Month: December 2002

An old St. L & H train car, sitting on a tail track just outside of Union Station, Toronto.

This crap. So they stop the ship. It’s carrying missiles. The US suspects that they may be being shipped to a “potential terrorist nation.” WTF is that? I’ll bet about half the world is a “potential terrorist nation” by now. No one really likes the US anymore – other nations are giving them weird looks, as if to say “What the heck are you guys smoking over there?”

So anyways. The US actually ADMITTED that they have no authority to seize the shipment. One would think that they should be encouraging the Yemenis to buy arms – I mean, isn’t this what the US does? Stockpiling arms in order to bully everyone else around (not to mention prop up the economy)? Heck, that’s the American way! Sell ’em some Patriots in case those Scuds go off course!

What bloody hypocrites.

Last night I had a nice chat with Jon about gaming consoles and the like. He reminisced about his Genesis and 32x, while I can only dream of one day owning a NeoGeo. At least I have its little cousin.

Anyways, because of that it was ironic to see that today IBM has announced that OS/2 is being dropped, finally. OS/2 was a damn find operating system in its day, except that there was virtually no software for it. I have fond memories of running OS/2 Warp on my 386. sniff

And now, Nuclear Weapon Test Films!

Today was a good day. After banging my head against ADSI and ADO, I finally solved my problem the UNIX way: with a Perl CGI program. w00t.

If I was sending a package of CDs to an apartment across from the Pentagon (which I am), would it be a good thing or a bad thing if I wrote “NOT ANTHRAX” across it, considering that the first package of CDs that I sent were damaged beyond use?

I just realized today why those bonus stamps you get from Subway have the store number and ticket number printed on them: so that when you hand it in, they have a record of which stores you’ve been to: geographical data. Or maybe I had too many bowls of paranoia flakes this morning…

Today I am very, very tired. My brain has been affected: at lunch I went to the post office to mail a half-dozen packages, and after everything has been processed realized that I left my wallet in my office, 4 blocks away and 17 stories up. Luckily the mail clerk was extremely nice (as long as I was bringing back cash), but on my extra walk I almost crossed the street for no reason three times.

But hey, I finally got an office phone! 4 for 4 on the week! And a 17″ screen. ViewSonic, yum.

Did SlashDot melt down?

I’m going to go home and sleep now. Bye.

mmm, that would be good.

Woman jump-starts her car with infant. No, infants can’t be used as jumper cables. Infants, however, can swallow small ICs usually attached to keys that emit a small signal when brought close to the ignition, necessary for the car to start. This is also another reason not to buy a Ford.

Geez, before I read this I didn’t see how this whole terror/Iraq thing made sense. This states it so succinctly!

Curiously enough, that last entry was #500. Which makes this #501. Funny that.

Today is your typical first day at work: got office, got PC, got logins, mysteriously don’t have phone. Hey, three out of four ain’t bad.

…everyone has noticed that Americans have gone completely wacko, right? I mean, at least when it comes to certain things. Take this, for example. Now, I rode the Greyhound a lot over the summer, and I can’t think why these people wouldn’t have just gone and tried to talk to the driver before, say, firing up the phones and calling in the state patrol. But I do think that this is similar to the situation most computer users come into: given the choice between reading the manual and phoning someone, most people will phone someone. These people did the same thing.

Of course, a few things have shown me what kind of nutty thinking is going on down there across the border. First, there’s Bowling for Columbine. I really want to see this again. It really is a great film about American culture, not just gun culture, but what drives people to arm themselves, in some cases enough to kill everyone on their block (or in their town). Then there’s Gore Vidal’s essay The Enemy Within.

I start my new job tomorrow! Woohoo!

Wanny buy some ponies?