Month: June 2001

Things you learn when administering a large mailing list:

• Some people can’t follow instructions to send an e-mail.
• Some people can’t use a web form.
• Some people don’t actually read e-mails, they just assume their contents.
• Some people are just downright rude and can’t compose a proper message asking for help, and instead choose to floow your mailbox with messages filled with “UNSUBSCRIBE UNSUBSCRIBE UNSUBSCRIBE” over and over again…

Luckily I’m nice, and just deal with these things. I could very easily not care. Listar makes things much easier. I love Listar.

If everyone on the subway would just take off their knapsacks and put them on the floor, the amount of available space would go up by at least 20%.

Gah. Overslept my alarm by 51 minutes this morning. Subsequently, rushed like a madman this morning, got to work at 20 after 9, and forgot my lunch. And I feel tired. I am going to bed early tonight or I’ll have to sleep all day.

Reading: Thomas More’s Utopia. I think I actually understand renaissance humour that was translated from Latin. I also seem to have some penschant for reading tough books (cf. Kafka)

Listening: to whatever I can burn for my Soul Player, as fast as I can 🙂

Witness the phoenix-like rebirts of NewtonTalk:

NewtonTalk.net

How come every time I watch George W Bush say something on TV, I hear the unmistakable sound of the palm of my hand striking my own forehead? I wonder…

There were other witty things to write here, I know I had them. Hrm. Oh. I moved desks at work today. Why? I dunno, I don’t ask questions, I just fix the Perl code and build enormous databases. My new desk is on a different floor, but is older, and therefore smaller. I brought my chair down though; they can take that over my dead body (or when my contract expires). I also found another phone and swapped parts so that I ended up with one phone with a working receiver switch and display and one with a messed up display and a broken receiver switch. No user servicible parts my ass.

I never knew writing programs with Apple’s MPW C compiler could be so much fun.

chuma is over 9000 hits on the front page.

Fortune for the Newton should be released imminently… tonight I should take the time to fix and maybe find some testers for RotateBook. And find Sandy an eMate 🙂

1. Dumb school officials

Well, okay, I only have one right now, but it seems like I see a link to a story like this every week now. I’ve come to the general conclusion that (high) schools are designed to oppress, not teach. A number of things have pointed me towards, including:

• Hearing about Sandy’s brother struggling for no good reason.
• Reading about all of the completely ludicrous decisions that school administrators make. In some cases, they’re forced to make these decisions because they must enforce some brain-dead school policy, often involving the phrase “zero-tolerance.”
• Learning that people who went to public schools (and still go there) are still steered towards conforming to either the curriculum or whatever the teacher thinks is “good” (I had the experience of going to an independant school instead)

That’s all for now. Gotta go.

Do you have a decent amount of MP3s, and a CD burner?

Go out and buy this. Now. Do it. It will be worth every penny. It kicks ass and takes names. It flys.

Got a new chair at work yesterday. It good. It comfy. It doesn’t suck, like my old one did.

I totally forgot that no one would be home today to sign for my Soul Player, so I had to get it redirected to my office for tomorrow. Hopefully it will arrive here so I’ll get a chance to play with it and take it to Guelph for the weekend.

I read this really great page once on why Flash is evil. What happened to me just now when I went to the Canada Post website? It’s using flash. For no good reason. Goddammit. Is nothing sacred? It seems like Canada Post is on this big marketing/brand recognition kick, which includes such things as selling free Internet CDs with a buttload of CP-branded stuff in it. And now this stupid silly new site. It’s not faster. Grr. And it’s using Active Server Pages. Where’s my clue-by-four.

My Soul Player has been shipped! Almost. It has a tracking number, but doesn’t seem to have been scanned yet. Oh I hope it comes tomorrow I hope I hope I hope…

I just got spam from… a Nissan dealer in Turkey. They were trying to sell me an Almera Comfort Hatchback, whatever that is. It doesn’t exist in Canada, AFAIK.

I wonder what chuma means in Turkish?

The LEGO X-Wing Collectors’ Edition is the largest frickin’ LEGO model I have ever built. It’s huge. Massive. And Sandy and I only found time to build half of it this weekend. Still have the wings and the pedestal to go. But it’s already impressive.

This morning I found and used an Avid Cinema mug in the kitchen. Mmmm, video.

Speaking of video, on Thursday I hepled out with Ross’ annual shoot of the FPS play. You can read Calum’s story of the ’99 shoot here.