spot the same error, but tell me EXACTLY where
the problem is.  Had javac done the same thing, it would have saved me
considerable time.

You may ask why I spend so much time bellyaching about Java?  It's not that
much time compared to how much of my time Java wastes for me.

-rbarry

%20080529
permanant link
I'm bleeding the edge of software while using a 4-year-old iPod to drive
20-year-old headphones to play a 50-year-old album.

-rbarry

From the javac man(1) page:

  -source release
   
    1.3
      [irrelevant]
    
    1.4
      [irrelevant]

    1.5
      The compiler accepts code containing generics and other language features
      introduced in JDK 5.  This is the default.
                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So why the hell is it that when I try a command-line compile of a Hello World
with one extra line:

  private static Vector<String> foo;

...I get this:

  1. ERROR in tmp.java (at line 5)
     private static Vector<String> foo;
                           ^^^^^^
     The type Vector is not generic; it cannot be parameterized with
     arguments <String>

I have to add the command-line option to get the DEFAULT behavior:

  javac -source 1.5

I'm sure that there's some environment variable or config file that is affecting
this, but.... well...

It isn't so much that I'd like an answer to this particular question, but rather
the question:  Why the ^#*( do I run into garbage like this every single time I
use this idiotic language?  This is why I quit using java in the first place.

Of course, java's abysmal documentation style makes me wonder why any sane man
would ever choose to use it, too.  Lemme provide a (very unfortunately) typical
example.  Not exactly a useful learning resource.

-rbarry

%20080528
permanant link
EXPORT ONE_MORE_GOOD_REASON_TO_USE_DVORAK = \
    LEFT_LITTLE_FINGER_CAN_STAY_ON_SHIFT_WHILE_TYPING_MACRO_NAMES

-rbarry

%20080527
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So when Treebeard's folk left Middle Earth, would you say that was the Ent of an
era?

-rbarry

A sad, sad moment today.  I went to do a search through my blog and realized
that I no longer had one large file that contained the whole thing - for the
first time in 15 years or so.  It's the end on an era.

-rbarry

People quote shakespeare with wreckless abandon:  "There is nothing good or
evil but thinking makes it so..."  "A rose by any other name..."  etc., etc...

...without ever stopping to think that maybe he was wrong.

-rbarry

%20080522
permanant link
I've been using a Kinesis Ergonomic Keyboard (image) for about 9 years now. 

The, uh, same one.

It is, without a doubt, the best gaming keyboard I have ever laid my hands upon.
I can one-hand 34 buttons, without ever looking at - or moving - my hand.  My
Netrek game improved by an order of magnitude by the simple addition of this
keyboard.  What it has done for my gaming it has also done for my typing and my
day-to-day keyboard stamina.  If it weren't for one issue, which I'll get to in
a couple paragraphs, I'd recommend one to everyone with ten fingers...

I've had issues with it where the printed circuits behind the keyboard have
worked themselves loose and I had to perform surgery.  I've spilled a coke on it
and had to clean every internal bit of it with alcohol.  The default mapping
that Windows XP uses when I switch it to Dvorak (I have an older model that 
doesn't do this internally) is Just Plain Satanic, but I have a Scancode Map
squirrelled away that solves the problem.  It's so old, it uses the old AT DIN
connector, but I've strung together a DIN-to-PS2-to-USB adapter chain, and the
device ticks along just fine.

This morning, the space key (not the space BAR, but the space KEY) was stuck.
The key would depress and release normally, but the machine was hearing a 
keydown and no keyup.  I opened up the case, checked the switch, found its
cover had popped up, fixed the problem, and am again typing on my favorite
keyboard in the world. 

Geek surgery.  Problems solved.

So why is it that when I was spotted by the IT department screwdrivering my way
into my favorite device of all time, and they offered to replace it, I told them
that I'd like to try a Maltron?  Because no matter how many times I've
complained to Kinesis over the years that using calculator buttons for the
function keys makes them entirely useless to someone who uses them every minute
of every day..... my pleas have apparently fallen upon deaf ears.

In the first weeks of owning the Kinesis, it became apparent that the function
keys were going to be a major problem.  They are so close together and devoid of
any characteristics that would allow you to differentiate them by feel that you
cannot operate them by touch.  I am a 100% touch-typist.  I learned to type on a
blank keyboard.  If that weren't bad enough, over time the pressure required to
trigger them got to such a level that I now have to hold the keyboard between
my thumb and index finger and squeeze to use the escape key.  As a rabid
vim user, I fortunately have this key remapped to the caps lock, but what about
the other function keys?  My current solution to the problem is to have a
'normal' flat keyboard sitting behind my Kinesis.  When I need F7, I move my
hand up to the second board and hit it.  It's a pain in the ass. 

Companies soldier on just fine by making a great device and never changing it.
But it seems to me that making a great device and actually being willing to
improve it is worth something.  Take me for example - I'd happily buy a new
keyboard from Kinesis if they would fix this issue.  In the last decade, the
only changes to the Kinesis have been in its firmware.  The most deplorable
design flaw of the device remains uncorrected.

We'll see how the Maltron goes.  If I like the thing, I'll donate my Kinesis to
a museum.

  -rbarry

%20080520
permanant link
This morning, I went to tell Toni a joke:

"What has four legs and an arm?"

To which the proper answer is, of course, "a happy Pit Bull."

Parker however, was in the middle of Dumbo and came up with an immediate
answer: an elephant.

	-rbarry

%20080508
permanant link
The Transportation Security Administration's new Registered Traveler Program.

Absolutely brilliant.  No more waiting in line to get to your airplane, you 
simply flash your card and walk on through.  I hate the security line, and so
do you.  Why wouldn't we implement something like this?

For the same goddamn reason that you don't let someone into your VPN without
authenticating simply because they are logging in from home.  A free pass 
through any security system of any sort is a free invitation to the bad guys to
walk all over you.

Here's the scenario:  John Doe is a bad guy.  He's out to get.... whatever...
through a security checkpoint.  Setting aside the fact that if he tried to do
it by walking through security, his probability of success would be something
like 75 percent, we go on to how the Registered Traveller Program
is his best friend:

1) He applies for a card and is accepted.
   Duh.  He takes anything he likes on board.
2) He applies for a card and is rejected.
   He finds someone who DOES have a card and either plants materials on them
   or blackmails them into knowingly moving them.
3) He applies, is rejected, and cannot find an appropriate rube.
   He simply takes his chances on a run through security and has a 75% chance
   of success.

I should be clearer on point 1.  It's actually a gaping hole.  In addition to
assuming that all 'terrorists' are idiots, Homeland Security seems to think that
they also operate in groups.  It is probably the only point on which I agree
with the idiots, but it means that if one of them doesn't get the card, there
are more who have a chance to apply for one.  One of them will get it. 
Statistics are on their side.  How can Homeland Security have that second word
in their name and still not know the most basic rules about applying security
policies?

They're wasting your time, your money, and trampling your privacy.

To make it easier for our 'protectors' to execute their jobs, I offer the 
following replacement for the recently-published work, "Terrorist Recognition
Handbook:  A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist
Activities."

   Your target will be carrying a Registered Traveller Card.

-rbarry

%20080501
permanant link
Those of you who aren't geeks are excused for now.  I'm going to go off on one
of my horrific rants about Microsoft, and you probably don't want to suffer
through it.

I've been playing with DirectX9.0 a bit and the very first program that I wrote
was, of course, a "Hello World."  Every frame, the words "Hello World" appear on
the screen - hundreds of times per second.  (Well, it depends upon how you
measure it, I guess.  Rerendered hundreds of time per second, redrawn to the
display about 60 times per second.)

Simple enough.  

One of my eventual applications of this work will be to get the raw RGB memory
for the back buffer, hand-render (raytrace) into it, then flip the buffer.  So
I was curious about the frame rate at which I could render the venerable line,
as it would give me a vague upper bound.  A search through the dustier corners
of my brain (I haven't done serious PC-specific programming since all my hair
was brown and still attached to my head) gave me some timers to play with, and
a simple line of code or two later I was telling DirectX to render the frame
rate for the last frame, as well as the average rate for the entire program.

My two approaches to this program were:

sprintf (displayString, "Hello World");

...and...

sprintf (displayString, "%f", frameRate);

When the first version is run, the program screams along at a very high frame
rate.  I render render each frame in a different color so I have a good idea
that it's running quite quickly, but I don't have specifics.  The second version
runs fine - for a while, but slows down until eventually a given frame is on
screen for several seconds at a time.

I'll spare you the details of the investigation, but suffice to say that this
has been a problem with the DirectX SDK for years now.  The problem is right
here:

mFont->DrawText(...., displayString, ...);

Get this:  DrawText renders the string to a texture for caching purposes.  I
get that and I agree with it:  I don't want to be burning cycles re-rendering
the word "Score" every frame of my game.  BUT any sane caching system in the
universe assumes that resources are limited.  DrawText is not using a sane
cache.  WHY, IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT BACKSTROKES IN BUTTERSCOTCH, DOES DRAWTEXT
NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER CLEAN OUT ITS CACHE?

I'm not kidding.  If I'm rendering fps as a float, each string is likely to be
different, meaning that each frame creates a new texture in the cache, but it
never reclaims unused textures.  My machine starts to crawl when the executable
hits about 1 gig and pretty much dies at 2-3.

I've heard rumors that destroying the font and recreating it (a cpu-intensive
process in its own right) will take care of the problem.  It is that which I
endeavour to suffer now....

Haven't these people ever heard of LRU?  LFU?  delete[]?

	-rbarry

UPDATE (same day)
	Destroying and recreating the font takes about .5 - 1.0 seconds.  In
	other words, you can't do it in a real-time environment.  I'm exploring
	other options.

%20080430
permanant link
Please explain to me why it is that AcroRead needs to be using 10% of my system
CPU when its minimized.  No takers?  Well, let's just close the thing...

...

...

...and it's still taking 10% of my CPU.

I wonder how many millions of megawatts have been wasted by Adobe on this little
modicum of stupidity over the years.  Not that this is actually even in the
running for the top 10 dumbest Adobe issues, but for now it's the one that is
on my radar.

	-rbarry

%20080402
permanant link
Color Deficiency.  Yeah.  I got it.  A friend asked me what I see when I wear
blue-blocker sunglasses, to which I (eventually - hey I have a universe to save,
dammit) replied, "I see red people."

	-rbarry

%20080327
permanant link
Vegan?  Really?  If it were the only option available, are you REALLY telling me
that you'd walk into the Colosseum naked, rather than with leather armor and a
whip?

-rbarry

%20080325
permanant link
Consider this to be a call for suggestions.

Evidently I have TWO loyal readers - or as I like to state it, my readership
has been doubling.  For those poor saps, who can't seem to figure out how to
remove me from their RSS subscriptions, I offer the following opportunity for
input in the direction foodini.org is about to take.

I mentioned recently that I'd like to be able to blog on blogs.  Each blog
entry would have a full blog connected beneath it, and so on.  At any but the
top level, making entries would be a free-for-all.

Having back-burnered (I have a mental stove with a lot of burners) this idea as
being of little utility because, well, it is...  my photo pages do bring in 
quite a bit of traffic and having the ability for people to comment on photos 
would be handy.  It's trouble because I really didn't want to implement this, 
but it looks like it's going to be a necessary part of making a user-interactive
photo archiving system.

Me?  I can use any crap software I write.  Even my radiosity engine.  That's not
to say that my radiosity engine was crap, but getting input files made was like
creating a config.sys and autoexec.bat for the execution of random graphics
demos circa 1993.  It was difficult, it was inflexible, but it was the
unavoidable bed of nails on the path to a certain kind of eye-candy
enlightenment.  The point is that if you have an opinion, chime in.  It's your
life that's going to get worse should you fail to do so.  =]

-rbarry

%20080321
permanant link
Holy mother of logarithms!  The recent addition of the permalinks has a few
search engines happily buzzing about, growing my logs by several k per hour.
-rbarry

For strange reasons which need not be noted here, I needed to find as many
groups of nine as I could.  For instance, a baseball team fields nine players.
A cat has nine lives.  A stitch in time saves nine.  Nine planets, give or take
a planetoid.  Nine circles of hell.  This is about as far as I'd gotten in the
brainstorm.

When brain implants become a reality, all I want is a google interface.  I
punched in:

	cat nine lives "baseball team" planets "circles of hell"

There were nine hits.  As this article ages, that number will, of course change.
In fact, it will probably include this page before too long.

-rbarry

UPDATE 20080604:  Sure enough, today there are 14 hits, and this page is number
                  three.

%20080320
permanant link
http://www.foodini.org/latest.cgi will now forward you to the most recent
article in the mass.  It is an autoforward, so you'll have to bookmark it
manually.  I've also set up permalinks, so you can hit a single article at a 
time and bookmark the specific entry in which you're interested.

I've been mulling over the idea of allowing comments on the page - essentially
each entry would have a complete blog of its own beneath it - ad infinitum.  No
guest posters would be allowed in the zeroth level, but after that it would be
a free-for-all.  My one reader would be able to argue with himself until the
rapture.  Let the flaming commence, etc.


I have finally dragged myself, kicking and screaming, into the modern era. 
After years of using the same cgi processing code, I may actually begin using
the CGI module that ships with perl.  Years and years and years ago, a friend
handed off a code snippet that would do the work of converting the cgi data
passed to a script and turn it into an associative array.  I've never needed
more and I've never felt like writing perl in anything less C-like than I'm
already forced to, so I've stuck with my current, archaic system.

Times change, though.  I'm looking at replacing the photo browser on my website.
Really, that means that I'm replacing the entire website - there's hardly
anything in here other than the blog and the photos.  The reason the photo
browser forces me to update is the need to allow friends and family to upload
photos.  I nearly fell back to a .procmail solution - and if you know what I'm
talking about, you know why CGI.pm was preferable.

I'm a dinosaur.  It's time to start updating some skills.

-rbarry

%20080319
permanant link
In the last couple of days, I've smashed together some changes to the ol' blog
style.  The priority was, as it has always been, to preserve the terminal look
of the thing, but I did want to make it possible to view a single post at a
time, partly just to add a bit of google-bait, but partly because the large 
mega-file version of it will hit the half-megabyte point within the next month
or two.  Every hit was costing my service provider bandwidth which was no
longer easy to ignore.

I keep swearing that I'm going to plunk in something that allows user comments
and dialog, but the idea that won't stay out of my head is the bastard child
of Frankenstein, a Swiss Army Knife, and Bill Gates evil twin.  Trust me when I
say it would be very weird - and a low priority.

My current priority set:
* Replace the photo browser in its entirety.  This is going to be a mess on
  too many levels because the highest priority there is simply to make it 
  possible for account holders to uploaad photos.  In 1996, I was an HTML God.
  In 2008, I can still do plenty of cool cgi-side html generation, but I'm in
  no position to take the time to bring in much in the way of new tech.
* The hand-written blog font.  My first pass is here.  The individual letters
  need less surrounding white space.  Other than that, it is a good start.  
  The script is capable of using letters, words, or entire phrases - for the
  sake of compression.  The 500k blog file expanded to many megs of html with
  the demo font.
* Many projects that have died in the last few years.  My enthusiasm has waned
  and my time has disappeared.  Instead, I waste time on Eve Online.  Pink Floyd
  warned me about this.
  
-rbarry

%20080313
permanant link
There've been some discussions lately, from slashdot to NPR, about this idea
floating around about boarding airplanes more efficiently.  The basics, as I
understand it, is to order everyone up by seat assignment and have all the 
window seat passengers board first.  The guys at the back of the plane are the
first in line, etc., so that when the door opens, a huge line of people get to
their seats at the same time.  Then you do the middle passengers, then the
aisle.

Dumb.  People sit together in the same row, and if you've ever flown with 
children - especially multiple children, you know that splitting up families
would be catastrophic.  I won't go into the "proof by example," but off the top
of my head, I can come up with several cases where making a special case out of
a row of passengers would make the whole thing a mess.

If you're going to line up everyone in a militant order - such that every seat
comes with a specific place in line, do the following (assuming a 50-row plane
with 3 seats on each side of the aisle, lettered (window)ABC(aisle)DEF(window):)

50A 50F 50B 50E 50C 50D
...then move up a few rows...
45A 45F 45B 45E 45C 45D
...until...
5A 5F 5B 5E 5C 5D

The idea is that you want to have enough room between rows so that when the
aisle is packed with people putting their stuff away, the people at the back of
the line just happen to be boarding to the rows at the front of the plane.
When you get done with row 5, start one row farther forward and do it again:

49A ...
44A ...
...
4A ...

And yes, you'll be paying me if you board your passengers this way, regardless
of how many rows you skip at a time or how many aisles or decks you adapt it 
for.

	-rbarry



%20080311
permanant link
I'm falling behind again - a month with no updates.

Certain types of meetings at Stormfront, while absolutely critical and usually
productive from beginning to end, do have the tendencies of a gas - they expand
to fill any container in which they are placed.  When one critical person has
something else to do... that's when the meeting will probably end.

So Reed Knight was being asked for a decision on a major problem and after 
giving a tentative decision asked, "Can I sleep on it after this meeting?"

...to which Geoff Jones replied, "Why wait?  You can probably sleep on it 
DURING this meeting!"

	-rbarry

%20080209
permanant link
Yesterday was, unexpectedly, an emotional day.  Toni and I took Parker to the
zoo for our first visit since just days before the widely-publicized attack on
three zoo patrons.  The last time we were there, the Big Cats were getting their
Christmas presents: large paper-wrapped boxes containing great big chunks of
meat.  The boxes had been placed up on platforms in the indoor cages, to which
each cat in turn would make a single, fluid, pulse of a jump... and tear the
box to shreds.

Parker was talking about the "Tiger Who Jumped Up," and her big present, for
weeks afterward.

It seems that every time conversation about the incident comes up, someone
hazzards a statement about whether the men involved 'deserved' what happened to
them, always along the lines that of COURSE they didn't, but they were
obviously way out of line.  I think I'm going to seriously risk a very
politically incorrect essay today.

It needed to happen.

Tigers have been living in that enclosure for decades.  Doubtless, they've been
hassled by zoo visitors on a regular basis.  However, whatever this particular
trio did while in the park after closing time, while nobody was around to keep
them in propriety, was more than these animals had ever suffered.  It has been
shown that given sufficient motivation, the cats could get out, but they had
never gotten out before.  Therefore, they had never had sufficient motivation to
do so, and we can safely conclude that this group of men provided a more severe
abuse to the tiger than she had ever received at the zoo.

That's saying a lot.  The facts that the men involved were drunk, high, and
stubbornly uncooperative with the police would seem to support the conclusion
that they knew that they were way out of line.

This kind of behavior is unacceptable.  I refuse to refer to the incident as an
attack because I can't help but see it as an animal's only path of self-defense.
I say that this event needed to happen because the casual nature the behavior 
many take toward animals needs some examination in our society.  If anyone
'deserved' this kind of result - and even I can't go that far - but if anyone
did, it was the theesome in question.  If it had to happen, providence made its
best choice.

Tatiana the Tiger had attacked (and this time I use the word correctly) a keeper
the year before.  I can't help but think that the keeper became careless.  Tati
was a wild animal and needed to be treated as such without exception.  I do feel
for the keeper because we all get lax from time to time, but there is a major
difference between a momentary lapse of attention and the cruel and torturous
assault carried out by a pack of drunks.  Tati didn't deserve what happened to
her.

So you can see where I stood as I walked into Member Services at the Zoo at
closing time.

It was hard enough just getting through the front door.  Much of the memorial
material zoo visitors had left behind was up in the office, some of which I
recognized from the newspaper.  I was blinking furiously, Toni was sniffing and
asked to be excused.  Struggling to control my voice I asked to adopt an animal.

Earlier in the day, I'd talked about adopting a Tiger, but I'm not sure Parker
had grasped any part of that conversation.  Still, his normal shyness was
completely absent when I let him make the decision and the associate asked him
what kind of animal he wanted.  He belted out, "A TIGER!" and I nearly lost it.

-rbarry

UPDATE: 20080311
    Apologies in advance.  It's 3am and I've been doing emergency plumbing for
    the last hour....

    I try not to edit any post after it goes in here.  Well, to be honest, I'll
    usually revise and edit a post for a few days, but I have kept a strict
    policy of no content alteration after a week.  It seems contrary to the
    idea of journaling, logging, whatever you want to call it.  However, this
    evening, I've been thinking about how this particular entry will reflect
    upon me in the coming years as family - Parker especially - friends, and
    potential employers stumble across it.  I told myself that "Just This Once"
    I could justify it.

    Eventually, I made only the most basic grammatical changes and tried to be 
    clearer where I thought I'd originally been foggy, but in the end I left
    the statement that I felt this "needed to happen."  If the punishment that
    Karma-or-whatever-you-want-to-call-it dealt out to the three men in question
    could be spread among all those who deserve some retribution for their 
    actions, then the result would be fair.  Well, that's my opinion.  But
    statistics have their own sort of fair: you play the game, you roll the
    dice, and you win or you lose.

    If these three guys had, say, been caught by a zoo employee and been
    convicted of some crime, there would have been almost no attention given to
    the entire event.  I think that the media attention that this has brought to
    bear on animal cruelty is a good thing... and I also hope that somewhere,
    someone has given second thought to similar behavior, even if not for the
    obvious ethical reasons, but for simple thoughts of self-preservation.
    That's where I see the only real silver lining here.

    -rbarry   Hopefully going to get some sleep.  As long as I don't dream of
              dripping faucets.

%20080204
permanant link
A friend of mine from way back went to work for the government and was going
through the usual gauntlet of security interviews.  Now, there's a small group
of people whom I've told to use me as a reference at any time.  This friend is
one of those.

Unfortunately, I didn't find out about this until the phone call:  "Hello, this
is Ron."  Keep in mind that this was a LONG time ago and everything is a
paraphrase.  The gist should be about right...

"Hello, am I a addressing Ron Barry?"

"This is he."

"This is Agent John Doe of The Federal Bureau of Investigation.  I'm currently
conducting background interviews about a Mr. __________ __.  Do you know Mr.
___ _____?"

Now my first thought was that my friend had run seriously afoul of the law,
which seemed totally ludacrous.  However, at this point, the thought of
associating myself with someone under the Federal microscope didn't seem so
bright, but honesty being the better part of self-destruction, I soldiered on.

"Uh.  Yes."

...to which the agent responded that my friend was obtaining security clearance
and I'd been listed as a reference.  It took me a few minutes to catch back up
with the conversation.

The discussion turned to setting up a meeting, and that eventual conversation
led to some entertaining moments.  (When asked if my friend was involved in any
organizations which might be interested in subverting the Federal Government, I
replied that he was, in fact, a member of the NRA.)  Yes, FBI agents have a
sense of humor, though I think this guy's actual thought might have been, "how
soon can I get the hell out of San Francisco."

-rbarry

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.  Therefore,
if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart
enough to debug it.  - Brin W. Kernighan, Knight of the Symbol Table

%20080129
permanant link
Yarrgh, Matey!  Climbing the cliffs of a Puerto Rican volcano used to boil me
blood and shiver me timbers, but now it dulls me hook and aches me peg leg, so
I'm afraid I'll have to give up bein' a pirate of the carabiner!

-rbarry  (who else?)

%20080114
permanant link
Why do we use the term "raving lunatic" when they are, in fact, usually ranting?
-rbarry

Software Architecture Failing the Reuse Test

I know plenty of software architects who are going to take one look at the
title of this essay and scoff.  Who can blame them?  Software has come a long
way since punched tape, but I'm still going to make the assertion that one of
the most critical components of the entire process of creating large software
systems has failed horribly.

Reuse. 

Unfortunately, the software industry is proving its inability to grow.  We love
new tech, new toys, and new ideas, but the industry is reaching middle age - 
we also love our habits and our routines.  Need a user interface for that 
system you're putting together?  Write one.  That's the way we are.

Trouble is, this is an absolute violation of the fundamental engineering 
principal of reuse.  Don't tell me you're going to reuse it in your next n
projects and that it therefore qualifies as reusable, because you're going to
couple it to the software system you're currently writing and that will be the
only system which will ever be capable using it.

It isn't reusable when it is no more than an extension of a bigger system.  

I think it would be helpful to bring in an example - what I consider to be the
canonical example of the issue:  How many 3D vector libraries do you think
exist in active distribution at this very moment?  Thousands.  I would bet
that every games company has their own, every animation software house, every 
audio processing, simulations, in-car navigation, cartography, and modelling
shop has its own.

This is bullshit.  Even the open source community, an affiliation of zealots
(using the word in a positive sense, here,) can't get it together to make a 
vector class that will allow you to use their many packages together,
seamlessly.  Take the best of the open source graphics, physics, and audio
packages in the world, and your life will be miserable just because you have to
get these things to speak the same vector language.

This is what I call a failure of architecture.  If the most fundamental unit of
a 3D denizen's life cannot encourage the software community to cooperate in a
communist fashion, then I see this industry continuing in its current, hopeless
thrashing through reinvention after reinvention.  The real travesty is that this
disaster is shrugged off over and over as being normal - as though it's the way
things are, and therefore... the way it will always be.

It seems to me that open source's greatest victory isn't going to be domination
of the desktop market.... well, I don't think that'll ever happen, but if it
did, it would be even less spectacular than if it became standard practice for
every individual, organization, and corporation to go to OSS for every
fundamental building block of their software which lies outside of the direct
scope of the business in which they compete.  This means games companies would
use an OSS engine which they would modularize to produce their competing IP,
effects, Artificial Intelligences, and interfaces.  Sims companies would have
a single source of modular physics that they would extend to provide the 
particular features which are their marketing bullet points.  These modular
systems would, in turn, be constructs based upon smaller and more fundamental
systems - eventually including our venerable vector class.  You get the idea.

We're wasting a lot of time here, people.  We are drowning ourselves in
repeating and rewriting history, so to speak.  In a rare link (for me) to
popular culture, I'll ask you if you've seen the movie "A Beautiful Mind."  If
you have, you might remember the scene in the bar where the main character
observes that multiple entities can actually deadlock in a worst-case situation
if they each try to strive for that which is best for themselves, but can
achieve a better result - for everyone involved - if they cooperate toward a
solution?

The state is called Nash Equilibrium, and it is the topic which John Nash, the
main character (with John C. Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten) earned the 1994 Nobel
Prize in Economics.

When I discuss these ideas with other engineers, we inevitably reach the same -
very strong - counterargument: that there is no standard which would satisfy
everyone's needs.  This is absolutely true.  No implementation is going to
provide the total flexibility as a custom roll.  My assertion is that the cost
of those inflexibilities is less than the cost of rolling your own solution.
How long does it take to roll a complete 3D math lib, complete with matrix
methods and native code for every platform you target?  Once you've done it,
how often does it change?  The only time I touch my vector math code is to add
new methods to it, and with a large public implementation, I get that for free.

Now, the vector class is a bit of a special case here.  The definition of 3D
math and its operations don't change over time, while the requirements of a 
software product do.  If you are changing the requirements of your systems,
as long as those systems are the features with which you compete in the market,
you're getting the best benefit for the cost of implementation.

However, if an off-the-shelf system will get you there - at least for a while -
and let you work on your core business from the very beginning, you are wasting
precious resources rolling your own custom solutions.  More often than not, a
"good enough" solution will get your business running and from that point on,
you'll not have time to replace the foundations because you'll be too busy 
making the points upon which you compete better.  If that means making the
vector class run faster, great!  Do it!  Go with my blessing, but make the
enhancements available for reuse.

-rbarry

Remember - a little inertia can go a long way.  -rbarry

%20080108
permanant link
A neighbor donated about ten pounds of dog fur - that's not a typo - to the
cause last year, giving my mother a bit of a hairy problem: how to make it into
yarn.  Short story: her blue-dyed Samoyed-hair yarn took first place at the
Anacortes County Fair this year.

I now live with a quarter-dozen felines.  I was thinking of collecting the
residue and seeing if she could make me some cat3 cable.   (geek joke)
-rbarry

%20080105
permanant link
Created a wikipedia.org account: "Sniggerfardimungus" and can't post.  The
username has been automatically blocked because: it is a blatant violation
of [the] username policy - it is obviously profane.

Using the word 'obviously' when you're auto-screening substrings is a little
iffy.  I wonder if a lover of Japanese mushrooms would have a problem with
registration.

-rbarry


%20080104
permanant link
Well, we had a 4.5 earthquake here a while age that lasted about 10 seconds. 
Compared to the wind today, it was just a little bump.  We're getting 60mph
gusts around here and the building faces 2 miles of uninterrupted space. 
-rbarry

%20071222
permanant link
I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.
- Woody Allen

I can't stand Woody Allen, but I guess everyone has their off days.  In his case
an off day would be the day that I was actually entertained by something he
said.  -rbarry

%20071212
permanant link
Parker and I left the BART station for his preschool this morning and just as 
we were approaching the bus stop - it left.

I said, "well, kiddo, it looks like we're going to walk to school."

Somewhere, Parker has learned about explitives.

-rbarry

So in the last 18 months, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have all released their
'new' consoles.  I would like to take this opportunity to observe which is
selling the best.  The Nintendo Wii.  Why?  I've been saying it since the 90s,
people: Gameplay is King.

Look at Wii Sports.  THE TENNIS PLAYERS HAVE NO LEGS!!! THE BOWLERS HAVE NO
ARMS!!!  If you make a great game, nobody gives a crap how it looks.  If you
make a flashy, high-tech game which plays like crap and costs $400+$60 to get
into, the world will beat a path to the nearest collection agency to close your
sorry backside down.

I could spew off 3-4 pages - EASY - on where Sony blew it on this one, but left
as an exercise for the reader is probably best at this point.  At this point,
I'll call this generation: Wii wins on profits worldwide, with the XBox taking
a respectable chunk.  Sony will be lucky to break even.  Why?

You have to sell early.  With the XBox a year ahead, they had to do something
to get consoles in homes.  There's a domino effect from there: low early sales
mean developers look askance at you and don't want to jump in to develop for
your device.  That means that at no point during your lifetime do you have 
titles - they're all being released for the console that had the sell-through
numbers.  From about 18 months in, it's all downhill. 

Could they have made it work?  Yes.  But that box would have had to hit shelves
at the same price as the XBox, or unnoticably close to it.  Releasing without a
response to the XBox Live from THE PREVIOUS GENERATION was... I... There...

I sputter at the stupidity.  I've got to stop.  Seriously.  I could go on 
forever.

I would say that Sony is astronomically obtuse when it comes to taking care of
developers, but that title actually belongs to Nintendo.  Again, if I go down
that road (Sony's or Nintendo's abuse of developers through neglect) we'll be
here all night, and it's already 1:42 am.  Nintendo at least can get away with
it - they have all the original IP it takes to keep themselves alive forever.
In 2095 they'll be selling yet another gamecube clone but with 2 GIGS of main
mem and two whole processors.  And it will sell 40 million copies of "Zelda,
Chronicles of an Aging Guy in a Green Hat."

So I ask you, dear reader, why the hell do you keep reading this crap?

-rbarry

So I'm sitting with Parker this evening as things are winding down, watching
him play Mario, and I tell him, "Okay, kiddo, last one.  The next time you get
eaten, it's bedtime."

Parker's a couple months past three, so telling him to do something many times -
especially if he doesn't want to - is par(ker) for the course.  This meant that
I was a bit surprised when, after Mario met an untimely end at the hands
(actually, they seem to be limbless) of a snow monster of some sort, he calmly
turned off the GBA and stood up.

I looked at him and said, "Parker, I'm very proud of you.  It's a sign that you
really are becoming a big boy that you can both remember that it's bedtime and
be helpful about it when the time comes.  You're becoming a grown-up."

He responds to this by grabbing my cheeks, flapping them back and forth, and 
cooing, "BLAAAGH!!! BLAAAGH!!! BLAAAGH!!!"

They grow up so fast.  *sniff*

-rbarry

%20071204
permanant link
How to Write Good Bug Reports:  A Guide for Video Game Testers.  Or, So You Got
The Testing Job, How Do You Turn it Into a Development Position?

A bug is a liability.  Let's face it, the games industry of the 80s is dead and
if you can't define your company's each and every activity in terms of dollars,
then your company is probably going to be following the path of Acclaim.  If a
bug is a liability, then everyone in the company should look at it as a process
in which their job is to minimize the cost of that liability.

Identifying a bug is only the first part of your job.  In fact, I would assert
that it is the least fraction of the importance of the work that you do.  It is
only when the bug report finds its way into the hands of the person who is going
to fix it that your work finds merit.

The following report has merit in all the categories that count to me, an
engineer:

  Title: Can't kill the Kobold in Level 3.

  Reproduction Steps:
  1) Load a Level 3 savegame.
  2) Go North two rooms and head West through the door with the broken hinge.
  3) Standing to the left will be a Kobold carrying a bunny rabbit.
  4) Beat on him.
  5) Observe that when he dies, he simply gets back up and hits you with the
     bunny rabbit.
  *  Repro rate: 5/5

  Relevant issues:
  * I've discovered that the only Kobold which has this issue is the one with
    the bunny.
  * The Kobolds in level 4 who carry bunnies die normally.
  * The issue only occurs if you load a game, not if you progress through from
    the beginning.  (repro rate: 5/5 with loaded game, 0/2 playthrough.)

  (Apparently) Irrelevant issues:
  * There is a back way into this area.  Using it doesn't seem to affect the
    bug. 
  * My choice of weapon did not change the outcome.
  * If I kill other enemies first, the bug still occurs.


The above report carries a wealth of information for the developer who must
track down and fix the issue.  First, the odds are that the engineer in question
has never played the section of the game you're referring to.  You play the
whole game, all day, every day... or at least you have, so it may be difficult
to imagine that the guy who wrote the code isn't intimately familiar with it.

He isn't.

The time it takes you to write up steps that get him there are 5 minutes of
your time that save him probably far more.  Think of the cost of that 5 minutes
you spend in company dollars, and the potential cost of 15-20 minutes of the
developer's time.  Those are the terms in which your value to the company will
be measured.

The example report next shows that you did your homework to identify the least
set of critical issues to reproduce the problem.  It means the difference 
between an engineer (or a designer, or whoever) having to go and discover these
things for themselves, and having the possibility of immediately recognizing
what the actual issue is.  In many cases, a well-written bug tells me exactly
what the problem is before I go to look at my code.  Guess how much cash that
saves our employer.

The 'Irrelevant' issues section is the collection of things that you tried in
attempting to establish the critical contributing issues which didn't work.  For
example, you might think, "we had a bug where the player's choice of weapon made
it impossible to kill some enemies."  Well, you really need to check that out.
It tells the engineer right off the bat that it's not a duplicate of the
previous bug and he doesn't have to waste time going through the game and 
setting the breakpoints to prove it.  Just take good notes as you test and be
clear on what did and didn't contribute to the issue.

Also present is the repro rate:  How many times were you able to get the bug
given the 'minimum' set of repro steps?  How often did the bug fail to occur
with different playthrough paths?  Note that it may take a long damn time to
put all this together, but there's nothing that says that you only may work on
one repro at a time, is there?  You can be doing playthrough for multiple bugs
at a time.  Just be sure to make note of the details in each bug.  DON'T skimp
on this bit.  Nothing will annoy a developer more than seeing 5/5 on a bug
that they can't reproduce.  You might as well tell them directly that you
didn't engage your due diligence.

Now that the major features have been called out, I'd like to take a page from
my personal history of bug fixing:

  Title: Kobolds don't die.

  Issue:
  Whenever I kill a Kobold, he stands up.


The first thing a developer is going to do is send this back to you, assuming
that they don't just retire it altogether.  I could analyze the crap out of this
one, but having seen the 'good' example, you probably shudder at how poor this
'bad' example is.  Assuming that the developer believes you, how long is it
going to take them to reproduce the problem - especially in light of the fact
that they may not even know where the bunny-wielding Kobold in Level 3 is?  If
you wrote this bug, you just cost the company more than you make in several
days.

Don't do it.

Getting to the point where you can ferret out the relevant issues takes practice
and experience.  You won't be doing a great job overnight, but you'll get there.
Keep at it.  It's worth it.

My title promised some help on turning a testing job into something bigger.
I'll level with you here.  It doesn't happen often.  Games companies don't 
frequently move testers up the rungs, but it does happen.  I work with several 
level designers now who have done exactly that.  How did it happen?  They
had a good interface with the people who'd be fixing the bugs they found.  

If I find that a tester is consistently writing great bugs, I know that guy's
name.  But if a tester is consistently writing bad bugs, well... I know his
name too.  If you want to be moved into the industry, you want to be the guy I 
go to find to say, "Damn that was a nice catch!"  Because if we start hurting
for level designers guess which testers are going to be the first to be given
the opportunity if that route is taken?

That's right.  Be that guy.  (Or gal.)

It really is about cost.  Take the time to do it right and you save the company
money.  Rush through it because you have a million things to check today, and
you may get a million bugs checked, but you were still a net loss that day.

-rbarry

%20071128
permanant link
For the eve-online players, the first commandment of eve:

Thou shalt not Covetor thy neighbor's asteroid.
-rbarry

%20071107
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Pixar.  This is not a hit-or-miss organization.  I will not name what is, in 
my opinion, the worst of the Pixar films, but even if I did, it is still an
order of magnitude better than anything Disney Proper has done in the last half
century.

How does any organization manage to put out Faberge time after time after time
when its parent organization - or for that matter, its entire industry - is
plopping out Cadburys?

I bought Ratatouille on release day - yesterday.  Having seen it twice in the
theater, I was happy to let the audio run while I hacked up game code.  In the
evening, I watched it in earnest again, then let it run again in the background.
I've just done it again.

What is it about Pixar that 4 of the last 5 of their movies easily trump the
rest of the industry for the last decade?

Entertainment is a tough industry.  It is very easy to get sick of your product.
Enthusiasm in a perpetual ebb tide for most (as Perpetual was a permanant ebb
tide of everything.  Sorry - personal joke.)  

It's been pointed out to me that Pixar is still rehashing tried-and-true themes.
Ratatouille is Cyrano de Bergerac, Bugs' Life is Seven Samurai, etc.  But this
is no Roxane or Magnificent Seven (though both were fantastic in their own 
ways.)  There's something about the presentation that makes the entire thing
new.

Did you _really_ feel for Cyrano after 20 years when Roxane finally realized
the truth?  What about for C.D. Blake?  Not really?  Remy?  If you're anything
like me, there _was_ a tad of a twinge there.  I don't think that it's the
technology that is bringing Pixar rampaging into the number one slot of movie
production houses.  The technology isn't puting the shine on an old number.

I've never worked anywhere where there was a true love for the product being
developed.  Interest, yes.  Intellectual stimulation, yes.  Vehement hatred,
and my second Perpetual reference of the day, hell yeah.

I would love to love my product.  It's been too long since I've done graphics,
or my resume would be at Pixar tomorrow because you can really sense the chasmic
depth of their embrace of their work.  I'm already counting the days 'till
WallE.

-rbarry


%20071026
permanant link
So the press is running around at work at the moment - Nickelodeon wants to do
a piece on our game and its development.

This is not my first press zoo.

At Perpetual, there was a 'Self-Guided Tour' for the press who'd shown up to
the Games Development Conference.  Essentially, areas of the office were
labeled as art, design, test, etc., and the guests were able to question any-
one in those areas as to how they did their work and what they did for the 
project.  The areas where the minor minions worked were roped off, making the
access to personnel a fairly selective thing, but there were a couple dozen
employees on display.

The entire engineering staff were off limits.

In previous similar events, the attention paid to engineers has been equally
dismissive.  Nickelodeon has been no different, though I did get the attention
of a lighting man just long enough to let him make a wiring tangle out of my
office space and trip over my controllers.  =]

There is an argument that engineering is a process that nobody understands, so
it's better to talk to designers, testers, audio, artists, animators.... because
what they do can be grokked by the average schmo.  I'll not insult your
intelligence by pretending that this is an objective piece and get right to the
point: try doing design, test, audio, art, animation.... without the engineering
to back it up.  Yet a department so critical to the process of producing a game
receives absolutely no public recognition for its efforts.

Another way to put it is that engineering is a process which nobody understands
because it's almost entirely evicted from eyeball time.

You want kids to stay in school?  Keep up with their math?  Think with 
constructive self-criticism?  Self-organize?  Work well with others?  Game
engineers should be your mascots.


Really - I wasn't going anywhere with this.  It sounds a lot more like a rant
that it was intended.  I'm mid-level here, so even if they were grilling geeks,
I'd be uninvolved.

%20071022
permanant link
So I gave an old Hammond to my local hospital as part of their annual charity
drive.  The IRS denied the deduction, however.  It seems they don't give you
a break for organ donation.  -rbarry

Carpe Dig'em - Sieze the Sugar Smacks  -rbarry

%20071018
permanant link
Reading through the Lesser Gnu Public License today gave me a bit of a giggle -
the doc refers to the "GNU/Linux operating system" as "the whole GNU operating
system['s] variant."  It sure IS dark where Richard Stallman has his head at
the moment.  In the whole GNU-vs-Linux thing, I'm about as uninvolved and 
apathetic as one can be, yet even I have long since become convinced that
Stallman is off his rocker.

I can already hear the arguments of many a Debian user, carefully pressing
their own perception of truth in the matter, but the logic aside for the 
moment, it was carefully worded by RMS himself as yet another (very low-
caliber) shot in his eternal tilt at the Linus windmill.

I actually liked the guy until I got stuck spending a few hours with him.
-rbarry

%20071017
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Okay, there was a flurry of activity there, then silence.  Sorry about that.
The blog is undergoing a bit of a change.  Live in fear, mortals.  -rbarry

%20071009
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When you're making software, you test your code before you check it in.  If 
you don't, may the Archangel Gabriel laugh in your face.  I gather his database
is more reliable than whateverthehell project you're currently thwarting.  As
though I'd known it all along but had never given it any grey-matter CPU time,
it dawned upon me how often bugs make it into software because the underlying
systems change - not the feature itself.

For instance, you check in changes to a game level design, dropping the ceiling
by a dozen centimeters.  You test it, it works.  Sometime down the road, changes
to the camera are checked in, but they are not checked against the whole system,
only enough of it to be economical.  There's enough testing to minimize possible
damage, in other words.  If the new camera can't handle the new, lower ceiling
and ends up outside the room, well, that's software.

Software bugs are little islands of entropy in very large systems which live
in attempted violation of the second law of thermodynamics.  Entropy is the
reward for entropy in a software system.  The more you change - especially at
the lower levels, the more you will find yourself doing fixes... which brings
on more entropy.

Okay, so how to solve the problem?  Obviously, minimize change.  

It seems like an absurd argument.  To get from an empty project to a complete
one, you have to implement features - you have to make changes.  This is very
true, but you don't go out and rewrite everything from scratch, do you?  I've
probably used printf more often than any other function, but I've NEVER
implemented it.

Get as much of your software out-of-the-box as you possibly can.  If I hear one
more developer say that they can build X cheaper than buying it, I'm going to
have to hurt them.  You are only going to use X once in your software - they
get to sell it many times.  They get to amortize the cost across many customers,
which means that you get it cheaper than it would be to develop it.

But you don't need all those features?  How much of it do you need?  Ten
percent?  Fine, can you really build ten percent of that product and get it
tested to the level that they did for the cost of buying it?  You think so?
Are you keeping in mind that it takes more than 10% of the effort to develop
10% of the features? 

Then how about this:  Can you deliver it on day one of your project, in a state
that will not change time and again through the life of your development?  No,
you can't.  You will develop something that falls short of your design, in
more time, with more bugs, and those parts of your system - you know, the ones
that MAKE YOU MONEY - will suffer as a result of that entropy and your lack of
attention.

If you are in the games industry - get a third party engine.  If you're in 
data services, get a database system.  Rolling a website?  You're going to be
heavily reliant upon apache, perl, ruby, sql, etc.  You wouldn't think of 
writing your own C++ compiler for a single project, so why on earth would you
write your own physics, rendering, particle systems, animation, shaders, AI,
design tools, audio system, memory manager?

Yeah, you might want to do some of these things.  But choose what your project
is supposed to be FIRST, then start making it.  Only tinker with the foundation
when you find something totally unacceptable.  Game design is the talent of
getting the most out of the resources you have available.  Work within your
restrictions and play to your strengths and you're going to make the best game
you have the potential to produce.  Waste your time writing an animation 
system that makes you look the same as everybody else and you WILL fail
eventually.

-rbarry

%20071002
permanant link
They fed us at work today.  Indian.  Food Coma.  Can't form....  nouns...

I was just contemplating the curry.  Worland Wyoming (duh,) Port Townsend
Washington, and Logan Utah had no Indian food.  On my honeymoon, I (well, we)
ate at an Indian place in Victoria and a lifelong love affair began - with
curry.

Hey, I'm divorced.  She's a good friend now, but I still see a lot more of the
chef at Little Delhi than I see of her.

But I still wonder how on earth the greatest cuisine in the universe managed to
be outdone by McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and KFC for the attention of the American
public.

Oh yeah.  Right.

PS.  Yes, the best in the universe.  If there's food on mu Arae, are you
prepared to bet that it's human-consumable?  Well, less likely to kill you than
a Big Mac?

-rbarry

%20070928
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A lone ant returns from a long journey - an unsuccessful picnic-locating trek -
to find his entire colony dead, save the last gasping member of his ancestral
home.

"The humans!  They lay out poison traps!  We all ate from the cruel bounty
and.... and..."  And he died.

Now, despite his regular expeditions to track down the picnics which had been 
such a regular staple of his colony, an ant is not a creature which survives
well on his own.  This particular ant was no exception, so he left in search of
companionship.

After many days of travel, he comes upon a pair of rats.  "The Humans have
really gone out of their way this time," said the first.  "I was getting sick
of eating garbage."  He started to sniff at his meal.

The second rat nodded in agreement, "It was very nice of them to leave it here
for us, too.  I'm getting too old for the walk out to the trash bins."

The ant, smelling the metaphorical rat, broke into the conversation.  "DON'T
TOUCH THAT," he screamed, though his voice was all but inaudible to the rodents,
"IT'S POISON!!!"

The rats paused for a moment, then the second rat mumbled under his breath about
the size of an ant's brain, scooped a pebble from the cheese-shaped box, ate it.

And died.

The first rat was both shocked and impressed.  "How did you know that the food
was tainted," he asked.

"I have a history with humans."

The rat asked the ant to return to his home with him, in the hopes of spreading
the word to the rest of his bucktoothed relatives about the dangers of poison
traps.

Just as the second rat had, the rest of the rats took no notice.  Slowly, the
colony grew sick and many started to die.  In increasing desperation, the first
rat and the ant tried everything to call attention to the cause; drama, musical
theater, tragedy, irony, sarchasm, but finally began to turn things around when
they discovered the ant's knack for comedy.

Soon, they were a huge hit - the rat playing the straight - er - man to the
comic ant.  Working situations about the dangers of poison traps into their
routine slowly, but surely, turned the attitudes about the rats until the great
day of victory when every rat in the colony had shed their poison-induced
illnesses and sworn off the tantalizing boxes of rodent fast-food.

The moral of the story?  When you're sick, never underestimate the importance of
a good De-Con Jest-Ant.

Epilogue:
Okay, Toni gets up before 6am on Thursdays ("I never could get the hand of 
Thursdays") and drags me out of bed at about the same time.  Between being in
the grips of the latest disease to make its rounds of parker's pre-school and
the sleep deprivation, this is what my brain does at 5:45 am.

-rbarry

%20070927
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Today is Halo 3 Aftermath Day.  Well, for those of us who don't go to GameStop
at midnight on the release date, spend all night playing, and call in sick the
following day - it's Halo 3 Aftermath Day.  A little tired, a little hung over
(Keith and I both opened the last beers of the evening.  Doh.)  But mostly in
the ranks of the survivors, I encubmer you with my first impressions.

My first, first impression is the price point.  $60 is a number for an
unknown game on the shelf which forbids its purchase.  It is also a number
which will become a factor in deciding whether (not when) to buy a current-gen
console.  Keith and I have borrowed one, and will continue to do so.

When Halo 1 first came out, there was a great deal of complaint about the fact
that you spent much of your time going from one place to another - then the
rest of your time going back again through exactly the same spaces.  For
Bungie (Halo's creators,) this works well.  If you have to walk through a room
twice, you get twice the gameplay for the nearly the same production effort.
Further gains for Bungie were made by making large sections of the game out of
modular rooms, again providing more content, but making some sections of the
game feel repetitive.

Halo 2 shed some of the guilt of its predecessor.  I have to admit that I spent
far, far fewer hours on 2 than Combat Evolved (Halo 1,) but my vague
recollection is that much less time was spent going through the same areas over
and over.  To me, this seems like the natural way to set up a game.  Let players
get their repeat experience from repeating the game.  I have no idea how many
times I played CE, but after completing some sections once, I never did them
again - simply to avoid doing the same cloned rooms over and over.

In other words, the replay value of the game was diminished by the cut-and-paste
style of parts the level design.  

Halo 3, to abuse the ring metaphor, hearkens its beginnings.  In the first
few minutes of play, how many times do you see Ops, the Hangar, etc?  Much of
the environment consists of a collection of generic objects strewn about to
provide cover for players and enemies, losing any sense of passing through the
environment.  When two rooms look identical, the sense of progression through
the game suffers, even if they really are different places.  This impression is
substantially reinforced when you end up going back to exactly the same place in
space for the nth time and have no idea how many more times you're going
to be forced to visit.

Consistent lighting, environment textures repeated ad nauseum, the lack of 
unique landmarks, and the requirement that a player enter a room many times 
from many angles are a modus operandi which inherently disorients the player.
Most of the time, the only way I knew I'd just walked through the right door
was because the game would helpfully inform me that it had just autosaved.

Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying the game.  The CPU restrictions which plagued
Bungie in the first two installments, gone in the XBox360, have given them the
necessary resources to do much of the Artificial Intelligence work they were
unable to deliver on the original XBox.  Enemies behave more dynamically, 
though certainly still like dumb drones, but it still delivers a more enjoyable
interaction.

So while I am enjoying the game, I am disappointed by the apparent concentration
on the features the XBox360 could deliver while providing level design that 
one might expect out of the days before 3D Hardware.

If you think this post was an over-extended rant, don't get me started on the
color-deficient gamer issues Halo 3 suffers.

-rbarry

%20070921
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It is amazingly cruel, somehow.  I went into Eve-Online hibernation about 12
weeks ago to train up for a Chimera - the Eve equivalent of a small aircraft
carrier.  The motivation was twofold; I was tired of the time it took to run
the high-level missions I was doing in a Battleship, and I desperately needed
to find a way to spend some of the cash I've been making in that game.

After about 6 weeks of training up my character, only days away from having
the required skills and already making bids on ships, I was confronted with the
toppling truth that capitol ships cannot be used in Level 4 missions.

Well, one option remained: a serious battleship.  Like I said, I had cash to 
burn and a need for a tank with some major firepower.  So, (and this is where
I will revert into unashamed eve-speak - it's not necessary to understand it
all,) I did this:
Caldari Navy Raven (renamed to "Never More")
* 7x 'Malkuth' Cruise Missile Launcher
* Faction NOS
* Faction Shield Hardeners
* Faction Shield Booster
* T2 Ballistic Control

Short version: about 3 Billion ISK spent.

...which is where we come to the cruel bit: My training for the last module to
fit on this behemoth will finish at about the time I expect to get home on
Tuesday night - the date of release of Halo 3.  I guess it's a good excuse to
put off the XBox360 purchase for a while and get some serious player advance
done in Eve.

-rbarry

%20070920
permanant link
A bit of an unusual move for me:  I may make this entry sticky.  I keep telling
people that such-and-such is in my top 5 games of all time - but I never do 
manage to iron out what exactly that list is.  This will be subject to change
and whim.  Stuff may get bumped by current fad, but hey.  The only constant in
the universe is change.

Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy (Infocom) A permanant #1 in this list.  ?
Netrek (Open Source) Nearly flunked me out of several (non-consecutive) years.
The Curse of Monkey Island (LucasArts) What were they THINKING going 3D?
Tetris - Original GameBoy (Nintendo?) 
Addams Family Pinball (Midway) The only pinball game ever to drain my wallet.
Bubble Bobble (Taito) Non-platformer side-scroller - simple, but VERY addictive.
Halo - XBox (Bungie) FPS should NOT require an entire keyboard.
Cyberball (Atari) A 2-on-2 game cost $6 in 1989.  Ouch.
Battle Balls (Seibu Kaihatsu) A sub-genre I've considered resurrecting for ages.
Super Sprint (Atari) Uninterrupted high-score holder for 2 years.
Pikmin (Nintendo) Beautiful, polished, revolutionary, brilliant.
Guitar Hero (Red Octane) Special controllers will continue to push the industry.

-rbarry

Can I patent the idea of painting or otherwise displaying - company logos,
building names, names of complexes, street names, and other important bits of
geographical information  - flat?  I'm sick of looking at google maps and
trying to work out which building is Toys R Us, etc.  Especially with how
unpredictable the address location of any mapping software is.

So.  If ya wanna do it.  Pay me.

-rbarry

%20070919
permanant link
Belay that colon-nerp wash what passes fer a smiley, lads.  Today we be
lookin' fer somethin' with a bit more o' the sea in it's blood!

:{    ARGH!  I be feeling a bit seasick!
:{>~  ARGH!  I seem to have chucked me grog into me black beard!
,{    ARGH!  I told ye kids ye'd put someone's eye out with that BB gun!
;)    ARGH!  Me optometrist done supplied me with a lovely eye patch!
;)?   ARGH!  I got a new hook to go with me eye patch!
,[!   ARGH!  Whoever stole me eye patch'll taste the steel of me cutlass!

The be yer only warning!  Bring hither the goofyness or taste cold
exclamation point.

-rbarry

Ahoy mateys!  It be Talk Like a Pirate Day!!!

E'n the weather be knowin' an takin' part o' the festivities!  Po'rf'l trade
winds be whipp'n' the West'rn port o' San Francisco som'n fierce.

To top off the mood o' the day, I had meself a wee parlay wit' me hand 
specialist, Dr. Gordon Brody - a fair soul if ever there be.  The ship's 
surgeon informs me I'll likely be needin' the touch of his cutlass.  Witless
as I was this morning, I didn't think to ask if he could install a hook!

ARRRR!

-rbarry

%20070915
permanant link
What's the longest you've ever been on hold?  That's what having a napping
toddler is like.  You can't go anywhere and you have no idea how long the
stretch to which you've committed yourself shall be.

Today was major.  Four hours.  Finally iTuned Van Morrison's Moondance.  I've
not heard much of anything of that band, but it's a good blues tune...

-rbarry

The camera doesn't lie.  That's Photoshop's job.  -rbarry

%20070914
permanant link
I don't think this qualifies as a Geek Challenge(TM), due to the likelyhood
of there actually being a solution, so for an un-scored un-trademarked un-
capitalized geek challenge...

You've just replicated a line in vi a bunch of times to look like this:
foo[0] = ...;
foo[0] = ...;
foo[0] = ...;
foo[0] = ...;

What is the fewest number of required kestrokes to turn the zeroes into a 
sequence?  Assume any number of lines.  After all, I occasionally end up doing
10-20 lines of data entry like this.

If you're interested in the last (albeit, also weak) Geek Challenge, it's
a wee bit down

-rbarry

So far we've had politics, random tech babbling, jokes, more politics, a brief
tangle with financial investment strategies - which I hope to pick up again
soon - and a myriad of other subjects in here.  In the interest of being 
completely fair my constituency (a total of two semi-regular readers of whom
I'm aware,) I tend to avoid deep technical issues.

To be Completely Fair, however, now I chime in on an issue that is sweeping the
Linux world as I type: the Completely Fair Scheduler and its ancestry.  Ingo
Molinar has fallen under the gunsights of a number of scheduler authors, who
shall remain nameless, for is alleged hijacking of their ideas and their code.
Several of these lamenters, though one in particular, have made the lambasting
of Molinar something of a crusade.

I find it greatly entertaining that this debate finds any fertile ground 
whatsoever in the Linux world.  Let's assume for the moment that Molinar was
unashamedly plagiaristic in his work - that a huge percentage of the CFS code
came from other digits than his own.  If that were the case, I would still
congratulate him on his continuing in the footsteps of the Linux pioneers.

I'll draw back from the word plagiarism here, but to say that Linus Torvalds
drew heavily upon previous open source projects, like Minux and Gnu, in the
creation of Linux.... would be a whopping understatement.  This is only the
first of many such adoptions in Linux, and Molinar's won't be the last.

-rbarry

%20070913
permanant link
I just realized that I've not done a geek challenge in AGES.  I'll have my 
people get right on it.

-rbarry

I had intended to publish a prophetic piece about Google, though my usual
vigor has failed to condense as it did yesterday.  Maybe that's the point of
prophecy - the lassitude helps you adopt that flat, gravelly voice so common to
seers.  For reference, see Harry Potter 5, Hitchhikers' 5, and Imbuggly Ferret
and the Thirsty Widleshauz.

Anyway, brilliant bit about the coming micro-humbling of Google deleted.  You
didn't want to read it any more than I wanted to write it...

-rbarry

%20070912
permanant link
Reading through the logs for this page, I found someone who came here
searching for:
  What does "The only winner of The War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky" mean?

-rbarry

Someone turned my rant up to 11 this morning...

It seems simple to me.  Let everyone who supports the war, support the war.
I'll write off my contribution so far as a loss and I'll never speak against
any of the mind-numbing drivel coming out of Washington ever again.  As long
as I don't have to continue to pay for it.  600 Billion spent in Iraq.  That
cash could have been much better spent at home, and Halliburton could still 
have escaped the country with their pile of it.

-rbarry

The NSF (The National Science Foundation) has been seduced by the Dark Side.
The Dark Side has many facets - and stupidity is one of them.

I'm going to skip right over the privacy issues here.  I suspect that as a
privately-funded organization, they are almost as immune to such ethical 
considerations as our own government.  Too, I'll ignore how tired I am of 
seeing a new web crawler come into existence every time I think I finally have
a handle on the level of traffic I'm paying for out of foodini.org.  The NSF
is going to add one more, I gather.  Into the bin also, the idea that the cost
incurred here could easily serve a more noble cause.... like actual science.

And straight on to the Dark Side of stupidity.  Bin Laden.  Alive.  Yes?
NOBODY IS AS STUPID AS THE VAST MAJORITY OF AMERICANS SEEM TO BELIEVE
TERRORISTS TO BE!!!  The TSA (Transportation Security Administration) is as
guilty of this as anyone, so they'll serve as my example.  The TSA actually
believes that by making you carry all your liquids in up to a quart of 3.5
ounce containers, that they will prevent someone determined to carry a liquid
explosive from doing so.  

For some reason TSA actually believe that of all the people out there
who have it in for the US, not one of them will be bright enough to realize
that it is possible to divide up their quart of product into a number of 3.5
ounce containers.  These are the people who are wasting your money pretending
to protect you.  Anyone whom the TSA assumes to be beneath their level,
intellectually, should consider it the gravest of insults.

"Get to the point," you say?  Hey, I have to keep my readership down somehow,
but I shall appease you nonetheless:  Please.  Assume that the people you're
after are bright.  Everyone.  Starting right now.

Let this decree go forth:  That no one shall be allowed to say, or to spend 
money saying, that they are fighting terrorism unless they have assumed their
quarry to be more intelligent than the average teenager.  Many teens I know are
capable of:
 1) Setting up a computer and a net connection.
 2) Setting up and running a website.
 3) Encrypting all traffic to and from that website.
 4) Encrypting all storage on that website.
 5) Generating good passwords.
 6) Hacking a WEP key.  (This means that even if you have an encrypted wireless
    access point at your home, someone else can still use it.  It's not hard.)
 7) Using 1-6 to make the NSFs new expenditure no more useful than the 600
    BILLION that the US has already sunk/committed to the war in Iraq.

PS - 600 Billion dollars is $2,000 per man, woman, and child in the US.  If 
George had asked you to write the check for yourself and your family, would 
you have done it?

-rbarry

%20070911
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If Microsoft could sense my hostility, I'd be dead by now.  - James Stewart

%20070910
permanant link
Well, as the sticky header says, I've created a version of the 'blog' that
only gives the first few articles.  I looked at the usage stats for my site
in the last 30 days and it came to nearly 30 gigs, so I'm trynig to cut back.
I learned my lesson about a year ago when a video I had in here was linked by
some sort of Korean slashdotting organization.  The bill that month was
respectable, to say the least.  - rbarry

If there's one thing that I've learned from reading up on crypto, it's that
Alice and Bob seriously need to be getting more face time. -rbarry

%20070822
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I think I was the victim of the most devious campaign call - ever - a couple
days ago.

It began while I was sitting at my desk, trying to grapple with software which
would be best left ungrappled.  My cellphone - my Federal 
Do-Not-Call-Registered cellphone - rings.  The caller ID reads 999-999-999.

I have no idea why I answer these things.  I guess I've had enough experience
with legitimate businesses and organizations, who have blocked or garbled caller
IDs for valid privacy reasons, to be willing to sacrifice 15 seconds of my life
in these situations.

Me:  "Hello, this is Ron."  When the ID is blocked, it's not a personal call,
so I answer in a businesslike fashion.  If you ever called me while I was in
college, you'll have to take it on faith that I am actually capable of picking
up the phone in this manner.

We all recognize the grey noise, characteristic of a phone call that begins
with being connected to a sensor rather than a person, but for some reason
we soldier on:  "Hello, this is Ron."

The woman that hits the other end of the line comes on, sounding like a reject
from the Baywatch cast.  This woman has absolutely no history with the Blarney
Stone. 

"Yeah, hi."  Long pause.

"Yes?"

"Who is this?"

"Ron Barry.  To whom am I speaking?"

"Is Ron home?"

"This IS Ron and this is my cell phone."

"Yeah."  Pause.  "I'm, um, calling for Gavin Newsom.  You'll be voting for Mr.
Newsom for Mayor, right?"

I suspect that there are a number of reactions when the caller gets to this
point; guarded affirmation, disgruntled disagreement, or even a "Not now that
I've received THIS call."  I hope the most common is the one I chose, which
was to simply hang up.

Immediately after doing so, I realized how perfectly this call had been
engineered - from the moment the phone rang - to annoy the living shit out of
the recipient.  Caller ID that screams schemes, the our-time-is-more-valuable-
than-yours arrogance of providing to the telephone equivalent of a dead line,
the total moron on the other end of the line who 1) I don't believe was acting
as far as the sub-par IQ is concerned, and 2) was as forcing repetition of
everything in a perfect way to grate on my nerves.

I don't have much of an opinion for or against Newsom.  My politics on this
are too complicated to get into here, so you'll have to trust that I'm as
personally invested in the SF Mayoral campaign as most New Yorkers when I say
that there is a far greater chance, in my mind, that this call came from one of
Newsom's opponents rather than from Newsom's campaign itself.

I say a greater chance and leave it at that.  Certainly, the remise position
exists, but it would generate so few votes as to render the effort worthless.

-rbarry

%20070802
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So I'm sitting at the computer, trying to get my brain around the disaster that
Hewlett Packard has made out of it, getting along to a bit before midnight
when Parker comes toddling in.

He asks if he can sleep in my room and I tell him that Daddy isn't sleeping
yet, but that I'd be happy to cuddle him for as long as he likes.  He comes
over for a hug and a snuggle, very, very drowsy.  A couple completely
incoherent questions come out, then he gets up and walks to the door of my
room.  He turns around and I ask him if I can do anything and, still confused
and trying to cover for his incoherence he rubs an eye, smiles, and says, "I'm
just being silly, Daddy."

Then he walks to his room, pulls the door most of the way shut, crawls into his
tent, and goes back to sleep.

-rbarry

The Jack Thompson Dictionary:
Sociopath:  One who is crazy because he plays games.
Psychopath: One who plays games because he is crazy.

-rbarry

%20070713
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So when they awarded Marcel Marceau his place in the French Legion of Honor,
did they skip the acceptance speech?  -rbarry

%20070709
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This may be the world's most infrequently read blog, but I feel that it is
time for me to take the soapbox on an issue which has literally been bothering
me for my entire life.  It's not women, though I'm sure when I get around to 
writing that entry, my readership will quintuple overnight.  I'd like to be
able to say that the problem is one of ignorance, because ignorance is
generally forgivable in that education provides both the cure and gives one the
awareness of one's past transgressions.  The problem is simple apathy.

We all suffer from apathy at some level.  Hell, you could hardly live in this
world if you didn't have a filter between your physical senses and your 
emotional responses.  It's what keeps most Americans from going totally insane
at the fact that they now live in a military state.

But.  Popping the political digression off the stack for later abuse, I will
now unveil the heart of the matter.

Color deficiency.

There goes my readership.  Half of my audience, accustomed to the
get-it-over-in-three-paragraphs world that our information-flooded senses
desire, just checked out - operating, no doubt, on the happy deadweight of
apathy that surrounds this particular issue.

Fifteen percent of men are color deficient.  No big deal, right?  They still
live normal lives, participate in sports, yadda yadda yadda.  Bull.  It is
exactly the attitude that being color deficient isn't a disability that
makes it a disability.

I work in the entertainment industry, where color is the currency of the realm.
You would think that in such an educated, informed environment, it would
be easy to stand up and announce that screwing up the color in a game loses you
nearly 15% of your audience.  I've tried it.  If there's one thing you can be
sure about, it's that professional artists are nearly 100% normal-visioned.
Too too many in my professional history have placed their personal aesthetic
above such petty notions as producing an accessible product.

So we get games like Homeland - which turned out to be a $50 bookend for me.
We get an XBox controller with an A and B button, which are differentiated on
screen by their red and green colors.  Don't get me started on the number of
items (including the Game Boy Advance) that warn you that the battery is dying
by turning a bright green light into a bright red light.

I've been 'consoled' on this issue by people who tell me that at least it's not
life-changing.  I was passed over for a full-ride scholarship on the grounds
that I could not pass a flight physical.  When Utah changed its street lights
to a color indistinguishable from a red traffic light, I had to retrain my
driving habits because, except for my Wife's quick thinking, we both would have
been killed one night when I nearly ran a red light at 60MPH simply because I
didn't even know that the stop light was there.

So here it is.  I'm happy to quit screaming about this issue.  I'd be delighted.
The trouble is, it is up to you to make this work.  I don't care what you do
for a living.  Whether you design XBox controllers (in which case, you're going
to hell anyway,) do art for simulators, or write parking tickets... all I ask
is that you take this seriously.  It's very little effort to make a lot of lives
a whole lot easier.

If I've personally referred you to this entry, I promise that I'm not trying to
give you a hint.  It's just good to have the occasional post actually get read.
=]

Oh, and - that photoshop plugin doesn't actually show you what I see.
-rbarry

%20070521
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"Naturally, I disagreed -- partially because I am a naturally disagreeable
person.  Any idiot can make friends -- but can you make some really serious
enemies?"  Howard Anderson, Network World, 05/10/07

%20070518
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I did it that way for very good engineering design reasons, though mainly
because I was being lazy.  - rbarry

%20070405
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Crayons.  In the office supplies cabinet.  Awesome.
-rbarry

%20070307
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Austinus > tip for the men in eve: NEVER..... i repeat NEVER  answer a girl
asking why you like eve with "Because it only ignores me for an hour a day"

%20070222
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What's the difference between a methodologist and a terrorist?  You can
negotiate with a terrorist.  - Ivar Jacobson

%20070215
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Okay, I had thought that this was so obvious that everyone would have caught
on, but a conversation I overheard recently makes it pretty clear that people
actually need things like this explained to them.

Allstate Auto Insurance has been running a pair of commercials recently to
advertise two features of their new insurance plans: accident forgiveness and
rebates for accident-free driving.  You get in an accident, and it doesn't 
affect your rates.  Figure it out - what the hell is the difference between
having your rates go up and not getting the rebate?  Notice that they don't
advertise the two features in the same commercial?  I guess they (rightfully,
it seems) expected most people to miss this if they didn't have it handed to
them within their 30-second attention span window.

*sigh*
-rbarry

%20070205
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Okay, so I ask our receptionist why so many clean-cut gentlemen with suits,
ties, and carry-on rollerbags have been piling into the office this morning.

They're here from MTV.  MTV reps.  In suits.  Why is there a sudden stabbing
pain just behind my eyes?
-rbarry

%20070119
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Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.  Brew a
better beer and the world will beat a path to your bathroom.  -rbarry

%20061207
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Wells Fargo is a source of a great deal of useless mail for me.  There are a
couple of mutual funds that I really like, each purchase of which generates
a new mailing of the company's prospectus to me.  In addition, I get a flood
of fund updates, statements, offers, and now, notifications of a new privacy
policy.

Now, WF isn't so bright about how they generate this torrent.  Any notice that
says that they have changed how they go about something results in my receipt
of at least 3 copies of that notice - each individually mailed.

Now they seem to have started addressing my mail thusly:

Wells Fargo Bank 
Ronald S Barry

...where  describes the type of account that generated that 
instance of snail mail spam.  I noticed this just this afternoon - on the three
copies of their new privacy policy which arrived today.  Anyone who glanced
at my mail would know who I bank with, how many accounts I have, and the types
of those accounts.  Very private.


%20061108
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As I'm writing this, my optimisim is slowly gaining some spark of life.  If
Montana and Virginia go as they are now, the Republicans will have lost both
congressional majorities.  I reserve the right to two avenues of consternation:
that the Governator won.  Professional wrestlers and rappers shouldn't act, and
neither should bodybuilders act nor actors become politicians.  Didn't this
country learn anything from the Regan years?  

Second Avenue?  I'm waiting to see if Diebold's card gets played to preserve
a Republican dominance when it _really_ counts: 2008.

America, you're not as dumb as I've been taking you for recently.  I may have
to revise some of my investment strategies.

%20061107
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"Hi, welcome to your polling place.  Would you like to use a Diebold Election
Fraudulator this morning?" - rbarry

%20061030
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It seems fairly clear to me that computers are not the unemotional, relentless
minions to our will that we believe them to be.  That isn't to say that they
experience fear - quite the opposite.  They have some emotion that is totally
opposite to fear that compels them to continue to piss me off whenever I need
to threaten them with physical violence. - rbarry

%20061003
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Considering the recent issues in Iraq with US Army enlisted personell -
everything from mistreatment of P.O.W.s to rape and murder of civilians - I
have certain misgivings about the new minimum recruitment standards being
applied:

"We're looking for high school graduates with no more than one felony on their
record."

Maybe instead of slipping the criminal record, they could have started taking
dropouts?  I mean, they ARE looking for people dumb enough to voluntarily jump
into the infantry.  It seems that taking them before the social rejects would
be preferable.  -rbarry

%20060928
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I've been playing a bit more Guitar Hero recently, and I've been watching
other peoples' attempts at some tunes on youtube.com.  This has led me to
one of those high-tech/low-tech observations.  With all the crap we have
lying around these days, nobody seems to own (or at least, know how to hook
up) a VCR!!!  People point a video camera at their screen and use it to 
record their attempts - resulting in a crappy image.  If they only used a
VCR, they could capture the video directly and have a clean video.  

*sigh*
-rbarry

%20060915
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Hey, if I could stick my tongue up my own nostril, I'd probably do it all the
time. - Ken Johnson

Hear the one about the rooster and the steer?  It's a real cock and bull story.

-rbarry

%20060908
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How does a chimpanzee get dressed in the morning?
He probably has the Secret Service help him.  -rbarry

%20060905
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I was caught attempting to abscond with a $5000 footstool and was charged with
Grand Theft Ottoman. -rbarry

%20060829
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I've been working on the same annoying problem at work for about 5 weeks.  It's
driving me insane, not because I can't solve the problem, but because the
system simply won't let me.  Every avenue of exploration has exposed a major
limitation of the system (at least, to me) and left me backpeddling.  Upon
venting this to an officemate, the conversation went something like this:

Abdul: So how are you going to approach the problem now?
Ron:   Heavy drinking.
Abdul: Heavy drinking?
Ron:   Yes.
Abdul: That's not going to solve the problem.
Ron:   Maybe not for the rest of you!

%20060817
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U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor today declared the Terrorist Surveilance
Program (TSP) "[a violation of] the separation of powers doctrine, the 
Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United
States Constitution, the FISA and Title III."

She went on to say that "the president of the United States ... has
undisputedly violated the Fourth [amendment] in failing to procure judicial
orders."

The Justice Department has announced that they will appeal the decision and 
the order to permanant enjoin from directly or indirectly utilizing the TSP in
any way.

The Justice Department has issued the following statement:  "In the ongoing 
conflict with al Qaeda and its allies, the president has the primary duty under
the Constitution to protect the American People.  The Constitution gives the
president the full authority necessary to carry out that solemn dety, and we
believe the program is lawful and protects civil liberties."

Ignoring the fact for the moment that I don't believe at all that anyone at 
the Justice Department both understands what civil liberties are _and_ believes
that the TSP doesn't violate them, I'll get right to the point of hypocracy:
They are standing on the power granted to the president BY THE CONSTITUTION,
the same document that Bush referred to as "just a goddamn piece of paper."
That same document EXPLICITLY grants us the freedom from the actions taken by
the executive branch.  There are no clauses which grant the president the
exceptions he is claiming.  The prioriy of freedom and rights are therefore 
left no grey area.  The TSP is EXACTLY the kind of program the signers of the
Constitution had in mind when they BANNED them.

The JUSTICE DEPARTMENT doesn't even understand this?  Did any of these guys go
to law school, or are they all Bush's appointed cronies?
-rbarry

%20060816
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You may have gephydrophobia, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
-rbarry
P.S. The treatment center will be opening up on Treasure Island next week.

%20060815
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"You do not secure the liberty of our country and value of our democracy
by undermining them.  That's the road to hell."  - Lord Phillips of Sudbury

%20060814
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This morning, as Parker ate a frozen orange juice popsicle, I jokingly told him
to "eat his popscicles."  "No daddy," he exclaimed, "ONE popscicle!"  -rbarry

%20060807
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"The weather people came and stole my water heater!"  - John Moldover

%20060803
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General John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed
Services Committee today that the top priority in the Iraq war is to secure the
capital [of Iraq].

WHAT?!?!  How ******* long do you need?  It's been YEARS!  What have you been
doing with the HUNDRED BILLION dollars we handed you to do this?  Why are we
tolerating this level of incompetence in our leadership?

Since 9/11, the state of Texas alone has seen more traffic fatalities as a 
result of drunk driving than we lost in that entire attack, and our government
spending on DUI prevention increases in levels of roughly .1% (yes that's one
one-THOUSANDTH) what we have put into the war.  (See the "Traffic Safety Law
Enforcement Campaign Act.")

Think about it.  Your odds as a US citizen of dying in the last 10 years of
a drunk-driving accident (at over 16,000/year) are about 1 in 2000.  The
figure for being a victim of terrorism in the same time period is 1 in 80,000.
Can anyone at all give me any reasonable explanation why this sham is tolerated?

%20060731
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It's a new experience for me - working on a Massive Multiplayer Online
Role-Playing Game (MMORPG).  One of the oddest bits never quite ocurred
to me before as an effect of this kind of work.

You see, our game world is HUGE.  Mondo.  Massive (hence, the name of the
genre.)  It's Damn Big.  Most of us have developed our haunting habits:
I began working here and was immediately shown how to find [area name
deleted] and where the useful bits of content were, and ever since, I've
stayed within a kilometer or so of that location.

Now, when you walk around downtown, you see buildings that weren't there
a year ago.  Rarely, a building that was there a month ago has gone, but
you don't generally see, say, an entire population center drop into place
literally overnight.  Over the course of the weekend, one of my little
country hangouts where I liked to test [stuff that I'm working on] turned
into a metropolis.  When I left, trees and hills.  When I returned, I was
standing in a fountain of a town square.  It's like a GW Bush dream come
true.

%20060728
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I once had a graduate professor who claimed that you could hand half the
professors in the world their own dissertation, written using a different
notation, and they wouldn't recognize the work - though of course, they'd
think it was BRILLIANT!

So in the vein of 'Notation is Everything,' in honor of Doctor Egbert:
Name a system involving three dimensions of time-related variables, which
we note with a common, recognizable-to-the-everyday-person method.

In other words - it's a method of scoring out three different functions
of time.

%20060727
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There's always time to oppress some sculpins. - Brian Carver

%20060726
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I was once at a very good party in Salt Lake.  Didn't know anyone there
except Eric Jenson, who was off smoking with some friends.  Anyway, I
seemed to be hitting it off rather well with a very nice, young, short,
attractive lady.  Having a great conversation.

Now, you have to imagine the flow of thoughts that went through my brain
as this happened.  As I said, I was doing rather well with a woman for the
first time in... ?, and beginning to think that I had been in the wrong
places for quite some time and that I should spend more time at good
parties.  When all of the sudden, another nice young lady walks by.  
Very attractive, equally short, (I'm big on short, so to speak,) very 
sexy, and I suddenly wonder if the girl I was talking to (who couldn't 
have missed the sudden shift in my gaze and my sudden loss of cool) was 
about to write me off as a bad job.

But we both laughed, commented on how nice the second woman's nipple rings
were, that the party seemed to be taking a fundamental turn, and continued
our conversation.  -rbarry

Looking through my logs today, I found that someone had come to this page
from a URL which was FIFTEEN HUNDERED characters long.  They'd practically
typed in the entire description of how to cheat at some game or another
into a google search.... and wound up here.  Weird. 

Hey.  I didn't promise that it would be a barrel full of laughs EVERY day
when you show up to read this thing.  -rbarry

%20060724
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I'm seeing a number of attempts in my logs by people who are trying to get 
at the passwords on this system by requesting ../../../../../etc/password,
or whatever number of back-directories they feel are necessary.

It's pretty clear what's going on - they want a list of valid usernames at
this address so they can start spamming those users.

So this week's geek challenge, (you knew it was coming,) is to come up 
with something truly evil to send back to these people when they attempt
to connect.  I'm thinking that a valid-looking etc/passwd would be a good
start, but the winner will be the one who comes up with the ultimate in
justice for people who engage in these activities.

It just dawned on me that every one of these attempts is a violation of
the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (and many other statutes, I'm sure.)
There has to be some fun to be had there...

Within a physical 6-inch radius I have:
1) my cell phone
2) my foodini.org email account open
3) my perpetual.com email open
4) the perpetual IRC channel
5) my ICQ account.

If I ever hear anyone complain that I'm difficult to get ahold of again, I'm 
going to SHOW them how easy it is to get ahold of someone!  =]  -rbarry

Deja Voodoo:  I think I've felt this stabbing pain before.  -rbarry

%20060711
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A friend was making the happiest of announcements today, and postscripted
with a petition for baby names and contributions to the diaper fund.  

I told him that I can provide a couple hundred diapers, and that if he names
the boy "Ronald Scott," they'll even be clean.  -rbarry

The only trouble with the World Cup.... is that it's Soccer.  Steve Clinard

%20060707
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I've been looking forward to the release of Guitar Hero II with...

AGH!  I had to abandon in mid-post and now I can't remember what I
was going to say!

I don't envy the designers and engineers of said game their job of
creating a completely new genre: the cooperative multiplayer rythm
game.  Damn, I can't wait.

Red Octane: Pink Floyd is a gold mine.  Some B.B. King, maybe.  Hell,
sneak in some Bela Fleck and Victor Wooten - you are doing bass, right?
Some of the Fleck/Wooten projects would be fun.  It may not be Banjo
Hero, but have you _heard_ UFO Tofu or Live Art/Amazing Grace?

While I'm at it, George Thorogood, Move it on Over his a good lead/
rythm/bass tune.  You ARE planning on supporting a multitap, aren't
you?

/psychotic rambling

-rbarry

%20060706
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As the bugs pile up in my inbox (4 new ones today) I considered filing a 
high-priority bug to everyone else in the engineering and design staff
which read "assign no bugs to Ron for a week."  But then I realized that
they'd all get marked as duplicates of each other and the last one would
be assigned back to me.  -rbarry

%20060704
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Why is the 4th weekend always the first weekend in July?  - rbarry

%20060630
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"The Constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper." - G.W. Bush.  Nov, 2005

%20060616
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Build at your own risk.

1. Large garbage can.
2. Insert large airbag assembly.  Trail ignition wires out small hole in can.
3. Fill can with pingpong balls.
4. Cover can with tissue wrapping paper and tape along edge.
5. Aim.
6. Add 12 volts.
7. Despite how hilarious the whole thing was, realize how stupid you were
   to fire it off near anyone.
-rbarry.

%20060603
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Having kids is somewhat like taking a stroll through a college biology
department.  And licking all the petrie dishes.

I've been enjoying all the benefits, the last few days, of life at 104
degrees. -rbarry

%20060530
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Meditation == Contemplating one's navel.
Given extended periods of time to contemplate one's navel, one is only going
to discover one thing:  Belly-button lint.
If the purpose of meditation is enlightenment and belly-button
contemplation is going to turn up a near infinite supply of lint, then
lint must be enlightenment.

I'm on my way to the laundromat.  I'm going to make a killing in the
second-hand enlightenment (soon to be trademarked "Enlintenment") market.

Meditate with me upon this.

    -rbarry
update:  Brian Carver tells me his Enlintenment(tm) is always blue.

It has been described as the holy grail of computer science: software which
is capable of recognizing and 'understanding' natural language.  

I must disagree.  Software capable of explaining to me what the hell I signed
when I bought my house would be a good start, but I'm feeling like a real
software mountain to climb:

This week's Geek Challenge is simple:
1) To earn basic points, create a piece of software that is able to explain
   in plain terms, it's own End User Licensing Agreement (EULA).
2) To earn advanced points, create a piece of software that is capable of 
   explaining in plain terms, any Microsoft EULA.
3) To earn full points, create a piece of software that can explain in plain
   terms, why the hell software still comes with a EULA, considering that they
   never seem to hold up in court.

-rbarry

%20060526
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Advertising bugs the crap out of me.  So much so that I tend to avoid 
products whose advertising annoys me in any way - and trust me, it's quite
easy to annoy me in 30 seconds.

But last night, as I was 25 seconds into yet another annoyance, it suddenly
dawned upon me that the beer commercial I was suffering through (for a nasty
light beer, I'm sure) had planted in my mind the desire, the urge, nay, had
branded upon my very soul: the need for a beer.

As I walked to the fridge, it occurred to me that the last beer in the fridge
was no more.  It had ended its long life on this planet as many beers do.
Consumed.  Hopelessly, I rummaged through the fridge and spotted a minor 
miracle.  A Guinness, unresigned to its eventual fate, was cowering shamefully
behind a pickle jar.  It's probably the most surprising thing that has
occurred to me in the last month.

I put Mr. Guinness out of his misery.  The world was a doubly-happier place.

    -rbarry

%20060522
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I've been thinking of arranging the Mario Brothers (or Mario Bros., take your 
pick) theme music for saxophone and violin because 1) no such duet music seems
to exist anywhere - probably for a very good reason and 2) because it seems
that through the ages, my best friends have been violin players and the only
time I've ever played with any of them was at commencement ceremonies - from
a far distant part of the orchestra.

Anyway, add it to the stack of things I really need to get to sometime in my
life, though it's been given a higher priority than most because I have struck
(no pun intended) upon Awesome Band Name Number Two (where ABNNO was Sculpin
Oppressor).  "Sax and Violins."  -rbarry

%20060517
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My office is a bit entertaining to reach.  It's on the fifth floor.  The
elevators are risky.  At best.  The stairs are a loop of about 20-30
meters per floor.  So:

Mr. Kamen, you may ask, when you invented the Segway Personal
Transporter, did you in fact consider the issue of how one
gets to the fifth floor of 149 New Montgomery Street?

No?

Well, between the elevators that _might_ get you _close_ to
the floor you selected (assuming that you are out of the
elevator in the same hour in which you entered) and the stairs
which are a combination of stairwell and marathon, Mr. Kamen
seems to have left us denizens of 149 in the lurch.

Until now.  Dean Kamen.  I salute you.  Somebody please leave
the window near my office open 24/7:

Man Slinger

    Thank you,

    -rbarry


%20060516
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"If there's one thing I've learned from Resident Evil, it's that you should
never enter a zombie-infested area without a lighter.  I'm not going into
the SBC building without a shotgun and a lighter." - Yu Ping Hu

What can I say about Flagship Studios?  I guess it's this:  If you are facing
the prospect of taking an old employer to court, you have to be able to pay
for it.  In order to pay for it, you have to have a job.  Having a job means
being at your desk and not tying up all your time in court.  So despite having
a lawyer ready to go to court ON CONTINGENCY over the rather questionable
behavior of this company, I had to drop it and move on.

But it warms my heart to see reviewers dropping them firmly on the top 10
bad titles at netjak.com:

  #8: Hellgate: London, PC

  Nothing says "We have no original ideas" more than leaving your old company
  to form a new company, and then making the exact same game you made back at
  your old company. Ladies and gentlemen, I present Flagship Studios!

  This game is just about as similar to Diablo 2 as you can get without being
  sued. Granted, it's fully 3D now, but you still fight demons from Hell, and 
  you still do the same damn thing over, and over, and over again. Randomly 
  generated dungeons, millions of mouse clicks, and 5 points to allocate every 
  time you level. Fantastic. 

	...until you can't.

%20060504
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"I wish I wasn't [so rich].  There is nothing good that comes out of that."
- Bill Gates

World's richest man he may be, but he's never going to be in the running for
the world's brightest.  It would seem that he could very easily make himself
not-so-rich AND do a lot of good at the same time.  And I'd like to help.

Bill, if your sub-zero IQ is keeping you from being able to figure this out,
please feel free to contact me any time, day or night.  I can grant you this 
wish by helping you help some very worthy causes. (I hate Richard Stallman, so
the Free Software Foundation will not be among them.)

May I propose:
$10 Billion to form an Overexploited Software Engineers' Union.  

I'll have to think about this one.  You personally gave the limit to the Bush
campaign.  Maybe $10 Million per war veteran to pay for their physical and
psychological bills in the decades to come?

This is a good one.  I reserve the right to edit this one well past the 1 week
limit.

%20060502
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"Being misinterpreted out of context is what separates us from the animals."
- John Spurling

%20060428
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Note to self:
Need to document Parker/Bus thing and the creditcard door lock....
%20060428
It seems that somebody out there isn't so much of a fan of the 
default courier font that most browsers use for preformatted text.  
I've been getting the occasional complaint for quite some time about
it, but it seems like such a violation to take a blog which started
as a simple plan.txt file on a VAX (yes, an actual Digital Electronics
VAX 11/780) and turn it into something so modern.

At one point, I was at the bid sale at USU and they had that vax on
sale for $25.  Of course, I would have had to unplug my stove to feed
it 220 volts, but I could _still_ have my plan on an 11/780... and 
40 2800baud modems and a whole gigabyte of disk space!

Anyway, maybe it's that time.  I'm going to have to think about it.
I am using up about 3-5% of my allowable bandwidth on my website
just serving out this one file....  Break it up a bit and switch to
something a little more modern.  Maybe even allow (*gasp!*) comments.

Kicking and screaming....  Kicking and screaming....

-rbarry

UPDATE: 20080319
        This post used to be in the starndard browser font.  For reasons of my
        current formatting preferences, I've removed the browser's permission to
        do as it likes with the thing - it breaks the layout of the entire page.

%20060427
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"Microsoft is now talking about the digital nervous system... I guess I would
be nervous if my system was built on their technology, too." - Scott McNealy

       HOW TO DEFEAT THE ENCRYPTION ON ANY AUDIO FORMAT AT ALL
               (And Why I Found It To Be a Good Idea)
       -------------------------------------------------------
You buy music?  Me too.  Trouble is, the people who publish it are pulling
in far more cash from it than the artists who actually created it... and
they're spending that money doing something very stupid: trying to keep
you from copying it.

Let me be clear on this:  I'm not advocating your 'right' to copy music,
only asserting that they (RIAA, etc.) are wasting cash that should be going
to artists doing something completely, patheticly, impossibly pointless.

Way back in the day when Napster was big, I ran out to buy the latest album
from my favorite band the very day it released.  I had my own system which
allowed me to listen to my CDs at home, at my office, or at school, just
by MP3-ing them all and dropping them on a network only I could access.  I
had assumed that I was going to be doing the same thing with the new CDs
so I could listen to them while slogging away on a programming project
later that day.

It turned out that the CDs (multi-CD album) had all sorts of nasty crap on
them to keep you from doing exactly what I was doing.  The publisher was
assuming that I was ripping them to distribute them.  I wasn't, but the
fact that they made an operation that, regardless of what lobbists were/are
bought to change the legality of the issue, was perfectly ethical - pissed
me off to no end.

When I arrived home that evening, I went to stage two.  This is the bit for
which you are probably reading this article: I hooked up the digital output
on a CD player to the input on a computer - and simply recorded the audio
in real time, compressed them with my favorite codec...

...and then had an idea.  Essentially, there was a nice solution here which
would get you around any copy protection scheme.  Even if I were forced to
use the analog output from the stereo, I could still get a perfectly 
acceptable result... but the publisher of the album in question had assumed
that I was up to no good, so I humored them.  I dropped the whole thing on
Napster and called it a day.

My point, dear friends?  If you're keeping up with the news, you are either
infuriated by how much power these people wield over our lawmakers, or
you're completely brain dead.  Don't vote for the politicians they buy 
(Senators Feinstein (D-CA) and Graham (R-SC), for example), and stick to
the radio.  If they have so much cash that they can waste it on their
current activities, they don't need any more of yours.  I'm certainly
listening to a LOT more public radio these days.

By the way, HDTV is similarly signal-interrupt vulnerable, but that's a 
story for a different day.

-rbarry

%20060426
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If you feel the need to identify and catalog all of your obsessive behaviors,
do you have Meta-Obsessive Compulsive Syndrome?  How would it be diagnosed
that I even think about these things?  -rbarry

Robert Downey Junior will be starring in a modernized adaptation of Moby
Dick.  Downey, of course, will be playing the lead character, Captain Rehab.

-rbarry

%20060424
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Sun Microsystems, we stand in awe.  Your Schwartz in definately bigger than
ours.  But do you know how to use it?  (Mel Brooks jokes, commence!)

Walking to the drug store, I noticed a guy with a small, grey bird sitting on
a bench by the sidewalk.  On my way back, the pair had been replaced by an
extremely amorous couple.  I elbowed Marilyn and grinned, "Cockatiel, Cop a
Feel."

-rbarry

%20060421
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Alien Robot Fleet.  Some Assembly Required.  (They come in Pieces.) -rbarry



%20060418
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"I'm the decider, and I decide what's best."  - G.W. Bush.

Note the distinction between, "I decide what I think is best," and "I decide
what's best."  Worst of all, I think he actually believes it.

%20060416
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Couple great quotes from the radio this afternoon:
"Keep the Devil interested, but waiting."
"No ounce of prevention can kill you like the cure." 
...both from "Dave's True Story"  (davestruestory.com)

%20060411
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I was just reading a blurb in the paper about Cheetah the Chimp - star of all
the Tarzan movies of the 30s and 40s.  It said that he's Guinnessed as the
oldest chimp on record, at 74, and that chimps in captivity usually live to
around 60.

This got me to thinking: whenever you read about the life expectancies of
animals, you get a couple estimates; "in the wild" and "in captivity."  This
begs the question, when you say I have a life expectancy of 80 years, is that
in the wild or in captivity and which one am I?  -rbarry

%20060406
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I had an idea for the ultimate juggling act: It is quite possible to solve
a 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube one-handed.  I'm not that ambitious, but I was thinking
about juggling a 2x2x2 and two balls... solving the cube in the process.

A 2x2x2 turns out to be quite difficult simply to manipulate one-handed.
-rbarry

%20060405
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Hrm.... someone just hit the website having searched for the "Mad About Ron
Porno Movie!!!!!"  -rbarry

I would like to propose the ultimate Lego Mindstorms challenge:

Build a robot that, when placed in a room full of random lego parts - 
including all those that went into its own construction - can construct a
perfect copy of itself from those parts, including dumping its own program
to the new robot.

For extra points, it should be able to locate the boxes it needs in any
toy store or warehouse, and complete the process.

For extra extra points, make it evil.  -rbarry

%20060403
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I've had so many people express an interest in my color deficiencies, and
found myself trying to explain the technical side of it with a lot of
hand-waving and statistical language that I figure it's time to just store
a link to the best presentation on the topic I've seen so far:

http://www.firelily.com/opinions/color.html

Please note when you read it that once a photo has been made on film or
taken digitally, there is no way to simulate the process of trichromatic
color deficiency.  Dichromatic, yes.  If I can find a source of some
very specific camera filters, I'll be able to do the former... eventually.

UPDATE 20080803:
  The problem with trying to simulate what a color deficient person sees when
  starting with a photograph is that you are already too late:  For a photon
  of an ambiguous frequency, the camera has already captured it and lumped it
  in with all the other photons that a normal-sighted person would see in the
  same way.  For me, for example, if a photon in the 'aqua-marine' part of 
  the spectrum hits a camera sensor, it will contribute some blue and some
  green, but the photoshop filter has no way of knowing whether this color was
  the result of a single frequency band or one of an infinite number of bands
  that could result in the same color.

  The photoshop filters that attempt to show what a color deficient viewer would
  see in this situation will invariably appear to be some hue or another to me.
  Trouble is - that part of the spectrum is totally grey to me, in real life,
  anyway.  In a photo, that section of the rainbow can be anything from grey to
  green.

%20060328
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Woo hoo!  I set a new personal record - TEN TERABYTES of core files!!!

%20060320
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Well, at lunch we were discussing sushi - specifically, horse sushi/sashimi.

When one participant mentioned that he'd politely declined an offer of just
such a beast while in Japan, I commended him for not putting a gift horse in
the mouth. -rbarry

It's been a fun week.  Add to everything else that the neighbors' retaining
wall dropped a ton (I'm not speaking figuratively here) of concrete into our
backyard last week...

%20060315
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Search engines must be getting better - I get far fewer hits here than I
was 6 months ago.  I wonder if the sheer size of the page is giving them
a hint....  I am over a quarter megabyte and just now hitting 50000 words
in 851 entries.

Let me define stress for you:
* Having an 18-month-old.  Parker's fantastic, but he has moments of good
  as well as toddler evil.
* Wedding plans.
* Quitting a job to start a new one.
* Starting a new job.
* Getting canned with no explanation after 6 days.  Soul-searching as a
  result of this one is no good for the self-esteem, regardless of the
  reason.
* Filing a lawsuit against employer for above mentioned issue.
* Trying to sell a car - especially when you're leasing it from Chase
  Auto Financing.  Never do business with these morons.  This is the
  second time I've been screwed in the four-figure range by these people.
* Spending literally 10 hours on the phone in the last 2 weeks to take 
  care of Chase and buyer.
* Getting above-mentioned car in an accident ON THE WAY TO HAND IT OFF
  TO THE BUYER!!!
* Dealing with auto insurance company.
I can't figure out why I've had a screaming headache for the last three
days.  Funny how no dose of ibuprofen has any effect at all.

Which wise man uttered "Beware the Ides of March?"

%20060310
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Hrm... I wonder if I could have sued Exabyte back-in-the-day for false
advertising: "This damn floppy only holds 320 KILOBYTES!!!  Less than a
trillionth as much as advertised on the box!!!" - rbarry

%20060308
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Do the Platonic Solids ever get together, just to snuggle?  - rbarry

%20060306
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Sorry, everyone - time for another rant about how much windows sucks.

I run a chunk of software on my desk at work called synergy, which allows me
to plug a monitor into my win box and my linux box and share a keyboard and a
mouse between them.  The hardware is plugged into the windows machine and it is
the responsibility of that box to forward mouse and keyboard events to linux
whenever my mouse leaves the windows field and enters that of the linux box.
Comprende?

Anyway, any time I start the project I'm working on - or for that matter, try
to get Microsoft Visual Studio to do anything at all - the mouse is jammed in
windows space.  I can't move it over to the linux machine until some cycles 
free up.  So of course, I go into the task manager to set the priority on
synergy to realtime so it can't starve anymore... and find that it already is.

In other words, Microsoft's real-time service can be starved by a low priority
process.

%20060303
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The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

%20060222
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True story:

The IT guy for my office came in to deliver replacement memory for my
new machine - the old had been overheating and taking my machine down
from time to time - and a new lasermouse to replace the $3 hockey puck
that was passing for a pointing device on my box at the time.

As he left, he apologized for all the issues with my machine - that it
sucks to show up for a new job and have equipment problems from the 
get-go.  I told him that it was alright - that the best laid plans of
mice and mem often go awry.
         ^^^
  -rbarry

%20060221
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I recently found myself discussing with a bartender/bar owner the 
possibility of creating a website for him.  A friend and I said we'd
be happy to tackle the job.  When it came to discussing payment, we
said that his company's microbrew would be fine compensation.

He threatened to throw us out for using the four-letter-words "free
beer." - rbarry

%20060213
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Well, it's official - I've handed in my notice at Sun Microsystems.
There's something to be said for an industry in which the 1 year, 11
months, and 2.5 weeks is my personal record for staying at the same
company.  Numerous layoffs have seen to that quite efficiently - that
and John Romero.


Now, I can't say anything about _why_ John Romero left Midway, though
I've been fortunate to be filled in on those details, but I can
speculate... which I have already done.  To summarize my previous
statements:

JR left Midway to "Pursue other opportunities..."  Um.  He left 
with no other jobs available and I can tell you the man has none of
his Id money left.  He can't live without work.  It was quite clear
that he was shown the door.

Gee, why would Midway let such a considerate, gender-sensitive,
mature person leave?  Hrm.  Let me think.  How many female artists
were in the employ of Midway when he left?  Maybe we can work this
out for ourselves...


%20060201
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A friend of mine is scheduled for what he calls the Big Snip in a couple
of weeks.  After telling me about a dream about the event involving
Scotch Tape, of all things, and a rather inept surgeon, I told him that
I'd be happy to call his doctor and ask to make sure that his equpment
is sterile before my friend's is.  =] -rbarry

%20060107
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Upon noticing that I was wearing only socks around the office, a coworker
asked me to explain.  I said that it would appear as though I needed
to be rebooted.  - rbarry

%20051110
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Month-and-a-half since the last entry.  I'm WAY behind here.

After reading yet another diatribe on the 'fact' that open source is going
to take over the world and will eventually become the only software model
in existence, I feel I must rebut.

I've been working at Sun Microsystems for quite some time and have been a
part of the movement to open Solaris.  One is bound to observe that a great
number of people are being PAID to work on solaris.

I might go so far as to posit that the vast majority of people who currently
write open source software make their real living making software somewhere
that pays them to make 'closed' software.  Does it not follow that if these
establishments, one-by-one, are dominated out of existence by open source,
that the same individuals who make OSS will become jobless, or at least in
rampant oversupply in the employment market?

The inevitable conclusion of such a trend would be that many people would no
longer see a future in Comp Sci and spend their lives - and their education
funds - doing other things.  But you would be a hacker no matter what?  Right.
I started twiddling bits on a TRS-80 when I was eight.  I sold my first game
when I was 14.  I've been through enough bleeding-edge pure-research and 
absolute-latest-tech development projects to keep my brain reeling till I
die... and I have to tell you that if there hadn't been a sound financial
future in this when I hit college.... I would have done something else.

Now I don't deny that there are plenty of socialists in software.  I had the
unfortunate experience once of having to spend an entire day with Richard
Stallman.  I managed to go from idolizing the man to refusing to utter the
word GNU for a year in that day.  But these people are still getting paid
by somebody.  Your service department isn't going to bring in cash forever.
As the net becomes more and more organized, don't you find that your tech
support for every device/package/toaster/pet you own is a search engine?

People with brains and very expensive educations write software.  Deal with
it.  You're going to have to pay for the stuff one way or another.  Even if
you insist on using nothing but open source, one could make the argument that
all the stuff you _can't_ do with it* (don't kid yourself.  Why do you think
I suffer through having two windows boxes at home?) is part of the price you
pay.

* I use windows for:
1) You have two debuggers in this world that are worth a damn: Metrowerks
   and Visual Studio.  Only one of these is supported by the free software
   packages I use to develop my games.  (Micro$oft's)
2) Video.  Ignoring the fact that Quicktime - and all the available content
   it provides - is only available as a player under win and mac, I do video
   editing.  'nuff said.
3) The Gimp.  Sucks.  Ass.  You can scream all you like that it is as much
   a powertool as Photoshop, but that doesn't make it true.  It's interface
   is designed by people who thought they were being radical, but they were
   in fact being morons.  Did I mention that it doesn't load the proprietary
   formats that my hardware dumps data in?  Photoshop does.
4) Games.  I have to give transgaming a real pat on the back.  They are 
   utterly f-ing brilliant.  But that doesn't get you the latest ATI drivers
   under your brand of UNIX.  Besides, transgaming is strictly linux.  What
   about BSD/Solaris? 
5) Hardware support.  Like everyone else, I have a camera, an mp3 player,
   a wireless hub, and other useful tidbits that I use regularly.  Funny how
   there are no wireless drivers for the brand-new laptop I borrowed from
   work and tried running linux on.  Those .exes that came with my camera
   don't work under free software...  etc.
6) This bears repeating:  Debugging under linux is a pain in the ass.  Most
   of the hackers I know still debug with printfs.

wc -l /usr/src/project5/*.c
40000
/usr/src/project5/a.out
Segmentation Fault (core dumped)

shit.  Good bugger-f-ing luck if you are using gdb.

%20050827
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Wouldn't it be wonderful to think that G.W. Bush was capable of transcending
his background and becoming a person who could understand broader and more 
fundamental issues of human contact... ?
- Roger Waters - Interviews From the Dark Side of the Moon DVD

%20050818
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I can't stand it anymore.  I keep going through my logs and seeing all the
goofy shit that gets people to this web page and it just floors me.  Most
of my readers aren't privy to all the details of what happens when you go
to a web page - among other things, your browser is nice enough to send
the server you access the web page that contained the link that you clicked
to go to the new page.  Make sense?  In other words, when you did a google
search for "mary-kate and ashley porn" and got this page, your browser
tells my web server that the page you came in from was (and this is an
oversimplified example) google.com/search=mary_kate_and_ashley_porn.

This information ends up in a log on my system and I have no end of fun
reading through the stuff that people actually search for:

So without further ado, the Search of the Day (I'll come up with a fun
acronym later) is:
> (google.com)What is the periodic table symbol for the element that slays
> the cybermen?
That would be Gold.  Au.

BORING!  NEXT!

> (google.at)Is mary kate olsen technically still a virgin?
I'm not going to touch that one.  And I know what you're thinking.

> (google.com)In the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, what was the scariest
> and most dangerous place in the universe and where is it located?

That would be the Frogstar, World B, the most totally evil place in the 
universe.  (Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Chapter 8.)  It pays
to have electronic copies of these things.  =]

> (google.se)Are frogs turing compatible?
Don Knuth (the computability and algorithms man Himself) once provided
an abstract to a conference on this topic as a joke.  Maybe he didn't
want to spill the beans on his actual topic.  Anyway.  As far as I know,
nobody has managed to reliably flip a bit on any size frog array and
therefore it would be highly unlikely that they would be turing compatible.

%20050817
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Some time ago, I finally sat down and gritted my teeth: I was going to get
through the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Infocom Game if it was the last
thing I did.

I received my first copy of this abomination when I was in 7th grade - that's
1985 or 1986-ish.  I never finished, despite ages of effort.  I know people
that made it through by working as a team with others, but I was alone - 
stranded in a hell of Douglas Adams' devising.

The game cheats.  It lies to you.  It makes fun of you.  And try as you may -
read all of the books if you like - this is the hardest blasted game of all
time.  Getting through Pikmin in 18 days was easy.  Doom on nightmare mode?
Done.  HHGTTG took me until I finally caved in as an adult and swore that my
epitath would not be something to the effect of having been beaten by a game.

For those of you who simply want to see how it ends, there is salvation.  I
put together a rough doc that will get you through the whole thing.  It's not
a hintbook.  It is the definitive solution - line by line.  You'll see the
game go by, but you won't appreciate it.  So.  For those of you without
Infinite Patience: http://www.foodini.org/hhgttg/infocom/hhgttg_solution.txt

Utah is an interesting place in some respects.  When it comes to conservative
causes, it is reactionary in the extreme - and to the extreme right.

The issue of gay marriage comes up and Utah is ready to start the Rainbow
Inquisition.  The idea pops into someone's head that the church and state
separation can be neatly avoided by renaming creationism 'intelligent
design' (for who would argue with teaching something 'intelligent' in the
schools?) ....and Utah is stepping up to the plate to get started - and buy
the first new school textbooks the state has seen since the last time they
re-wrote history.  (Don't get me started on this latter (Latter?) topic -
I spent more than a decade there.)

So when a friend of mine sent me a very well-written article, penned by a
professor of Biology at Brigham Young University encouraging the deflation
of intelligent design (http://sltrib.com/opinion/ci_2941591, or see below)
I replied with the following, republished here because I love a soapbox:

>   Rather, we seek spiritual truth through our personal devotions and
> secular truth through the scientific method. We urge the Utah
> Legislature to do the same.

To paraphrase in a manner in which the general public is more likely to 
meme: "Religion is the study of Who created the universe.  Science is the 
study of how it was accomplished."  In short, there is no intersection.

I suspect that intelligent design will have to hit the supreme courts - 
and it would get ugly there no matter what.  If it is rejected, the Court 
would eventually have to rule on whether evolution should also be a 
verboten topic.

If the Court decided to allow intelligent design, there'd be a major 
uproar:  1) Parents (myself included) would yank their kids from the 
public school system.  2) Taxpayers (myself included) would be in a twist 
over their money going to support a religiously jaded education system.

Given the options facing the decision-making bodies in the US today, a 
student of the future might find himself in one of two extreme situations:

1) I believe in God and am required to study evolution.   Is it possible 
for me to assume the notion (for the moment) that this is how God 
accomplished the task and that the school system is asserting nothing more 
(or less.)

2) I firmly believe that god (note the careful choice of capitals) does 
not exist as a creator.  I therefore cannot accept any guise of 
creationism and therefore requiring me to study intelligent design is a 
fundamental undermining of my First Amendment rights.

Now it has been stated that the First Amendment specifically protects 
religion and not non-religion.  This attempt to turn the Bill of Rights 
into a club for use by those who would impose their beliefs upon their 
neighbors (you know, those people that you're supposed to love, respect 
and forgive) are no better than the Church of England's treatment of 
certain waterlogged, penguin-impersonating, turkey eaters of our past.

Or at least, that's what they taught me in the same schools they're now 
trying to lumber with intelligent design.

    rOn

(Original article from the Salt Lake Tribune, copied here because they
don't keep articles around for very long.)

Creationists' anti-evolution assertions are just plain wrong
Stephen Nelson

Over the past few months, the possible introduction of legislation to
mandate teaching intelligent design (a camouflaged form of creationism)
in Utah public schools has spawned considerable debate within the pages
of The Salt Lake Tribune.
    Of particular concern to us are three anti-evolution creationist
"myths" that have all been raised recently in The Tribune. Although a
newspaper may not be the proper place for detailed scientific
discussion, some clarification is appropriate as belief in these
assertions may affect legislation and public policy.
    l The first claim is that there are no transitional forms in the
fossil record. This is patently untrue; there are many examples, but the
creationists repeat the statement as if the retelling will change
reality.
   We offer just a few examples: Mammals, it is clear, evolved on land.
But one branch, the whales, subsequently evolved to a marine existence.
Evolution predicted, and subsequent research has found, ancestral
(fossil) whales progressively adapted to the ocean. Similarly, hominids
(apparent ancestors of humans) now comprise a sequence of some 20
recognized species.
   Indeed, Dr. Kurt Wise, a creationist with sufficient background to
speak knowledgeably on the matter, has repeatedly insisted that his
fellow creationists must stop their dissembling on the matter of
transitional fossils, and specifically points to whale and hominid
fossils as being transitional both in form and in time, and with which
creationists must honestly come to grips.
   Further examples of transitional fossils can be found in any
paleontology text, including horses, elephants, birds, etc., not to
mention plants and invertebrates. Given the special set of circumstances
required for the preservation of fossils, the record of transitional
forms is quite striking. This issue should be laid to rest.
   l The second myth is that methods of dating rocks and minerals are
unreliable, or produce different ages for the same rock. The latter, in
fact, is true at times. A classic case is the granite of Little
Cottonwood Canyon.
   We know of four techniques that have been applied to two different
minerals in the rock (it is sometimes possible to apply more than one
technique to a single mineral). Each technique records the time at which
the rock cooled below a critical temperature. The oldest age, 30.5
million years, records the time elapsed since the granite solidified
from a molten state at a temperature of about 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit.
   The other ages of 10 million, 5 million and 3 million years record
the time at which the rock cooled through 400 degrees, 200 degrees, and
150 degrees due to uplift along the Wasatch Fault. In other words, it
would have been entirely unreasonable for all four methods to yield the
same age. The fact is that when properly applied and understood, modern
techniques for dating rocks are very reliable.
   l The third, and in some ways most distressing, myth is the
assertion that the second law of thermodynamics disproves evolution.
This rests on the notion that "disorder" is increasing, whereas
evolution postulates increasing order in life over time.
   Thermodynamics is a difficult topic to explain in a few sentences.
Open-system, not closed-system, thermodynamics must be considered since
the Earth constantly derives energy from the sun. And in open systems,
energy transfer can and does drive greater complexity: For example, the
creation of snowflakes. There, standard physical and chemical laws
inexorably create myriad symmetrical forms and complex patterns.
   Similarly, physical and chemical laws produce mutations, most bad
but some good, which produce new biochemical pathways in living
organisms, and which, when acted upon by natural selection and other
forces, have evidently produced the many forms of life. Evolution does
not violate thermodynamics; it is the product of thermodynamics.
   For the interested reader, scientifically sound information on these
and other issues raised by creationists can be found at the National
Center for Science Education Web site at http://www.ncseweb.org..
   To the non-believer, creationist objections are likely to sound
inherently absurd. However, as scientists who hold deep and profound
personal beliefs in God, we offer a few final observations.
   Since there is overwhelming evidence for the evolution of life and
the antiquity of Earth, we find it very unlikely that God would set
about to deceive us. Although each believer may seek to understand the
purpose of creation, we believe it is unwise for any individual to claim
to know the mind of God concerning the mechanics of creation.
   We agree with Apostle James Talmage of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, who, commenting wisely on the interface between
science and religion, said, "We do not show reverence for the scriptures
when we misapply them through faulty interpretation."
   Rather, we seek spiritual truth through our personal devotions and
secular truth through the scientific method. We urge the Utah
Legislature to do the same.
   ---
   Stephen Nelson and Bart Kowallis teach in the Department of Geology
at Brigham Young University.


%20050808
permanant link
I had the rather disconcerting experience today of reaching for my mouse and
getting a handful of stapler.  For a split second I was imagining some sort
of weird alien ergonomic device.  It's the simple things that will bring your
train of thought barreling off the tracks and into the ravine.

%20050314
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Okay, I've had doctors tell me to avoid phlebotomy colleges, nurses tell me not
to go to certain parts of Romania, and med students refer to me as a Big
(er, pulsating) Red Bull's-Eye.

But until today, it has never been so clear as when I soiled a doctor's tie.

I have veins.  Big ones.  I could rent them out for use by your local fire
department.

%20050307
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How to tell that your bank (Wells Fargo) is sending you way too much mail:

Wells Fargo Investing sends me mail to confirm any transaction on my accounts -
one envelope for every transaction on every account.  So when I make my 
IRA/ESA/TIRA contributions for the year and purchase my usual mutual funds (see
below) I receive an envelope for every account... all on the same day.

Just to keep things interesting, they also send me mail when my funds pay
dividends... like today when I received an envelope telling me that I'd
received a $.27 dividend - that's not an error, that's 27 cents - and they
sent me two pages of paper in an envelope crammed with ads.  Postage?  27 cents.

%20050304
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The punishment for use of rlogin/telnet on this network shall be terminal.
- rbarry

%20050228
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A musing on time travel.

The argument has been made that if time travel were possible, we would have
seen time tourists by now.  People hanging about at the tsunami high water
mark taking full-motion holography, recording the 2000 inauguration with their
pinkie rings, and generally converging on other natural disasters to mull
about and oggle.

It would seem that the universe's very presence would be sufficient argument
that (reverse) time travel will never be achieved.  Were it to happen, you'd 
eventually get to a point where the population of the universe had no universe
left in which to live - either due to the big crunch or heat death - and would
pick a time in their past in which to resettle.

Their progeny would repeat the process, and so on.  Eventually, their combined
mass in any time would cause the universe to collapse in upon itself.

Maybe it will work out such that you have to replace an equal mass to your own
if you move to another time.... -rbarry

%20050203
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Kip Thorne's Gravitation Book, at 1215 pages, isn't just a book ABOUT gravity. 
It's also a rather weighty demonstration.  -rbarry

When I owned this thing, I remember it being not only the biggest, but also the
densest (mass, in addition to material to comprehend) book I'd ever owned.
There existed no sane method for reading the thing without experiencing great
pain.

%20050112
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And since I managed a limerick with Orange as the primary rhyme, I thought I'd
tackle Silver:

A man from the City of Silver
Had laid out his lunch on a salver.
His food did not sate,
So he swallowed the plate
quite whole, taking no time to savour.

(I'm still working on it.)

%20050111
permanant link
Science is a wonderful thing - if one doesn't have to earn a living at it.
- Albert Einstein

At least if you're a _Republican_ asshole, you'll never be without a peer
group.  -rbarry

%20050104
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A man from the County of Orange
Had trouble all day with a door-hinge.
He screamed in dismay
Till his voice went astray
And he had to go suck on a lozenge.

    -rbarry

Limerick.  By committee:

There once was a man from Atlantis
Who found he had ants in his pantis.
His plans were thus laid:
His banjo he played
For the dancing ant-eating mantis.

    -rbarry/bcarver

%20041222
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Zombie Cream Stout?

Had a bit of trouble naming this one, so it takes some explanation.  The
original recipe comes from San Francisco Brewcraft, though the final form
is an improvisation.  The SFB recipe was handwritten and almost completely
illegible:  Qeeucli was eventually deciphered to Munich, Boilee to Barley.
However, we hit a snag with Kcesaflie...

None of the homebrew stores online list anything that seemed close enough
to decode this cryptograin, so Brian (Scearce) resorted to running an agrep
(approximate grep) through /usr/dict/words for a match...  We saw "kestrel,"
"chevalier," and "vouchsafe," but nothing relating to grain.

We even hit upon cerebellum...  We weren't convinced that a half-pound of 
brains were quite right for brewing, but it led to the inevitable zombie
jokes...  BTW, ZCS has a nice creamy head on it.

I gave up and called the store.  Carafa.

%20041209
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I don't follow these things very carefully, so I can't say with certainty that
a star wars tv show is in the works.  If it were, my only question would be 
why it took lucas so long to get to that medium.  Anyway, in case it is
happening and a title has not been agreed upon yet, I'd like to submit the
catchy:  "The Reruns of the Jedi." -rbarry

%20041116
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Don Marquis said, "A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to
immitating yourself." 

It was announced today that Disney is setting up shop in Glendale to start
production on "Toy Story 3."  They've been reduced to immitating someone
they had to hire in lieu of doing good work themselves.

CNN link


If you've not been following the developments in this area, Disney and Pixar
have had a cooperative agreement for the production of 6 movies.  After 
Toy Story 2 came out, Disney pointed out (with logic that only seems to make
sense if you are a lawyer working for Disney or Michael Eisner - it's an 
exercise for the reader to determine which has the longer horns and redder
skin - that TS2 wasn't a movie, but a SEQUEL, according to their contracts.

This left Pixar in the unenviable position of having made a movie - sorry,
Mike, a SEQUEL - for Disney for free.

So for the sake of a quick buck, Disney bent Pixar over the back of a chair
and ruined a very productive arrangement.

I've not missed opening night of a Pixar film yet, though I've not seen a
Disney film since they turned sour when I was a kid.  Short version:  I'll
happily ignore TS3 when it comes out.

%20041110
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If you own a German Shepherd, a Doberman, a Rottweiler, or even a Chihuahua -
and your house gets robbed - you can expect the dog to raise the alarm.  The
only way you'll ever get an alarm out of a Labrador is if you tie a bell to
his tail.  - rbarry

%20041108
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We have an even more ambiguous election this time around than last.  *sigh*

All I can say is, is anyone surprised that Halliburton stock shot up (beat the
dow margin by 3x) the day after the election?

%20041028
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Dateline, Broward County, Florida.  Broward was Gore's biggest landfall during
the 2000 election - a greater majority of Democratic voters turned out there
than any other county in the state.  Today it was announced that 58,000 ballots
already cast.... have gone missing from Broward.

CNN isn't covering this.  I had to go to The BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation.

To prove that he took the issue of global warming seriously, Marburger[1] 
shamelessly cited a study that President Bush had commissioned from the 
National Academy of Sciences. The administration had asked the NAS[2] to find 
"weaknesses" in climate science studies to justify their efforts to derail an 
international global warming treaty.[3]  When the commissioned report instead 
confirmed human-induced climate change and mentioned fossil fuels as a major 
culprit the EPA decided to replace the findings in its Report on the 
Environment with a discredited study funded by the American Petroleum 
Institute.[4]

[1] Dr. John Marburger III - George W. Bush's science advisor.
[2] National Academy of Sciences.
[3] "Moving Target on Policy Battlefield," Washington Post, May 2, 2002
    (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18131-2002May1?language=printer)
[4] "Report by EPA Leaves out Data on Climate Change," New York Times, June 19,
	2003

%20041026
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Why is it that, almost without exception, people searching for porn online
can't spell?  I get a half-dozen hits a day or more on this page - most of
which are people who are searching for free porn.  Most common spelling
mistakes?  'there' instead of 'their,'  'mashine,' 'mary-kay' instead of
'mary-kate,' 

%20041014
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Doctor, are you SURE I don't have hypochondria? -rbarry

%20041007
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Still working on band names:
    "Still Got Our Day Jobs."

I swear I'm going to make a regular feature of the searches that get people
to this page.  The most recent ones that really caught my eye were:
* Mary-Kate XXX
* idiot's guide to sound waves
* 10-digit prime numbers in e     - someone trying to solve the google labs
    puzzle, I gather.  I was VERY disappointed that there were only two
    stages to the thing.  When they have 10 or so, then I'll apply, acting
    on the assumption that they've filtered out the riff-raff.  =]

%20041004
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Two recent announcements from Microsoft have me up in arms.  First, they're
going to offer an anti-spyware product.  I'm not even sure where to begin on
this one.  How about requiring that every executing program be visible to the
user in some way or another, like... say... the process management window?
When I suspect that something is running on my computer that shouldn't be (my
disk is grinding away when I'm not doing anything) that's the first thing I
start.  Without fail, the offending process notices that PM is starting and
zonks out...  and I'm stuck reinstalling my computer.

How about simply creating a PM that works as it should?  That would be a nice
start.

Simply put, it's Microsoft's damn fault that spyware exists.  Maybe they
should fix their OS instead of putting out a piece of software that is nothing
more than marketing drivel.  If MS has an anti-spyware product, spyware _must_
be the fault of those nasty black-hats, right?

Second, Ballmer stating that the battle against viruses is a never-ending
battle.  Ah, shit.  Where do I begin with this one?

Set the wayback machine for 1995.  Ron is working in the computer labs, where
students ask a myriad of questions, but there is definately a top ten list.
On that list are such gems as "can I get a virus via email?" ...and, at the
DEC/Ultrix lab, "is there a virus scanner in here?"

The answer to the first question was a resounding no.  We usually got a private
giggle out of the question.  I mean, email is a device for propegating text.
How do you get a binary from your source, to your inbox (on a unix box,) to
your local machine via a nice ASCII-filter?  You couldn't.  Leave it to
microsoft to invent a away to do so.  It's called Outlook.  For God's sake,
don't use it.

As far as DEC/Ultrix is concerned, my airing it regards a greater concern:

        Viruses are a Microsoft-World problem.  Full Stop.

In my time as a Unix user, I've seen ONE Linux virus and it depended heavily
upon the version of Linux you were running.  You could only get the virus
from someone else running exactly the same version.  In other words, the thing
was nothing more than an intellectual curiosity.  I say that I've only "seen"
one unix virus before, but to be more accurate, I've only _heard_ of one.  The
thing never propegated beyond a few dozen computers.

The reason viruses don't show up in unix is somewhat technical, but it boils
down to core priorities.  Unix separates the user from the machine and then
allows the user at the important bits of the machine once it is determined that 
such an action is allowed.  Microsoft assumes that the user owns the machine 
and can do whateverthehell he wants with it, so when something nasty finds 
its way onboard, it can play havoc.  Unix, no privileges, no havoc.  MS - the 
world is the Black Hat's paradise.

You may think that I'm just MS-bashing here, but I'm being very realistic.
Security has never been a priority at Microsoft.  How could it be?  You can't
market security to someone that believes that there's nothing on their
computer worth securing - even if they do pay their bills, access their credit
cards and bank, and work at home on that machine.  Until (insert name of very
large, very unlucky company here) really gets burned and the world starts
holding individuals accountable for their online/email stupidity, Microsoft
doesn't have to spend a cent on security.  They'll just keep treating it as
they have - in the press.

%20040922
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It occurred to me today that the S.C. Johnson quote:

    A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something
    undreamed of by its author.

would classify bugs and security holes as _contributors_ to the success
of a tool, thereby neatly explaining the success of Microsoft.

-rbarry

%20040920
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The normal make a living - the deranged make history. - Titus.

%20040917
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From the RFC #2795, on the design of the Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite:

   All IMPS protocols must utilize the following packet structure.

   |-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+--|
   |Version | Seq  # | Protocol # | Reserved  | Size  |
   |-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+--|
   |         Source        |      Destination         |
   |-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+--|
   |           Data                        | Padding  |
   |-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+--|

   Version, Sequence Number, Protocol Number, and Reserved fields
   are 32 bit unsigned integers.  For IMPS version 1.0, the Version must
   be 1.  Reserved must be 0 and will always be 0 in future uses.  It is
   included because every other protocol specification includes a
   "future use" reserved field which never, ever changes and is
   therefore a waste of bandwidth and memory. [6] [7] [8].

%20040908
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"You really should try the Samoyed Brittle.  It's quite tasty." - rbarry

%20040907
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Would someone mind explaining to me why the Selective Service System (SSS, not
to be confused with, but similar in some respects to the SS) is ramping up for
full activation?  Every one of 20,000 draft positions (boards and appeals) must
be ready by June 15, 2005.

Who's our next war with, George?  

By the way, you'll now have to get a "pre-clearance" to go to Canada - a
precaution against draft-dodgers.

It certainly would make the Mary-Kate and Ashley games a bit more interesting
if they got drafted.

%20040906
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It's 3am and I have just gotten back from the hospital and finished all my
chores for the day.  I'll be getting marilyn in about 6 hours.  So much for
a good night's rest tonight.

%20040831
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For those of you who have suffered through my plan day after day after day, 
today is when it really pays off for you:  

At 2:50 this morning marilyn was poking me awake.  Not surprising - she has
the alarm on her side of the bed and I never hear it, so I asked her to make
sure she poked me awake a bit earlier than usual this morning.  Tuesdays are
staff meeting days.

It was dark outside and the light in the room was on... and marilyn was working
on a glass of wine!?!?!?!?!?  Hello, Leo G. Carrol.

"My water broke an hour ago."

I guess I'll be missing my staff meeting.

%20040830
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I hope one day to clone another Dick Cheney.  Then I won't have to do anything.
GW Bush.

%20040826
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...and since, by the end of the week, I'll have 15 gallons of beer brewing in
my building (some is shared with the neighbors):

"Mr. Rumson, do you believe that everything that comes out of the earth should
be made into Liquor?"

"Whenever possible." - Paint Your Wagon, (AKA The Outlaw Josey Wails)

%20040825
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I want to build an optically transparent bowling ball with a video camera
mounted inside with a gyroscopic stabilizer to keep it level and aimed in
the direction of the pins.  I have no idea why.  -rbarry

%20040820
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A friend and I (HI BRIAN) have had some interesting conversations about the
possibility of writing an adaptation of Sun Tsu's "Art of War" in the netrek
universe.

As you can imagine, there are some things that transfer rather well to a Star-
Trek-iverse Mini-Massive Multiplayer Simulation (STiMMMS.)  Energy,
Maneuvering, the Skillful Attack.  We're having a bit of trouble with it 
where the horses come in, though.

Another first today: html formatting in the (gulp) blog.

The Four Word Film Review has become something of an idle sport for my
officemate, Brian Scearce and me.  While discussing recent submissions (his, 
mine) we started discussing an old sci-fi flick called The Terminal Man.

I'll spare you the gory details, but a dude has a device implanted in the main
character's skull to predict seizures and zap him when they're on their way. 
It drove him nuts.  Bad Sci-fi at it's best.

Just as I finish this conversation, I turn to my machine and give my password
to the screenlock.  In front of me is yesterday's edition of gizmodo.com.  I
hit reload.... and stare blankly at a screen displaying a description of a
device that does exactly the same thing.

I'll let you all know how the microphone search goes.

%20040812
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Only CNN can bring you the phrase "simian work ethic."

%20040810
permanant link
A little PSA for you:

You're walking down the street and behold - an unopened candy bar.  Do you,
a) Pick it up and eat it?
b) Pick it up and give it to a friend to eat?
c) Ignore it - the problem will go away by itself?

The correct answer is:
d) Treat it as though it were an explosive device and call in the FBI?

Setting aside the political commentary about my dislike of the FBI and 
Homeland Insecurity, I have a point to make about how so many of you are
treating your computers.

Someone sends you an email message with an attachment.  Do you open the
attachment?  NO!  FOR CHRISSAKE, STOP DOING IT!  How often has anyone EVER
sent you email that you didn't expect in some sense?  Your children send
you pictures of your grandchildren?  Great.  If the filenames make sense,
by all means, open them up.

However, when the email comes and has no message body that says, "LOOK!
It's Junior's first explosive embolism!  Isn't he CUTE?"   ...you should
suspect that something is up.  Even opening an IMAGE can be a security
problem. (http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA04-217A.html)

Just delete it.

When you open these attachments, you're not only eating the candy bar,
but you're taking a chunk to your friends, co-workers, employers, and
anyone else you might have had an email correspondence with in the last
umpteen ages, jumping on their shoulders, yanking back their throats,
and shoving it down their gullets.  Enjoy the imagery?  Neither do I,
but neither do I enjoy getting these things.  I'm pessimistic enough
about the intelligence of the average individual.  The problems with
email worms would GO AWAY if everyone would just use some common sense
and realize that their computer is somewhat frail.  It does whatever 
you tell it to, even if you tell it to stick an untrusted .exe to it's 
head and pull the int.

This message also applies to the literally hundreds of thousands of 
people who have downloaded the "increase your doom3 performance by
40%" binaries.  What the hell are you thinking?  You trust a guy on
a soapbox to be able to optimize your game more than you trust ID to put
out a product that's had every CPU cycle carefully squeezed (squozen?)
out of it?

Worms and Spam are two problems that simply go away if people are bright
enough not to respond to the social engineering contained within.  I'm
going to petition the SS (Office of Fatherland Security) to start
a "witless protection agency," where anyone who forwards viruses or
actually buys viagra online will have an agent sitting at their computer
whenever they use it telling them that taking melaphoxinine will not help
them choose lottery numbers.

%20040805
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"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful - and so are we," said George W.
Bush to a high-level meeting of Pentagon officials.

"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people -
and neither do we." 

I believe it.  FUD is the only thing that will keep him in office.

I'm not sure I'd trust a kit called "Mr. Beer" to put out a good product.
After all, I've known an awful lot of Mr. Smiths in my time, but I'd not
trust a single one of them to shoe my horse. - rbarry

We were unable to access the page you requested. Our server july be busy.
Please wait a few seconds, then try again.
 - error message received from buy.com's website today.... repeatedly...

%20040802
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I got a divorce... and an exeat from her family. -rbarry

You know those obstacle courses they have dogs run through?  I built one for
my wife...  Brian Scearce

%20040728
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At Sun, I get regular reports about security issues of all kinds.  Viruses,
vulnerabilities, social engineering.  And Encryption.  Much of it is offsite
information and some of it comes from news sources rather than technical
people, like this gem from gcn.com:


A basic measure of an encryption algorithm's strength is the length of the
key used to scramble messages. Each additional bit increases the number of 
possible combinations by a factor of 10. For a 56-bit key, someone would 
have to correctly guess each of 10 possible numerals for all 56 bits in 
the key to break it. 

As Brian Scearce has suggested, you might want to concentrate on the zeroes
and ones for a while before proceeding on to the twos, threes, and so on.

%20040727
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"...and the software version of that, which I will get for you as soon as
I go to the bathroom, ..."  Brian Scearce  (Re: Settlers of Catan, though
possibly core dumps.)

%20040726
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Today marks a sad, sad day.  It is the first time I have referred to my 
.plan as a blog.  Ew.

"What was that article on robotic planes I saw last week.  I guess I'll have
to Google for it.

"Hrm.... Google's down.  I'll have to put that on hold for a minute.  I guess
I'll look up 'omoshiroi,' since I can't remember what it means...

"Hrm.... Google's down.  I'll have to put that on hold for a minute.  I guess
I'll look up the SQL Inner Join...

"Hrm.... Google's down.  This seems strangely familiar.  Maybe I'll see if
there's any news about the problem...

"Hrm.... Google's down.... Maybe I'll update my blog."
Dude... I'm getting Google withdrawl shakes.  GWS?  Goorawkes?  By the end of
the day, I'm sure the world will have a technical term for it.

a la Nightfall (AGH!!! I couldn't remember the author - Asimov, I was fairly
sure- but I started reaching for the browser to Google for it,) maybe the
sudden plunge of our civilization into Google-less darkness will be the fall
into madness that ends our civilization.  =]

%20040721
permanant link
England and America are two countries separated by a common language.
- George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we 
deserve. - George Bernard Shaw

When Rudolph Nureyev was to appear on the Muppet Show, he turned up about ten
minutes late, disturbing Sam the Eagle to no end.  There was a major traffic
jam slowing his progress to the Show, though on his motorcycle Nureyev was
able to weave his way up to the source of the problem; a herd of caribou were
picketing the theater.  They were claiming that many of the Muppets did not
have their Actors' Guild memberships.

Nureyev told the police there that he'd have a word with the disgruntled 
cervids and approached.  The police watched with interest as a great debate
ensued, impressed by Nureyev's total composure and control of the situation.

After a few moments, there appeared to be some agreement.  The caribou
dispersed and Nureyev entered the Theater only a few minutes late.  One of the
officers expressed his surprise at the result to his partner, who simply
shrugged and replied, "Foregone conclusion.  After all, Rudolf Nureyev knows
Reindeer." 

-rbarry

%20040720
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Not that I agree with him, and there is a certain hubris in the sentence
in addition to the word's actual presence, but its worth a quote:

This chapter, more than any other in this book, is about Laziness, 
Impatience, and Hubris -- because this chapter is about good software
design.  - Chapter 5, Programming Perl - Wall, Christiansen & Schwartz

%20040719
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What's the name of the bacteria that causes dental tartar?  It's right on the
tip of my tongue.  - rbarry

%20040716
permanant link
Just because security and convenience are mutually exclusive doesn't mean that
insecurity and inconvenience are - ask your microsoft rep. - rbarry

%20040714
permanant link
In the neverending search for a band name, I submit to you:

    "Everything in B-flat"

I've generally avoided posting log information here.  There's still a part
of me that admonishes that there's evil afoot wherever one publishes private
information - a throwback to the days when one would spend hours absorbed
in alt.flames, aghast at anyone who dared to publish email sent, in private,
to them.

However,  I find the reasons that people end up at this page increasingly
entertaining.  A quick look at my logs can quickly tell you what search
engines are good and which are bad, simply because the good engines don't
send people here.  I've often considered concatenating /usr/share/dict/words
(every word in the English Language) to the end of this file just as a
flytrap for people who are still naive enough to use the msn search engine.

Anyway, as I was attempting to convey, today's entertainment is provided by
those poor souls who have found this page while looking for something
ENTIRELY different:

(mamma.com/askjeeves) directions to the Federal Prison in Lorren, Pennsylvania
(websearch.com)       stats on successful young marriages
(infospace.com)       Cocaine math stumped Grade 11
(search.msn.co.za)    advertizing agency wants cats, kittens
(search.msn.com)      amphi high school grade records
(search.yahoo.com)    Charlotte Ross in "Nude Awakening"
(search.yahoo.com)    budweiser finger exercise manchine [sic]
(altavista.com)       fast lisa performing chewing stockholder

Now I'm not favoring google here.  It's not as though they are giving me
hits that I"m not reporting.  I'm heavily editing others in this list - msn? 
My god I see a lot of crap from them.  (See "yougoslavia virgins," below.)  The
simple fact is that google is only giving me people that are clearly looking
for something in this page.  ("The story of Mel," for example.)

They didn't want it good, they wanted it Wednesday.  -- Robert Heinlein.

I'll withhold my comments about working at Acclaim Entertainment for now.

%20040713
permanant link
Taken VERBATIM from answers.google.com.  Minor typo, but you have to wonder.
=]

Your feelings of conspiracy, etc., are classic signs of schizophrenia, most
assuredly not caused from hitting your head, but rather from the LSD, since
LDS has been shown to lead to psychotic disorders.

State Farm Insurance has been my insurance carrier for the entire time I've
been driving - the better part of two decades.  At times, I've had to call
them to tell them that I was changing my policy and they've always been good
about making changes retroactively.

Today, I called them to cancel my renters' policy - the title on our house
required that we have a year of insurance through the title company's cohorts.
"No problem," I thought.  

I thought.

Well, I think I thought.

There is something about working every day with things that don't make sense
that seems to give the brain a chance explain to itself the complete nonsense
of what it's doing.  I tried a half-dozen times to explain to the agent that
if I was canceling a policy, my rate should go down.  Over and over I was
told that this was not the case because I'd be losing my "multi-line
discount."  Since I had a number of policies with them, they gave me a bit of
a break.  The break turned out to be twice what I 'paid' for renters'
coverage.  I should have asked how many policies I needed to add to my
insurance to get to the point where they were paying me every month.

Here's where it gets weird.  Remember what I said about retroactive adjustment
of coverage?  If the change to my policy had been made - and made 
retroactively - I would have had to PAY THEM FOR THE LAST 13 DAYS OF TIME
WHERE I WANTED THEM TO NOT COVER ME FOR SOMETHING AGAINST WHICH I HAD NOT
CLAIMED!!!

State Farm?  It's been an interesting two decades.

%20040701
permanant link
If Helen of Troy was the beauty that launched a thousand ships, is a millihelen
the beauty required to launch a single ship?  How many microhelens does it take
to send off a single sailor?

%20040623
permanant link
Okay, there's plenty to get excited about in mathematics, but I consider
a whole volume on the history of zero to be much ado about nothing. -rbarry

%20040621
permanant link
...there is a huge difference between disliking somebody -- maybe even 
disliking them a lot -- and actually shooting them, strangling them, dragging 
them through the fields and setting their house on fire. It was a difference 
which kept the vast majority of the population alive from day to day.
- Douglas Adams, DGHDA

I've discovered something of a secret formula for productivity at work.

To put it in context, I tend to have a hard time getting started on anything.
Once I'm fully engulfed by a project, I'm there.  It's that period of time
where the issue is dangling on a hook and I have to decide if I like the look
of the barb.  Once I'm started, I'm easily distracted - even by simple boredom.

The formula?
* Make sure that you are in the middle of something when you leave at night.
This guarantees that you aren't trying to bootstrap first thing in the 
morning.
* Take notes on where the hell you were when you knocked off for the evening.
There's nothing worse than rubbing the sand out of your eyes while trying to
figure out why this doesn't work:
 sed '
  /[:,]root,/b
  /[:,]root$/b
  s/:1:\([^:][^:]*\)$/:1:root,\1/;
  s/:1:$/:1:root/;
 ' $dest > /tmp/g.$$ &&
(Keep in mind, I know zilch about sed.)
* There's a reason why they give Ridlin, a STIMULANT, to ADD children.  If
your mind refuses to attack something - rather than lugubriously prodding it
with a dead snake - you won't stay on the ball.  Our brains evolved for a
greater degree of multi-tasking than our careers demmand.  A little caffeine
goes a long way.  One a day is sufficient.

%20040616
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When your urologist asks you how it's going... he means it.  - rbarry

%20040615
permanant link
How to read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams:
* Run (walk, crawl, sprint, mosey, amble, toddle, limp, soldier forth) to the 
nearest (or farthest - maybe you need the exercise) bookstore (not library, the
economy needs your help) and locate a copy of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective
Agency, the book whose title fits on a line of text about as well as the book
itself fits into a beer bottle.
* Purchase said book, hereafter known as DGHDA, tbwtfoalotaawatbifiabb, or
DGHDA for short.
* When you get DGHDA, aka the book whose damn abbreviation must be typed mostly
on one finger if you use a sensible keyboard layout, (that's the interesting 
thing about using dvorak - words are great for typing, but the random layout of 
qwerty makes acronyms easy while on dvorak they tend to reduce your index 
fingers to mush) take it home and put it down.
* Go back to the bookstore.  This is a test for all of you who start building a
model before actually reading all the directions: you forgot your copy of the
Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.  A Samuel Taylor Coleridge biography might be
nice as well.
* Read the Rhyme.
* If you've gotten this far, you either study the model instructions first or
you received the same high-school-english selective lobotomy I did.  Rhyme is
not a gripping read.
* If you picked up the biography you could read it, but I'd like a few
survivors here.  Please use it to shim your chair or heat your home, though not
at the same time - they say a maimed plaintif is a legal gold mine.
* Read DGHDA.  It won't make any more sense than it would have before, but now
you have a chance of understanding why the author put us through that last bit.

Actually, I'm reading it again now for the first time in yearsandyearsandyears.
I'd read Rhyme and knew a bit about Samuel Taylor Coleridge and it still
weirded me out.

PS - as of 20040625, I had fully re-read both.  I still don't get Dirk's visit.
I realized today that I missed my calling in life.  Looking at my notes for
the day it occurred to me that I should take them to the local pharmacy and 
see what I've written myself a prescription for. -rbarry

The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video 
recorder.  Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the 
bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television 
for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric 
Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an 
increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world 
expected you to believe.

Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to 
believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to 
believe things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City.

-Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.

%20040601
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If you don't understand the term "Turing Complete," please don't try to
convince me that HTML is a programming language. - rbarry

%20040527
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The word of the day is somnolant.  If I were conscious, I might be able to
explain.  Funny, the words one encounters when re-re-re-re-reading Adams.
Even funnier; how many times I've been willing to skip looking up words that
I'd n-1 times before I'd been willing to skip. - rbarry

The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that
were powered by bad news but they didn't work particularly well and were so
extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn't really
any point in being there.
-- from the opening paragraphs of "Mostly Harmless," by Douglas Adams.

%20040526
permanant link
The word of the day is lassitude.  If I had the energy, I might be able to
explain.
-rbarry

%20040525
permanant link
This really belongs in May of 2002, but I felt that it was a good idea to get
it archived in case USU blows away the only copy of it out there.  There's
always the hope that someone from this era will contact me...

...

I can't express my sadness at seeing the Club shut down. It had been a long, 
hard road to keep it operational at times. Without the help and companionship 
of a number of people over the years I would never have been willing to put so 
much blood, sweat and tears into it.

Brian Carver and Nate Packer - you're both certifiable and damned if I'd take 
you any other way. I can clearly remember my first meetings with the both of 
you, and I can say without reservation that my first impressions of you turned 
out to be absolutely true.

Mika, you were a latecommer to this batch of psychotics, but you fit right 
in. =] This was a real crate of loonies you jumped in with, and I've been glad 
from day one to have you. I wish you the best in everything you do.

I'd like to add my thanks to two other people. Nate and I remember 
Chris Oversby, though nobody of the current 'generation' would. His 
determination to make this work rubbed off on me in a major way. He started 
this Club with two dry weapons and a couple masks. Everything we walk away from 
this experience with is attributable to this wonderful man.

Secondly, I'd like to thank Katrina Farrow. You meant more to me than I ever 
let on. Your spirit and character have been greatly missed. I hope you found 
everything you were looking for and more.

When I left Logan, I didn't really feel like I'd left anything behind. Most of 
the people I'd been through school with were gone, and Brian and Nate weren't 
going to be long before I expected to see them in Salt Lake. The school itself 
was a collection of mixed experiences and some disappointments. The moment I 
really felt that the life I had and the person I'd been had really ended, was 
when I unloaded the gear I had to bring back to Salt Lake from my car. That 
bloody box and all the electrical problems we'd had with it... the reels that 
I've re-wired more times than I can count... floor cords that were an unending 
nightmare... A flood of time and memories came back. Most of what I remember 
comes from the people...

Everyone that put up with my teaching and all the friends I made in that club - 
you have been a wonderful part of my life. Thank you so much for those moments. 
I'll treasure them forever...

rOn

%20040524
permanant link
A letter to the editor I bashed out on Feb 17.  Funny that none of the usual
slew of papers would take it:

Between George W. Bush's hints, in his State of the Union Address, that he 
wanted to amend the Constitution to forbid gay marriage and the recent 
developments in San Francisco, one can hardly miss the rising tensions
surrouding gay unions in this country at the moment.  The President's approach 
is the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman - a
statement that I believe entirely cheapens the idea of a marriage down to the
level of sex.  Though I am heterosexual, I find this presumption to be grossly
insulting.

The advocates of gay marriage argue for a definition based on love, dedication,
and commitment.  These ideas should not be so foreign to Mr. Bush.  He has been
a Methodist since his marriage in November, 1977.  The Methodist vows ask,
"wilt thou have this woman/man to be thy wife/husband?"  And, "Wilt you love
him/her, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others ... so long as
ye both shall live?"

Love.  Dedication.  Commitment.  These are the ideals so important to Mr. 
Bush's Christian faith that they are part of his holy bond.  I have attended
weddings where the term "to cleave unto" explicitly laid down in the vows that
sex was a part of what it is to be married, but this is not George's marriage.
He wants to define marriage in his own image.  He seems to be ignoring the
fact that this land was first colonized by people fleeing from the tyrany of
crusidic Christianity.  He's perfectly happy to be bringing centuries-old
persecution, left behind by those settlers, to this land that he called "A
Land of Freedom and Opportunity Unequaled" on July 4, 2001.

He wishes to become the opressor.


%20040519
permanant link
I swear I'm going to write a book using the weird subject lines that show up in
my inbox.  Today's contestants are:

    fitful protoplast decretory     - Explain that one.

%20040514
permanant link
Dear George,

I'd like to thank you for rescuing the United States from what little
dignity it had left after the first two years of your presidency.

You may not take responsibility for what has happened to the world impression
of our nation as a result of _your_ war, but I hold you personally responsible.

Fortunately, as a result of the disaster you've made of the economy, we can
neither earn the wage we could before nor is our dollar worth anywhere near
what it was on foreign markets when you took office, so I have little ability
to leave the states as I would like to do on a normal vacation.  I say 
fortunately because there is no longer a nation left upon this earth in which 
I cannot go without gaining the open rebuke of the citizenry - where I would 
not assume a foreign accent to avoid being identified with you and your 
personal agenda.

So your father was a failure in Iraq.  American voters booted him after one
term because they realized that he was a failure in many things.  You didn't
have to go opening old wounds to try to clear the Bush name.  You've made me,
for the first time in my life, ashamed to be an American. 

Though I'll always be a patriot.

        -- Ron Barry  

%20040513
permanant link
"...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders.  That is easy.  All you have to do is tell them they are being
attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger.  It works the same way in any country."
- Hermann Goring

%20040430
permanant link
Like dogs and muggers, transistors can sense fear. - Norman Yarvin
I've no idea why I never posted this here.  I wrote it up for

alt.rodents.pets.rats a couple years ago now:

It's been a long time since I had rats, but thought it might be fun to
share my experience of a multi-species (feline/rodent) household:

I was doing some volunteering for a local animal shelter - taking in
ferals and socializing them - when I got a call from the organizer. 
She had just gotten a pregnant, 9-month-old cat and didn't want the
kittens born at the shelter - they'd grow up wild.

So I cleared space for a mamma and a week later had a batch of
kittens.

As the kittens grew, they would sit in front of the rat cage like a
3-year-old to a disney movie.  The mother cat showed no interest, so I
carefully started introducing everyone.  The mamma cat sniffed at the
rat and walked off.

Over the weeks, the rat had run of the household:
pic1
pic2

(Notice that in the second pic, the rat is eating from the catfood
bowl, hidden from view.)

The cats were very interested, but never got any farther than touching
at her with a paw.

After a few months, the kittens were adopted out, but I kept the mamma
(now called Mamma) and the runt (Mowgli.)  The rat was by now
accustomed to having the run of the house while the cats followed at a
respectable distance.

One day, watching TV, I caught out of the corner of my eye the rat
skittering into the kitchen followed closely by two cats.  I thought
nothing of it until several seconds later when I heard the most awful,
high-pitched scream coming from the room.

On my feet and across the room, I rounded the corner to the kitchen
expecting to find that my favorite rat was no more.  I would NEVER
have guessed what I actually saw:  a ten-pound cat, standing on her
hind legs in the corner of the kitchen, trying desperately to put
distance between her and the rat - about a foot away and also on her
hind legs.  Difference was.... THE RAT HAD A HUGE TUFT OF CAT HAIR IN
HER MOUTH!!!

Near as I can figure, the rat finally had enough of months of being a
curiousity and put the cat in her place when prodded.  After that day,
I could always tell when the rat was on her way into the room... both
cats would stand up, hiss, and dart out.

  rOn


%20040423
permanant link
"In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would
have been dead a long time ago." - Microsoft Senior Vice President Bob Muglia

%20040419
permanant link
With the recent discovery on Mars of a fingerprint match of several meteorites
already found on earth, everyone is enjoying a time of speculation regarding
the cross-seeding of life from one planet to the other.  The religious right
is echoing the same rhetoric they have since Galilleo's heretic days and the
"maybes" are popping up all over the sci and sci-fi cultures.

It seems to make a certain level of sense to test the idea.  Pocket anything
from an amino acid to a bacterium in a Ni-Fe chamber, strap it to the space
station for a year, then drop it.  When it lands, pick it up and see if 
anything might be coaxed back to life.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Actually, I've become a glib believer in the notion that anything the
Catholics revile as sacreligious must be true.  =]

%20040415
permanant link
Doing a quick "ego search" as part of a test of a9.com, I found an opportunity
to marvel at the ambiguity in the English Language.  I found:

Eighty-second Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists.

By the time they're done with the title, their time is almost up.
Fear the ducky!

http://www.foodini.org/pics/personal/2004/20040414/

%20040412
permanant link
Micro$oft's new business plan:

Abuse IP you don't own, infringe patents, steal ideas... settle out of court
for pennies on the dollar of what you made in the process.

%20040408
permanant link
Re-Defeat George W. Bush!

Alternatively:
Hell, VOTE for Bush.  Look at what happened when he LOST!
"Maybe death is just nature's way of saying 'Try again'" -- The Tick

Who was it that said that ironies come in twos?

Actually, I'm just making that shit up - none of my entries have any sort of
lead-in and therefore make for boring reading.  Of COURSE it has nothing to
do with the fact that I'm a terrible writer anyway.... =]

Where was I going with this?  Must not have been important.

%20040406
permanant link
When you send me junk mail, you might want to be more careful about the
subject lines generated by your mail multiplexor.  For instance, this morning
I did a grep ^Subject garbage, and found an ad whose title was "gaudy."  Okay,
not great advertising, but not great entertainment either.

I decided that contestant number 207 is going to be my band name:

                    SCULPIN OPPRESSOR

I'm still trying to figure out what a brouhaha berlitz is.

%20040311
permanant link
After many hours of programming work, we were able to estimate that 
Kansas's flatness is approximately 0.9997. That degree of flatness 
might be described, mathematically, as "damn flat."
- http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i3/kansas.html

Going over the org chart - and where a certain new employee fell in the chain,
the employee joked, "so I have to be promoted 6 times to be the CEO."  His 
boss (one promotion up, BTW) replied, "...and get at least 6 lobotomies."

%20040305
permanant link
The only constant in the universe is change... 99 times out of 100.
You know there is something wrong with campaign finance when the Democratic

Party _hopes_ to raise $105 Million over the course of their campaign and the
Republican Party has ALREADY (look at today's date, people) raised $155 M.

%20040226
permanant link
The risks of putting too much [of your 401k] into [your employer's] company
stock are ... otherwise known as "Drinking the company Kool-Aid." - Liz Puliam
Weston, columnist for msn money.
%$20040220
Well, Bush's support is not holding as well as he'd like.  Sections of NASA who
aren't so happy with the reorganization of cash have made sure that Hubble is
in the news every day, San Francisco, among others, aren't exactly falling over
for The Lame Duck's Constitutional ban on freedom hinted at in the State of the
Union.  His attempts to unload responsibility for the WoMD issue in Iraq onto
the intelligence community by ordering his own personal investigation hasn't
gone over so well.  The Nazi's SS has been grabbing some less-than-glorious
news recently, as well.

This means he's _really_ got his back against the wall Re: garding the
Re: 'lection.  Following Utah's example, voting districts are being
manipulated in preparation for the upcoming election: states supporting Bush in
the last election have seen an additional 2% electoral vote count while those
who did not.... a 2% REDUCTION.  The increases and reductions do not
statistically match population (of voting age) changes.  I'm counting on some
serious economic (and other) diddling before too long.  If Bush succeeds,
investors can make their money over the next 9 months.  Otherwise, double-
benefit:  You have more time to invest and the market recovery will finish its
work in December AND we get rid of George W. Orwell.   

As far as that illustrious (illaudable, illegitimate, illiberal) president -
win or lose (or lose or win,) I'm staying pat...

%20040130
permanant link
McDonald's mascot holds the official title of "Chief Happiness Officer."

%20040128
permanant link
I've been invited to the nudists' ball, but I haven't a thing to wear! - rbarry
%$20040128
I mentioned last week that I expected continued rape of natural resources as
a method of boosting Bush's economic woes.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture
is expanding logging in California - four fold.  Why?  "To reduce the risk of
wildfires."

Bullshit.

%20040127
permanant link
So the Queen of England is knighting Bill Gates.  I didn't think it was 
customary to knight the dragon. - rbarry
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. - Nietzsche

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become
a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
- Nietzsche

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil. And why
do you not want to pluck at my wreath?...You say you believe in Zarathustra?
But what matters Zarathustra? You are my believers but what matter all
believers? You had not yet sought yourselves: and you found me. Thus do all
believers; therefore all faith amounts to so little. Now I bid you lose me and
find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you... 
- Nietzsche
%$20040123
The ECB (European Central Bank) in considering dropping their lending rates
in the face of the Dollar's current weakness.  After the announcement, the
dollar climbed by about the same margin as the US market fell.

I'm thinking that the strength of the US market is more tied to the fact that
with the Dollar sinking so low, not only exports are increasing, but the
investment in US markets in speculation that the trend will continue, but
foreign purchase of US stocks, bonds, and funds is on the rise as well.  I 
have some doubts here in the fact that market growth over the last year only
shows about a 30% improvement.  In that same time, I see about a 17% increase
of the Euro against the Dollar.  If US market growth were a combination of
increasing faith in US economic indicators AND the plummetting value of the
dollar and its effect upon rate of foreign investment, I'd expect a greater
increase in the indecies. 

There's another flip side even to that - a 30% growth in a year is going to
lean many investors to profit-taking.  Just as there are phenomena of gestalt
thinking as markets drop that can limit - or amplify - loss, there are some
that prevent growth.  If investors believe that the market will average %11
over the long term, chances are it will continue to do so far a long time.  By
the same token, if investors believe that 30% is too good to be believed, that
is where growth will cap out.

So.  (I love that sentence.)  My current outlook:  I'll stay the course as long
as the trend of the dollar continues.  After that, I have to find a way to have
my $$$ out of US markets in preparation for the correction.  I still hold the
belief that this will be after the election.

%20040123
permanant link
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't
cross the street to vote in a national election. - Bill Vaughan

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
- Winston Chruchill

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
 - Adlai Stevenson

Creating a computer language in which it is possible to write in English is
pure folly.  I've known very few computer scientists who can write in English.

A long memory is the most subversive idea in America.

A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I.  I believe
that everything positively stinks.  - Lew Col

A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!"

"However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of
obligation." - Stephen Crane

A mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed on the
Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new game.  Noting
that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the pilots search out a
beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly along it at the water's edge.
Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their heads in unison watching the planes go
by, and when the pilots turn around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in
the opposite direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match.  Then,
the paper reports, "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin
colony and overfly it.  Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins fall
over gently onto their backs."

    - Audubon Society Magazine.

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
 - George Wald

A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
 - Anonymous   (Attribution update on 20090217)

A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today.  The results blacked out 1400
homes and, of course, one raccoon. - Steel City News

A tautology is a thing which is tautological.

All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.

All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers - each one owes
infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he
was born.  - Francois Fenelon

There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it would
completely cover the Sahara Desert.

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people
refuse to see it.  - James Michener, "Space"

The most effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.

%20040122
permanant link
One of the first questions many people ask me when I tell them that I'm working
with John Romero is, what's he really like?  (HELP ME!)  His reputation seems
to preceede him (Please, he's driving me crazy,) everywhere he goes and 
people are curious about whether or not it can be that bad.  (No, seriously, if
I have to hear about how "cool" Apple II assembly code is one more time... for
the love of God, just drop an Apple ][GS on my head!)  It's been a very
productive, enjoyable, professional experience.

  - Non-verbatim quote from a powerpoint/speech.  

www.lifeandliberty.gov - a propeganda engine for the US patriot act - not only
makes the claim that their goal is the preservation of life and liberty, but
they have the ironic gall to include a privacy statement.

%20040121
permanant link
The Great Reversal.

For those to whom life makes sense only when their ends are up, I present
the same plan you all know and love... with what you've not read yet at the
top.  For those of you who read things in chronological order (including me,)
I guess we're screwed.

I just realized that cascading dates are now screwed.  I'll have to go back
and fix it.

%20040119
permanant link
Only George W Bush can say that the enemies of freedom are being rounded up.

Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. - Thomas Jefferson

Just remember that he didn't mean the governing body watching you, but the
other way around.

Well, I promised more on what I think Bush is doing.  I doubt he'd go full
despot, though it's certainly not out of the question.  It would require that
every American feel like they have something to lose - and keep their mouths
shut and their heads down to keep it.  This is the double-benefit for him with
pushing the economy.  After years of everyone worrying about their jobs and
having money problems, if he can get to the point where jobs are relatively
secure and social security (not that that term is not capitalized) is stable,
he may achieve exactly that.
%$
(Market posting)
Our president is currently consolidating power.  He has learned much from his
granddaddy Prescott Bush and his financing of the Nazis in the 30s through
the Union Banking Company.  If you need any convincing of what he's up to,
there are dozens of resources on the net that make it very clear that 1) The
Bush family has learned from history, 2) Americans, thanks to a very poor
education system, have not, and 3) Doomed to Repeat.  Nuff Said. 

Bush is using the same rhetoric Hitler did, down to nearly exact quotes, to
whip up support for his policies of stepping on constitutional rights.
Associated Press has been told not to cover protests for the same reasons
Hitler's cronies put the kibosh on demonstration coverage in the 30s.

Bush has one major obstacle to overcome: the 2004 election.  I don't think he
can pull together everything he needs to to get where he's going (more on that
later) in 11 months.  He needs that election.  He'll do anything to win it,
and that means making every American voter happier.

He'll do a tax cut.  He'll continue raping the environment for every dollar.
He'll make sure the dollar continues to drop against foreign currencies to
keep foreigners buying US products - despite what that does to the economy in
the long run.  He'll continue to own the supreme court (7 of the 9 are
Republican appointees) to keep controversial issues put off until after the 
elections.  In short, these things are VERY good for an economy in the short
run.

So.  (*wink*)  I'm very heavily leveraged to the S&P 500.  When the 500 go
up 1%, I go up 1.5%.  This puts me up about 45% last year.  Value funds have
also been good - nearly double since 01/03.  I will continue these positions,
barring a worrying undertone in the CNN Factor, until the election.  If Bush
loses, I'll probably switch back to bear market funds (BEARX is my fave.)  If
he wins, I'll be switching to something Canadian.... like my citizenship.

This page was started as a place for me to stash humor.  That simple.  No real
thought went into it - I simply published anything I found funny enough to
archive.  Looking back to the beginning of the file, I find that there is
much there I would not include today.

It has become as much a repository for anything that makes me think as much
as humor, though I see only a very fine line between the two ideas.  After all,
what is humor but another way for our minds to explore relationships between
ideas?  Think about it.  How often do you find something truely funny with
no double-meaning, no reflection upon our world, no exaggeration of reality?

So.  I've evolved this page to a history of some sort, albeit only through
the reflections, made by those statements I choose to publish, upon my 
thoughts.

Earlier today, I made the claim that my investing strategy is largely based
upon betting against the intelligence of Americans as a whole.  I've done
pretty well at it.  I do not invest in individual stocks, bonds, what-have-you,
because the details of how a particular business operates has a great influence
(if this isn't obvious to you, go away.  I'll keep betting on your behaviors
as time goes by) on the stock or bond in question.  Individual companies, no
matter how Microsoft, IBM, Qualcomm, (each named for its own reason) it may
be, has less effect on the market as a whole than zeitgeist.

I bet on what I call the CNN Factor.  Any issue that can maintain CNNs
attention for an extended period gets my attention - often only in terms of
how it will likely affect the average schmo's pursestrings.  There are other
factors as well, but for the most part, that's the way I play it.  Invest
in market indices and hope for the best (or the worst, as gestalt intelligence
goes.)

I've had a few people ask me about this philosophy.  Enough interrogations have
led me to the thought: publish my decisions as I make them and let them stand
on their own.  If I'm right, anyone who is interested (all 3 of you who read
this page) can learn from it.  If I'm wrong, I'll learn from having it all
documented.

So.  (Great word with which to start a paragraph.  Wonderful sentence, too.)
In the spirit of posting moments of profound glibness, I'll start posting these
odd thoughts, as well...  Look for posts starting with %$, rather than the
usual.

The best memorial I can conceive for 2000-2004, other than the sudden and
painful demise of Ralph Nader for his part, would be a 100% democratic turnout
in Florida this November.  This assumes of course that no invented state of
emergency prevents the election. - rbarry

I see great conceit in the manufacture of audio books.  Unabridged, most
cannot be acquired for less than double the cost of the book itself - a fact
attributed to the great effort of READING a book.  - rbarry

...a church steeple with a lightening rod on top shows a lack of confidence.
- Doug McLeod

The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the
wealth which it prevents you from achieving. - Russel Green

I realize that patriotism is not enough.  I must have no hatred or bitterness
towards anyone. - Edith Cavell, last words, Oct 12, 1915

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy
crazier.  - H. L. Mencken

No one in this world, so far as I know ... has ever lost money by
underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
- H. L. Mencken

Speaking of fundamental assumptions, this is my primary method of determining
market behavior.

%20040114
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It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the
average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own
devices or his own thoughts.  - H. L. Mencken

I find that this stands true today even more in the sense that it is the
fundamental assumption motivating a politician's greed and lust for power
(among other things) that the average citizen is little more than a sound-
bite processing voting engine.

%20040112
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NAZI GERMANYS WAR ON TERRORISM
 
Hitler used the 1933 burning of the Reichstag (Parliament) building by a 
deranged Dutchman to declare a "war on terrorism," establish his
legitimacy as a leader (even though he hadn't won a majority in the
previous election). 

"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he
proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by
national media.  "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is
the beginning."  He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to
declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people,
he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation
for their "evil" deeds in their religion. 

Two weeks later, the first prison for terrorists was built in Oranianberg,
holding the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national
outburst of patriotism, the nation's flag was everywhere, even printed in
newspapers suitable for display. 

Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader
had pushed through legislation, in the name of combating terrorism and
fighting the philosophy he said spawned it, that suspended constitutional
guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now
intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned
without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could
sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism. 

To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State" passed
over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he
agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency
provoked by the terrorist attack on the Reichstag building was over by then,
the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police
agencies would be re-restrained. 

Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a
political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage.
Instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as
The Fatherland. As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the
beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was _the_
homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. 

Within a year of the terrorist attack, Hitler's advisors determined that the
various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the
clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal
with the terrorist threat facing the nation, including those citizens who
were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist sympathizers. He
proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the
Fatherland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent
police, border, and investigative agencies under a single powerful leader. 

Most Americans remember his Office of Fatherland Security, known as the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt and Schutzstaffel, simply by its most famous
agency's initials: the SS. 

And, perhaps most important, he invited his supporters in industry into the
halls of government to help build his new detention camps, his new military,
and his new empire which was to herald a thousand years of peace. Industry
and government worked hand-in-glove, in a new type of pseudo-democracy first
proposed by Mussolini and sustained by war.

%20040108
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Well, for my birthday, 2003, Dubya signed a new law (note that this is the
same day that the news was too occupied by the capture of Saddam Hussein to 
cover violations of civil liberties) that allows the FBI to sieze the records
pertaining to an individual from any "financial institution."  To keep the
uncomfortably restrictive nature of the definition of "financial institution"
from being too inconvenient to constitution-railroading, section 374 of the
new Orwell Law expands it to include jewelry stores, casinos, insurance
companies, travel agencies, real estate agents, stockbrokers, the Postal
Service, and car dealerships.

No court order is required and they do not have to show just cause.

...

That wasn't a joke, people.

%20040106
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A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in
front of him.   When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very
large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf
balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full.  They agreed that it
was.

So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into
the jar.  He shook the jar lightly.  The pebbles rolled into the open
areas between golf balls.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full.  They agreed it
was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar.
Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

He asked once more if the jar was full.  The students responded with a
unanimous "yes."

The professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and
poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty
space between the sand.  The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to
recognize that this jar represents your life.  The golf balls are the
important things--your family, your children, your health, your
friends, your favorite passions--things that if everything else was
lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

"The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your
house, your car.

The sand is everything else--the small stuff.

"If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no
room for the pebbles or the golf balls.  The same goes for life.  If
you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never
have room for the things that are important to you.  Pay attention to
the things that are critical to your happiness.  Play with your
children.  Take time to get medical checkups.  Take your partner out
to dinner.  Play another 18.  There will always be time to clean the
house, and fix the disposal.

"Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter.
Set your  priorities.  The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer
represented.

The professor smiled.  "I'm glad you asked.  It just goes to show you
that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a
couple of beers."
(ca., november 2003)

OAKLAND, (CA) -- Oakland Raiders football practice was delayed nearly
two hours today after a player reported finding an unknown white powdery
substance on the practice field. Head coach Bill Callahan immediately
suspended practice and called the police and federal investigators.
After a complete analysis, FBI forensic experts determined that the
white substance unknown to players was the GOAL LINE. Practice resumed
after special agents decided the team was unlikely to encounter the
substance again.

Pat Goodman
Denver Broncos Fan

The U.S. Government really cares about their soldiers in Iraq.  Why, for 
the soldiers' Thanksgiving dinner, they even flew in a turkey all the way 
from Texas.  (Think about it.)

One Saturday morning a fisherman gets up early, dresses quietly, gets his
lunch made, puts on his long johns, grabs the dog and goes to the garage
to hook up his boat to the truck and head down to his favorite fishing
area.  

Coming out of his garage, he is pounded by a torrential downpour of rain.  
It's freezing, there is snow mixed in with the rain, and a hard wind is
blowing with 50 mph. gusts.

He retreats back into the garage and, in disgust, returns to the house and
turns the TV on to the weather channel.  He finds it's going to be bad
weather all day long, so he puts his boat back in the garage, quietly
undresses, and slips back into bed.

There he cuddles up to his wife's back, now with a different kind of
anticipation, and whispers: "The weather out there is terrible!"

To which she sleepily replies: "Can you believe my stupid husband is out
fishing in that shit?!"

Today on the way to work I thought I saw a headline that read "Beer 
Recall." It was actually "Beef Recall," and the story explained the 
discovery of mad cow disease in the United States. Mad cow disease is a 
condition that causes wasting away of the brain, leading to dementia, loss 
of coordination, and death.

Now, will somebody explain to me why they're _not_ recalling beer?

%20040104
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On my flight back from San Francisco, there were a pair of young Marines, 
ostensibly on their way to Iraq, discussing what they had done with their
summers.  One of them talked about his trip to Fort Lauderdale and the other
mentioned that he'd taken a road trip to Alaska, to which the first Marine
asked, "How'd you do that?  Is there a bridge or something now?"

Yeah.  It's called Canada. - rbarry

%20031218
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Cannot run out of time.  There is infinite time.  You are finite, Zathras is
finite.  This.  Is wrong tool.  - Zathras, Babylon 5

%20031216
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You know, if I spend a little time _really_working_ on a resume and cover
letter, I actually look like I should be employed.

%20031206
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We do these things not to escape from life, but to prevent life from 
escaping us.

If a person is choking on an ice cube, don't panic. Simply pour a jug of
boiling water down their throat and presto! The blockage is almost instantly
removed.

Avoid parking tickets by leaving your windshield wipers turned to fast wipe
whenever you leave your car parked illegally. 

        During a visit to America, Winston Churchill was invited to a buffet
luncheon at which cold fried chicken was served.  Returning for a second
helping, he asked politely, "May I have some breast?"
        "Mr. Churchill," replied the hostess, "in this country we ask for
white meat or dark meat."  Churchill apologized profusely.
        The following morning, the lady received a magnificent orchid from
her guest of honor.  The accompanying card read: "I would be most obliged if
you would pin this on your white meat."

A sociologist, a psychologist, and an engineer were discussing the
consequences and implications of a married man's having a mistress.  The
sociologist's opinion was that it is absolutely and categorically unforgivable
for a married man to forfeit the bond of matrimony, and engage in such lowly
and lustful pursuits.
        The psychologist's opinion was that although morally reprehensible,
if a man MUST have a mistress to achieve his full potential as a human being,
then -- well -- he may go ahead and choose to have a mistress, as long as he
is considerate enough to keep this secret from his wife.
        The engineer then interjected: "I also believe that, if necessary,
a married man is entitled to a mistress.  However, I do not see why the
affair should be concealed from the wife.  On the contrary, if the affair
is out in the open, then on Friday evenings he may tell his wife that he
is going to see his mistress, tell his mistress that he is going to be with
his wife, then go to his office and get some work done!"

A man took his wife deer hunting for the first time.  After he'd given her
some basic instructions, they agreed to separate and rendezvous later.  Before
he left, he warned her if she should fell a deer to be wary of hunters who
might beat her to the carcass and claim the kill.  If that happened, he told
her, she should fire her gun three times into the air and he would come to
her aid.

Shortly after they separated, he heard a single shot, followed quickly
by the agreed upon signal.  Running to the scene, he found his wife standing
in a small clearing with a very nervous man staring down her gun barrel.

"He claims this is his," she said, obviously very upset.

"She can keep it, she can keep it!" the wide-eyed man replied.  "I
just want to get my saddle back!"

A bad marriage is like a horse with a broken leg, you can shoot
the horse, but it don't fix the leg.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are not a Taxidermy display.

The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
"airplane-seat" metaphor.  Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while
seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference -- one can
see only a very few things at once.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.

"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity."
- Oscar Wilde

A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself. 
    - Don Marquis

%20031205
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At an international breweries convention, four CEOs go out to lunch.  The
Anheuser-Busch Executive orders a Budweiser, the Coors Brewing Company
Exec orders a Coors, the Man from Miller - an MGD.  When the waiter comes
to the CEO from the Guinness Brewing Company, he orders a Ginger Ale. 
Laughing, the three question the fourth about his choice.  He answers,
"Well, I figured that if you're not drinking beer, I won't either."

%20031124
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The best way of predicting the future is to invent it. - Alan Kay

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.  Then give up.  There's no
use in being a damn fool about it. - WC Fields

Optimist:  Glass is half-full.
Pessimist: Glass is half-empty.
Engineer:  Glass is too big.

I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals.  I'm a vegitarian because I hate
plants.  - A. Whitney Brown

If you think something small can't make a difference, try sleeping with
a mosquito in the room.

Nothing in the world is friendlier than a wet dog.

The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys
who are undecided. - Casey Stengal

The reason grandchildren and grandparents get along so well is because they
have a common enemy.

A friend bails you out of jail.  A best friend is in the next cell saying
"Damn that was fun!"

He who sleeps in the buff is in for a nude awakening.

Remember the last time an ethnic Austrian took power on behalf of a rightist
party by taking advantage of an economic meltdown? 

[A]s you know, these are open forums.  You're able to come and listen to what I
have to say. - GWBush, Oct 28, 2003

The Ambassador and the general were briefing me on the - the vast majority
of Iraquis want to live in a peaceful, free world.  And we will find these 
people and we will bring them to justice. - GWB, 10/27/2003

See, free nations are peaceful nations.  Free nations don't attack each other.
Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction.  GWB, 10/3/2003

I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving.  I
rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the
news themselves.  - GWB, 9/21/2003

That's the nature of democracy.  Sometimes pure politics enters into the
rhetoric.  - GWB, 8/8/2003


%20031119
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God, if I were defending a castle, I'd want my art department building the
front door.

- Peter Jackson, Director of the Lord of the Ring movie trilogy, in reference
to the fact that his setpiece door, intended to be taken down during filming by
the real battering ram they'd built, held up against all the Uruk-hai actors'
attempts to take it down.

%20031106
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The moon is moving away at a tiny, although measurable
distance from the earth every year.  Do the math and you
will clearly see that 65 million years ago it was orbiting
the earth at a distance of about 25 feet from the earth's
surface.  This would explain the death of the dinosaurs.
 Well, the tallest ones, anyway.

%20031030
permanant link
To: swhyte@cisco.com (Scott Whyte) 
Subject: Re: backbone routers' priority settings for ICMP & UDP 
From: Dave Siegel  
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 1998 12:15:13 -0700 (MST) 
Cc: marcs@znep.com, nanog@merit.edu 
In-Reply-To:  from Scott Whyte at "Feb 3, 98 02:55:13 pm" 
Sender: owner-nanog@merit.edu 

> Marc, I'd have to agree, ICMP is more for flow control than congestion
> control. A source quench is to [keep] a fast machine from overrunning a slow
> machine, not preventing all flows from going through one link. 
> 
> One (weak) metaphor is that traffic lights at an intersection are for flow
> control, while the traffic lights to get onto the freeway (common here in
> California) are for congestion control... 

Extremely weak metaphore, since a source quench indicates there weren't
enough buffers available to send your packets.

Now, if the freeway was full, and cars started dropping out of the space/time
continuum, that'd be more like a source quench.  ;-)  The freeway would call
your wife at home and say "sorry, but your husband didn't make it to work
because the freeways were too full."  If wife runs correct a correct
TCP implementation, she would know to initiate "slow start" and would 
send out her husbands at a slower rate until she gets a feel for how
bad the traffic is.

%20031006
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Microsoft interview of old:
"Why are manholes round?"
The manholes on the M$ campus are square.

%20030810
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What-chew talkin' 'bout, governor?  People wonder why I've lost whatever faith
I might have had in the governing process.  First we have a man who presses a
recall petition campaign because it's the only way he'll ever be allowed on
the California ballot as a Republican.  Can you say conflict of interest?  Now
we have GARY COLEMAN RUNNING IN THE ELECTION.  That's right.  You loved him as
the 10-year-old arms merchant in The Curse of Monkey Island, now you can help
put him in a position to do _real_ harm...

Date: 14 Feb 90 17:16:16 GMT
From: bnrgate!bnr-fos!bmers58!pdbain@uunet.uu.net  (Peter Bain)
Subject: Imperial measurements

There is a story about a software contractor who was hired to write
code to calculate range tables for the US Navy.  They used feet for
altitude and statute miles for range.  "No! We're the Navy.  Use
NAUTICAL miles!" the Navy said.  So the contractor changed the code to
use nautical miles for the range.  And negative fathoms for the altitude.

%20030715
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Just as one never confuses a bureaucracy with a meritocracy, do not mistake
our government for a democracy. - rbarry

%20030617
permanant link
Childbirth - a midwife crisis.

%20030530
permanant link
Duct tape is like the Force.  It has a light side and a dark side and it
holds the universe together. - Carl Zwanzig

Each Friday night I drove my wife to the train station so 
she could go visit her sister who was ill. Ten minutes 
later, MY sister arrived by train so that she could manage 
our house over the weekend while my wife was gone. On 
Sundays this procedure worked in reverse with my sister 
departing by train ten minutes before my wife arrived.

One evening after my sister left and while I awaited my 
wife's arrival, a porter sauntered over.

"Mister," he said, "you sure have some system going! But 
one of these days you're goin' to get caught!"
 - unknown author

An Irishman moves into a tiny village in County Kerry, walks into the pub
and promptly orders three beers.  The bartender raises his ebrows, but
serves the man three beers, which he drinks quietly at a table alone.

An hour later, the man has finished the three beers and orders three more.
This happens yet again.  The next evening the man again orders and drinks
three beers at a time, several times.  Soon the entire town is whispering
about the "Man Who Orders Three Beers." Finally, a week later, the bartender
broaches the subject on behalf of the town.  "I don't mean to pry, but folks
around here are wondering why you always order three beers?"

"Tis odd, isn't it?" the man replies, "You see, I have two brothers, and one
went to America and the other to Australia.  We promised each other that we
would always order an extra two beers whenever we drank as a way of keeping
up the family bond." The bartender and the whole town was pleased with this
answer, and soon the "Man Who Orders Three Beers" became a local celebrity
and source of pride to the village, even to the extent that out-of-towners
would come to watch him drink.

Then, one day, the man comes in and  orders only two beers.  The bartender
pours them with a heavy heart.  This continues for the rest of the evening;
he orders only two beers. The word flies around town.  Prayers are offered
for the soul of one of the brothers. The next day, the bartender says to the
man, "Folks around here, me first of all, want to offer condolences to you
for the death of your brother.  You know - the two beers and all......"

The man ponders this for a moment, then replies, "You'll be happy to hear
that me two brothers are alive and well.  It's just that I, meself, have
decided to give up drinking for Lent."

%20030522
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It might look like I'm doing nothing, but at the cellular level, I'm really
quite busy.  - Anon.

%20030317
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"We are not dealing with peaceful men." - G.W. Bush, RE: Iraq
"We are not dealing as peaceful men." - G.W. Bush, corrected.

%20030311
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"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor
to lead all his customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly
ignores the fact that it was he who by peddling second-hand, second-rate
technology, led them all into it in the first place."

--Douglas Adams
Author, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

%20030307
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There is a theory which states  that  if  ever  anyone  discovers
exactly  what  the  Universe  is  for and why it is here, it will
instantly disappear  and  be  replaced  by  something  even  more
bizarre and inexplicable.
 
There is another  theory  which  states  that  this  has  already
happened.
 
- from the first few pages of Restaurant at the End of the Universe

www.lawyerjokes.com forwards to an actual law firm specializing in "internet
and URL law..."  Some lawyers (like politicians) inspire jokes, others just
_are_. -rbarry

What do you call 25 skydiving lawyers?  Skeet.  - Click and Clack. (cartalk)

%20030303
permanant link
A committee is a cul de sac to which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
- John A. Lincoln 

%20030227
permanant link
 WARRANTY CARD - McDONNELL DOUGLAS CORPORATION

 This was allegedly posted very briefly on the McDonnell Douglas 
 Website by an employee there who obviously has a sense of humor. The 
 company, of course, does not have a sense of humor, and made the web 
 department take it down immediately (for once, the 'IMPORTANT' note at 
 the end is worth a read too....)

 PRODUCT SUPPORT QUESTIONNAIRE

 Thank you for purchasing a McDonnell Douglas military aircraft. In 
 order to protect your new investment, please take a moment to fill out 
 the warranty registration card below. Answering the survey questions 
 is not required, but the information will help us to develop new 
 products that best meet your needs and desires.

 1. Title

 [_] Mr.
 [_] Mrs.
 [_] Ms.
 [_] Miss
 [_] Lt.
 [_] Gen.
 [_] Comrade
 [_] Classified
 [_] Other

 First Name: ............................................
 Initial: ........
 Last Name:..............................................
 Password: .............................. (max. 8 char)
 Code Name:..............................................
 Latitude-Longitude-Altitude: ......................

 2. Which model of aircraft did you purchase?

 [_] F-14 Tomcat
 [_] F-15 Eagle
 [_] F-16 Falcon
 [_] F-117A Stealth
 [_] Classified

 3. Date of purchase (Year/Month/Day):
 ......../......./......

 4. Serial Number: ........................................

 5. Please indicate where this product was purchased:

 [_] Received as gift / aid package
 [_] Catalogue / showroom
 [_] Independent arms broker
 [_] Mail order
 [_] Discount store
 [_] Government surplus
 [_] Classified

 6. Please indicate how you became aware of the McDonnell Douglas 
 product you have just purchased:

 [_] Heard loud noise, looked up
 [_] Store display
 [_] Espionage
 [_] Recommended by friend / relative / ally
 [_] Political lobbying by manufacturer
 [_] Was attacked by one

 7. Please indicate the three (3) factors that most influenced your 
 decision to purchase this McDonnell Douglas product:

 [_] Style / appearance
 [_] Speed / maneuverability
 [_] Price / value
 [_] Comfort / convenience
 [_] Kickback / bribe
 [_] Recommended by salesperson
 [_] McDonnell Douglas reputation
 [_] Advanced Weapons Systems
 [_] Backroom politics
 [_] Negative experience opposing one in combat

 8. Please indicate the location(s) where this product will be used:

 [_] North America

 [_] Iraq
 [_] Iraq
 [_] Aircraft carrier
 [_] Iraq
 [_] Europe
 [_] Iraq
 [_] Middle East (not Iraq)
 [_] Iraq
 [_] Africa
 [_] Iraq
 [_] Asia / Far East
 [_] Iraq
 [_] Misc. Third World countries
 [_] Iraq
 [_] Classified
 [_] Iraq


 9. Please indicate the products that you currently own or intend to 
 purchase in the near future:

 [_] Color TV
 [_] VCR
 [_] ICBM
 [_] Killer Satellite
 [_] Satellite Killer
 [_] CD Player
 [_] Air-to-Air Missile
 [_] Space Shuttle
 [_] Home Computer
 [_] Nuclear Weapon

 10. How would you describe yourself or your organization? (Indicate 
 all that apply:)

 [_] Communist / Socialist
 [_] Terrorist
 [_] Crazed
 [_] Neutral
 [_] Democratic
 [_] Dictatorship
 [_] Corrupt
 [_] Primitive / Tribal

 11. How did you pay for your McDonnell Douglas product?

 [_] Deficit spending
 [_] Cash
 [_] Suitcases of cocaine
 [_] Oil revenues
 [_] Personal check
 [_] Credit card
 [_] Ransom money
 [_] Traveler's check

 12. Your occupation:

 [_] Homemaker
 [_] Sales / marketing
 [_] Revolutionary
 [_] Clerical
 [_] Mercenary
 [_] Tyrant
 [_] Middle management
 [_] Eccentric billionaire
 [_] Defense Minister / General
 [_] Retired
 [_] Student

 13. To help us better understand our customers, please indicate the 
 interests and activities in which you and your spouse enjoy 
 participating on a regular basis:

 [_] Golf
 [_] Boating / sailing
 [_] Sabotage
 [_] Running / jogging
 [_] Propaganda / misinformation
 [_] Destabilization / overthrow
 [_] Default on loans
 [_] Gardening
 [_] Crafts
 [_] Black market / smuggling
 [_] Collectibles / collections
 [_] Watching sports on TV
 [_] Wines
 [_] Interrogation / torture
 [_] Household pets
 [_] Crushing rebellions
 [_] Espionage / reconnaissance
 [_] Fashion clothing
 [_] Border disputes
 [_] Mutually Assured Destruction

 Thank you for taking the time to fill out this questionnaire. Your 
 answers will be used in market studies that will help McDonnell 
 Douglas serve you better in the future - as well as allowing you to 
 receive mailings and special offers from other companies, governments, 
 extremist groups, and mysterious consortia. As a bonus for responding 
 to this survey, you will be registered to win a brand new F-117A in 
 our Desert Thunder Sweepstakes!

 Comments or suggestions about our fighter planes? Please write to: 
 McDONNELL DOUGLAS CORPORATION, Marketing Department, Military 
 Aerospace Division

 IMPORTANT:
 This email is intended for the use of the individual addressee(s) 
 named above and may contain information that is confidential 
 privileged or unsuitable for overly sensitive persons with low 
 self-esteem, no sense of humor, or irrational religious beliefs. If 
 you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or 
 copying of this email is not authorized (either explicitly or 
 implicitly) and constitutes an irritating social faux pas.

 Unless the word absquatulation has been used in its correct context 
 somewhere other than in this warning, it does not have any legal or 
 grammatical use and may be ignored. No animals were harmed in the 
 transmission of this email, although the crazy dog next door is living 
 on borrowed time, let me tell you.

 Those of you with an overwhelming fear of the unknown will be 
 gratified to learn that there is no hidden message revealed by reading 
 this warning backwards, so just ignore that Alert Notice from 
 Microsoft. However, by pouring a complete circle of salt around 
 yourself and your computer you can ensure that no harm befalls you and 
 your pets.

 If you have received this email in error, please add some nutmeg and 
 egg whites, whisk and place in a warm oven for 40 minutes.

 Sure, you can TRUST the Gov't. Ask any Indian.

%20030226
permanant link
A Sad Passing

What with all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the
moment, it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person
which almost went unnoticed last week.  Larry La Prise, the man who
wrote "The Hokey Pokey" died peacefully at age 93. The most traumatic
part for his family was getting him into the coffin.

They put his left leg in... and then the trouble started.

%20030213
permanant link
C programmers think memory management is too important to be left to the
computer.  Lisp programmers think memory management is too important to be left
to the user.
-Ellis & Stroustrup's The Annotated C++ Reference Manual

%20030204
permanant link
Developing for the xbox is a frustrating process:  Change a line of code,
complie your system (takes about 30 sec) let it copy to your devkit (another 30
sec gone) let game load (10-15 sec) look at how your code behaves, interrupt
execution of game and wait 2 minutes for visual studio to unlock.  Note the
number of times in a day you have about 3 minutes to kill.

So, this is revision 3 of the prime number generator.  After trying it with the
STL (total piece of shit on windows - the vector container isn't specialized to
use a single bit per bool, so to compute all primes less than or equal to n, you
need n*8 bytes of memory.  You DON'T do this with virtual memory.)  I re-wrote
using a bit field today.

If for no other reason than with the STL, 15 minutes only produced the whole
collection of 1..29-bit primes, where the following code gave me all of the
0..32 bit primes in less than 10 minutes, despite the addition of an extra
210 Billion calls to GetTickCount and 210 Billion more compares.  If
you're interested in the result, I have the first 1000000 results in a text
file here:

(removed.  Too big to be worth storing.  Ask and ye shall receive.)

If you need the first 203,280,222 prime numbers, give me a buzz.

If you want to _store_ values, you might want to just write out the 
bit field rather than using my ascii output code - I only included it
for ease of use.  BTW - I've computed all the 10-digit prime numbers in
less than half an hour - including IO time.

Who's to say I'm crazy?

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////
#include 
#include 
#define getBit(b,p) (*((p)+(b>>6))&((0x8000000000000000ULL)>>((b)&0x3fULL)))
#define setBit(b,p) (*((p)+(b>>6))|=((0x8000000000000000ULL)>>((b)&0x3fULL)))
typedef unsigned long long int u64;

u64 next;
        
void alarm_handler(int sig) {
        printf ("%10llu\n", next);
        alarm (10);
}
        
FILE *getOutputHandle() {
        static int filenum=0;
        char filename[80]; 
        FILE *file;
        
        sprintf (filename, "%04d", filenum++);
        strcat (filename, ".primes");
        file = fopen (filename, "w"); 
        if (!file) {
                /*this should be more graceful*/
                fprintf (stderr, "cannot open %s\n", filename);
                exit (0);
        }

        return file;
}   
    
int main( int argc, char *argv[] ) {
    u64 size;
    u64 *seive;
    u64 i, j, floor = 1;
    FILE *file;
    int filenum, filesize;
    char filename[80];
        
    if( argc != 2 ) {
        fprintf( stderr, "Usage: %s LAST_INT_TO_CHECK\n", argv[0]);
        exit( 1 );
    }
    
    size = atoll(argv[1]);
    printf ("last int: %llu\n", size);
    seive = ( u64* ) malloc( (size>>3) + 1);
    memset( seive, 0, (unsigned int)((size>>3)+1));
    
    file = getOutputHandle();

    alarm (10); 
    sigset (SIGALRM, alarm_handler);
    
    filesize += fprintf (file, "2\n");
    for (next=3; next<=size; next+=2) {
        i=next>>1;
        if (!getBit (i, seive)) {
            filesize += fprintf (file, "%llu\n", next);
            if (filesize > 2000000000) {
                fclose (file);
                filesize=0;
                file = getOutputHandle();
            }
            for (j=i; j<=size>>1; j+=next)
                setBit (j, seive);
        }
    }
    fclose (file);

    return( 0 );
}


%20030203
permanant link
When my plan (the file you are currently reading) is accessed, I log a couple
stats: the time, day, the browser used, the operating system being used, and 
the URL from whence the viewer was referred.  This logging only started a few
months ago, but the log itself provides our newest entry.  About a dozen people
have come here from altavista, searching for words that, simply due to the size
and topical diversity of this page, have been drawn here.  The things they were
searching for makes it pretty clear that this page disappoints a number of it's
visitors:

* wild tangent naked characters
* "perpetual motion" "santa sleigh" roof "how to make"
* CRACK W2K NUMBERS

...and my personal favorite:
* yugoslavia virgins

Yesterday: when you could neatly tuck the documents - a looseleaf binder - under
an arm and it took a forklift to move the computer.

Conway's Law:  In any organization, there is one person who knows what is going
on.  That person must be fired.

They have computers, and they may have other weapons of mass destruction. - 
Janet Reno

No computer has ever been designed that is ever aware of what it's doing; but
most of the time, we aren't either. - Marvin Minsky

%20030130
permanant link
A human being is a computer's way of making another computer.  Yes, we are
their sex organs. - Solomon Short

Engineers hate risk.  They try to eliminate it whenever they can.  This is
understandable, given that when an engineer makes one little mistake, the media
will treat it like it's a big deal or something.

Examples of bad press for engineers:
* Hindenberg
* Challenger
* Hubble
* Apollo 13
* Titanic
* Ford Pinto
* Corvair

The risk/reward calculation for engineers looks something like this:

Risk: Public humiliation and the death of thousands of innocent people.
Reward: A certificate of appreciation in a handsome plastic frame.

Being practical people, engineers evaluate this balance of risks and rewards
and decide that risk is not a good thing.  The best way to avoid risk is by
advising that any activity is technically impossible for reasons that are far
too complicated to explain.

Now, the speed limit on the Golden Gate Bridge is supposedly 45, right?  Well,
flow of traffic is usually more like 55, prompting the occasionally-seen bumper
sticker that says, "Drive Fourty-Five on the Golden Gate Bridge."

The last one I saw was a double-size bumper sticker, taking up half the rear
bumper of the car that, as I drove my usual 50.... well, 55.  Alright 60, shot
past me at well over the speed I was driving.  Hrm. - rbarry

%20030115
permanant link
Popular Science tends to carry some... apocryphal... statements.  In response to
a cover touting the trimaran future of the navy; "Yeah, and if you believe that,
I've got a bridge to sell ya."

%20030106
permanant link
Government A to Government B:
"If I owe you a million dollars, I'm in trouble.  If I owe you a trillion
dollars, you're in trouble."

Hearing about a dinosaur alive in the rain forests of
South America, a professor launches a scientific
expedition. After several weeks he stumbles upon a
little man wearing a loincloth, standing near a
300-foot-long dead dinosaur.

The scientist can't believe his eyes. "Did you kill
this dinosaur?" he asks.

"Yep," replies the rain-forest native.

"But it's so big and you're so small! How did you
kill it?"

"With my club," the primitive fellow answered.

"How big is your club?"

"Well, there are about 100 of us."

    Q:  How many elephants can you fit in a Volkswagen?
    A:  Four

    Q:  How can you tell if there's an elephant in your fridge?
    A:  There's a footprint in the butter.

    Q:  How can you tell if there are two elephants in your fridge?
    A:  There are two footprints in the butter.

    Q:  How can you tell if there are three elephants in your fridge?
    A:  You can't close the door.

    Q:  How can you tell if there are four elephants in your fridge?
    A:  There's a Volkswagen parked out front.


%20030103
permanant link
From my .sig, circa '97:
Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis,
Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus aethiopicus, Australopithecus
robustus, Australopithecus boisei, EPEE FENCER, Homo habilis, Homo erectus,
Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens sapiens.
         - rbarry

%20021218
permanant link
There once was a lady named Bright
Whose speed was much faster than light
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned home the previous night

%20021026
permanant link
News isn't news anymore, it's entertainment.  It's fiction based in part on
current events.

An article today on CNN discussed the possible causes of the Soyuz-U that blew
up in launch on the 15th.  The LAST LINE of the article was a quote from the
Chief of the Russian Space Agency: 
    All possible explanations for the explosion are being considered "from a
    manufacturing defect to malicious intent."

This earned the article the title: Russia rocket mishap might be sabotage.

%20021010
permanant link
Photographers' creed:  Shoot 'em all - let your editor sort 'em out. - rbarry

%20021008
permanant link
Dear United States of America, post-9/11:
Keep up the good work.  George Orwell would be proud.

%20020904
permanant link
"I might sell my soul to the government or even sell it to satan, but I don't
think I would stoop so low as to sell it to M$ (microsoft)." - Ray Rallison

%20020827
permanant link
Okay, this one joins the elite of the my plan because figuring out the answer
damn near killed me:

willywutang is hanging out on a heavily forested island that's really narrow:
it's a narrow strip of land that's ten miles long. let's label one end of the
strip A, and the other end B. a fire has started at A, and the fire is moving
toward B at the rate of 1 mph. at the same time, there's a 2 mph wind blowing
in the direction from A toward B. what can willywu do to save himself from
burning to death?! assume that willywu can't swim and there are no boats,
jetcopters, teleportation devices, etc.. (if he does nothing, willywu will be
toast after at most 10 hours, since 10 miles / 1 mph = 10 hours)

The tricky bit is that there is a solution, as a friend of mine with a Natural 
Resources degree pointed out to me but THERE IS ANOTHER SOLUTION - the one that
I had more fun with.

%20020814
permanant link
It's not whether you're right or wrong that's important, but how much money you
make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong. - George Soros

%20020813
permanant link
Though apparently the original purpose of bagpipes was to scare the crap out of
the enemy in battle. ("Aiiie! We're being attacked by Catholic schoolgirls, and
you should SEE what they're doing to those poor cats!")-Ehursh-

%20020812
permanant link
You can't make this stuff up.  From an August 12 Associated Press:

Hoping to push back the frontiers of advertising, a British marketing firm said
Monday it would pay nearly $800 each to five people for the right to transform
them into human billboards for a fantasy superhero. 
 
Acclaim UK is seeking applicants who will legally change their names for one
year to promote the latest installment of its video game series about Turok, a
time-traveling American Indian who slays bionically enhanced dinosaurs. 

The Institute of Science in Marketing, a business group supporting the effort,
expects its so-called Identity Marketing technique will catch on as the next big
thing for companies eager to reach consumers dulled to conventional advertising.

...
This is the same company that has some idiot out "in line" for a copy of Turok
50 DAYS IN ADVANCE and is paying families for ADVERTISING SPACE ON TOMBSTONES!

%20020806
permanant link
"Before beginning any home-plumbing pepair, make sure you possess the proper
tools for the job.  Check the following list of handy expletives, and see that
you know how to use them."  - Calvin and Hobbes.

%20020802
permanant link
There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those who understand binary and
those who don't.

If all the world's a stage, where is the audience sitting?

Do penguins have knees?

A friend is one who still thinks you're a good egg - even though you're slightly
cracked.

A fine is a tax for doing wrong.  A tax is a fine for doing well.

A parent is one who carries pictures where money used to be.

Dog at flea circus steals the show.

What color does an asphyxiating smurf turn?

My wife will buy anything marked down.  Last year she bought an escalator.

%20020730
permanant link
Said of the Clumsy Lovers by the Inlander - Spokane, WA:
"The music ... with incredible fiddle playing ... is firmly rooted in the
musical tradition of dancing like your life depends on it."  

Isn't it wonderful to have a Commander in Chief that is so loved and trusted by
his constituency?  Every time Dubya shows up on the tele to reassure "His
Fellow Americans" that the market has seen its worst... it takes another
hundred-point dive.  Somehow I'd bet his personal assets aren't heavily stock
invested at the moment.

Okay, even I have been reluctant to start encrypting every communication I
make, but this has gotten out of hand.  On July 15, 2002, the US House of
(Mis)Representatives voted 385 to 3 (THAT'S NOT A TYPO!!! 99 TO 1 PERCENT!!!)
to, among other things "...expand[s] police ability to conduct Internet or
telephone eavesdroppnig WITHOUT FIRST OBTAINING A COURT ORDER."  (emphasis
added.)

This is a clear violation of due process (4th amend.,) people. 

As an example of the complete lack of intellectual responsibility of the
persons involved in passing this bill:

"Until we secure our cyber infrastructure, a few keystrokes and an Internet
connection is all one needs to disable the economy and endanger lives.  A
mouse can be just as dangerous as a bullet or a bomb." - Lamar Smith, R-Texas

What is this guy smoking?  Has he any idea of what he's actually talking about?
I'd bet he has both an internet connection and a keyboard but no clue where to
begin if he wanted to get started on what he's implying here.

How about this: if you have security problems with the US' systems, fix them.
legal wrangling isn't going to protect you from anything.

%20020708
permanant link
Who disturbs my meditation as a 3c509 disturbs the stillness of the INT pin?

%20020624
permanant link
Hokie - I've been C++ing for years now, but have steadfastly avoided the STL
for the most part - and have recently been reminded of WHY I always preached
that C++ was of the devil.  When you really start viciously molesting template
code, God help you because your complier error messages sure won't.

I've taken to compiling my code with g++ and VC++ just because I have a
better chance of getting an intelligible error message now and again from at
least one of them.

%20020603
permanant link
There's a very fine line between a hobby and mental illness. - Dave Barry

%20020529
permanant link
When we finally get Carbon nanotube processors, it's going to bring a whole new
meaning to the concept of C programming.  

For the REAL geeks:
Would C++ require a radioactive processor?  What's the MTF of a processor whose
junctions are made of a material with a 5715 year half-life?

%20020517
permanant link
...it's a scary thing.  Because you realize that the first purpose of alcohol is
to make English your second goddamn language.
...the second purpose of alcohol is to make your brain an etch-a-sketch.
- Robin Williams

%20020516
permanant link
After a minor argument (a "Slight Case" for insult) with Yet Another SCA
gentleman, I felt it necessary to find a modernized version of rules of
dueling.  I struck gold at http://www.cbc2.org/faculty/dabbott/Duello1.html ,
where a member of Columbia Basin College has taken the time to establish a set
of rapier/pistol/short sword/sabre/katana dueling rules.  The reproduction is
quite faithful - to the point that it clearly spells out in which cases the
death of a primary is required...

Reading through this document, sitting at a computer in a modern age, I still
managed to get lost in the slightly victorian language and organization...
until the section on the Presiding Officer:

"The fair and impartial word and hand of God upon the field [is the Presiding
Officer.]  The Presiding officer will see that the matter at hand and its terms
of honor are satisfied in a fashion suitable for the gentry.  The Presiding
Officer and Officer Seconds shall at all times be suitably armed to enforce the
rules and punish those who act in a manner beneath the dignity af the Event and
their Station.

    "* Suitable armament is either an Uzi or sawed-off shotgun."

Ah, the good old days.

I did manage to lay to rest, for myself anyway, the issue that was at hand -
the duellists' code upon which this text is based states, (Rule 42) Unless
previously stipulated, neither of the combatants shall be allowed to turn off
the sword of his adversary with the left hand; should a combatant persist in 
thus using his left hand, the seconds of his adversary may insist that the hand
SHALL BE CONFINED BEHIND HIS BACK.  

Man, I thought a red card was bad.  Can you imagine fencing with a hand cuffed
to a belt loop?

I was recently reminded of an interesting idea I had a number of years ago for
finally resolving once and for all any Holy War whatsoever.  Flip a coin.
Think about it for a minute. - rbarry

%20020515
permanant link
There are several good protections against temptation, but the most popular is
cowardice. - Mark Twain on Utah Legislative Practice

http://www.cafeshops.com/cp/store.aspx?s=foodini

%20020411
permanant link
The SEC accused Xerox of accelerating revenue recognition by more than $3
BILLION and boosting pretax earnings by $1.5 BILLION over four years.  The
copier has agreed to pay $10 million to settle the civil fraud complaint.

Is that supposed to be a punitive sum?  Is it supposed to keep them (or
anyone else) from doing it again?  Does anyone actually believe that the
SEC is trying to prevent this type of behavior?  By allowing fines ORDERS
of MAGNITUDE less than the profits made, they explicitly encourage it.

%20020402
permanant link
The New Jersey State Gambling Commission (or whatever NJ calls them) recently
issued a decree that no licenced establishment may have any dealings (no pun
intended) with Andersen Accounting, Inc.  I wonder if that includes moratorium
on betting on the future of Anderson or their clients?  - rbarry

%20020319
permanant link
If there were a god of profanity, could you take his name in vain?  - rbarry

Precinct toilet stolen.  Police have nothing to go on.

%20020313
permanant link
Stupidity is not a handicap.  Park somewhere else!

%20020310
permanant link
Shouldn't there be legislation against exorcising demons?  After all,
posession IS nine-tenths of the law. -rbarry

%20020305
permanant link
Have you EVER seen a banner ad that said - "You've won something if this panel
is flashing..." that wasn't flashing?

%20020226
permanant link
Man convicted of multiple RS-232 murders.  Citizens relieved to have serial
killer behind bars.  (If you don't get it, don't worry about it.)

Legislation postpones sex abuse, sodomy.  - Headline from Herald Journal,
Logan, Utah.

%20020222
permanant link
Ron, you've found your muse... and she has a five-o-clock shadow and male
pattern baldness. - Eric Jensen

%20020201
permanant link
Being truly evil requires every bit as much attention to detail as being 
truly good... and an island fortress...  -Ian Lewis

%20020120
permanant link
Working at an entertainment company isn't all fun and games - sometimes it's
just games.  -  Jay Kint

Yeah, but have you ever tried dipping a whole chicken in sweet and sour sauce?
-Derek Kusiak

I've seen a chicken get nekked.  - Josh Markiewicz

%20020109
permanant link
See Ron, you should just start taking a lot of Estrogen... it would sure make
it a lot easier to work with you. - Randy Jones

111,111,111^2 = 12345678987654321

The Greek national anthem has 158 verses.  Noone in Greece has memorized them
all.

typewriter     - longest (qwerty) single-row (TOP ROW!!!) word.
instantiations - longest (dvorak) single-row (home row) word.
alfalfa        - longest (qwerty) home-row word.
upkeep, opaque - longest (dvorak) words that must be typed with one hand.
stewardesses   - longest (qwerty) word that must be typed with one hand.
-rbarry

Lethologica - the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn't wear pants.

Dueling in Paraguay is legal as long as both parties are registered blood
donors.

%20020107
permanant link
An ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

When asked at a local bar if what I was drinking was alcoholic, I replied that
I did not know - I try not to get involved in the personal lives of the things
I drink. -rbarry

%20020102
permanant link
'cause I got a pretty big frickin' nose. - Randy Jones

%20011213
permanant link
Any time I'm feeling puzzled, I think to myself - I'm feeling Randy. - Jay Kint

%20011119
permanant link
I've got an anvil in the oven.  - Gonzo the Great.

%20011115
permanant link
Ron, you're a better looking woman than I am. - Randy Jones.

I only pay my girlfriend $500 per month.  It's a good deal! - Randy Jones.

%20011113
permanant link
Yesterday, they had a mushroom motif.  - Tyson Jensen, Acclaim

I'd do Miss Piggy.  -Randy Jones, Acclaim

%20011112
permanant link
(effeminately) Ooooh!  My Boolean expressions are exposed. - Jay Kint, Acclaim

%20011109
permanant link
Some people might say that I'm a pretty shallow guy, but a shallow guy with a
great ass. - Cat, Red Dwarf

Date: Sat, 12 Jan 1991 13:21:23 PST
From: cate3.osbu_north@xerox.com
Subject: Ah, yes.  Canada
To: JXerarch.dl.osbu_north@xerox.com

   On the subject of interesting signs. My family lives in Montreal, where
French-speakers outnumber English-speakers. A construction team apparently
was working on changing this situation while blasting near the Montreal
General Hospital five years ago. By law, signs relating to personal safety
must be in French, and you are allowed to put English writing on the sign
if you really feel you must. A sign explaining the signals for blasting
read:  (paraphrased, but the numbers are as they were there)

Explosion will come thirty seconds after the long blast of the horn.

L'explosion suiverai deux minutes apres la longue coup du sirene.
     (Explosion will come two minutes after the long blast of the horn.)

%20010814
permanant link
    It so happened that the Newfoundland agricultural ministry,
anxious to have something to administer, decided to set up some
chicken farms. They decided to give away free starter chickens.
    Well, the first day this old farmer came in and ordered 10,000
chickens. "Great!!!", the minister's secretary exclaimed, "Give th' bye
as many as he wants". So the farmer went home with 10,000 chickens.
    But a week later, the farmer was back with an order for 20,000
chickens. "He must have a really big operation, this is great!! Fill the
order", the secretary ordered. The farmer went home with his 20,000.
    It wasn't long again, though, that the farmer was back for
30,000 chickens, the biggest order the government had seen. Of course,
it was filled, and the farmer got his 30,000 chickens.
    After all this, the secretary decided to go and see this fantastic
chicken farm, and to show some other bigwigs the effectiveness of his
department at getting the Newfies off fishing boats and onto the land.
So, they got a government car and drove to the address they had for the
old bye's farm. But when they got there, all they could see was dry
old fields and a run-down empty barn, and, of course, the old farmer.
    "Where in hell are all the chickens we sent you? Thought
you had a real spread going here", the secretary blustered.
    "Well ya' know", the farmer drawled, "Those chicks was the
dumbest things. I've been growing things before, y'know, but I guess
I'd never see any to beat them. I planted 30,000 of the little suckers,
but not one came up!!"

"My homie, homie, homie made of foamy, foamy, foamy!" - Rizzo the Rat to
Clifford the Blue Guy with Dreadlocks.

%20010801
permanant link
The STL's [C++ Standard Template Library] flexibility, however, has a price,
chief of which is that it is not self-explanatory.  - Nicolai M. Josuttis, The
C++ Standard Library

%20010717
permanant link
A novice went into the master's cubicle and saw a new computer sitting upon the
master's desk.

"What is that computer?" asked the novice.

The master placed his hand upon the small box that was connected to the
computer by a wire.  " Behold," said the master, "This device controls what we
see on the screen."

The novice looked closely at the screen, but all he saw were meaningless
symbols.

"The screen simulates a desk," explained the master, "For example, here on the
screen is a filing cabinet and a trash repository.  Here also is a typewriter
and a calculator."

"This is a wonderful invention," whispered the novice in awe.

"It is not as wonderful as it seems," said the master.  He took the novice by
the shoulders and made him stand several feet back.  "Can you see the two
desks?" asked the master.

The novice nodded.  "One is on the floor, the other is on the screen," he
remarked.

"Just so.  Now, is there something missing on one of the two desks?"

The novice pondered for a moment.  "One of the desks does not have a computer
on it," he said.

The master shook his head.  "Neither of the desks has a computer on it."

A bloke was about to bring his new girlfriend home, so he warned his parrot not
to say any offensive remarks; the parrot had a tendency to verbally abuse
anyone who came into the house. The next night the guy walked in with his new
girlfriend, and the parrot instantly began to insult her: "Who's a fat cow,
then? Who's been hit by a truck, then?"

The next day the infuriated man decided to shove the parrot in the freezer to
teach it a lesson. About two minutes later the parrot calls out, "Im sorry. Im
really sorry. Im really, really sorry." The man feels a bit guilty and decides
to let the parrot back out.

For the next couple of months he doesn't hear so much as a squeak out of the
parrot. He can't believe how successful his freezer trick turned out to be. But
finally one night the parrot got up enough courage to talk again. "Excuse me,
please," the parrot said very cautiously, "but what exactly did the chicken
do?"

On reaching his plane seat a man is surprised to see a parrot strapped in next
to him. He asks the stewardess for a coffee where upon the parrot squawks "and
get me a whisky you cow!" The stewardess, flustered, brings back a whisky for
the parrot and forgets the coffee. When this omission is pointed out to her the
parrot drains its glass and bawls "and get me another whisky you bitch". Quite
upset, the girl comes back shaking with another whisky but still no coffee.
Unaccustomed to such slackness the man tries the parrot's approach "I've asked
you twice for a coffee, go and get it now or I'll kick your ass". Next moment
both he and the parrot have been wrenched up and thrown out of the emergency
exit by two burly stewards. Plunging downwards the parrot turns to him and says
"for someone who can't fly you're a ballsy bastard!" 

%20010716
permanant link
I have gotten so accustomed to flying that I don't even notice the safety
lecture, et. al., but maybe I should be paying closer attention:

Overheard after landing: "Thank you for flying Delta Business Express. We hope
you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a
ride."

"This aircraft is equipped with a video surveillance system that monitors the
cabin during taxiing. Any passengers not remaining in their seats until the
aircraft comes to a full and complete stop at the gate will be strip-searched
as they leave the aircraft."

From a Southwest Airlines employee.... "Welcome aboard Southwest Flight XXX to
YYY. To operate your seatbelt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull
tight. It works just like every other seatbelt, and if you don't know how to
operate one, you probably shouldn't be out in public unsupervised. In the event
of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will descend from the ceiling.
Stop screaming, grab the mask, and pull it over your face. If you have a small
child traveling with you, secure your mask before assisting with theirs. If you
are traveling with two small children, decide now which one you love more. "

"Your seat cushions can be used for flotation, and in the event of an emergency
water landing, please take them with our compliments."

And from the pilot during his welcome message: "We are pleased to have some of
the best flight attendants in the industry... Unfortunately none of them are on
this flight..."

Another flight Attendant's comment on a less than perfect landing: "We ask you
to please remain seated as Captain Kangaroo bounces us to the terminal."

An airline pilot wrote that on this particular flight he had hammered his ship
into the runway really hard. The airline had a policy which required the first
officer to stand at the door while the passengers exited, smile, and give them
a "Thanks for flying XYZ airline." He said that in light of his bad landing, he
had a hard time looking the passengers in the eye, thinking that someone would
have a smart comment. Finally everyone had gotten off except for this little
old lady walking with a cane. She said, "Sonny, mind if I ask you a question?"
"Why no Ma'am," said the pilot, "What is it?" The little old lady said, "Did we
land or were we shot down?"      

%20010713
permanant link
Something I've been meaning to do for quite a while, but am short on costumes
and equipment:


For a longer scene, this could start with some sort of mood-setting leadin. 
The first samurai in bloody combats/duels and the second quietly meditating. 
They both start a journey that somehow needs to convey that they are travelling
with the express pourpose of their meeting.

Shot 1:
Music and picture fade in slowly.  The picture focuses upon the face of a
determined japanese warrior.  Hold for several seconds.

Shot 2:
The camera centers upon a second warrior, calm and serene.  Hold there for
several seconds.

Shot 3..3+n:
Camera goes back and forth between the warriors.  Each time, warrior 1 appears
more taut while in each cut, warrior 2 appears nearer to terminal relaxation.

Shot n+4:
Shot rests on warrior 1 long enough to convince the viewer that any second
he'll have an explosive embolism.  The camera shows a brief silouhetted profile
of the warriors, with a small tree between them.

Shot n+5:  (from the profile or face-on I haven't decided)
Suddenly warrior 1 draws his sword, screams "BONSAI!!!" and takes a vicious
swipe with his weapon.

Shot n+6:
Back to profile, we see both warriors in silhouette.  Warrior 2 begins to
kneel, slowly - the impression to the audience being that he has been mortally
wounded.  After a pause, he reaches out and touches the tree, causing the
top to fall off leaving a stumped flattop.  He dejectedly picks up the fallen
section of tree, stands, lets it drop, and both warriors pass each other at
center and exit at opposite sides of the screen.  Fade to black.

    I have no idea how these things occur to me in the middle of the night.

    rOn

From "A Unicycle Trip Across the USA",
http://unicycling.org/unicycling/tales/kcash.html  :

I'd like to share a story about my unicycle ride across the United States. A
trip that both changed my life and gave me big calluses on my butt.

"Direct3D is a low-level 3-D API that is ideal for developers who need to port
games and other high-performance multimedia applications to the Windows
operating system."  - DirectX 8.0 SDK

If they wanted an "ideal" method for porting 3-D applications to Windows, they
would have implemented GL so as to be consistent with existing standards of the
time.

From the New Unicyclists FAQ:

General Questions:
Q: Why do unicycles have only one wheel?
A: Ahem...

%20010627
permanant link
Note: Sometimes a story comes along that needs no polishing or enhancement to
make it better. This is one of those. It is a real letter submitted to the IRS
the midst of 1995's weird and bizarre denial of dependents, exemptions and
credits.

The letter speaks for itself.

Dear Sirs:

I am responding to your letter denying the deduction for two of the three
dependents I claimed on my 1994 Federal Tax return.  Thank you. I have
questioned whether or not these are my children for years.  They are evil and
expensive.  It's only fair that, since they are minors and no longer my
responsibility, the government should know something about them and what to
expect over the next year.  Please do not try to reassign them to me next year
and reinstate the deduction. They are yours!

The oldest, Kristen, is now 17.  She is brilliant.  Ask her!  I suggest you put
her to work in your office where she can answer people's questions about their
returns.  While she has no formal training, it has not seemed to hamper her
mastery of any subject you can name.  Taxes should be a breeze. Next year she
is going to college.  I think it's wonderful that you will now be responsible
for that little expense.  While you mull that over, keep in mind that she has a
truck.  It doesn't run at the moment, so you have the choice of appropriating
some Department of Defense funds to fix the vehicle, or getting up early to
drive her to school.

Kristen also has a boyfriend.  Oh joy!  While she possesses all of the wisdom
of the universe, her alleged mother and I have felt it best to occasionally
remind her of the virtues of abstinence, or in the face of overwhelming
passion, safe sex.  This is always uncomfortable, and I am quite relieved you
will be handling this in the future.  May I suggest that you reinstate Dr.
Jocelyn Elders who had a rather good handle on the problem.

Patrick is 14.  I've had my suspicions about this one.  His eyes are a little
closer together than those of normal people.  He may be a tax examiner himself
one day, if he is not incarcerated first.  In February, I was awakened at three
in the morning by a police officer who was bringing Pat home.  He and his
friends were TP'ing houses.  In the future, would you like him delivered to the
local IRS office, or to Ogden, UT?

Kids at 14 will do almost anything on a dare.  His hair is purple. Permanent
dye, temporary dye, what's the big deal?  Learn to deal with it. You'll have
plenty of time, as he is sitting out a few days of school after instigating a
food fight in the cafeteria.  I'll take care of filing your phone number with
the vice-principal.  Oh yes, he and all of his friends have raging hormones. 
This is the house of testosterone and it will be much more peaceful when he
lives in your home.  DO NOT leave him or his friends unsupervised with girls,
explosives, inflammables, inflatables, vehicles, or telephones.  (They find
telephones a source of unimaginable amusement. Be sure to lock out the 900 and
976 numbers!)

Heather is an alien.  She slid through a time warp and appeared as if by magic
one year.  I'm sure this one is yours.  She is 10 going on 21. She came from a
bad trip in the sixties.  She wears tie-dyed clothes, beads, sandals, and hair
that looks like Tiny Tim's.  Fortunately you will be raising my taxes to help
offset the pinch of her remedial reading courses. "Hooked On Phonics" is
expensive, so the schools dropped it.  But here's the good news!  You can buy
it yourself for half the amount of the deduction that you are denying me!  It's
quite obvious that we were terrible parents (ask the other two).  She cannot
speak English.  Most people under twenty understand the curious patois she
fashioned out of valley girls/boys in the hood/ reggae/ yuppie/ political
doublespeak.  The school sends her to a speech pathologist who has her roll her
"R's".  It added a refreshing Mexican/Irish touch to her voice.  She wears hats
backwards, baggy pants, and wants one of her ears pierced four more times. 
There is a fascination with tattoos that worries me, but am sure that you can
handle it.  Bring a truck when you come to get her, she sort of "nests" in her
room and I think that it would be easier to move the entire thing than find out
what it is really made of.

You denied two of the three exemptions, so it is only fair that you get to pick
which two you will take.  I prefer that you take the youngest two. I will still
go bankrupt with Kristen's college, but then I am free!  If you take the two
oldest, then I still have time for counseling before Heather becomes a
teenager.  If you take the two girls, then I won't feel so bad about putting
Patrick in a military academy.  Please let me know of your decision as soon as
possible, as I have already increased the withholding on my W-4 to cover the
$395 in additional tax and made a down payment on an airplane.

Yours truly, Bob.

(Note: The IRS allowed the deductions and reinstated his refund)

Note the all-positive phrasing on this sentence from amazon.com:

We've also changed our pricing on some books, CDs, DVDs, and videos: for some
products prices have stayed the same, for some products prices are lower, and
for some products we've REDUCED OUR DISCOUNTS.  (Emphasis added.)

Personally, I've never been an amazon fan since their insistence on sueing over
moronic patent issues but what can you do?  Our patent office is even farther
off in left field than amazon's legal department.

I just installed a skylight.  My upstairs neighbor is furious.

%20010625
permanant link
I played a blank tape at full blast - the mime next door went nuts - called in
imaginary police.

Did you hear about the terrorist that hijacked a 747 full of lawyers?  He
threatened to release one every hour until his demands were met.

How many lawyers does it take to roof a house?  Depends on how thin you slice
them.

What's the difference between a tick and a lawyer?  A tick eventually stops
draining you.

What do you call a lawyer gone bad?  Senator.

Beethoven to fellow composer:  I liked your opera.  I think I will set it to
music.

How is a drum solo like a sneeze?  You can tell it's coming, but you can't do
anything about it.

A man goes to an exotic tropical island for a vacation. As the boat nears the
island, he notices the constant sound of drumming coming from the island. As he
gets off the boat, he asks the first native he sees how long the drumming will
go on. The native casts about nervously and says, "Very bad when the drumming
stops."
              
At the end of the day, the drumming is still going on and is starting to get
on his nerves. So, he asks another native when the drumming will stop. The
native looks as if he's just been reminded of something very unpleasant. "Very
bad when the drumming stops," he says, and hurries off. 

After a couple of days with little sleep, our traveller is finally fed up,
grabs the nearest native, slams him up against a tree, and shouts, "What
happens when the drumming stops?!"

"Bass solo." 

A drummer, tired from being ridiculed by his peers, decided to learn how to
play some "real" musical instruments. He went to a music store, walked in,
approached the store clerk, and said, "I'll take that red trumpet over there
and that accordion." The store clerk looked at him a bit funny, and replied
"OK, you can have the fire extinguisher but the radiator's got to stay." 

What do you call a drummer who just broke up with his girlfriend?  Homeless.

What'd the drummer get on his theory exam?  Drool.

An orchestra was rehearsing a contemporary symphony in which there was a
particularly difficult jazz trumpet riff. However, none of the trumpet players
could play it. One trumpet player suggests they hire in a jazz trumpeter. The
conductor screams, "NO, NO, NO!! Jazz musicians are irresponsible, can't play
in tune, and are not real musicians!!" Finally, they talk him into it.

The next night at 7:57 (for an 8:00 rehearsal) the jazz musician shows up
carrying his trumpet in a paper bag. The conductor decides to wait until after
to yell at him. But the jazz-man plays the riff perfectly the first time. The
conductor tries to thank him after rehearsal, but the cat is gone.

The next couple of rehearsals go pretty much the same way, with the cat
actually playing the entire first trumpet part - perfectly.

Finally, the conductor grabs him after rehearsal and says, "You know, at first
I didn't want to hire you because I thought jazz musicians were irresponsible
and couldn't play in tune, but I must say you have changed my mind. Thank you."

The jazz-man says, "Well, cat, I figure it's the least I could do since I can't
make the gig." 

How do you get a conductor out of a tree?  Cut the rope.

Did you hear about the guitarist who locked his keys in his car?  He couldn't
get his drummer out.

Gentleman: One who can play the bagpipes and doesn't.

How can you tell that the stage is level?  Drool comes out of both sides of the
trombonists' mouths.

Why are violins smaller than violas?  They're not, really.  It's just that
violinists' heads are bigger.

What has three legs and its ass on top?  A drum stool.

What do you do with a bad conductor?  Stand next to him in a thunderstorm.

Two drummers walked by a bar.  Hey... it could happen.

The difference between a French Horn and a '57 Chevy?  You can tune the Chevy.

A player in an orchestra forgot the time of their next performance, so he rang
the conductors office and asked to speak to the conductor. He was told that he
had passed away earlier.                                                

He hung up, considered this for a few minutes, then rang again. He got the same
reply. After the fifteenth time, he got the reply, "Look, he's dead! Why the
hell do you keep ringing us?."
                                                                       
Replied the musician, "I just like to hear you say it."

From alt.atheism:

Let's say you're a photographer out getting still photos
for a news service,  travelling alone, looking for
particularly poignant scenes.

If you were to stumble across George W. Bush struggling to
keep from being swept away in a raging river and you had a
choice of rescuing him or getting the Pulitzer prize-winning
photograph of the death of a President ... what aperture
setting would you use?

Best answer posted so far:

I'd ask him if he wants to be saved by God or by an
atheist. If he chooses me, I'd ask him if he wants to
ignore the climate or adopt a CO2-lowering policy. If
he chooses the former, I'd say fight the climate now,
in the form of this raging river swelled up by a
hurricane; and choose a wide-angle aperture.

%20010614
permanant link
I believe that marriage is the headstone of American soceity. - Frank Burns,
M*A*S*H

Soapbox time:  The MPAA is off their collective rockers.  How the hell does
South Park: the Movie manage to rate an R when Orgasmo, a movie by the same
people and nowhere near as lewd or offensive, gets an NC17?  When I saw it, I
would have thought that except for the crude humor it would have been a PG-13.


Strobe lights - giving reality the illusion of a really poor frame rate.
-Tyson Jensen

Red meat isn't bad for you.  Now, blue-green meat, that's REALLY bad for you.
-Tommy Smothers

What if the earth is being watched by little alien observers who have become so
bored with their jobs that they have nothing better to do than run the
seti@home client on their machines?  -rbarry

It is very difficult to look at the possibility of lesbian sheep because
if you are a female sheep, what you do to solicit sex is to stand still.
Maybe there is a female sheep out there really wanting another female,
but there's just no way for us to know it.
                -- Anne Perkins, in her study of sexuality in sheep.

In Cupertino, California, it is illegal to count backwards audibly in
hexadecimal.

UPDATE 20090610:
    I have double-checked this one.  Cupertino has their municipal codes
    online.  Feel free to utter "FEDCBA9876543210" in Cupertino.

Rhode Island state Sen. Dominick J. Ruggerio was arrested and charged in
September (early 90s) with shoplifting condoms.

January 13, 1991

Jeremy Lynch, a photography student at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in
Toronto, claimed in November that Lake Ontario is so polluted with mercury
and iron that he has been able to develop photographs using lake water
captured around factories without adding any chemicals.  A Toronto pollution
control official said he did not dispute Lynch's claim.

"Cold Fusion, the greatest intellectual blunder of the 20th century."
"What about Microsoft?"
"I said _intellectual_"

IBM and DEC decided to have a boat race, on the Thames, following the
famous Oxford vs Cambridge course.

Both teams practiced hard, and came the big day, they were as ready as
they could be.

IBM won by a mile.
 
Afterwards, the DEC team were very downhearted, and a decision was made
that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found, so a working
party was set up to investigate and report.

Well, they had everybody on the working party, Sales, Systems Engineering,
Marketing, Customer Education, Field Service, the whole lot, and after 3
months they came up with the answer, and the working party co-ordinator
gave his summary presentation.

"The problem was", he said, "that IBM had 8 people rowing and 1 steering,
whereas we had 1 person rowing and 8 steering."

The working party was then asked to go away and come up with a plan to
prevent a recurrence the following year, for DEC's pride had been damaged,
and another defeat was not wanted.

Two months later, the working party had worked out a plan, and the
coordinator gave his (customarily brief) summary --

"The guy rowing has just *got* to work harder!"

Long, but well worth reading:

Date: 5 Jan 91 11:15:02 GMT
From: jimcat@itsgw.rpi.edu (Jim Kasprzak)
Subject: Adirondack fishin' tale

 One day in the village of Lake George, Murray Campbell, the local
conservation officer, stops by Frieda's Diner for a cup of coffee.
In the parking lot he spies old Walter Shaw's pickup truck, so he
parks next to it, him and Walt being friends from way back. On his
way past the truck, he can't help noticing that there in the back
of Walt's truck, all lined up nose to tail, are thirty-three big
old lake trout. Now, that's a pretty good day's fishing around 
Lake George; it's also against the law, since the legal limit is
three per person.
 
 Well, folks up in the north country never were much for doing things
in a hurry, so Murray walks into the diner, says hello to Frieda,
sees Walt sitting at a stool by the counter, and goes over and sits
next to him. Murray takes off his conservation officer hat, orders 
a cup of coffee, and proceeds to start talking to Walt about the 
weather, family, what have you.
 
 Soon enough the talk turns to fishing, as it's likely to do in those
parts, and Murray clears his throat and says, "Y'know, Walt, I 
couldn't help but notice those thirty-three trout out there in the 
back of your truck. Now you know as well as I do that the legal 
limit is three, so unless you can do a pretty good job of explaining,
I'm gonna have to write you up for a violation."
 
 "Explainin'?" says Walt, indingnantly. "Why, I'll do ya better than
that. You come out fishin' with me tomorrow and I'll show you how
when I fish, I can't possibly come back with any _less_ than thirty
trout!"
 
 "Now, that'd be a neat trick, Walt," replies Murray. "You convince me 
that you can't catch less than thirty trout, and I'll let you off."
 
 So the next morning Murray gets up bright and early, goes down to 
the docks to where Walter Shaw keeps his boat, and the two of them
set off towards the middle of the lake. Walt takes them out to the 
good ninety-foot flats just past Dome Island and stops the boat dead
in the water, just as pretty as you please. Then he stoops down by 
the side of the boat, sticks a finger in the water, draws it out and
gives it a sniff. "Yep, looks good," he says, then puts his hand in 
the water again, scoops up a little bit of it, gives it a taste, and
proclaims, "Okay, this is the spot all right." Murray, meanwhile,
is just sitting back watching all this rigamarole and wondering what
on Earth Walt could be up to.
 
 Well, next thing you know, Walt opens up a box sitting next to his
seat, pulls out a half-stick of dynamite, lights the fuse with his
Zippo lighter, and tosses it in the water. BOOM! A huge fountain of
water shoots up into the air, drenches Walt and Murray, and a couple
of seconds later there's fish floating up to the surface, dozens of
them, left and right. And Walt's right there with his net flipping
them into the boat one by one.
 
 Murray is flabbergasted. "Walt!" he says when his friend finally 
gets done loading up the boat with fish. "What do you think you're
doing!? Now not only do I have to write you up a fish and game 
violation, I'm gonna have to report you for using explosives 
without a permit!"
 
 Walt doesn't say a word; he just reaches down into the box, pulls 
out another half-stick of dynamite, lights the fuse and sticks it 
in Murray's hand. He grins at Murray, and says, "So, you wanna talk,
or you wanna fish?"

From: acs-grf@alembic.ACS.COM
Newsgroups: alt.personals
Subject: relationship wanted
Date: 2 Jan 91 08:15:17 GMT

SWM seeks SWF for destructive, adolescent relationship based upon
mutual objectification and possession, visual and tactile pleasure
derivable from definable objective models of sexuality and romance, and
implicit disregard for personal identity.  Interests include
abstract mathematics and philosophy with a particular interest in
meta-ethical theory.

Blacksburg, Va. -- Sheriff's deputies rushed in with guns drawn in
response to a series of 911 calls but found they had been summoned
by a tomato.

A Montgomery County dispatcher had traced the calls to the home of
Linda and Danny Hurst.  The Hursts were not home, so police figured
someone might have broken in.  Danny Hurst later found an overripe
tomato in a hanging basket, dripping tomato juice onto a telephone-
answering machine below.  Police think the juice from the distressed
tomato shorted out the machine's dialing system, causing it to call
the emergency line.

"It just burst," said a deputy.  "Then it called us.  I guess it
needed help ... or needed cleaning up."

    December 30th, 1990 _Parade_ magazine (from UPI)
% 20010501
The "Multiple Personality" legal defense is ruled to be constitutional by
the Supreme Court, in a 137-76 vote.

Did you know Mozart died penniless?  In fact, he seems to have been Baroque all
his life.  - rbarry 

I guess this is the week I earn my pay. - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) , during 
the Cuban missile crisis

I like the word 'indolence'. It makes my laziness seem classy. - Bern Williams

I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that
I approved of it. - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

I strive to be brief, and I become obscure. - Horace

I think it would be a good idea. - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) , when asked what
he thought of Western civilization

I'd rather bathe lepers than be interviewed by the press. - Mother Teresa

I was so ugly when I was born; the doctor slapped my mother. - Henny Youngman

Disk Full - Press F1 to belch.

It's not hard to meet expenses, they're everywhere.

If I want your opinion, I'll ask you to fill out the necessary forms.

If things get any worse, I'll have to ask you to stop helping me.

If at first you DO succeed, try not to look astonished!

Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change.

I'm out of bed and dressed, what more do you want?

Lead me not into temptation, I can find it myself.

Sex on television can't hurt you unless you fall off.

Auntie Em, Hate you; Hate Kansas; Taking the dog. --Dorothy.

A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory.

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted
all other alternatives. - Abba Eban (1915- )

Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain. - 
Martin Mull

I am a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from humans.

I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific. - Lily 
Tomlin

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with
sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo 
Galilei

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an
agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is
all that agnosticism means. - Clarence Darrow , Scopes trial, in 1925.

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. - Will 
Rogers (1879-1935)

I don't even know what street Canada is on. - Al Capone (1899-1947)

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life
fearhell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I
think the m of heaven would be even worse. - Isaac Asimov

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names. - John F. Kennedy

Extra-marital sex is as overrated as pre-marital sex. And marital sex, come 
to think of it. - Simon Gray

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing. - Anonymous

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence 
punctuated by committee meetings. - George F. Will , journalist, political 
commentator, 1994

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. 
- George Burns

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Communication with an engineer is only slightly more difficult than 
communication with the dead. - Lorren 'Rus' Stiles, Sr.

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to 
dispense it. - Dick Cavett

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. - Andre Gide

Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be 
amused. - Anonymous

Despite the high cost of living it remains a popular item. - Anonymous

Only those who attempt the absurd...will achieve the impossible. I think...
I think it's in my basement...Let me go upstairs and check. - Escher

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or 
morphine or idealism. -Carl Gustav Jung

Justice is incidental to law and order. - J. Edgar Hoover

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line 
between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on
earth. So what the hell, leap. -Cynthia Heimel , "Lower Manhattan Survival 
Tactics" in Village Voice

Never moon a werewolf. - Mike Binder

Never judge a book by its movie. - J. W. Eagan

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never
learn anything from history. - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

For best results: wash in cold water separately, hang dry and iron with warm
iron.  For not so good results: drag behind car through puddles, blow-dry on
roofrack. - Laundry instructions on a shirt made by HEET (Korea)

All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height. - Casey 
Stengel

A signature always reveals a man's character - and sometimes even his name.
- Evan Esar

A cement mixer collided with a prison van on the Kingston Pass. Motorists are
asked to be on the lookout for 16 hardened criminals. - Ronnie Corbett

If thy enemy wrong thee, buy each of his children a drum. - Chinese Proverb

Any time four New Yorkers get into a cab without arguing, a bank robbery has
just taken place. - Johnny Carson

I was brought up to respect my elders and now I don't have to respect anybody.
- George Burns.

If you live to be 100, you've got it made.  Very few people die past that age.
- George Burns.

What goes up must come down.  Ask any system administrator.

Don't take life too seriously - none of us get out alive anyway.

Enjoy life.  There's plenty of time to be dead.

Beware the lollipop of mediocrity.  Lick once and you suck forever.

I was sitting in the hottub at my gym after working out and wondering why the
swimming pool area was covered by an extensive sprinkler system. - rbarry

To hell with a barrel full of monkeys.  How about "more fun than a cat and a
laser pointer."

Well, everyone, it's time to start reading Terms of Use statements.  Check out
what Microsoft has slipped into one of theirs (from
http://www.passport.com/Consumer/TermsOfUse.asp)

License to Microsoft

By posting messages, uploading files, inputting data, submitting any feedback
or suggestions, or engaging in any other form of communication with or through
the Passport Web Site, you warrant and represent that you own or otherwise
control the rights necessary to do so and you are granting Microsoft and its
affiliated companies permission to:

    1. Use, modify, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly
    perform, reproduce, publish, sublicense, create derivative works from,
    transfer, or sell any such communication. 

    2. Sublicense to third parties the unrestricted right to exercise any
    of the foregoing rights granted with respect to the communication.

    3. Publish your name in connection with any such communication.

The foregoing grants shall include the right to exploit any proprietary rights
in such communication, including but not limited to rights under copyright,
trademark, service mark or patent laws under any relevant jurisdiction. No
compensation will be paid with respect to Microsoft's use of the materials
contained within such communication. Microsoft is under no obligation to post
or use any materials you may provide and may remove such materials at any time
in Microsoft's sole discretion.

Microsoft's No. 1 product is Windows, which now comes automatically installed
on every computer in the world and many kitchen appliances. Technically,
Windows is an "operating system," which means that it supplies your computer
with the basic commands that it needs to suddenly, with no warning whatsoever,
stop operating. --Dave Barry

If the cops arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?

Instead of talking to your plants, if you yelled at them would they still grow?
Only to be troubled and insecure?

The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants;
instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the
variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of
the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program,
should the value of pi change. --Fortran for Xerox manual.

Does your employer have to provide separate sanitary facilities if you work in
the sewer?  - rbarry

Windows 2000 login screen: Control-Alt-Del helps keep your password secure.

I called the janitor the other day to see what he could do about my dingy
linoleum floor.  He said he would have been happy to loan me a polisher, but
that he hadn't the slightest idea what he had done with it.  I told him not to
worry about it - that as a programmer it wasn't the first time I had
experienced a buffer allocation failure due to a memory error.  - rbarry

The docs I got when I started my new job included some paperwork I had to sign
regarding what is considered prohibited use of the system.  Among the entries
was "Illegal or unethical activities that could adversely affect [the 
company]."  It doesn't mention anything about illegal or unethical activities
that positively affect the company.  =] - rbarry

Okay - if a prune is a _dried_plum_, what exactly is prune _juice?!? - rbarry

Hearing a disturbance, The master programmer went into the novice's cubicle.

"Curse these personal computers!" cried the novice in anger, "To make them do
anything I must use three or even four editing programs.  Sometimes I get so
confused that I erase entire files.  This is truly intolerable!"

The master programmer stared at the novice.  "And what would you do to remedy
this state of affairs?" he asked.

The novice thought for a moment.  "I will design a new editing program," he
said, "a program that will replace all these others."

Suddenly the master struck the novice on the side of his head.  It was not a
heavy blow, but the novice was nonetheless surprised.  "What did you do that
for?" exclaimed the novice.

"I have no wish to learn another editing program," said the master.

And suddenly the novice was enlightened.

-The Zen of Programming - Geoffrey James.

     a = x            [true for some a's and x's]
   a+a = a+x          [add a to both sides]
    2a = a+x          [a+a = 2a]
 2a-2x = a+x-2x       [subtract 2x from both sides]
2(a-x) = a+x-2x       [2a-2x = 2(a-x)]
2(a-x) = a-x          [x-2x = -x]
     2 = 1            [divide both sides by a-x]

Some people are going to hate me but; (and there is a simple explanation.)
There was once a barber.  Some say that he lived in Seville.  Wherever he
lived, all of the men in this town either shaved themselves or were shaved by
the barber.  And the barber only shaved the men who did not shave themselves.

Please do not feed the hackers.  Their diet has been carefully selected by
trained vending machine operators to keep them sedentary at their desks 24
hours a day.  rbarry

You don't need a sword to send your foes into a stupor - just be yourself. -
The voodoo lady.

Guybrush: Are you sure there's nothing I can do to get you to navigate my ship
to Lucre Island?
I. Cheese: I'm open to pursuasion.  What did you have in mind?
Guybrush: I was kind of hoping you'd cave in due to my incessant nagging.
I. Cheese: Kid, I've been married for 30 years.
Guybrush: So?
I. Cheese: So if there's one thing I'm immune to, it's high-pitched incessant
nagging.

A man placed some flowers on the grave of his dearly
departed mother and started back toward his car when
his attention was diverted to another man kneeling at
a grave.

The man seemed to be praying with profound intensity
and kept repeating, "Why did you have to die?  Why
did you have to die?  Why did you have to die?  Why
did you have to die?"

The first man approached him and said, "Sir, I don't
wish to interfere with your private grief, but this
demonstration of pain is more than I've ever seen
before.  For whom do you mourn so deeply?  A child?
A parent?"

The mourner took a moment to collect himself, then
replied..."My wife's first husband."

AUSTIN, TX (Dec. 13) - Attorneys for Texas Governor George W. Bush filed suit
in federal court today, seeking to prevent Santa Claus from making his list
and then checking it twice. The complaint seeks an immediate injunction
against the beloved Christmas icon, asking the court to effectively ban his
traditional practice of checking the list of good boys and girls one
additional time before packing his sleigh.

The suit, filed in the Federal District Court of Austin, Texas, asks a
federal judge to "hereby order Mr. Claus to cease and desist all repetitive
and duplicative list-checking activity, and certify the original list as
submitted, without amendment, alteration, deletion, or other unnecessary
modification."

"There are no standards for deciding who is naughty, and who is nice. It's
totally arbitrary and capricious. How many more times does he need to check?
This checking, checking, and re-checking over and over again must stop now,"
said former Secretary James Baker.
[snip]

Why don't personal lubricants come with a satisfaction gaurantee? - rbarry

"My pants are already plenty controversial.  I don't need to add crackpot
pseudoscience to the mix." - Guybrush Threepwood

Sometimes, when it's quiet, I can still hear the monkeys. - Guybrush Threepwood

A billion here, a billion there -- pretty soon it adds up to real money. -
Senator Everett Dirksen (Republican.)

Why does my UPS have an ON/OFF switch? 

The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to apply Turing
tests to objects of its own creation. 

it occurred to me a while ago that Unix is much like the U.S. Government:

A long time ago, a few brilliant men created a system that empowered its users,
gave them freedom, and provided a few essential services. Now it is old, slow,
easily corrupted, overly restrictive, too large and confusing for anyone to
understand, plagued with inconsistencies, and run by men who only care about
money. -- lee@puck.mport.com 

In headlines today, the dreaded killfile virus spread across the country adding
'aol.com' to people's Usenet kill files everywhere. The programmer of the virus
still remains anonymous, but has been nominated several times for a Nobel peace
prize. -- Mark Atkinson 

Consultant's Creed: If you think *I'm* expensive, wait until you hire an
amateur. 

I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck. 
-- Rob Pike, commenting on the X Window System 

Digital is to analog as steps are to ramps. 

Computers save time the way kudzu prevents soil erosion. 
-- Al Castanoli 

Brilliance is typically the act of an individual, but incredible stupidity can
usually be traced to an organization. 
-- Jon Bentley 

A logician trying to explain logic to a programmer is like a cat trying to
explain to a fish what it's like to get wet. 

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human
history -- with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila. 
-- Mitch Ratcliffe 

Proof Techniques 

1) Proof by referral to non-existent authorities
2) Reduction ad nauseam
3) Proof by assignment
4) Method of least astonishment
5) Proof by handwaving 
6) Proof by intimidation
7) Method of deferral until later in the course
8) Proof by reduction to a sequence of unrelated lemmas
9) Method of convergent irrelevancies 

From /usr/include/netinet/ip.h:

    u_int16_t frag_off;

(Taken out of context, of course.)

The box said "requires Windows 95 or better"... so I installed linux.

And which parallel universe did you crawl out of?

I'd love to help you out.  Which way did you come in?

How depressing... Nobody's after my job.

Blessed are the geeks, for they shall internet the earth.

A few of the Logan crowd, in the death throes of the annual fall cold season,
decided to start a band with a whole new gurgling sound.  They are calling it
the Violent Phlems.  -Brian Carver.

Okay, so all the rice flour came off the deep fried tofu.  I'll call my new
recipe "hage-dashi tofu."

    Somebody's gotta get it....

The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
(Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, in comp.os.linux.misc, on X interfaces.)

There are no threads in a.b.p.erotica,  so there's no  gain in using a
threaded news reader.
(Unknown source)

"I would rather spend 10 hours reading someone else's source code than
10 minutes listening to Musak waiting for technical support which isn't."
(By Dr. Greg Wettstein, Roger Maris Cancer Center)

When the Apple IIc was introduced, the informative copy led off with a couple
of asterisked sentences:

  It weighs less than 8 pounds.*
  And costs less than $1,300.**

In tiny type were these "fuller explanations":

      * Don't asterisks make you suspicious as all get out?  Well, all
  this means is that the IIc alone weights 7.5 pounds. The power
  pack, monitor, an extra disk drive, a printer and several bricks
  will make the IIc weigh more. Our lawyers were concerned that you
  might not be able to figure this out for yourself.

     ** The FTC is concerned about price fixing. You can pay more if
  you really want to.  Or less.
    -- Forbes

"We invented a new protocol and called it Kermit, after Kermit the Frog,
star of "The Muppet Show." [3]

[3]  Why?  Mostly because there was a Muppets calendar on the wall when we
were trying to think of a name, and Kermit is a pleasant, unassuming sort of
character.  But since we weren't sure whether it was OK to name our protocol
after this popular television and movie star, we pretended that KERMIT was an
acronym; unfortunately, we could never find a good set of words to go with the
letters, as readers of some of our early source code can attest.  Later, while
looking through a name book for his forthcoming baby, Bill Catchings noticed
that "Kermit" was a Celtic word for "free", which is what all Kermit programs
should be, and words to this effect replaced the strained acronyms in our
source code (Bill's baby turned out to be a girl, so he had to name her Becky
instead).  When BYTE Magazine was preparing our 1984 Kermit article for
publication, they suggested we contact Henson Associates Inc. for permission
to say that we did indeed name the protocol after Kermit the Frog.  Permission
was kindly granted, and now the real story can be told.  I resisted the
temptation, however, to call the present work "Kermit the Book."
    -- Frank da Cruz, "Kermit - A File Transfer Protocol"

Unfortunately, most programmers like to play with new toys.  I have many
friends who, immediately upon buying a snakebite kit, would be tempted to
throw the first person they see to the ground, tie the tourniquet on him,
slash him with the knife, and apply suction to the wound.
    -- Jon Bentley

To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System.

There are two ways of constructing a software design.  One way is to make
it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to
make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
    -- C.A.R. Hoare

  The salesman and the system analyst took off to spend a weekend in the
forest, hunting bear.  They'd rented a cabin, and, when they got there, took
their backpacks off and put them inside.  At which point the salesman turned
to his friend, and said, "You unpack while I go and find us a bear."
  Puzzled, the analyst finished unpacking and then went and sat down
on the porch.  Soon he could hear rustling noises in the forest.  The noises
got nearer -- and louder -- and suddenly there was the salesman, running like
hell across the clearing toward the cabin, pursued by one of the largest and
most ferocious grizzly bears the analyst had ever seen.
  "Open the door!", screamed the salesman.
  The analyst whipped open the door, and the salesman ran to the door,
suddenly stopped, and stepped aside.  The bear, unable to stop, continued
through the door and into the cabin.  The salesman slammed the door closed
and grinned at his friend.  "Got him!", he exclaimed, "now, you skin this
one and I'll go rustle us up another!"

The proof that IBM didn't invent the car is that it has a steering wheel
and an accelerator instead of spurs and ropes, to be compatible with a horse.
    -- Jac Goudsmit

The only difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman is
that the car salesman knows he's lying.

The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected.
  -- The Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June 1972

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose
from.
    -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Si vous pouves lire ceci, 
Sie vermutlich wurden nicht erzogen
en los Estados Unidos.

Little Endian Bytes

          ***********************************************************
          The galaxy has been conquered by the Romulans:
          The Romulans:
                     2b||!2b (R6) with 36 planets and 180 armies.
                       rehab (R1) with 5 planets and 78 armies.
                       guest (R2) with 2 planets and 8 armies.
                        Mayo (R4) with 0 planets and 47 armies.
          ***********************************************************

The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity
-- the rest is overhead for the operating system.

The computer industry is journalists in their 20's standing in awe of
entrepreneurs in their 30's who are hiring salesmen in their 40's and
50's and paying them in the 60's and 70's to bring their marketing into
the 80's.
                -- Marty Winston

"The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty.  You might want to mug
someone with it."
                -- M. Devine, Computer Science 340

That's the thing about people who think they hate computers.  What they
really hate is lousy programmers.
                -- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"

"Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
one which cannot be justified on any other grounds."
                -- J. Finnegan, USC.

        Stop!  Whoever crosseth the bridge of Death, must answer first
these questions three, ere the other side he see!

        "What is your name?"
        "Sir Brian of Bell."
        "What is your quest?"
        "I seek the Holy Grail."
        "What are four lowercase letters that are not legal flag arguments
to the Berkeley UNIX version of `ls'?"
        "I, er.... AIIIEEEEEE!"

Some people claim that the UNIX learning curve is steep, but at least you
only have to climb it once.

Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
"user-friendly".  ...  Their best approach, so far, has been to take all
the old brochures, and stamp the words, "user-friendly" on the cover.
                -- Bill Gates, Microsoft, Inc.
        [Pot. Kettle. Black.]

Simulations are like miniskirts, they show a lot and hide the essentials.
                -- Hubert Kirrman

                                SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT

Title:          Are Frogs Turing Compatible?
Speaker:        Don "The Lion" Knuth

                                ABSTRACT
        Several researchers at the University of Louisiana have been studying
the computing power of various amphibians, frogs in particular.  The problem
of frog computability has become a critical issue that ranges across all areas
of computer science.  It has been shown that anything computable by an amphi-
bian community in a fixed-size pond is computable by a frog in the same-size
pond -- that is to say, frogs are Pond-space complete.  We will show that
there is a log-space, polywog-time reduction from any Turing machine program
to a frog.  We will suggest these represent a proper subset of frog-computable
functions.
        This is not just a let's-see-how-far-those-frogs-can-jump seminar.
This is only for hardcore amphibian-computation people and their colleagues.
        Refreshments will be served.  Music will be played.

Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it!
Kirk:   Analysis, Mr. Spock?
Spock:  Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table.
Kirk:   Then it's of external origin?
Spock:  Affirmative.
Kirk:   Mr. Sulu, go to pass two.
Sulu:   Aye aye, sir, going to pass two.

Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches.  If the vending machine
doesn't sell it, they don't eat it.  Vending machines don't sell quiche.

Real programmers disdain structured programming.  Structured programming is
for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet- trained.  They wear
neckties and carefully line up pencils on otherwise clear desks.

Real computer scientists only write specs for languages that might run
on future hardware.  Nobody trusts them to write specs for anything homo
sapiens will ever be able to fit on a single planet.

Prof:    So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data
         encryption standard and they came up with ...
Student: NTFS.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
                -- D.E. Knuth

A picture is worth about 4k - 8k on an alpha. - rbarry

        One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic
is our support for UNIX?
        Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago.
Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our
VAXs are going for UNIX use.  UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand,
easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual
users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines.
And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it.  We have
good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
        It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run
out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end
up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
        With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly
check that small manual and find out that it's not there.  With VMS, no matter
what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if
you look long enough it's there.  That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX
is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there.
                -- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984
[It's been argued that the beauty of UNIX is the same as the beauty of Ken
Olsen's brain.  Ed.]

One of the most overlooked advantages to computers is...  If they do
foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little.
                -- Joe Martin

        One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make
a better garbage collector.  We must keep a reference count of the pointers
to each cons."
        Moon patiently told the student the following story -- "One day a
student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a better garbage
collector..."

"One Architecture, One OS" also translates as "One Egg, One Basket".

No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain.  All I'm after is
just a mediocre brain, something like the president of American Telephone
and Telegraph Company.
                -- Alan Turing on the possibilities of a thinking
                   machine, 1943.

Never try to explain computers to a layman.  It's easier to explain
sex to a virgin.
        -- Robert Heinlein

(Note, however, that virgins tend to know a lot about computers.)

        n = ((n >>  1) & 0x55555555) | ((n <<  1) & 0xaaaaaaaa);
        n = ((n >>  2) & 0x33333333) | ((n <<  2) & 0xcccccccc);
        n = ((n >>  4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n <<  4) & 0xf0f0f0f0);
        n = ((n >>  8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n <<  8) & 0xff00ff00);
        n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000);

Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the
only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
                -- Wernher von Braun

Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system.  Therefore, users
tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space.  It has
been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is the
message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files.
                -- System V.2 administrator's guide

        It took 300 years to build and by the time it was 10% built,
everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But by then the investment
was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it has
cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing.
        There are at present no plans to replace it, since it was never
really needed in the first place.
        I expect every installation has its own pet software which is
analogous to the above.
                -- K.E. Iverson, on the Leaning Tower of Pisa

It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program.
What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing
thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical?
                -- Alan Perlis

        It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself
working as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates.  One slow day, he
found that he had time to chat with the new entrants.  To the first one
he asked, "What's your IQ?"  The new arrival replied, "190".  They
discussed Einstein's theory of relativity for hours.  When the second
new arrival came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's
IQ.  The answer this time came "120".  To which Einstein replied, "Tell
me, how did the Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half
an hour or so.  To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the
question, "What's your IQ?".  Upon receiving the answer "70",
Einstein smiled and replied, "Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?"

... in three to eight years we will have a machine with the general
intelligence of an average human being ... The machine will begin
to educate itself with fantastic speed.  In a few months it will be
at genius level and a few months after that its powers will be
incalculable ...
                -- Marvin Minsky, LIFE Magazine, November 20, 1970

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual
way.  This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of
complaining.
                -- Jeff Raskin

If the designers of X-window built cars, there would be no fewer than five
steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same
prinicples -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo.  Useful
feature, that.
                -- From the programming notebooks of a heretic, 1990.

It has been said that physicists stand on one another's shoulders.  If
this is the case, then programmers stand on one another's toes, and
software engineers dig each other's graves.
                -- Unknown

        I'm sure that VMS is completely documented, I just haven't found the
right manual yet.  I've been working my way through the manuals in the document
library and I'm half way through the second cabinet, (3 shelves to go), so I
should find what I'm looking for by mid May.  I hope I can remember what it
was by the time I find it.
        I had this idea for a new horror film, "VMS Manuals from Hell" or maybe
"The Paper Chase : IBM vs. DEC".  It's based on Hitchcock's "The Birds", except
that it's centered around a programmer who is attacked by a swarm of binder
pages with an index number and the single line "This page intentionally left
blank."
                -- Alex Crain

I went to my first computer conference at the New York Hilton about 20
years ago.  When somebody there predicted the market for microprocessors
would eventually be in the millions, someone else said, "Where are they
all going to go? It's not like you need a computer in every doorknob!"

Years later, I went back to the same hotel.  I noticed the room keys had
been replaced by electronic cards you slide into slots in the doors.

There was a computer in every doorknob.
        -- Danny Hillis

/* Halley */

        (Halley's comment.)

Hacker's Guide To Cooking:
2 pkg. cream cheese (the mushy white stuff in silver wrappings that doesn't
        really  come from Philadelphia after all; anyway, about 16 oz.)
1 tsp. vanilla  extract  (which is more alcohol than vanilla and pretty
        strong so this part you *GOTTA* measure)
1/4 cup sugar (but honey works fine too)
8 oz. Cool Whip (the fluffy stuff devoid of nutritional value that you
        can squirt all over your friends and lick off...)
"Blend all together until creamy with no lumps."  This is where you get to
        join(1) all the raw data in a big buffer and then filter it through
        merge(1m) with the -thick option, I mean, it starts out ultra lumpy
        and icky looking and you have to work hard to mix it.  Try an electric
        beater if you have a cat(1) that can climb wall(1s) to lick it off
        the ceiling(3m).
"Pour into a graham cracker crust..."  Aha, the BUGS section at last.  You
        just happened  to have a GCC sitting around under /etc/food, right?
        If not, don't panic(8), merely crumble a rand(3m) handful of innocent
        GCs into a suitable tempfile and mix in some melted butter.
"...and  refrigerate for an hour."  Leave the  recipe's  stdout in a fridge
        for 3.6E6 milliseconds while you work on cleaning up stderr, and
        by time out your cheesecake will be ready for stdin.

Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every
program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.

Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because
God is not capricious or arbitrary.  No such faith comforts the software
engineer.
                -- Fred Brooks

Computer Science is the only discipline in which we view adding a new wing
to a building as being maintenance.
                -- Jim Horning

Coding is easy;  All you do is sit staring at a terminal until the drops
of blood form on your forehead.

Web designers are people who carefully separate the wheat from the chaff, and
then carefully print the chaff.

Unix - reach out and grep someone.

Behind every great computer is a skinny little geek.

Programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.

A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of 
by its author. - S. C. Johnson

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of
pearls.  The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. 
There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless loops nor
useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity.

A program should follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment'.  What is this law?  It
is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the way that
astonishes him least.

A program, no matter how complex, should act as a single unit.  The prograam
should be directed by the logic within rather than by outware appearances.

If the program fails in these requirements, it will be in a state of disorder
and confusion.  The only way to correct this is to rewrite the program.
    -Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

A novice of the temple once approached the Chief Priest with a question.

"Master, does Emacs have the Buddha nature?" the novice asked.

The Chief Priest had been in the temple for many years and could be relied upon
to know these things.  He thought for several minutes before replying.

"I don't see why not.  It's got bloody well everything else."

With that, the Chief Priest went to lunch.  The novice suddenly achieved
enlightenment, several years later.

A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than
some that do.  - Dennis M. Ritche.

A computer is an old testament god - with a lot of rules and no mercy.
    -Joseph Campbell

I got me a job last month workin' at the city zoo.

My job was to feed them polar bears, but they told me I was fired today.

I don't know what their problem is. Them bears seemed to like them penguins way
better than smelly buckets of dead fish.

From the "Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide:"
So, you want to write a kernel module.  You know C, you've written a number of
normal programs to run as processes, and now you want to get to where the real
action is, to where a single wild pointer can wipe out your file system and a
core dump means a reboot.

Please keep your hands off the secretary's reproducing equipment.

From /usr/include/linux/kdev_t.h:

Admissible operations on an object of type kdev_t:
- passing it along
- comparing it for equality with another such object
- storing it in ROOT_DEV, inode->i_dev, inode->i_rdev, sb->s_dev,
  bh->b_dev, req->rq_dev, de->dc_dev, tty->device
- using its bit pattern as argument in a hash function
- finding its major and minor
- complaining about it
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

What I want to know is how the fool and his money got together in the first
place.

Catapultam habeo.  Nisi pecuniam umnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane
mittam.  (I have a catapult.  Give me your money or I shall fling an enormous
rock at your head.)

Arachibutyrophobia: The fear of having peanut butter stick to the roof of your
mouth.

Last night I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky and I thought to
myself, "Where the hell is the ceiling?"

Someday we'll look back on all this and plow into the back of a parked car.

When my kleptomania gets bad, I take something for it.

If I have to work for an idiot, it might as well be me.

Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue.

Bad or missing mouse driver.  Spank the cat [Y/N]?

Air conditioned environment.  Do NOT open windows.

At Evans and Sutherland, an application for the process of submitting,
receiving, and closing out Change Requests (CR) is generally disliked by the
engineers for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that it takes
forever to get it to properly send a through.  The Ap has gained a reputation
as the C.R. Ap.

In case you've not seen Battlefield Earth yet, I decided to include the
comments made by 69 reviewers recently at the movie review site
'rottentomatoes.com.'  What makes this so amazingly hilarious is that these
people seem to have saved up their lives' pain specifically to make these
statements:

"So overwrought, overacted and overwhelmingly inept that it must be seen to be
believed." 
-- Edward Johnson-Ott, NUVO NEWSWEEKLY

"Battlefield Earth is long and tedious."
-- Steve Rhodes, INTERNET REVIEWS

"It's bombastic, chaotic, plodding, visually dreary and patchily written by 
first-timer Corey Mandell and JD Shapiro, who's too unimportant to rate 
mention in the press kit."
-- Lawrence Toppman, CHARLOTTE OBSERVER

"Even if you were to classify it as a guilty pleasure, it would be the kind of
sullying guilt that makes people leap from heights."
-- Shawn Levy, THE OREGONIAN

"Battlefield Earth is dumb."
-- Tom Maurstad, DALLAS MORNING NEWS

"This Battlefield's girth is all flab, a bombastic concoction of miscued camp
and underachieving action."
-- E! ONLINE

"Buy a ticket for this mess, and you'll be sorry. Battlefield Earth is a 
shrill, hollow and unintelligible movie with no redeeming value whatsoever 
aside from watching John Travolta ham it up as an evil alien who looks like a
Rastafarian Michelin Man"
-- Glenn Whipp, LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS

"Overlong, not very well-written."
-- Luke Y. Thompson, NEW TIMES LOS ANGELES

"Wooden acting, sappy melodrama and illogical plot lines."
-- Philip Booth, ORLANDO WEEKLY

"As it gets more loudly ludicrous, with destruction coming in vast waves, you
don't think 'piece of cake' but 'piece of (oops).'"
-- David Elliott, SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

"Laughably bad."
-- SCREEN IT!

"There is no reason for this sci-fi movie not to be rooted in some notion."
-- Enrique Fernandez, SUN-SENTINEL

"Sitting through the summer's first monolithic monstrosity, Battlefield 
Earth, was one of the most painfully excruciating experiences of my life."
-- Joe Baltake, SACRAMENTO BEE

"The only people this film could recruit are members of the rock band Kiss, 
who, with their high-heeled boots and face paint, might figure they've got a
spot if this alien thing ever really came down."
-- Keith Simanton, SEATTLE TIMES

"You don't watch it -- you survive it."
-- Steven Rosen, DENVER POST

"I hated this movie, and I had a great time doing it."
-- Rob Blackwelder, SPLICED ONLINE

"Battlefield Earth falls short of even being a guilty pleasure."
-- Sarah Kendzior, 11TH HOUR

"This third-rate B-movie is predictable and silly in the extreme."
-- Jonathan Lewis, THE REEL SITE

"Battlefield Earth is rife with plot loopholes."
-- T.S. McBride, MOVIERANT

"Battlefield Earth is the same movie we've all seen before."
-- Charlie Craine, HIP ONLINE

"Kevin Costner should send a thank-you note to the producers of Battlefield 
Earth because they have single-handedly eclipsed the memories of Waterworld 
and The Postman for post-apocalyptic bombast."
-- Roger Friedman, FOXNEWS

"The film is a disjointed mumble of special effects, pretentious acting, a 
cacophonous soundtrack and dialogue unworthy of even the cheesiest B-movie 
of yesteryear."
-- Michael Elliott, CROSSWALK.COM

"It will no doubt take a place of honor in the proud pantheon of 'What Were 
They Thinking?' cinema, right alongside The Postman and Howard the Duck."
-- Scott Von Doviak, CULTUREVULTURE.NET

"Average story. Awful score. Awful sound effects. Awful editing. Awful 
sound. Average visual effects. Godawful scenery chewing acting. If ever a 
movie was meant to be shown at midnight, it is this one."
-- Chuck Schwartz, CRANKY CRITIC 

"Don't see this movie."
-- J. Rentilly, TNT'S ROUGH CUT

"It's probably obvious by now that Battlefield Earth is far from cerebral 
or anything even remotely serious."
-- Marc Fortier, REEL.COM

"Battlefield Earth has the feel of a movie made by a precocious 8-year-old 
with access to too many leftover costumes from Clan of the Cave Bear and 
Star Trek: The Next Generation."
-- Arne Johnson, CITYSEARCH

>"A noisy, chaotic, sloppily edited and embarrassingly banal and derivative 
saga."
-- Susan Stark, DETROIT NEWS

"This is florid science fiction, low-brow but energetic, complete with 
cheesy thrills."
-- Louis B. Parks, HOUSTON CHRONICLE

"The narrative is unclear beyond this one fact: Apes control the planet and 
humans are their slaves.  Oops. Wrong movie -- but not by much."
-- Duane Dudek, MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL

"The words 'so bad it's good' strain to make themselves heard through the 
film's coarse bluster and grimy din."
-- Gene Seymour, NEWSDAY

"Now that it's finally on the screen, we discover that the science-fiction 
epic Travolta considered a Holy Grail is silly junk."
-- Jack Garner, ROCHESTER CHRONICLE

"While the ending at least puts a little action into the proceedings, the 
film's pacing is all off and never gets the audience involved in the plot, 
and Christian's weird, tilted camera angles don't add much of anything to 
the experience."
-- SCREEN IT!

"The plot depends on the most ludicrous decisions and senseless actions ever 
made by a thinking race."
-- Sean Axmaker, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

"While the look is cool -- like a tinted B&W film, all washes of green, blue,
amber and red -- the story's broad strokes are painfully cliche'd and its 
details make no sense at all."
-- Maitland McDonagh, TV GUIDE

"If filmmaking has ever been less thrilling and more disengaging, I'd like to 
see it."
-- Wesley Morris, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

"Battlefield Earth is as relentlessly grim as it is artless, and Elia 
Cmiral's bombastic score also makes it painful to listen to."
-- Peter Howell, TORONTO STAR

"Bad science-fiction has a new name, and it is Battlefield Earth, the early 
frontrunner for this year's worst movie."
-- Jeff Vice, DESERET NEWS

"In Battlefield Earth, it`s all flash for no reason."
-- Steve Biodrowski, FANDOM

"Okay folks, we've got a winner for worst film of the year, and the year isn't 
even half over yet."
-- Eric Lurio, GREENWICH VILLAGE GAZETTE

"Battlefield Earth simply asks too much and delivers too little."
-- Matt Crenson, ASSOCIATED PRESS

"Mish-mosh of dank dialogue and predictable plot."
-- BEATBOXBETTY

"The characters are so deliciously absurd."
-- CINEMASENSE

"Battlefield Earth should be shown only at maximum-security prisons when a 
prisoner is tossed in solitary for bad behavior."
-- Max Messier, FILMCRITIC.COM

"Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a 
bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way."
-- Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

"It's generic sci-fi right down to the last detail."
-- Robert Horton, FILM.COM

"Deeply dumb, depressingly derivative and just plain nonsense."
-- Andy Seiler, USA TODAY

"If you're the kind of sci-fi fanatic who has to see every new futuristic 
action movie no matter how crummy it is  then of course you'll check out 
Battlefield Earth regardless of how many cheap jokes critics crack at its 
expense."
-- Andrew O'Hehir, SALON

"The movie plays like an uglier, Earth-bound Star Wars, interrupted by frequent 
Psychlo temper tantrums."
-- Michael Wilmington, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"Battlefield Earth is just a lumbering, poorly photographed piece of derivative
sci-fi drivel, full of grunting extras scampering around in animal pelts and
more dank, trash-strewn sets than I ever care to see again."
-- Owen Gleiberman, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

"Battlefield Earth begins as retro pulp and ends up, figuratively speaking, as 
tons of wet cardboard."
-- Jay Carr, BOSTON GLOBE

"In the post-apocalyptic adventure genre, Battlefield Earth makes Waterworld
look like a masterpiece."
-- Robin Rauzi, LOS ANGELES TIMES

"And after about 20 minutes of this amateurish picture, extinction doesn't seem 
like such a bad idea."
-- Elvis Mitchell, NEW YORK TIMES

"A truly dire and silly rehash of Planet of the Apes."
-- Lou Lumenick, NEW YORK POST

"Battlefield Earth saves its scariest moment for the end: a virtual guarantee 
that there will be a sequel."
-- Desson Howe, WASHINGTON POST

"What this movie lacks in simple logic, it makes up for in its apparent 
unintentional campy humor."
-- Paul Clinton, CNN

"The dialogue is inane, the acting wooden."
-- Ted Gideonse, NEWSWEEK

"Younger, less discriminating viewers (5-year-old boys) will eat it up."
-- Cody Clark, MR. SHOWBIZ

"How did this stinkbomb get made?"
-- Sean Means, FILM.COM

"This movie could not be stupider."
-- Eric D. Snider, THE DAILY HERALD

"It's so unbelievably and egregiously bad, you have to wonder if they really
meant for it to turn out this way."
-- Widgett, NEEDCOFFEE.COM

"Big-budget, little-intelligence entertainment."
-- Lisa Andrews, POPCORN

"At about the one hour mark, a portion of the audience split the scene and I 
don't blame them. They were fed-up with being taken for complete and utter 
morons."
-- John Powell, JAM! SHOWBIZ

"I'm really surprised with all the writing talent available in this town, 
that no one said 'Hey, this is just a bad script.'"
-- Ross Anthony, HOLLYWOOD REPORT CARD

"This movie reminded me of a couple of things which you may find telling: 
Judge Dredd and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers."
-- Bob Amaden

=======
Now, despite the 65 above reviewers above who were gnawing off their own 
limbs to survive, there were 4 positive... or should I say 'positive'
statements:
=======

"Despite starting off like a bad Star Trek episode, this film eventually 
graduates to a higher level."
-- Berge Garabedian, JOBLO'S MOVIE EMPORIUM

"This movie is what summer is all about."
-- 'Arrow in the Head', JOBLO'S MOVIE EMPORIUM

"Well, while there are problems with the movie, I have to give it an 
overall thumbs-up. Not way up though."
-- Mervius, FANTASTICA DAILY

"Is it worth seeing once? Sure."
-- Bob Graham, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

For the geeks:  
[root@winnebagel root]# (bg)&
Think about it though... it makes more sense to run bg in the background than
in the foreground.  Which of course brings me to:
[root@winnebagel root]# (fg)&

Yes, I know that they are routines inherent in the shell.  Don't take all the
fun out of it.

My life is like a porno movie... without the sex.

I drink to make other people interesting. George Jean Nathan 

All bigots who are prepared to die for their cause, please signify by doing so
now.

Life may have no meaning - or even worse - it may have a meaning of which I
disapprove.

"We must continue to execute as well as we have in the plan"  - Jim Oyler, CEO,
Evans and Sutherland

Utah, your waters are blue as the sky,
Your deserts are boundless, your mountains are high,
But Utah, oh Utah, you four-letter word,
Your customs and laws are completely absurd.

Your standards are double, your pleasures are few.
There aren't very many things left you can do.
You can still feed the seagulls in Liberty Park,
Provided, of course, that you leave before dark.

Armed robbers are many, and rapists abound,
While cops are all shutting the cinemas down-
For skin flicks are hellish, and porno obscene --
Your streets are unsafe, but your morals are clean.

From Capitol Hill to the Fashion Place Mall,
Your smoggy skies hang like a funeral pall.
And Kennecott Copper is taking a bow--
If Jesus returned, He would suffocate now.

Your Liquor Commission is going too far--
"Hard liquor must never be sold in a bar,"
So "private clubs" flourish, and visitors sigh:
Mini-bottles are what they'll remember you by.

I feel for the girls down on Second South Street,
They're having a hassle just making ends meet,
It's tough to sell something, or so I hear say,
When the BYU girls just give it away.

Your motorists are all completely insane. 
They drive like the devil, come sleet, snow, or rain.
Their eyes are dilated, they froth at the mouth,
As they charge through the traffic on 21st South.

Oh Utah, your birth-rate is four times the norm.
Planned Parenthood clinics are objects of scorn.
You sponsor young marriages, shotgun or planned,
Till the rate of divorce is highest in the land.

The Church tells the state "Women ought to stay home,
So fight Equal Rights, which allow them to roam."
The LDS women rejoice in their fate,
All others are better off out of the state.

At the top of the temple in downtown Salt Lake
The angel Moroni stands through his long wake.
Beware of the time when his trumpet will blow,
For then seagull droppings will shower below.

At the time that old Brigham said "This is the place,"
And founded the city on this desert space,
He christened it Zion, the land of the Saints.
They might call it Zion, but heaven it ain't.

Utah, my masters is coming up fast,
My five years in exile are over at last.
So goodby, oh Utah, you four-letter-word,
From distant Seattle I'll flip you the bird.

               - Anonymous... modified to fit my condition

                      HOW TO LEAVE THE PLANET
  1. Phone NASA. Their number is (713)483-3111. Explain that it's very
important that you get away as soon as possible.
  2. If they do not cooperate, phone any friends that you may have at the
White House - (202) 456-1414 - to have a word on your behalf put in with the
guys at NASA.
  3. If you don't have any friends in the White House, phone the Kremlin - ask
the overseas operator for 0107-095-295-9051.  They don't have any friends
in Washington, either (at least, none to speak of), but they do seem to have a
little influence, so you might as well try.
  4. If that also fails, phone the Pope for guidance. His new telephone number
is 011-39-6-6982, and I gather his switchboard is infallible.
  5. If all else fails, flag down a passing flying saucer and explain that
it is vitally important that you get away before your phone bill arrives.
            - 'MTCHHGTTG'

Well, a Scottsman clad in kilt left a bar one evening fair,
And one could tell by how he walked that he'd drunk more than his share.
He fumbled 'round until he could no longer keep his feet,
Then he stumbled off into the grass to sleep beside the street.

Ring-ding diddle-liddle-I-dee-O
Ring-di-diddley-I-O
Then he stumbled off into the grass to sleep beside the street.

About that time two young and lovely girls just happened by.
One says to the other with a twinkle in her eye,
"See yon sleeping Scottsman, so strong and handsome built,
I wonder if it's true what they don't wear beneath the kilt."

Ring-ding diddle-liddle-I-dee-O
Ring-di-diddley-I-O
I wonder if it's true what they don't wear beneath the kilt.

They crept up on that sleeping Scottsman quiet as can be,
Then lifted up his kilt about an inch so they could see.
And there, behold, for them to view, beneath his Scottish skirt,
Was nothing more than God had graced him with upon his birth.

Ring-ding diddle-liddle-I-dee-O
Ring-di-diddley-I-O
Was nothing more than God had graced him with upon his birth.

They marveled for a moment, then one said, "We must be gone.
Let's leave a present for our friend before we move along."
As a gift they left a blue silk ribbon tied into a bow
Around the bonnie star the Scott's kilt did lift and show.

Ring-ding diddle-liddle-I-dee-O
Ring-di-diddley-I-O
Around the bonnie star the Scott's kilt did lift and show.

The Scottsman woke to nature's call, and stumbled towards a tree.
Behind the bush, he lifts his kilt, and gawks at what he sees.
And in a startled voice he says to what's before his eyes,
Oh, lad I don't know where you been, but I see you won first prize.

Ring-ding diddle-liddle-I-dee-O
Ring-di-diddley-I-O
Oh, lad I don't know where you been, but I see you won first prize.

                          GEORGE BUSH STATUE COMMITTEE
                                 1040 BUFFOON ST.
                              LITTLE ROCK, AR 72205

Dear friend,

I have the distinguished honor of being on the committee for
raising five million dollars for placing a statue of George Bush in
the Hall of Fame in Washington D.C.

This committee was in a quandery as to where to place the statue.
It was not wise to place it beside the statue of George Washington,
who never told a lie, nor beside Jesse Jackson, who never told the 
truth, since George Bush could never tell the difference.

We finally decided to place it beside Christopher Columbus, the
greatest Republican of all.  He left Spain not knowing where he was 
going, never did know where he was, and returned not knowing
where he had been, and did it all on borrowed money.

Over five thousand years ago, Moses said to the children of Israel,
"Pick up your shovels, mount your asses and camels, and I will lead
you to the Promised Land."  Richard Nixon said, "lay down your
shovels, sit on your asses, and light a Camel. This is the 
Promised Land."

Now George Bush has stolen your shovels, kicked your asses,
raised the tax on Camels, and mortgaged the Promised Land.

If you are one of the fortunate few people who has anything left
after paying taxes, we expect a generous contribution to our
worthwhile project.

Respectfully, 

GEORGE BUSH STATUE COMMITTEE

0,1,3,5,7,9,15,17,21,27,31,33,45,51,63,65,73,85,93,99,...?
(When you give up: http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/)

Beginning of a chess game.  What are the 21 moves white can open with?

Why Jesus is a Democrat

One day at the Republican National Headquarters, a man walked in.

Good morning. I would like to join the Republican party.

Dandy. I have an application right here. What is your name?

Jesus of Nazareth.
 
What is your address?
 
I do not have a permanent address. I live in a commune with twelve other
men. We live in the wilderness.
 
What is your occupation.
 
I am a rabbi. I live off the donations of my flock.
 
So, you're jewish?
 
That's correct.
 
Do any of the men you live with have a real job?
 
No, but there is a woman who spends a lot of time with us who
has a job.
 
Good. What does she do for a living?
 
She is a prostitute.
 
Let me get this straight. You're Jewish. You don't have a home.
You don't have a job except that of itinerant preacher. You live
in a commune with twelve other men, none of whom work either.
Your only sources of income are welfare and money from a
prostitute? Is all that correct?
 
Yes, it is.
 
We, in the Republican Party, are trying to present an image of
stability. We are trying to promote family values, whateverthehell
that means. We don't like men who live with other men. We are
against prostitutes. We seem to be against everything that you
stand for. I'm sorry pal, but your life style does not lend itself
to the image we, in the Republican Party, wish to present.
Try the Democrats across the way.

"Noone would describe [customer company name deleted] as our friends.  They are
our customers.  Customers are not our friends." - Jim Oyler, CEO of Evans and
Sutherland.

A horse walks into a bar.  The bartender says, "why the long face?"

A Buddhist approaches a hot dog stand and asks the owner to make him one with
everything.

Via con queso.

It  wasn't merely that their left hand didn't always know what their  right
hand was doing, so to speak; quite often their right hand  had a pretty hazy
notion as well. - Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams, Chapter 14

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in a  moment  of  reasoned
lucidity  which  is almost unique among its current tally of five
million, nine hundred and seventy-five thousand, five hundred and
nine  pages,  says  of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation product
that "it is very easy to be blinded to the essential  uselessness
of  them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to
work at all.
 
"In other words - and this is the rock solid principle  on  which
the  whole  of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded -
their fundamental design flaws are  completely  hidden  by  their
superficial design flaws."

Devil's Dictionary time:

Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
opinion.

Academe: An ancient school where moralitf and philosophy were taught.

Academy: A modern school where football is taught.

Accord: Harmony.

Accordion: An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.

Accountability: The mother of caution.

Affianced: Fitted with an ankle-ring for the ball-and-chain.

Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their
hands so deeply inserted in each others' pockets that they cannot separately
plunder a third.

Alone: In bad company.

Aphorism: Predigested wisdom.

Apothecary: The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor and grave
worm's provider.

Armor: The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.

Barrack: A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of which it is their
business to deprive others.

Corporation:  An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without
individual responsibility.
         
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without
knowledge, of things without parallel.

Fiddle: An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the
entrails of a cat.

Genealogy: An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not
particularly care to trace his own.

Gravitation: The tendency of all bodies to approach one another with a strength
proportion to the quantity of matter they contain -- the quantity of matter
they contain being ascertained by the strength of their tendency to approach
one another.  This is a lovely ane edifying illustration of how science, having
made A the proof of B, makes B the proof of A.

Hand: A singular instrument worn at the end of the human hand and commonly
thrust into sonebody's pocket.

Hearse: Death's baby-carriage.

Heathen: A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he
can see and feel.

Hypocrite: One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the
advantage of seeming to be what he despises.

Kilt: A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in
Scotland.

Lawyer: One skilled in the circumvention of law.

Nectar: A drint served at banquets of the Olympian deities.  The secret of its
preparation is lost, but the modern Kentuckians besieve that they come pretty
near to a knowledge of its chief ingredient.

Neighbor: One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and does all he knows
how to make us disobedient.

Nonsense: The objections that are urged against this exellent dictionary.

Nose:  ...

        There's a man with a Nose,
              And wherever he goes
          The people run from him and shout:
              "No cotton have we
              For our ears if so be
          He blow that interminous snout!"
          
              So the lawyers applied
              For injunction.  "Denied,"
          Said the Judge:  "the defendant prefixion,
              Whate'er it portend,
              Appears to transcend
          The bounds of this court's jurisdiction."
                                                               Arpad Singiny

Oath: In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by
a penalty for perjury.

Ocean: A body of water occupying two-thirds of a world made for man -- who has
no gills.

Opportunity: A favorable opportunity for grasping a disappointment.

Ostrich: [...] The absence of a good working pair of wings is no defect, for,
as has been ingeniously pointed out, the ostrich does not fly.

Saint: A dead sinner, revised and edited.

Scriptures: The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the
false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

Normally, I don't condone email forwarding of any kind, but this was at least
mildly interesting.

1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?

Correct answer: Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe, close the door.

(This question tests whether or not you are doing simple things in a
complicated way.)

2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?

Incorrect answer: Open the refrigerator, put in the elephant, close the door.

Correct answer: Open the refrigerator, remove the giraffe, put in the elephant,
and close the door.  This question tests your foresight.

3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference.  All the animals attend
except one.  Which animal does not attend?

Correct answer: The elephant.  He is in the refrigerator!  This question tests
if you are capable of comprehensive thinking.

4. You wish to cross a river known to be infested with crocodiles.  How do you
get across?

Correct answer: Simply swim across.  The crocodiles are at the meeting.  This
question tests your reasoning ability.

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and
the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He
seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." --      
1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

From: John Beaderstadt beady@together.org Date: 1999/04/13 "Correction: It is
now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vaccuum. The 'Times'
regrets the error." NY times, July 1969.

I know that this defies the law of gravity, but you see, I never studied law.
- Buggs Bunny

                              Angels on a Pin

                             A Modern Parable
                          by Alexander Callandra
                      Saturday Review, Dec 21, 1968.

Some time ago I received a call from a colleague who asked if I would
be the referee on the grading of an examination question. He was about
to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while
the student claimed he should receive a perfect score and would if the
system were not set up against the student: The instructor and the
student agreed to submit this to an impartial arbiter, and I was
selected.

I went to my colleague's office and read the examination question:
"Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building
with the aid of a barometer."

The student had answered: "Take a barometer to the top of the
building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street
and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of
the rope is the height of the building."

I pointed out that the student really had a strong case for full
credit since he had answered the question completely and correctly. On
the other hand, if full credit was given, it could well contribute to
a high grade for the student in his physics course. A high grade is
supposed to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not
confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try at
answering the question I was not surprised that my colleague agreed,
but I was surprised that the student did.

I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning
that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of
five minutes, he had not written anything. I asked if he wished to
give up, but he said no. He had many answers to this problem; he was
just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him
and asked him to please go on. In the next minute he dashed off his
answer which read:

"Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge
of the roof. Drop that barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch.
Then using the formula S = =at2, calculate the height of the building.

At this point I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded,
and I gave the student almost full credit.

In leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said
he had many other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they
were. "Oh yes," said the student. "There are a great many ways of
getting the height of a tall building with a barometer. For example,
you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height
of the barometer and the length of its shadow, and the length of the
shadow of the building and by the use of a simple proportion,
determine the height of the building."

"Fine," I asked. "And the others?"

"Yes," said the student. "There is a very basic measurement method
that you will like. In this method you take the barometer and begin to
walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length
of the barometer along the wa]l. You then count the number of marks,
and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units.
A very direct method."

"Of course, if you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the
barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and
determine the value of `g' at the street level and at the top of the
building. From the difference of the two values of `g' the height of
the building can be calculated."

Finally, he concluded, there are many other ways of solving the
problem. "Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to
the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the
superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: "Mr.
Superintendent, here I have a fine barometer. If you tell me the
height of this building, I will give you this barometer."

At this point I asked the student if he really did know the
conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, said
that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to
teach him how to think, using the "scientific method," and to explore
the deep inner logic of the subject in a pedantic way, as is often
done in the new mathematics, rather than teaching him the structure of
the subject. With this in mind, he decided to revive scholasticism as
an academic lark to challenge the Sputnik-panicked classrooms of
America.

The article is by Alexander Calandra and appeared first in
"The Saturday Review" (December 21, 1968, p 60).
It is also in the collection "More Random Walks in Science" by
R.L.Weber, The Institute of Physics, 1982.

A neutron walks into a bar. "I'd like a beer" he says. The bartender promptly
serves up a beer. "How much will that be?" asks the neutron. "For you?" replies
the bartender, "no charge"

A physics professor at a state university in Michigan was famous for his
animated lectures. He was short and thin with wild white hair and an excited
expression. In lecture he would through himself from the top of desks and throw
frisbees to students in the back row to illustrate various principles. 

One day in class he was spinning on an office chair holding weights in each
hand when he lost his balance and tumbled into the first row. He apologized to
his class for going off on a tangent.

From: "Profusions of Puns, Gaggles of Groaners"

Seen on a billboard by an Illinois freeway recently:
"What part of 'Thou Shalt Not' didn't you understand?" - God  

Overheard at Evans and Sutherland:
"If I had a month to spend either making sure all the features on the chip work
or to spend documenting how it works, I'll fix the chip every time."  The
problem; how the hell does one use the damn thing if it supposedly works, but
nobody knows how?!?!?!

In response to everyone who has been asking ("You're doing WHAT!?!?!?") why
I have become dvorak-obsessed:

http://www.acm.vt.edu/~jmaxwell/dvorak/compare.html
%   
The options are optional.  - Red Hat Linux 6.1 Reference Guide.

The reuse of some object-oriented code has caused tactical
headaches for Australia's armed forces. As virtual reality
simulators assume larger roles in helicopter combat training,
programmers have gone to great lengths to increase the realism
of their scenarios, including detailed landscapes and - in the 
case of the Northern Territory's Operation Phoenix- herds of 
kangaroos (since disturbed animals might well give away a 
helicopter's position).

The head of the Defense Science & Technology Organization's 
Land Operations/Simulation division reportedly instructed 
developers to model the local marsupials' movements and 
reactions to helicopters. Being efficient programmers, they 
just re-appropriated some code originally used to model infantry
detachment reactions under the same stimuli, changed the mapped
icon from a soldier to a kangaroo, and increased the figures' 
speed of movement.

The newly modified software was demonstrated to a visiting
team of Americans. The hotshot Aussie pilots "buzzed" the 
virtual kangaroos in low flight during the simulation. The 
kangaroos scattered, as predicted, and the visiting Americans
nodded appreciatively... then did a double-take as the 
kangaroos reappeared from behind a hill and launched a barrage
of Stinger missiles at the hapless helicopter. (Apparently the
programmers had forgotten to remove that part of the infantry
coding.)

The lesson? Objects are defined with certain attributes, 
and any new object defined in terms of an old one inherits
all the attributes. The embarrassed programmers had learned
to be careful when reusing object-oriented code, and the Yanks
left with a newfound respect for Australian wildlife. 
Simulator supervisors report that pilots from that point
onward have strictly avoided kangaroos, just as they were
meant to.


From: Grisogono, Anne-Marie
Sent: Monday, July 12, 1999 5:26:05 PM
To: LOD All
Subject: official reply to virtual kangaroo emyth Auto forwarded by a Rule

Hi everyone
Apparently this e-myth has been rebounding to some of you, so here is the
official reply.  Please feel free to send on to any of your correspondents. . .
and apologies  to anyone who has been inconvenienced by it. This story has gone
around the globe a few times I reckon. It's been  discussed in Parliament,
reported on in the press, and keeps being  forwarded  to me from all corners.
Anyway, here below is the answer I send anyone who  asks about it. Now I know
how e-myths arise and evolve! 

[probably a forwarded message follows]

It's probably too late to recall and correct the story (it's already been 
forwarded to me by several different sources) but since you ask, here is the
kernel of truth in it: 

I related this story as part of a talk on Simulation for Defence,
at the Australian Science Festival on May 6th in Canberra. The Armed
Reconnaissance Helicopter mission simulators built by the Synthetic
Environments Research Facility in Land Operations Division of DSTO, do indeed
fly in a fairly high fidelity environment which is a 4000 sq km piece of real
outback Australia around Katherine, built from elevation data, overlaid with
aerial photographs and with 2.5 million realistic 3d trees placed in the
terrain in those areas where the photographs indicated real trees actually
exist. 

For a bit of extra fun (and not for any strategic reason like kangaroos
betraying your cover!) our programmers decided to put in a bit of animated
wildlife. Since ModSAF [That's Modular Semi-Automated Forces--units controlled
by the computer using game-quality AI--Brian] is our simulation tool, these
were modelled on ModSAF's Stinger detachments so that the associated detection
model could be used to determine when a helo approached, and the behavior
invoked by such contact was set to 'retreat'. Replace the visual model of the
Stinger detachment in your stealth viewer with a visual model of a kangaroo (or
buffalo...) and you have wildlife that moves away when approached. 

It is true that the first time this was tried in the lab, we discovered that we
had forgotten to remove the weapons and the 'fire' behavior. It is NOT true
that this happened in front of a bunch of visitors (American or any other
flavour). We don't normally try things for the first time in front of an
audience! What I didnt relate in the talk is that since we were not at that
stage interested in weapons, we had not set any weapon or projectile types, so
what the kangaroos fired at us was in fact the default object for the
simulation, which happened to be large multicoloured beachballs. I ususally
conclude the story by reassuring the audience that we have now disarmed the
kangaroos and it is again safe to fly in Australia. well, now you know....
                       
 - Anne-Marie 
   Dr Anne-Marie Grisogono Head, Simulation Land Operations

As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing.

And god said, "Let there be cats," and was ignored.

Try to do everything in chronological order; it's less confusing that way.

Does an irradiated cat have eighteen half-lives?

A naked man fears no pickpocket.

A conscience does not prevent sin. It only prevents you from enjoying it. 

Two psychics walk into a bar.  One says, "same for me."

100,000 lemmings can't be wrong.

Zen T-Shirt: Enlightenment Available - Enquire Within. 

Yeah, I love cats too...want to trade recipes? 

Yea, right, when...oink, flap, oink, flap...well I'll be... 

Would I ask you a rhetorical question? 

Work harder! Millions of people on welfare depend on you! 

Will Rogers never met a lawyer. 

Why isn't "phonetically" spelled that way? 

Why is there only one Monopolies Commission? 

Why experiment on animals with so many lawyers out there? 

When your IQ hits 28, sell! 

When you're in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut. 

When their numbers dwindled from 50 to 8, the dwarfs began to suspect "Hungry". 

Is there a synonym for thesaurus?

What was wrong with the ham before it was cured? 

What goes up has probably been doused with petrol. 

What has four legs and an arm? A happy pitbull. 

What goes around usually gets dizzy and falls over. 

What color is a chameleon on a mirror? 

I gave up water polo - I drowned too many horses.

Walk softly and carry a megawatt laser. 

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Exploration Team 1995-1955. 

Tuna just doesn't taste the same without the dolphin.

Tolkein is hobbit-forming.

Toad: Illegally parked frog.

To get the point, rub a porcupine backwards.

To err is human.  To moo bovine.

Legalize dope for sea birds.  Leave no tern unstoned!

This week's Psychic Meeting has been canceled due to unforeseen problems. 

umop apisdn

This is what I do for fun. Can you imagine my job? 

They can't fire me, slaves have to be sold. 

The world isn't really any worse, it's just that the news coverage is so much
better. 

The whole world is about three drinks behind. 

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. 

The secrecy of my job prevents me from knowing what I do. 

The problem with political jokes is that they get elected. 

The penalty for bigamy is having two mothers-in-law. 

The only winner of the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky. 

The only time I open my mouth is to change feet. 

The only difference between a rut and a grave is the dimensions. 

The leading cause of death for lawyers is ambulances in reverse.

The hangman let us down. 

The cost of feathers has risen; down is up.

The buck doesn't even slow down here. 

Tell me again how lucky I am to work here (I keep forgetting). 

Ted Kennedy for Lifeguard. 

Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.

Taco Bell is not the Mexican National Telephone Company.

Brockian Ultra Cricket, Rule 6: The winning team shall be the first team that
wins.

From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, according to LTUAE:

There is an art, it says, or rather a knack to flying.
 
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself  at  the  ground
and miss.
 
Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it.
 
The first part is easy.
 
All it requires is simply the ability to throw  yourself  forward
with  all  your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it's
going to hurt.
 
That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground.
 
Most people fail to miss the  ground,  and  if  they  are  really
trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it
fairly hard.
 
Clearly, it's the second point, the missing, which  presents  the
difficulties.
 
One problem is that you have to  miss  the  ground  accidentally.
It's  no  good  deliberately intending to miss the ground because
you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by
something  else  when  you're  halfway  there, so that you are no
longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about  how
much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it.
 
It is notoriously difficult to prise  your  attention  away  from
these  three  things  during  the  split  second you have at your
disposal.  Hence  most  people's  failure,  and  their   eventual
disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport.
 
If,  however,  you  are  lucky  enough  to  have  your  attention
momentarily  distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous
pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phyllum and/or
personal inclination) or a bomb going off in your vicinity, or by
suddenly spotting an extremely rare species  of  beetle  crawling
along  a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the
ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches  above  it
in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner.
 
This is a moment for superb and delicate concentration.
 
Bob and float, float and bob.
 
Ignore all considerations of  your  own  weight  and  simply  let
yourself waft higher.
 
Do not listen to what anybody says to you at this  point  because
they are unlikely to say anything helpful.
 
They are most likely to say something along the lines  of,  "Good
God, you can't possibly be flying!"
 
It is vitally important not to believe them or they will suddenly
be right.
 
Waft higher and higher.
 
Try a few swoops, gentle ones at  first,  then  drift  above  the
treetops breathing regularly.
 
Do not wave at anybody.
 
When you have done this a few times you will find the  moment  of
distraction rapidly becomes easier and easier to achieve.
 
You will then learn all sorts of things about how to control your
flight,  your  speed, your manoeuvrability, and the trick usually
lies in not thinking too hard about whatever you want to do,  but
just allowing it to happen as if it was going to anyway.
 
You will also learn how to land properly, which is something  you
will  almost  certainly cock up, and cock up badly, on your first
attempt.
 
There are private flying  clubs  you  can  join  which  help  you
achieve the all-important moment of distraction. They hire people
with surprising bodies or opinions to leap out from behind bushes
and  exhibit  and/or  explain  them  at  the crucial moments. Few
genuine hitch-hikers will be able to afford to join these  clubs,
but some may be able to get temporary employment at them.

Trillian did a little research in the ship's copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy.  It had some advice to offer on drunkenness.  "Go to it," it said,
"and good luck."  - Life, the Universe and Everything, Douglass Adams

The Pharmacist gave me an expectorant and I coughed up fourty-five dollars. -
Frank & Ernest

I've done no coke since 1974. - G.W. Bush, Jr. 1999 in response to questions
about a site that keeps track of news and information that isn't exactly the
sort of thing Bush's campaign manager wants floating around.  If it is 'a
garbage site' (www.gwbush.com), it is so because GWBush Jr provided the garbage
for them to post.

"My drug use was about average for children and young adults of my social class
and upbringing, and yes, that included cocaine as well as several other drugs."
- G.W. Bush in a Newsweek interview, published 11/15/98.

Now if he didn't have the backbone to stand up to higher principals then, what
business does he have running the drug war now?  We're supposed to be telling
kids not to cave into peer pressure and look at the role model we've given
them.  I can just see me with my kids 20 years from now: "Keep it up,
stoner-boy.  Don't come crying to me when you're the President of the United
States!"

There ought to be limits to freedom. - G.W. Bush, Jr. 1999

1999 Official USFA Rules, Chapter 3, t.11:
the field of play should have an even surface.  It should give neither
advantage nor disadvantage to either of the two fencers concerned, especially
as regards light.   ...maybe two people on the planet know why this is here.

From yahoo daily news, 12/3/99:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - NASA's trip to fix the Hubble Space Telescope has
been delayed two days so workers can complete wiring checks aboard space
shuttle Discovery.

The new launch is scheduled for Dec. 11, at 12:13 a.m.

The date should stand if no new problems pop up, NASA spokesman Bruce
Buckingham said Thursday. Besides damaged wiring, workers have had to contend
with a leaky hydraulic system and an engine with a broken drill bit embedded in
it.

Because of all the wiring trouble encountered this year, technicians are taking
extra time to inspect electrical cables as they close out Discovery's engine
compartment. So far, they have found only minor damage and are applying tape to
strengthen any flawed wires, Buckingham said.

[endquote]
Now, I've seen this sort of thing in engineering departments before, but I
didn't think we were supposed to be taking those practices to work.  =]

From 12/3/99 wired news:
The Mormon church isn't taking any chances around 31 December. It's grounded
its 60,000 missionaries from flying during the week surrounding New Year's Eve,
the Associated Press reported. 

All church employees, professors at Brigham Young University, have been ordered
to avoid airplanes during that time.

So if the president of the mormon church draws a salary, does that make him a
propheteer? - rbarry

Failure isn't an option... it comes bundled with our software.

Whatever doesn't kill me... only delays the inevitable.

Seen in reference to the Infocom HHGTTG game: "What can I do in the dark?"

Which famous Dr. Who arch-nemesis' battle cry was "Exterminate! Exterminate!"?
A> The Master      B> The Cybermen      C> The Daleks      D> The BBC Archives
(Ouch.  Not very nice.)

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may be in Utah.

If a cow laughed, would milk come out her nose? 

Do you need a silencer if you are going to shoot a mime? 

Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii? 

You know you're a grad student when you start explaining to children that
you're in 21st grade. - rbarry

All that glitters has a high refractive index. 

Do Not Attempt to Traverse a Chasm in Two Leaps. 

If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you. 

Recursive, adj.; see Recursive

$ rm meese-ethics
rm: meese-ethics nonexistent

$ ar m God
ar: God does not exist

$ "How would you rate Reagan's incompetence?
Unmatched ".

$ [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].

$ ^How did the sex change^ operation go?
Modifier failed.

$ If I had a ( for every $ Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.

$ make love
Make:  Don't know how to make love.  Stop.

$ sleep with me
bad character

$ got a light?
No match.

$ man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.

$ ^What is saccharine?
Bad substitute.

$ %blow
 %blow: No such job.

$ \(-
(-: Command not found.

$ sh

$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!

$ drink < bottle; opener
bottle: cannot open
opener: not found

$ mkdir matter; cat > matter
matter: cannot create

Okay, this is an old one.  (references to meese and regan???!!!)  Still, it's
an old-time classic:

There was a knock on the door. It was the man from Microsoft. "Not you again,"
I said. 

"Sorry," he said, a little sheepishly. "I guess you know why I'm here." 

Indeed I did. Microsoft's $300 million campaign to promote the Windows 95
operating system was meant to be universally effective, to convince every human
being on the planet that Windows 95 was an essential, some would say integral,
part of living. Problem was, not everyone had bought it. Specifically, I
hadn't. I was the Last Human Being Without Windows 95. And now this little man
from Microsoft was at my door, and he wouldn't take no for an answer. 

"No," I said. 

"You know I can't take that," he said, pulling out a copy of Windows 95 from a
briefcase. "Come on. Just one copy. That's all we ask." 

"Not interested," I said. "Look, isn't there someone else you can go bother for
a while? There's got to be someone else on the planet who doesn't have a copy." 

"Well, no," the Microsoft man said. "You're the only one." 

"You can't be serious. Not everyone on the planet has a computer," I said. "And
certainly, not everyone has a PC! Some people own Macintoshes, which run their
own operating system. And some people who have PCs run OS/2, though I hear
that's just a rumor. In short, there are some people who just have no USE for
Windows 95." 

The Microsoft man look perplexed. "I'm missing your point," he said. 

"Use!" I screamed. "Use! Use! Use! Why BUY it, if you can't USE it?" 

"Well, I don't know anything about this 'use' thing you're going on about," the
Microsoft man said. "All I know is that according to our records, everyone else
on the planet has a copy." 

"People without computers?" 

"Got 'em." 

"Amazonian Indians?" 

"We had to get some malaria shots to go in, but yes." 

"The Amish." 

"Check." 

"Oh, come on," I said. "They don't even wear BUTTONS. How did you get them to
buy a computer operating system?" 

"We told them there were actually 95 very small windows in the box," the
Microsoft man admitted. "We sort of lied. Which means we are all going to Hell,
every single employee of Microsoft." He was somber for a minute, but then
perked right up. "But that's not the point!" he said. "The point is, EVERYONE
has a copy. Except you." 

"So what?" I said. "If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you expect me to
do it, too?" 

"If we spent $300 million advertising it? Absolutely." 

"No." 

"Oh, back to that again," the Microsoft man said. "Hey. I'll tell you what.
I'll GIVE you a copy. For free. Just take it and install it on your computer."
He waved the box in front of me. 

"No," I said again. "No offense, pal, but I don't NEED it. And frankly, your
whole advertising blitz has sort of offended me. I mean, it's a computer
operating system. Great. Fine. Swell. Whatever. But you guys are advertising it
like it creates world peace or something." 

"It did." 

"Pardon?" 

"World peace. It was part of the original design. Really. One button access.
Click on it, poof, end to strife and hunger. Simple." 

"So what happened?" 

"Well, you know," he said. "It took up a lot of space on the hard drive. We had
to decide between it or the Microsoft Network. Anyway, we couldn't figure out
how to make a profit off of world peace." 

"Go away," I said. 

"I can't," he said. "I'll be killed if I fail." 

"You have got to be kidding," I said. 

"Look," the Microsoft man said, "We sold this to the Amish. The Amish! Right
now, they're opening the boxes and figuring out they've been had. We'll be
pitchforked if we ever step into Western Pennsylvania again. But we did it. So
to have YOU holding out, well, it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing to the
company. It's embarrassing to the product. It's embarrassing to Bill." 

"Bill Gates does not care about me," I said. 

"He's watching right now," the Microsoft man said. "Borrowed one of those
military spy satellites just for the purpose. It's also got one of those
high-powered lasers. You close that door on me, zap, I'm a pile of grey ash." 

"He wouldn't do that," I said. "He might hit that copy of Windows 95 by
accident." 

"Oh, Bill's gotten pretty good with that laser," the Microsoft man said
nervously. "Okay. I wasn't supposed to do this, but you leave me no choice. If
you take this copy of Windows 95, we will reward you handsomely. In fact, we'll
give you your own Caribbean island! How does Montserrat sound?" 

"Terrible. There's an active volcano there." 

"It's only a small one," the Microsoft man said. 

"Look," I said, "even if you DID convince me to take that copy of Windows 95,
what would you do then? You'd have totally saturated the market. That would be
it. No new worlds to conquer. What would you do then?" 

The Microsoft man held up another box and gave it to me. 

"'Windows 95....For Pets'?!?!?" 

"There's a LOT of domestic animals out there," he said. 

I shut the door quickly. There was a surprised yelp, the sound of a laser, and
then nothing.

The engineer thinks of his equations as an approximation to reality.
The physicist thinks reality is an approximation to his equations.
The mathematician doesn't care.

Minuet in oil on canvas.

Photographic memory.  Lens cap on.

The four ages of man:
 when you believe in Santa Claus
 when you don't believe in Santa Claus
 when you are Santa Claus
 when you look like Santa Claus

Very funny, scotty.  Now beam down my clothes.

The gene pool could use a little chlorine.

I seem to remember seeing all of these in Popular Science years ago, though I
could be wrong.  It was one of those trendy science-for-idiots magazines
sometime around '93.  A couple are good.  A couple suck.  I include them all
for completeness.

                 4th RUNNER-UP (Subject: Probability Theory):
If an infinite number of rednecks riding in an infinite number of pickup trucks
fire an infinite number of shotgun rounds at an infinite number of highway
signs, they will eventually produce all the world's great literary works in
Braille.

                 3rd RUNNER-UP (Subject: Bio-Mechanics):
Why Yawning Is Contagious: You yawn to equalize the pressure on your eardrums.
This pressure change outside your eardrums unbalances other people's ear
pressures, so they then yawn to even it out.

                 2nd RUNNER-UP (Subject: Symbolic Logic):
Communist China is technologically underdeveloped because they have no alphabet
and therefore cannot use acronyms to communicate technical ideas at a faster
rate.

                 1st RUNNER-UP (Subject: Newtonian Mechanics):
The earth may spin faster on its axis due to deforestation. Just as a figure
skater's rate of spin increases when the arms are brought in close to the body,
the cutting of tall trees may cause our planet to spin dangerously fast.

                 ** HONORABLE MENTION (Subject: Linguistics):
The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. If omitted in
one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian "pahks his cah," the lost
R's migrate southwest, causing a Texan to warsh" his car and invest in "erl"
wells.

                 GRAND PRIZE WINNER (Subject: Perpetual Motion):
When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped,
it always lands buttered side down. It was proposed to strap giant slabs of hot
buttered toast to the back of a hundred tethered cats; the two opposing forces
will cause the cats to hover, spinning inches above the ground. Using the giant
buttered toast-cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with
Chicago.

Too many freaks, not enough circuses.

Can I trade this job for what's behind door #2?

Suburbia: where they tear out the trees, then name streets after them.

Better living through denial.

Allow me to introduce myselves.

If one synchronized swimmer drowns, what do the rest of them do?

How much deeper would the ocean be if sponges didn't grow in it?

Do fish get cramps after eating?

As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had
to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized
that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in
finding mistakes in my own programs.
        -- Wilkes, Maurice

REAL PROGRAMMERS don't comment their code. If it was hard to 
write, it should be hard to understand. 
        -- Unknown

PROGRAM - n. A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's
input into error messages.  v. tr.- To engage in a pastime similar to
banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.
        -- Unknown

I know your little 4th grade teacher said there are not stupid
questions. She was wrong. This is Usenet.
        -- Unknown

I'd love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code!
        -- Unknown

Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for 
they are subtle and will piss on your computer.
        -- Unknown 

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy 
and taste good with ketchup. - Harvard Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings"

Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick 
to anger. - Tolkien

Do not meddle in the affairs of Unix, for it is subtle and quick to
core dump.
        -- Unknown

                     ACHTUNG!!!
Das machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy
schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und corkenpoppen mit
spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen. Das
rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in das pockets.
Relaxen und vatch das blinkenlights!!!
        -- Unknown

We're thinking about upgrading from SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5.
        -- Spencer, Henry

Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea--
massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a
source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.
        -- Spafford, Gene 

Real Programmers never work from 9 to 5. If any real programmer is
around at 9 a.m., it's because they were up all night.
        -- Some Computer Geek

Programming is like sex, one mistake and you have to support it for
the rest of your life.
        -- Sinz, Michael [Commodore-Amiga Inc.] (*)

In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
        -- Reid, Brian K. (*)

Be warned that being an expert is more than understanding how a system
is supposed to work. Expertise is gained by investigating why a system
doesn't work.
        -- Redman, Brian (*)

Hardware : The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
        -- Pesis, Jeff (*)

If you sat a monkey down in front of a keyboard, the first thing typed
would be a UNIX command.
        -- Lye, Bill (*)

Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal--if you don't use
your thumbs.
        -- Lehrer, Tom

Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
        -- Kulawiec, Rich (*)

I must've seen it in a USENET posting; that's sort of like hearsay
evidence from Richard Nixon...
        -- Houghton, Blair

Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million
typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare.
        -- Houghton, Blair

There is always a big future in computer maintenance.
        -- Deteriorata (excerpted from)

If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the 
computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, geta million miles 
per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
        -- Cringely, Robert X.

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying
to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
        -- Cook. Rich (*)

Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.
        -- Brandwein, Leonard

But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay: for whatsoever is more
than these cometh of evil.
        -- Matthew 5:37

If you put a billion monkeys in front of a billion typewriters typing
at random, they would reproduce the entire collected works of Usenet
in about...five minutes.
        -- Anonymous

There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
        -- Anderson, Jeremy S. (*)

Some are just slips of the tongue

     Grandmother of eight makes hole in one 
     Deaf mute gets new hearing in killing 
     Police begin campaign to run down jaywalkers 
     House passes gas tax onto senate 
     Stiff opposition expected to casketless funeral plan 
     Two convicts evade noose, jury hung 
     William Kelly was fed secretary 
     Milk drinkers are turning to powder 
     Safety experts say school bus passengers should be belted 
     Quarter of a million Chinese live on water 
     Farmer bill dies in house 
     Iraqi head seeks arms 

Some become unintentionally suggestive

     Queen Mary having bottom scraped 
     Is there a ring of debris around Uranus? 
     Prostitutes appeal to Pope 
     Panda mating fails - veterinarian takes over 
     NJ judge to rule on nude beach 
     Child's stool great for use in garden 
     Dr. Ruth to talk about sex with newspaper editors 
     Soviet virgin lands short of goal again 
     Organ festival ends in smashing climax 

Grammar often botches other headlines

     Eye drops off shelf 
     Squad helps dog bite victim 
     Dealers will hear car talk at noon 
     Enraged cow injures farmer with ax 
     Lawmen from Mexico barbecue guests 
     Miners refuse to work after death 
     Two Soviet ships collide - one dies 
     Two sisters reunite after eighteen years at checkout counter 

Once in a while, a botched headline takes on a meaning opposite from the one
intended: 

     Never withhold herpes from loved one 
     Nicaragua sets goal to wipe out literacy 
     Drunk drivers paid $1,000 in 1984 
     Autos killing 110 a day, let's resolve to do better 

Sometimes newspaper editors state the obvious

     If strike isn't settled quickly it may last a while 
     War dims hope for peace 
     Smokers are productive, but death cuts efficiency 
     Cold wave linked to temperatures 
     Child's death ruins couple's holiday 
     Blind woman gets new kidney from dad she hasn't seen in years 
     Man is fatally slain 
     Something went wrong in jet crash, experts say 
     Death causes loneliness, feeling of isolation 

...and one on Wired News 24.01.2000:
Greenspan (Federal Reserve Chairman) to get four more years.

A few from the flight crews:
Problem: "Left inside main tire almost needs replacement." 
     Solution: "Almost replaced left inside main tire." 

Problem: "Test flight OK, except autoland very rough." 
     Solution: "Autoland not installed on this aircraft." 

Problem: "#2 Propeller seeping prop fluid." 
     Solution 1: "#2 Propeller seepage normal." 
     Solution 2: "#1,#3, and #4 propellers lack normal seepage." 

Problem: "The autopilot doesn't." 
     Solution: "IT DOES NOW." 

Problem: "Something loose in cockpit." 
     Solution: "Something tightened in cockpit." 

Problem: "Evidence of hydraulic leak on right main landing gear." 
     Solution: "Evidence removed." 

Problem: "Number three engine missing." 
     Solution: "Engine found on right wing after brief search." 

Problem: "DME volume unbelievably loud." 
     Solution: "Volume set to more believable level." 

Problem: Dead bugs on windshield. 
     Solution: Live bugs on order. 

Problem: Autopilot in altitude hold mode produces a 200 fpm descent. 
     Solution: Cannot reproduce problem on ground. 

Problem: IFF inoperative. 
     Solution: IFF inoperative in OFF mode. 

Problem: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick. 
     Solution: That's what they're there for. 

...and several taken from the O'Reilly & Associates Practical C++ Programming
book:
>"Profanity is the language that all programmers speak." - Anon.

>"There is no programming language, no matter how structured, that will prevent
programmers from writing bad programs." - L. Flon

>"If carpenters made buildings the way programmers make programs, the first
woodpecker to come along would destroy all of civilization." - Anon

>"To be or not to be, that is the question." - Shakespeare on Boolean Algebra.

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." - Popular Mechanics,
1949.

"A man can never truely be a man without due respect for women and womanhood."
"Boys SUCK!"
 - pair of quotes seen on a refrigerator whiteboard in a BYU womens' apartment
recently.  The place loves it's hypocrites, eh?

"You mean to tell me that there is a chance I'll get a major nuclear explosion
all over this suit?  'Cause I'm telling you right now that stuff does not dry
clean."  - Cat, Red Dwarf

"The point is, you see," said Ford,  "that there is no point in driving
yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad.  You might just as well give 
in and save your sanity for later." - LTU&E - Douglas Adams

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly
native American criminal class except Congress. - Mark Twain

The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food
for laughter, they are an entire banquet. - Mark Twain

"I have no special regard for Satan; but I can at least claim that I have 
 no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on 
 account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against 
 him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. 
 We have none but evidence for the prosecution and yet we have rendered the 
 verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English. It is un-American; 
 it is French. Without this precedent Dreyfus could not have been condemned. 
 As soon as I can get at the facts I will undertake his rehabilitation myself 
 if I can find an unpolitic publisher. It is a thing we ought to be willing 
 to do for anyone who is under a cloud. We may not pay him reverance, for that 
 would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents. A person who 
 has for untold centuries maintained the imposing position of spiritual head 
 of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, 
 must be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest order. 
 In his large presence the other popes and politicians shrink to midgets for 
 the microscope. I would like to see him. I would rather see him and shake him 
 by the tail than any member of the European concert." 
[Mark Twain - "Concerning the Jews" essay] 

We despise all reverences and all the objects of reverence which are outside
the pale of our own list of sacred things.  And yet, with strange
inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things
which are holy to us. - Mark Twain

These people's God has shown them by a million acts that he respects none of
the Bible's statues.  He breaks every one of them himself - adultery and all. -
Mark Twain

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for
what he knows. - Mark Twain

If Christ were here today, there is one thing he would not be -- a Christian. -
Mark Twain

Why should I care about posterity?  What's posterity ever done for me?  -
Groucho

She got her good looks from her father - he's a plastic surgeon.  - Groucho

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. - Groucho

I've had a perfectly wonderful evening - but this wasn't it. - Groucho

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception. -
Groucho

Room Service? Send up a larger room. - Groucho

Remember men, we're fighting for this woman's honour; which is probably more
than she ever did. - Groucho

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll
never know. - Groucho

I was married by a judge.  I should have asked for a jury. - Groucho Marx

I'd horse-whip you if I had a horse.  - Groucho Marx

I added 2 printfs to a project, started it compiling.  20 minutes later I'm
still playing go, blasting floyd and goofing off on the net.  This is what
professionals get paid the big bucks for. (Evans and Sutherland)

Got yet another unsolicited XXX ad in the mail today.  I found it odd that when
I told the sender to go do something that he probably has pictures of, that he
had the gall to call _me_ rude.  =]

Fast, good, cheap.  Choose any two.  Try to cheat the curve and you not only
inevitably fail, but you sacrifice intelligibility.  Maybe that is why this
joint hasn't got shit's worth of documentation on anything - no manuals, no
comments, no design documentation more recent than 1996. (Evans and Sutherland)

If you ever want to see just how weak gravity is, push someone off a building. 
It takes them 8 seconds to reach terminal velocity under the force of gravity,
but only a millisecond for electromagnetic forces between them and the ground
to bring them to a complete stop again.

I'm sorry, you have reached an imaginary number.  Please rotate your phone by
ninety degrees and try again.

In reference to the announcement of a breakthrough that will likely allow the
synthesis of a bacterium within the next 5 years, Dr. Helen Watt, a philosopher
and Bio-ethicist working for the Catholic Church said "In itself, it's an
interesting piece of scientific research.  But it depends on your motivation. 
If you are trying to prove the non-existence of God that's one thing, but if
you are just carrying out an experiment that is quite another." 

It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black.  - www.demotivators.com

The purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to