October 31, 2003
MSIE 5uX0R5
MSIE doesn't seem to support subscript notation for strings, so I had to switch to the charAt() method. Also looks like it doesn't support the "for (var in object)" syntax, though I used that in my CookieWiper bookmarklet, which I thought I tested out on MSIE.
Anybody Know MS JavaScript?
Cripes. Looks like the rainbow effect I used in my previous entry doesn't work in MSIE. Time for everybody to switch to Netscape/Mozilla/something else!
October 30, 2003
Krullers R OK
The seal system on the bags of Krispy Kreme Mini Crullers has finally gotten sophisticated enough that I feel comfortable actually buying them. When I first saw them on the displays in the supermarkets, a few years ago, there was absolutely no way to be sure someone hadn't opened a bag, sneezed on the donuts, and folded the flexi-seal strips back to the "closed" (ha!) position.
After a while, they started putting these lame circular white stickers on the folded over part. This is sort of like... well, I can't think of what it's like, but it really seemed like a formality to me. Half of them came unstuck during handling; others looked like they had either become partially unstuck, or actually fully opened and then re-stuck (after having their contents sneezed on, of course). Later, I started seeing an almost bona-fide effort, with a second weak white round sticker on one of the flexi-tabs.
Now they have a big square sticker that says "Krispy Kreme" over the fold, which really sticks, and there is another strong sticker (with the price) on one of the tabs. Might still be possible to unpeel the stickers on one of these, re-seal it and have it go unnoticed, but at this point you can assume that it is better sealed than a lot of things in the supermarket. Not that I can think of anything else in the supermarket that is not either completely open (produce), or totally sealed.
The funny thing is, my family has been buying Nickle's (yes, that is the correct spelling) Donut Fair crullers, in a similar bag, for at least 20 years, and these bags have always had a sealed plastic lining on the inside, so I never had a moment's doubt about them. But it has taken Krispy Kreme, the new undisputed champion, the Starbuck's of donuts, two or three years to figure out a system which is of comparable sanitarity(?), and is much more complicated. AND THE DONUTS AREN'T AS GOOD!
October 28, 2003
Cillan
Sometimes you have to count on Google to help you figure out what bloggers are trying to say. Take the post, "Network-Cillan", from The Bitwise Storyteller. I saw the word "Cillan", and I figured it was some sort of Gaelic musical instrument, a term from Irish poetry, or something like that. So I look it up in good old Google, and it responds, "do you mean 'network-cillin'?" Now, initially this is not much better, but before too long, I do recognize those last six letters: they are the same as the latter two syllables of "penicillin". The post I linked to is about network security/antivirus stuff, so this actually makes sense (ignoring the point that penicillin doesn't attack viruses in the real world, only bacteria).
I'm really writing all this to test out whether the Nucleus blog software supports trackback.
October 27, 2003
Oh, All Right, All Right
I've got to find some time to talk about the big event that's happened in my life, (no deaths, new romances, promotions or anything you'd expect), but for now, I'll just mention that Slashdot has noticed the unfortunate phenomenon of blog comment spam, which coincidentally I was hit with last night (and to which I responded wittily), inspiring me for the first time to look into the phenomenon.
It sucks that society has this small number of people who insist on pissing in the pool every time someone opens up a new one. This, unfortunately, is the weakness of the Internet; if you have anything that gives people the freedom to communicate, someone can and will write a program to throw their crap around faster than the users of the Internete can deal with it while still trying to maintain open channels of communication. I used to think groups that moderated their mailling lists were elitists or totalitarians; back in the day, that may have been the only real reason for than, but now I'm afraid this is the future, because it is so easy for spammers to propagate their advertising into forums whose names they have never heard of, and will never hear of, just by pressing a proverbial button.
October 25, 2003
Monetary Nirvana
I have yet to lay my hands on one of the new "now in color" $20 bills, but if it's anything like how my friend David Eisner describes it, it is nothing short of pure ecstasy.
October 23, 2003
History Lessen
Interested in finding out about French military victories? Click this Google link: http://www.google.com/search?q=french+military+victories&btnI=I'm+Feeling+Lucky
Babe Magnet
"Dolce & Gabana is of course quite pricey. But apparently Stetson is a babe magnet as well, and cheaper. Finally, there may be drugstore knockoffs for these brand names. I know there are for women's perfumes."
Thus spake ma soeur. She IMed me, and I know I won't remember that stuff, so I figured I'd jot it down here.
Wonder when this post will show up as the top Google result for "babe magnet". When it does, the first perfume company I named should pay me, dammit.
Update: "Oh, Eddie Bauer's Pure for men turns me on. Don't like Stetson."
October 22, 2003
I Knew About This
Found a short article about oral surgery some Koreans in Korea get to Improve their English. Apparently there is an actual condition called ankyloglossia where the fold of flesh connecting the tongue to the floor of the mouth extends too far down the length of the tonuge, or hardens, and surgery is appropriate for these cases. The impression I get, however, though the article doesn't state this explicitly, is that many Koreans believe that the standard length of the lingual fraenum for a Korean is sufficient for speaking Korean, but that Koreans' mouths are not naturally made to be able to speak English and require some modification.
The article is generally about the extraordinary lengths Koreans will go to to learn English well -- or make their children learn it well. Here is the most absurd-sounding statement, which is not really characteristic of the message of the article or the trend, but is just so absurd I thought it worth mention: "Learning a foreign language too early, in some cases, may not only cause a speech impediment but, in the worst case, make an child autistic." (The "an" is probably an typo; hard to imagine that a Korean who can produce such a good (if absurd) statement would not understand when to use "a" and when to use "an".) Ooookaaaay. That must be why the rate of autism is so high among immigrant children in the U.S. Yeah, that's it.
October 21, 2003
Submitted Slashdot Story
I just submitted the below story to Slashdot. Since it will get rejected, I'm posting it here.
Student Charged With Outing Airport Security Flaws
Over the weekend, a college student was discovered to have sneaked illegal, potentially dangerous items (boxcutters, chlorine bleach, matches, and simulated explosives) aboard several domestic flights in order to demonstrate flaws in airport/airline security. He had sent e-mails in advance about his planned operations, but they went unnoticed. Nathaniel Heatwole is now being charged by the U.S. government with carrying concealed weapons on an aircraft. He has been cooperating with the authorities. The response from the government and the airline industry has followed the same pattern we have seen when hackers break into computer systems to expose security flaws: redfaced officials charge the vigilante the same as if he had actually intended to cause harm.
October 17, 2003
The Fleshpots, Oh the Fleshpots
In te Big Easy Now. usin this horrble TV-bsed web browser totype this in, And it iks [likes] to drop a lot of ltters, so it's too much trouble to go back and fix everything. Gee, helps if I type with slow, heavy keystrokes, though. Anyway, for having no ouse [mouse] capability,it's surprisingly useful usable.
Had aHurricane as y [my] introductory drink. he defult size in the particular place I got mine is 32 oz. This means that if you want to finish your rink,you kind of have to stay eithe o the street or n tat bar, fr a long time.
And, of coure, it ca mak you sick and I'm nto feling altogthe chipper right now.It assaid [was said] drink that kept me from going nto the more, um, interesting establishment[s] they have here in the Vieux Carré. May try to ht those tonigh.
Update: strikethroughs have been used to indicate later corrections. Since a part of this post is about the ill effect the keyboard had on my typing, I decided I had no choice but to leave a record of how I originally entered it.
October 15, 2003
Taikonaut? WTF?
Continuing with my recurring theme of what can only fairly be grouped as anti-Asian rants, I take issue with the word "taikonaut". I have a problem with being fed new English words for no good reason, or for having English words poorly chosen to represent things from foreign languages by non-native speakers.
Unfortunately, though it is just as much of an abomination as any other word-lending (reluctant to use the term "borrowing", as it too strongly suggests it was something desired by the speakers of the language being modified), the blame for this one is a little hard to pin down. Some Singaporean guy, who perhaps felt that, as a Singaporean space enthusiast, he was sufficiently qualified to do this, coined the word. Now, I suppose it would never have occurred to him to do this if it weren't for the unfortunate, pointless dichotomy of the terms "astronaut" and "cosmonaut", used to differentiate between people who do the same job, based on which of the two countries that have manned space programs the person is from. IMHO, "kosmonaut" is fine as a Russian word, and I think they should use this when speaking Russian to refer to a space navigator from any country. But we should do the same with the word "astronaut".
Anyway, so the S'pore guy coined the word, which, I suppose, is his prerogative. Sort of. But then the Western press decided to lap it up. Great. Well, then, we've got a lot of work ahead of us: what will be the English word for a person who travels in space and is from Japan? Or from Saudi Arabia or Tuvalu? And it looks like we've already missed the opportunity to coin the words "negronaut"1 and "gynonaut" (though a (white) South African space tourist calls himself an "Afronaut", which at least has a humorous ring to it); perhaps we should go back and rectify these and other omissions, lest some groups feel slighted.
Here's another dissenter on the use of the word, though his dissent is for different reasons.
OBTW, nice job on the launch, China. Welcome to the club.
[1] First syllable should be pronounced to rhyme with "peg".
October 13, 2003
I'm Making Me Very Angry
Once again, an important musical event has passed me by. Earlier today I decided I should get around to finding out the Fall concert schedule for the Clarice Smith. Well, the UMSO concert has come and gone. So has the SWE concert.
This is really bothering me, because, unlike past concerts, where I would just simply go to check off another musical event attended, I had been looking forward to this all summer as a chance to get back in touch with my various concert-going friends (particularly Linda, who I mentioned quite a while ago, but also the Nerve girl, even though last I heard she was not available). For me, this is a huge missed opportunity.
Argh.
I've set myself up some reminders for the upcoming Concert Band concert, but it's rather a bitter consolation prize at this point.
October 09, 2003
Longest Month
It just occurred to me that October is the longest month of the year. Post a comment below if you know why.
Forte
Have you ever heard anyone pronounce "forte", meaning a personal strength or specialty, as "fort"? I'm not sure I have, unless it was someone explaining why it "should" be pronounced that way. I will agree, in principle, that it should be pronounced that way, but insisting that that is how it is pronounced in the English language is just unrealistic. When I hear someone say "forté", I do form a mental opinion, however unfairly, that this person may not be the best-educated person I've ever met. But if I were to hear someone say "fort", I would consider that person as being not fully in touch with reality.
October 08, 2003
Gray Davis Terminated
I'm embarrassed for California, that's all I can say. No, I can say one more thing; thank the Great Sky Fairy that Ahnult was born outside the U.S., so he can't become president.
October 06, 2003
Kindness in Office Politics
A project that someone else was working on got reassigned to me. The other person apparently just didn't have it together, and may lack -- or have lost -- the requisite programming ability. So initially I was supposed to go and pick up the pieces from him/her, which I so far haven't gotten around to doing. But the latest I was told was, don't even bother talking to him/her; the information will be worthless. I figured that, despite the advice, I might go and talk to the person anyway, to see what info I could get, and, just as much, so that said person (call him/her X) wouldn't feel totally worthless. But, I have a bad feeling that X is going to get pushed out the door before too long. Maybe I would be doing X a service by not talking to X, and letting X see the writing on the wall.
But if I want to think that far ahead, maybe I should just go and talk to X and say, "they're saying bad things about you". Which might be hard to do without naming names.
October 03, 2003
Whatta Guy
The <project manager/VP> I referred to in yesterday's post responded to the dumb email with: "It's got potential..." Since this VP is not someone I consider either bawdy or jovial, my take is that he didn't want the guy to be too embarrassed, so he did this little face-saving thing, which he didn't have to do.
Hmm... "asswipe" as a server name. I don't know, just not humorous to me.
Ugliness Rating
I wish I knew what it meant.
You are the integer -19. You are the additive inverse of 19, and the ugliest integer greater than-123432935 .
What Integer Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
October 02, 2003
Gawd, How Embarrassing
Someone at my company -- a grown man -- posted this message to an internal mailing list:
In light of <our company's> new <project still in dev't phase> add campaign and the fact that <project manager/VP> has not named a winner yet for naming the <project name> servers I submit the name: asswipe
He shortly thereafter sent out another pathetic email saying the previous email was just a joke.
I'd support firing this guy if it weren't for the fact that, at his age, and the way the economy is, he'd probably never work again.