Ramblings

Questions: Resistance is Futile.

2009-11-28T15:51:06Z

So, fdmts is continuing a meme of Five Questions. I received questions from him; they and my answers are below. If you have the nerve, you may, in the comments, request five questions from me. :)

You were a math student in school. Given the choice to do it again - would you follow the same academic path?

Math, yes. Exact same path, no (assuming convergent multiverses where I still have the same wife & daughter at this time, of course). I'd spend another year as an undergrad, slow down a bit.

Once upon a time, you and I played an exhaustive game of gin rummy on a bus. We demonstrated that between players of equal skill, the game appears to all be up to the cards. Here's the question: Do you remember the score distribution?

"Remember"? No. But I can confirm that I'm currently leading 3785 to 3363, a 12.6% difference, which some would argue is more that could be attributed to the cards. Heh. :) Then again, it looks like at one point the score was 1870 - 1854 (in your favor, BTW), so perhaps our sample duration is too small. On the third hand, I think I changed to a more aggressive knocking strategy at that point. So perhaps we need to revise your conclusion by adding the strategy axis.

Has having a child changed your ideas about absolute right and wrong?

Not insofar as I never held out much hope for absolutes. I can now imagine a much broader category of "unfortunate but completely justified", though.

I give you a free pass to get away with some action. What do you do?

a/ There is no free pass.
b/ A fdmts free pass is no universal free pass.
c/ At the moment, in fact for days now, I can't think of anything I want to do that I would need to "get away with".

Malty beers, or hoppy beers?

Malty beers taste better to me, but malt doesn't agree with me. Ergo, cider.

Huh? Wha? Oh, yeah. Uh, I'm still here.

2009-10-26T02:43:35Z

I have been urged to show signs of my continued existence with an LJ post. Here be I.

You may know me as a die-hard Bears fan. Just when I think they're putting it together, they lay a giant Cincinnati egg. Nerts. And this coming off the bye week. Not good.

You may know me as a Ruby fan. On my local Linux VM, I just upgraded from 1.8.7 to 1.9.1, and none of my local scripts broke. Yay! Not about to test it at work going in to the holiday season, though. We'll be on 1.8.x for our reporting at least until February.

You may know me as a vocalist. Nope, nothing much going on there.

How else do you know me? Drop in a comment, and I'll give an update. :)

Baseball is weird sometimes, II.

2009-07-27T17:06:55Z

In Baseball is weird sometimes, we saw a pitcher get a win without retiring a batter, or even being in the game at the time. Well, Colorado Rockies rookie Alan Embree has gone one step further, getting a similar win, but without recording a pitch. Gotta love baseball scoring rules.

Gotta love mass marketers.

2009-03-07T00:36:29Z

CVS has a new marketing push: "Thousands of items under $4."

I guess that sounds better than, "We sell lots of crap." I mean really. It doesn't matter to me that I can pick up a CVS-brand butt-pick finger guard for only $3.69. I'm still not buying it. And why do you still think it's a plus for you if you sell for 89 cents the candy bar I can get at Kroger for 69 cents?

Boxing Day.

2007-12-26T20:38:13Z

And now, I can't even think the phrase "Boxing Day" without thinking of 2004's earthquake and tsunami. Has it really been three years?

"I'm sorry, your selection was not recognized."

2007-12-02T20:21:42Z

I was calling a credit card company to check some information about one of my accounts. I had touch-toned in my card number, and was at the main menu. "To speak to a representative, press 0. To use our automated system, please select from these options. For account balance..."

It got through option two, when (to my surprise) I farted. To my much greater surprise, the menu stopped and the system said, "I'm sorry, but your selection was not recognized."

I laughed so hard I cried.

Google: !evil <> good

2007-11-19T22:35:24Z

I had an odd moment last night, thinking about Google and their motto, "Don't be evil." It occurred to me that "not evil" leaves open a lot of possibilities. My gut says Google very possibly isn't lawful good, so is Google chaotic good, lawful neutral, or, heavens help us, chaotic neutral? Oh sh...

in-home wildlife.

2007-09-19T15:24:53Z

Our pest guy in the last two days removed from the house a dead rat in a trap, and a dead bird from the attic and basement, respectively. Yes, that's right, the rat was in the attic, and the bird was in the basement. I would have expected the reverse, but critters are strange.

Now that we're pulling dead wildlife from odd places, I almost miss the catch-and-release indoor skink game. It requires one confused lizard, two contestants, a colander, and a cardboard box. I'm sure you can fill in the rest.

On Relationships.

2007-09-11T18:13:43Z

My darling wife just reminded me of something I shared with her years ago, as she was sharing it yesterday with someone else. I thought I heard it somewhere else, but I can't find anything like it online...

Relationships are like teeth: if you don't take care of them, they'll go away (and you won't have them when you need them).

July 11 - Stability of the Union Day

2007-06-24T15:05:49Z

I had one of those odd, nagging sorts of thoughts last night as I was mulling over Independence Day. It occurred to me that an important day in the history of the United States had come and gone without much notice, if any.

I was thinking about the fact that, for over two generations, all kids growing up have ever known is a 50-state USA. And before that, for over two generations, all kids knew (until 1959) was a 48-state union.

July 11, 2006 is the day that the 50-state USA became the longest-lived incarnation of the nation. Arizona to Alaska was 17125 days, and Hawaii plus 17125 days is July 10, 2006. I don't know what I'll do to celebrate Stability of the Union day, but I'm sure I'll think of something.

In the "Huh, I never would have guessed" category, the next longest-lived configuration of the US after 48 states was 24 states, which lasted nearly 15 years from 1821-1836. Last bit of trivia - the US never had 39 states, because the Dakotas were admitted together: the only such pair.

Router Madness Resolved - note for posterity.

2007-06-12T12:56:36Z

Ok, Posterity, here's the skinny.

I have a Buffalo WLI-TX4-G54HP wireless-wired ethernet bridge. Nice piece of hardware. It worked with my old Linksys WRT54GS v1. Another nice piece of hardware, before they crippled the line in v5. Well, I tried to replace the router with a WRT54G, and what they had in the store was v8. It worked, right up to the point of using WPA security, then it failed miserably. Worked with no changes for another client, just fell down with the bridge.

Happily, my new D-Link WBR-2310 has no such difficulties and is working like a champ with both the Buffalo bridge and the Centrino-based onboard wireless of another computer in the house.

Zap += $55 ...

2007-06-08T12:34:40Z

Damned lightning fried the WAN port on my router.

AND, replacement router (same brand, newer version) no longer works with one of my wireless devices with WPA2 enabled. Grrrrrrr.....

Maybe I'll give their tech support one crack at it.

Zap = $600 and counting.

2007-06-07T13:08:59Z

Ahh, the wonders of nature. You've gotta love it when the first inkling you have that the sprinkles you're experiencing might turn into something more severe is a bolt of lightning which fries your DSL modem and takes out the TV.

If you're good at TV repair, I have a 27" Sharp, mostly working, but needing a little help. :) Let me know if you want more details.

On the plus side, I now have an HD-capable, wide-screen TV set a couple years before I was expecting to. And Speakeasy is overnighting a new modem, which should be installed later today.

Now I just have to hope that the car's transmission rebuild is successful next week.

Baseball is weird sometimes.

2007-05-07T13:18:23Z

This is one of the stranger box score oddities I think I've ever seen.

Take a look at the pitching for the Braves... especially the winning pitcher's line:

Atlanta	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	ERA
Paronto (W, 2-0)	0.1	0	0	0	0	0	0	2.25

And the fun part down below in "Batters Faced":
Batters faced: Wolf 25, Seanez 1, Tsao 7, Billingsley 8, Davies 28, Paronto 0, Soriano 3, Gonzalez 4.

Yup. The winning pitcher faced zero batters. In fact, he only threw one pitch. Several feet wide of the plate. Guy gets a win for successfully executing a pitch out into a caught stealing.

Baseball is weird sometimes.

Consumer Kudos - PUR, OXO.

2007-04-21T15:56:09Z

It seems that everyone online is ready to bash the horrible, horrible customer service that most consumer-facing organizations provide. Well, I'm here to call out two consumer product companies who have done the Right Thing (TM) for me.

PUR - a P&G brand
Now, I'll admit this one is partly tainted by practical concerns... nonetheless, for the second time, our PUR faucet-mount filter system went wonky. And for the second time, PUR replaced it free. First time they shipped us one (a new model not yet in all the stores); this time it was a coupon good for one free.

Why "tainted"? They make all their money on the filters, of course. It's far and away in their interest to give away the filter units, especially as replacements. Lesson: If you use a kitchen water filtration system (PUR, Brita, GE, whatever), when it goes south, just ask for a replacement. Unless the company has dumb policies or bad service rep training, you'll get it.

OXO
You know, the Good Grips household products. Well, a couple years ago we bought an OXO brand nylon turner. It had a little red OXO logo in the handle - which was bad, because it eventually trapped wash water, which would dribble out onto our food during use. Ugh. Well, it has since been redesigned with out the little red logo. We e-mailed and (at their request) called, and they sent a replacement within a couple of weeks, no further questions asked. They didn't ask for the old one back, nothing. Perhaps it was a known issue; in any case, we have a new turner and will keep buying OXO products.

Lesson: In fact, if you have any small-ticket item that goes south, just ask for a replacement. The worst that can happen is they say, "no."

Now you can read an excerpt of Nothing in Particular through Amazon.com

2006-11-10T21:59:11Z

Hey all! Kate's book now has the Search Inside! feature enabled on Amazon. Check it out and read an excerpt or two. Then buy a copy or two. :)

What to call a group of assholes.

2006-09-18T19:22:53Z

I was recently chatting about a problem involving dealing with a number of unpleasant people, referred to in the conversation as a "bunch of assholes".

My brain decided to rechristen itself Roget for the moment, and said, "No, no, no. Not a 'bunch'. A group of assholes is called a 'clench'."

Shameless promo.

2006-09-11T14:42:20Z

In case you're reading this and haven't been alerted personally, my wife has written a novel. You can get it from any major online book retailer, in paperback (Amazon) or hardcover.

This is not for the kiddies - she tackles serious subject matter and uses some coarse language. And while I know I'm biased, I think Kate's work is far and away better than some of the dreck that keeps popping up on best-seller lists.

Hmm... Mebbe I should try this bloggy thingy.

2006-08-22T17:54:48Z

OK, so this is the first blog I'm signing my name to. Whee! I have to... there's a critical mass of people I know using LiveJournal already. And this is the best way I have to read what all they've written.

I'm not saying where my other blogs are... or will be. You will have to guess where my really whacked out raves live. Mwah ha ha ha!