GMail makes you look at the contents of your spam folder before deleting it. I’ve been noticing that the majority of the subject headers recently have been either “Hey [someone else's name] check out this watch” or “my PHA???RMA” (where ? are random characters) with the first few words visible as “AMBzzIEN”, “VIAzzGRA”, and [...]
“My battery is low. So, if the call ends, [click] …”
- the_misha
Once again, Canadians are handing us our asses in terms of public policy innovation. The city of Vancouver got a three-year exemption from the federal drug code, and has been operating a safe injection site where people can use drugs in a medically supervised setting. The results? Increased referrals to detox programs, [...]
For years now, I’ve used my keyring as a way to measure how complicated my life is. I refactor the contents of my pockets mercilessly, so at any given point, what’s on my keyring is generally what *has* to be there — i.e., it’s all the stuff I’m Officially Responsible For.
Right now, by that [...]
Steve Yegge on refactoring (both Martin Fowler’s book, and the Eclipse tools that turn many of the examples from the book into canned actions). He’s not overly kind:
Today, though I’m just interested in why Java programmers are saying that the ability to “program” by pushing buttons is so critically important to them that they’re [...]
Better late than never: Add support for the scroll wheel to the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications 6 environment.
At last, a quiz I’m proud to post on my *own* blog instead of relegating it to my LiveJournal account. (=
How White and Nerdy Are You?
fawnapril sold her car Friday evening. (Actually, she got an offer Thursday, but they didn’t have cash, so they had to come back… anyway.) I’ll be getting a nice chunk of money from a web app, so at some point we’ll be getting a new car. Currently on the table: a [...]
Those of you not lucky enough to live in Portland, check out this animated aria from Shannon Wheeler’s “Too Much Coffee Man: The Opera.” Be sure to read the subtitles.
On my Dell 3GHz Pentium 4 with hyperthreading: test:units reports running in 4.2 seconds; test:functionals reports 5.9 seconds.
On this 1.66GHz Core Duo Mac Mini: test:units in 0.9 seconds; test:functionals in 1.95. That’s a 3-4x performance boost (not to mention a tolerable OS).
Shame about the integrated graphics, really, or I’d be plotting how [...]
Microsoft may not have invented the scroll wheel mouse, but for all intents and purposes, they introduced it to the mass market. So why the hell doesn’t it work in an Access Visual Basic code window?
I hate computers.
1.25GB of RAM, 3GHz processor, *two* video cards… you’d think it wouldn’t take ten seconds to respond when I move a few windows around. GAH!
[UPDATE 30 seconds later: inexplicably, it decided that when I asked it to move those Windows Explorer files around, what I *really* meant was to close them. WTF?]
I really should know better, but I left a note up in a Notepad window on my (WinXP) PC when I went to bed last night, and pushed the power button that’s supposed to tell the computer to hibernate, but for some reason has been putting it in standby mode instead — a standby mode [...]
I’ve been compiling a lot of stuff (Rails, RMagick) on a new Mac Mini (sadly, I don’t get to keep it) today. One of the first messages that just about every configure script flashes by as it does its work is the following:
Checking that build environment is sane… yes
I’m waiting for the one [...]
Seems Al Gore will be speaking here in town on October 24. Coincidentally, I’ll be skipping class to attend a conference as a student volunteer that week. Oh, and right before that is RubyConf in Denver, which I wouldn’t have been able to go to in any event, but sure would’ve liked to. [...]
I live on SE 70th Avenue. The Pub At The End Of The Universe is on SE 28th — 42 blocks down. (Of course, I’m a few blocks north of the street it’s on, so this kinda falls down, but still…)
This may be the hardest I’ve laughed in weeks: White and Nerdy, by (who else?) Weird Al Yankovic. Lyrics are here.
(An eternal debt of gratitude to Steve J for the link.)
One thing I’ve noticed about the community of Ruby programmers is this: they’re deeply interested in beauty. Rubyists will rewrite entire packages or utilities in Ruby at the drop of a hat just to shave a few lines off of code they find themselves writing often enough, if it makes that code simpler, [...]
Really. Apparently, even with the windows and sunroof open, it still sucks the rose out of the bud vase on the dashboard.
My favorite bit from the site:
*** Update 7/18/06 *** You have to give the California Department of Motor Vehicles (the DMV) credit for creativity on this one. A DMV insider has disclosed [...]
Mister Justin commented on my recent post about the dot matrix wallet:
What we need is a list of things that are actually *TOO* geeky for the uber-geeky Sam. Really, I want to see those things.
Well, I probably wouldn’t wear this “got root?” hat. Probably.
The Yoda backpack would be my first choice for a white [...]