Log -- David Chess

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Which hand?
Thursday, September 4, 2003
This morning I had a meeting up north aways, and on the drive back I stopped at (a little natural food store and a Subway for lunch, and) a little Indian grocery by the side of Route 9 ("Krishna Grocery; Take-out Lunch; Food; Drink; Snacks") and bought some cookies and asked the nice lady behind the counter if those CDs were for sale and they were (despite being so far behind the counter, and on their sides at that). I asked her for one of "movie music; like you have playing now", and she sold me for $6.99 or something a CD in a case whose cover claimed that it was "Dayya Dayya" ("& other wild remixes; 11 Wild Tracks / One Hot Album").
When I got to work the case turned out to contain a very dusty and rather scratched CD labelled "Their Favorites", and containing thirteen (not eleven) tracks. Still, it played, and it had the kind of music I was looking for. When I got home and gave it to iTunes to rip, iTunes looked in up in CDDB, and determined that it was "Favs. of HSSH", which a quick googling suggests means that it's someone's favorite songs from Hum Saath-Saath Hain.
Wonder how it got in the Dayya Dayya case.
At first glance I thought that some mailer had hiccupped somewhere and duplicated a Microsoft Security Bulletin, but in fact they issued five different security bulletins yesterday. (Insert obvious snide comment about "Trustworthy Computing" here.)
Today's nominee for Quote Most Likely to Sound Amusingly Quaint In Five-Ten Years:
"These connections are now so fast that you can download a whole movie in just a few hours."

From ampersand, Today's Weblog That You Ought To Be Reading Instead Of This One: Baghdad Burning.
Tuesday, September 2, 2003
So around now it's probably plausible to say
HAPPY ROUGHLY-FOURTH ANNIVERSARY TO THE WEB SITE!
more or less as usual.

To hold onto the Maine vacation flavor just a bit longer, here's the traditional list of reading material lying around in the Vacation Area, as of sometime Friday afternoon or so:
On the dresser we have a pile from the Rue Cottage bookstore: a nicely-worn copy of Lawrence's "The Fox", P. D. James's "The Black Tower" (from Rue Cottage's "Cheap Thrills" rack), and Alexander McCall Smith's "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" (I've finished the first two, and hope to read the third one someday).
Also up there is my "Mansfield Park" (which I'm about halfway through), "5 Tales from Tomorrow" ("Selected from the book THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION STORIES AND NOVELS: 1955") which I read four of (I wasn't in the mood to reread the classic but very grim "The Cold Equations"), Eno's "A Year with Swollen Appendices" (which I notice with amusement was also on the list in 2001), "Lynch on Lynch", Hesse's Magister Ludi (which I've begun rereading, but am finding rather slow going), and my recently acquired copy of "The Book of Mormon".
(Not to insult anyone's religious beliefs or anything, but anyone who thinks that this tome is the revealed word of God, translated through the direct intervention of the Almighty, is invited to contact me about some great land deals in Florida. I can't think of a really convincing story about how something divinely translated into English in the early 1800's comes out in a sort of awkward imitation of the dialect of the King James Bible.)
Still in the totebag are a copy of Stephen Baxter's "Ring", the Sturgeon collection "E Pluribus Unicorn" (1953), Josephine Tey's "The Man in the Queue" (originally copyright 1929; this edition 1988), Aniäs Nin's "The Delta of Venus", that great big thick graphpaper notebook again for writing in, the February and April 2003 numbers of the Journal of Philosophy, the Spring 2003 American Scholar, the September 2003 Natural History, the May 2003 Scientific American, and eight assorted issues of the New York Times Book Review (there were originally nine, but I read and recycled one).
Not a bad collection.
But anyway, we're home now, and I even went to work today and did a plausible imitation of remembering what it is I do there. Yesterday I got terribly physical and changed the battery in my car, replaced a couple of brake-light bulbs in M's car, and cleaned and oiled my bicycle enough to take it out around the neighborhood to see where the little boy'd gotten to on his scooter. This was, for me, an amazing set of victories over usually recalcitrant atom clusters.
You mean this isn't a joke?
Revolve, the new Bible for girls between the ages of 12 and 17, offers the complete New Testament in a fashion magazine format, replete with images of stylish, smiling young women, quizzes and celebrity birthdays (sorry, no horoscopes).

Webcaster lawsuit against the RIAA: coverage on The Reg, Wired, and all over.
When home routers attack:
However, rather than having originated as a malicious distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, the root cause is actually a serious flaw in the design of hundreds of thousands of one vendor's low-cost Internet products targeted for residential use.

A dotHack playing reader writes:
I like θ Dog Dancing Solitary March. What areas do you like?

I did that level, it was pretty cool. I like those "walled garden" ones, where even the field is a network of rooms. My party's all level 30 and over now, though, so it was a little wimp. We did the field of θ Chronicling Solitary White Devil the other day (great title: could be the Official Level of quite a number of webloggers). We also did some of the level with the longest name we could find. What was it again? θ Dog Dancing Organ Market Treasure Gem, I think.
Someone else mentions that very amusing "I am a scammer" scammer that we mentioned the other day. We currently have three (I think it is) threads going with various Nigerian scammers of various levels of amusingness. I may or may not ever get around to posting them, but in any case I feel like I'm doing the world some small service by wasting their time.
Good (polemical) Slate posting about hating Dubya. All too much truth in it.
And finally four from gorjuss:
The history of electronic mail.
Dude, you're getting screwed:
I'm just bewildered that Dell corporate policy is that users need to lie to use their new laptops, and to agree to legal agreements that it's completely impossible to have read. This is the next level above "click-through" licenses. Now, they figure no one reads the EULAs anyway, so why bother even providing a copy?

Great photo: The Mineral Moon.
And a final bit of politics:
Here's how the President plans to "promote energy independence for our country." He will be adding to his economic stimulus package a loophole in the federal tax code that will make it cheaper and easier than ever before for businesses to purchase large, fuel-inefficient SUV's.

Apologies to any fans of the President; feel free to rant at me about how it's really all okay...

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earlier entries

older log newer log reply about archive search home words site news talking place XML (RSS) Which hand?	Thursday, September 4, 2003 This morning I had a meeting up north aways, and on the drive back I stopped at (a little natural food store and a Subway for lunch, and) a little Indian grocery by the side of Route 9 ("Krishna Grocery; Take-out Lunch; Food; Drink; Snacks") and bought some cookies and asked the nice lady behind the counter if those CDs were for sale and they were (despite being so far behind the counter, and on their sides at that). I asked her for one of "movie music; like you have playing now", and she sold me for $6.99 or something a CD in a case whose cover claimed that it was "Dayya Dayya" ("& other wild remixes; 11 Wild Tracks / One Hot Album"). When I got to work the case turned out to contain a very dusty and rather scratched CD labelled "Their Favorites", and containing thirteen (not eleven) tracks. Still, it played, and it had the kind of music I was looking for. When I got home and gave it to iTunes to rip, iTunes looked in up in CDDB, and determined that it was "Favs. of HSSH", which a quick googling suggests means that it's someone's favorite songs from Hum Saath-Saath Hain. Wonder how it got in the Dayya Dayya case. At first glance I thought that some mailer had hiccupped somewhere and duplicated a Microsoft Security Bulletin, but in fact they issued five different security bulletins yesterday. (Insert obvious snide comment about "Trustworthy Computing" here.) Today's nominee for Quote Most Likely to Sound Amusingly Quaint In Five-Ten Years: "These connections are now so fast that you can download a whole movie in just a few hours." From ampersand, Today's Weblog That You Ought To Be Reading Instead Of This One: Baghdad Burning. Tuesday, September 2, 2003 So around now it's probably plausible to say HAPPY ROUGHLY-FOURTH ANNIVERSARY TO THE WEB SITE! more or less as usual.
	To hold onto the Maine vacation flavor just a bit longer, here's the traditional list of reading material lying around in the Vacation Area, as of sometime Friday afternoon or so: On the dresser we have a pile from the Rue Cottage bookstore: a nicely-worn copy of Lawrence's "The Fox", P. D. James's "The Black Tower" (from Rue Cottage's "Cheap Thrills" rack), and Alexander McCall Smith's "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" (I've finished the first two, and hope to read the third one someday). Also up there is my "Mansfield Park" (which I'm about halfway through), "5 Tales from Tomorrow" ("Selected from the book THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION STORIES AND NOVELS: 1955") which I read four of (I wasn't in the mood to reread the classic but very grim "The Cold Equations"), Eno's "A Year with Swollen Appendices" (which I notice with amusement was also on the list in 2001), "Lynch on Lynch", Hesse's Magister Ludi (which I've begun rereading, but am finding rather slow going), and my recently acquired copy of "The Book of Mormon". (Not to insult anyone's religious beliefs or anything, but anyone who thinks that this tome is the revealed word of God, translated through the direct intervention of the Almighty, is invited to contact me about some great land deals in Florida. I can't think of a really convincing story about how something divinely translated into English in the early 1800's comes out in a sort of awkward imitation of the dialect of the King James Bible.) Still in the totebag are a copy of Stephen Baxter's "Ring", the Sturgeon collection "E Pluribus Unicorn" (1953), Josephine Tey's "The Man in the Queue" (originally copyright 1929; this edition 1988), Aniäs Nin's "The Delta of Venus", that great big thick graphpaper notebook again for writing in, the February and April 2003 numbers of the Journal of Philosophy, the Spring 2003 American Scholar, the September 2003 Natural History, the May 2003 Scientific American, and eight assorted issues of the New York Times Book Review (there were originally nine, but I read and recycled one). Not a bad collection. But anyway, we're home now, and I even went to work today and did a plausible imitation of remembering what it is I do there. Yesterday I got terribly physical and changed the battery in my car, replaced a couple of brake-light bulbs in M's car, and cleaned and oiled my bicycle enough to take it out around the neighborhood to see where the little boy'd gotten to on his scooter. This was, for me, an amazing set of victories over usually recalcitrant atom clusters. You mean this isn't a joke? Revolve, the new Bible for girls between the ages of 12 and 17, offers the complete New Testament in a fashion magazine format, replete with images of stylish, smiling young women, quizzes and celebrity birthdays (sorry, no horoscopes). Webcaster lawsuit against the RIAA: coverage on The Reg, Wired, and all over. When home routers attack: However, rather than having originated as a malicious distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, the root cause is actually a serious flaw in the design of hundreds of thousands of one vendor's low-cost Internet products targeted for residential use. A dotHack playing reader writes: I like θ Dog Dancing Solitary March. What areas do you like? I did that level, it was pretty cool. I like those "walled garden" ones, where even the field is a network of rooms. My party's all level 30 and over now, though, so it was a little wimp. We did the field of θ Chronicling Solitary White Devil the other day (great title: could be the Official Level of quite a number of webloggers). We also did some of the level with the longest name we could find. What was it again? θ Dog Dancing Organ Market Treasure Gem, I think. Someone else mentions that very amusing "I am a scammer" scammer that we mentioned the other day. We currently have three (I think it is) threads going with various Nigerian scammers of various levels of amusingness. I may or may not ever get around to posting them, but in any case I feel like I'm doing the world some small service by wasting their time. Good (polemical) Slate posting about hating Dubya. All too much truth in it. And finally four from gorjuss: The history of electronic mail. Dude, you're getting screwed: I'm just bewildered that Dell corporate policy is that users need to lie to use their new laptops, and to agree to legal agreements that it's completely impossible to have read. This is the next level above "click-through" licenses. Now, they figure no one reads the EULAs anyway, so why bother even providing a copy? Great photo: The Mineral Moon. And a final bit of politics: Here's how the President plans to "promote energy independence for our country." He will be adding to his economic stimulus package a loophole in the federal tax code that will make it cheaper and easier than ever before for businesses to purchase large, fuel-inefficient SUV's. Apologies to any fans of the President; feel free to rant at me about how it's really all okay...
top	earlier entries