Afternoon folks,
{slurp}
Last night my wife got in contact with her sister who happens to be my friend Drew's significant other. As a result, we were able to get our hands on the old origional musings. I've updated my post from yesterday (yes, editing ones published works is BAD) and I've decided to roll out his musings in 3 installments. The 11.1 musing is a compilation of Drew's March 1999 musings, today I will include his April 1999 musings.
{slurp}
Sit back, enjoy and understand! :)
===================
April 1, 1999
===================
Good morning, folks.
Gah. April Fool's Day. I sincerely hope none of you were taken in by
anything that caused you discomfort. No real issues at my apartment -
Heather came up this morning to iron her pants - yes, I actually own an
iron. I know how to use it, too - even though it only has one button
and one knob. I'm good with the button; the knob still confuses me
slightly. I have to be content with the fact that my shirts have lots
of buttons. (*groan*)
She also brought me a couple of Toaster Strudels - I love that word.
Each of you, turn to whoever is reading this over your shoulder and say
"STRUDEL!" at them. They'll look at you as if you've spontaneously
grown a second nose, and very likely walk away shaking their head. This
is a great example of how much fun it is to be completely insane - try
walking down the sidewalk sometime and loudly arguing "humans as
housepets" with an invisible friend. Try the "for" side of the argument
if you're on the south or west side of the street, and the "against"
side if you're on the north or east side. If someone has the gall to
ask you who you're talking to, look at them like they're faaaaar below
your social class, shout "STRUDEL!" as snobbily as possible (This takes
practice. Try it a few times on your houseplants before trying it on
the street.) and walk away muttering about people far below your social
class.
The plural of "strudel" is "strudels". Does this seem right to you?
It strikes me that the plural of a word this much fun should be
"strudeli" or something.
Nevertheless, the office is out of creamers this morning. I discovered
this when Ian, the boss of the tech crew, pointed it out, saying that it
would be rectified immediately, or we'd be forced to fire the new
receptionist. Following this up, he placed the empty creamer box on his
head and went to the front desk, looking at the receptionist and saying
"Do you know what this means?". I like my job.
I have to overcompensate with sugar, causing my caffeine to be
exceptionally unsatisfying today. It brings to mind a Turkish proverb;
"Coffee should be as black as death, as hot as hell, and as sweet as
love." Nobody really understands Turks.
I'm now on Day 38 of my quest to read "Teach Yourself PERL in 21
Days". I don't have too much to do outside the office today, so I think
I'll try Day 3 again - last time I was well into it, then was called
away on work.
So the mixer with SGI went well. We all drank beer and ate a (rather
incredible) spread of finger-foods from a caterer. Over buffalo wings
and Coors Lite, I spoke with one of the techs, who gave me some
interesting news and some seriously disappointing news.
Disappointing: The new SGI Visual Workstations, cool as they are, are
under specific contracts with Microsoft, in that NOTHING but Windows NT
is allowed to be sold for them. This means no Irix, which is most of
the reason I wanted one in the first place. I have no use for an NT
machine! I still want the monitor though, so I think I might look into
an O2 with the Visual Workstation's flatscreen LCD monitor attached.
Waaaaay too much geek status in having a big, bright-blue toaster on
your desk.
Creamers are arriving, I'm off to recaffeinate.
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 5, 1999
===================
*sniggggh*
I'b sick.
My node id all stuvved ub.
I'll drop the dramatics; I may be talking that way, but it hinders my
typing in no way other than the fact that these laptop keys are
irritatingly stiff, given my rather skewed typing style. It hurts my
head that they feel this way; I'll blame that on the vicious flu virus
that has invaded my head and set up a base camp in my sinuses, where all
of the little virii are now drunk and singing loudly about their
victory.
Admittedly, I didn't put up that much of a fight. I meant to go out
Thursday night, seeing whereas Friday was a holiday in Alberta, but that
didn't happen. The preliminary skirmishes with the virus began about
5pm on Thursday, and by the time I got home from work, the forces that
make up Drew's Immune System had already lost enough ground to realize
that this virus would be a force to reckon with. My immune system sent
a message via fast horsemen to my central cortex, which instantly
relayed it to my subconscious, which milled about aimlessly for a while,
then obfuscated the message and sent it to my conscious mind; the
message I received was "Psst - you're tired. Go to sleep.". I argued
with my brain for a bit, but with the backing of my subconscious, my
immune system, my central cortex, and the enzyme equivalent of their
collective legal representation, I soon hadn't a leg to stand on. I
gave in at about 8pm, declaring loudly to all involved that I would
sleep for two or three hours, but at that point, we were all going out
to have fun. My collective agreed - in hindsight, agreed FAR too
readily - and we slept. I awoke at 10 am the next day, having slept for
14 hours. This, to the invading forces, was akin to reinforcements in
the form of tactical nuclear warheads. I felt great for all of Friday.
Friday night, my little sister Jen arrived from BC for a visit, and the
war became more interesting. Jen brought with her some hemp jewelry for
my other sister and I, a lot of photos, a bag of clothes, and ANOTHER
STRAIN OF THE VIRUS. Great. Reinforcements.
Nevertheless, Friday night was spent thoroughly intoxicated, stumbling
around Venum with my sister and a lot of friends. This would have been
loads of fun - but unfortunately, was exactly the break that the viruses
in my system were waiting for. Unbeknownst to me, they had a master
plan which involved lodging themselves firmly in my throat and choking
me from the inside.
Saturday, I awoke around noon, with nothing on my mind beyond a bowl of
new Marshmallow Froot Loops, when suddenly a message that SHOULD have
been relayed the night before found it's way into my conscious mind. As
it happened, after I went home the night before and went to sleep, my
subconscious had found a female companion and stayed up drinking until
dawn, and so had been incoherent to the point that my immune system gave
up and decided to send a message directly to my conscious mind. This
came in the form of a cough, and I coughed righteously for a few
minutes. This was the turning point for the battle for the day; as it
happened, I coughed out a good portion of the virii lodged in my
throat.
Saturday night, I napped from 6 until 9, then awoke to go to a rave.
We danced the night away, it being Jen's first rave, and thoroughly
enjoyed ourselves. The virii were really impressed with the mixing
skills of Deko Ze, and enthusiastically invaded my sinus cavities in
celebration. We left the party at about 4:30am, and headed home to
sleep.
The viruses, being malevolent little beasties, decided to awaken me at
about 10am. I was not happy with this idea, but there was very little I
could say about it. I moped around for much of Sunday, heading to the
theater at about 4pm to watch "The Matrix" (AMAZING movie, by the way).
In the evening, we all went to the Significant Other's Mother's house
for Easter dinner, then headed back and lounged until it was time to
sleep.
Nevertheless, this morning, I'm unhappy. I may head home around lunch
hour - I've very nearly accepted defeat by this tiny enemy. My brain is
still saying "NO! We can never surrender! We will fight you in the
sinuses, we will fight you in the throat and lungs..."
My immune system is saying "Ahhh, shaddup!".
I'b sick.
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 7, 1999
===================
Good morning, everyone...
Well, I think I may actually be winning the war. I stayed in bed for
most of yesterday, and it seemed to have a morale-boosting effect on my
immune system, which fought back with a vengeance against the horrid
virii that had invaded my body.
We all went to see two films at Imax last night; "Everest" and
"Extreme". The movies, while great, were not the highlights of the
night - well, untrue, the 3-minute-long opening "IMAX" animation made my
week. But no, events indirectly related to the movie, or more directly
related to the act of leaving our apartment for a few hours. Two things
worthy of rants happened.
First thing - the less important and life-changing of the two, but fun
nonetheless:
I got a bag of candy!
We're not talking about cheap halloween surplus here - these are
quality confections! The candy store in Eau Claire Market is wonderful
- blue whales, green thumbs, red feet... stuff you remember being two
for a nickel at the local store when you were six. New candies - sour
mandarin slices, realistic-looking and -tasting sugared grapefruit
slices, silver cola-flavoured jawbreakers, gummi-everythings... much
sugar to be imbibed. One of the more interesting ones - 8" long pieces
of licorice root, with which the Significant Other and I joyously
prodded passers-by while saying "Feh!" loudly.
Second thing - I have rediscovered my heritage.
"Oh yes", you say. "He sang maritime tunes in a mall. That's not
unusual for Drew."
Well, you're right, but that's not what I meant.
While driving to the theatre, I was struck by the reflection of light
from the Eau Claire Sheraton, the new windows reflecting the setting sun
brilliantly. Rather than causing an epileptic seizure, it caused me to
have the most incredible flashback to my days previous to living on
Earth. Follow if you will...
THE SCENE: The planet Zognar, fifty-seventh planet in orbit of the
star Alpha-Theta-Gamma-Omega-Seven. The grand council, consisting of
forty-three elderly gentlemen and one genetically-enhanced monkey, are
about to have another one of those parties that the Zognar Times society
column always talks about.
MONKEY: Order! Order please!
The room becomes quieter.
MONKEY: Before the quiche is served, there is one matter to be
addressed.
ELDERLY GENTLEMAN #27: What would that be, Monkey?
MONKEY: The matter of the EXILE OF DANGER BOY!
Gasps and murmurs from everyone. Ominous music fills the room.
MONKEY: Bring him forward!
A small battalion of armed guards enters from the rear of the hall,
bearing a strong cage with Danger Boy inside. They bring him forward
and set the cage before the council.
MONKEY: Danger Boy, you have misused your super-powers, causing
millions of zrooknas in property damage, hundreds to suffer, and fifteen
people to say "Tsk, tsk.". What do you have to say in your defence?
DANGER BOY: Feh!
Angered murmuring fills the room.
MONKEY: Danger Boy, I hereby banish you to the third planet orbiting
the star Gooble-Gooble-Drechk, where your super-powers will be useless,
and the specific mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide will render 85% of
your brain useless!
Giggling fills the room. DANGER BOY looks stricken, difficult for a
boy of three. The armed guards carry him from the room and load him
into a rocket ship, cleverly disguised as a comet. Watching the
procedings through a monitor, MONKEY laughs maniacally and presses a
button. DANGER BOY is launched into the cosmos, in the general
direction of Gooble-Gooble-Drechk...
So you see - I wasn't actually born here. I am a superhero without any
super powers. I am a champion of peace, justice, and the Canadian way,
without any real feats of valour under my belt. I've decided to stop
living this lie, or "secret identity", and embrace my heritage. It
shouldn't actually cause that much of a difference in my life; I can
still be Drew Smith at work and to strangers, but I'd prefer it if those
of you who know me personally would refer to me by my superhero name
from now on.
The Significant Other seems to understand this - she's pretty great
that way.
She is, after all, worthy of dating a superhero.
Cheers,
- Danger Boy.
===================
April 8, 1999
===================
(dundundundundunDUNdundunDUNdundundun...)
He's the guy who's super-hip
Weirder than an acid trip
Louder than your loudest speakers
Cooler than your velcro sneakers
Fighting villains with his mind
Always gets to work on time
Always knows just what the game is
Cooler than your socks! (his-name-is)
DAAAAAAAAANGER BOY!
(they-call-him)
DAAAAAAAAANGER BOY!
Powerless, he cannot fly
Freaky-styley super guy
Relying on his sense of luck
'cause he doesn't CARE! (they-call-him)
DAAAAAAAAANGER BOY!
(oh-yeah-he's)
DAAAAAAAAANGER BOY!
(you-know-he's)
DAAAAAAAAANGER BOY!
(hey-look-it's)
DAAAAAAAAANGER BOY!
(one-two-three)
DAAAAAAAAANGER BOY!
(be-just-like)
DAAAAAAAAANGER BOY!
(duh-duh-duh)
DAAAAAAAAANGER BOY!
Good morning, folks - thought I'd start this episode with a theme song.
:)
Life is pretty good. Just had an assignment that's WAY over my head
reassigned to Monday, so rather than spend the day scratching my head
and wondering what life would be like if I knew what I was doing, I get
to tie up the loose ends of the Impending Date of Doom stuff. This is a
good thing - I discovered yesterday that our fax machine is not
compliant. Yes, folks, check your stuff - some weird things are not
compliant. Anything that keeps a date is suspect, so fax machines,
phone switches, furnaces, gas meters, and quite possibly those glass
enclosed spinney-dial things on the outside of everyone's house. I'm
still not sure what they do - I've been told they're some kind of meter
for the amount of electricity used, but it strikes me that analogue
measurement of electricity can't be THAT accurate. Feh.
So I've been thinking about velcro.
Ok, enough of that.
There's nothing wrong with thinking about velcro.
Really.
Nevertheless - does anyone remember when velcro was invented? I'm
really not sure, myself - I remember having uber-cool velcro sneakers
when I was about 8 years old, so if we factor a few years for it to make
it to the mainstream market, then to childrens' footwear, then to New
Brunswick - probably at least three years for the latter.
It's scary to think of the differences between Calgary and New
Brunswick. Out here, we can buy products BEFORE we've even seen the
commercials! For example, I bought two boxes of "Marshmallow Shocked
Froot Loops" (Seen the commercial for these yet? Didn't think so!) the
last time we got groceries. These have two different flavors of
marshmallows; blue and white. Yes, I said flavors - "blue" officially
became a flavor in the mid 80's. We're not sure exactly when, but go to
the store and look in the drink cooler. I guarantee you'll see at least
five different brands of sports drink offering "blue" as a flavor.
Closer inspection will reveal that the flavor is actually "razberry" or
something similar - though anyone who thinks that razberries are blue
has some serious problems that they should work through with an
optometrist.
Nevertheless, that takes me away from velcro, and, more importantly,
the applications of velcro in the day-to-day life of a superhero.
Sounds like a great topic for a thesis. Those of you studying
engineering or abnormal human behaviorology, take notes.
I figure it'd be a great idea to get the Significant Other to sew me an
all-velcro suit, perhaps in full Danger Boy colors. It's not really a
superpower, but the ability to stick to velcro-covered buildings might
just come in handy some day. As a superhero, you must be prepared for
anything.
Velcro is a miracle fabric. I feel that without velcro, textile
technology never would have progressed past the zipper stage. I feel
that far too little respect is given to velcro, and that it's many
applications have been passed up in the name of fashion. When you think
about it - when was the last time you looked at something and thought
"Hey, that's a pretty great invention. I bet it could be really
improved through excessive use of velcro throughout!". Wasn't that long
ago, now, was it? Look in your kitchen for ideas, look through your
junk drawer, through your bathroom, and your closet.
Ok - this has officially become a quest. I want everyone to find FIVE
things in their house/apartment/cardboard box that would be improved
with excessive use of velcro.
Now - you are bound to run into someone while doing this. They will
question you as to what you're looking for. Look them straight in the
eyes and say...
"I have been sent on a mission by Danger Boy! I must find five objects
that would be improved through excessive use of velcro!"
Once you've found five objects, I want you all to email them to me at
dangerboy@riotnrrd.com. I will list the top twenty things tomorrow in
the musing. :)
Cheers,
- Danger Boy.
===================
April 9, 1999
===================
Good morning, folks.
Gah! A few minutes to myself - that's more than I expected today. As
it turns out, I don't have TWO difficult assignments for today. I have
three. Life is so wonderful that way.
To make matters worse, the third and largest assignment is at a
client's site, and can't actually even be STARTED until 5pm, when they
have booked time for their server to be down for a few hours. They're
losing money literally every second that the machine isn't online, so
this only adds to my nervousness.
Nevertheless.
Darren brought an interesting question to mind yesterday - he was
walking around with "Bounce" sheets in his pocket. The question has to
be asked - is it more cost-effective to use bounce sheets or cologne? A
standard-sized bottle of cologne costs roughly $80, and has probably 200
applications. Bounce sheets come in boxes of 30, and cost roughly $8
for a box. Doing the math, we realize that it's probably better to
spray cologne into your drier, thought I'm not entirely sure what that
will do for static cling.
"Hey Jim, you've got a sock stuck to your suitcoat!"
"Why thank you, Bob! At least it smells good..."
I don't think so.
The actual statement by the Significant Other was "Hey Darren, you have
Bounce in your pocket... or is that 'spring in your step'... I can never
remember...". We giggled. You should too.
I'm highly disappointed in all of you - I received only THREE replies
with uses for Velcro. I think that this is a worth exercise for you
all, so I'm going to leave it again for the weekend. I'd like to see a
LOT more replies (to dangerboy@riotnrrd.com) for uses of Velcro by
Monday - I'm planning on putting them up on the website as a "feature".
I'm going to try and put up a series of Musings-related pages in the
next little while - activities, etc for people that appreciate morning
diversions. Planned pages are:
The "how many cups until I overdose" interactive caffeine calculator
The Danger Boy Page o' Fun
Uses for Velcro
I'm open to any suggestions or volunteers for the pages - if you have a
page in mind that you'd like to do that has absolutely no social or
moral value whatsoever, let me know, I'll give free webspace - the
amount depending on exactly how useless and/or entertaining the sites
are. Hell, there's an SQL database on the server, active PHP3 modules
and mod_perl, so if anyone feels ambitious, the server is ready and
willing to support just about anything.
Nevertheless, enough blatant advertising.
Half of the office is hung over today, after a pool-and-beer mixer with
clients and sysadmins yesterday. From what I understand, it started at
2:30pm, and quite a few of them didn't stumble home until midnight. I,
of course, missed it all, feeling miserable and hungry after a day of
fighting with a CD burner that was turning out nothing better than drink
coasters all afternoon - which brings me to today's lesson.
Today's lesson in the quest to bring computer literacy to the masses is
entitled "Mastering Compact Discs for the Completely Inept". The course
materials needed are:
One Sony Recordable CD Drive (CDU948S SCSI-2)
Several laptops with different specifications, all with PCMCIA SCSI
cards
One box of 10 "Maxell" recordable CDs
A bottle of Valium
Two pieces of black licorice
Several hundred megabytes of mission-critical data
One child, age 7-9.
The object of our lesson today is to move all of the mission-critical
data on to a recordable CD for use by a client. This should be quick
and easy.
For the first step, you will need recording software. This will be fun
- allocate the next three hours to finding the software on the internet.
Failing this, allow the child access to the internet for 10 minutes.
Leave the room and eat a piece of licorice. Return - the software will
be installed and running, though your keyboard will be sticky and the
"M" key will have mysteriously disappeared.
We won't go into details about the software - you will probably never
burn more than one CD with any given piece of software anyway.
Carefully place a recordable disc into the recordable drive - DO NOT
TOUCH THE BOTTOM OF THE DISC! You did, didn't you. Either you touched
it, or felt that the child, having installed the software, was somehow
capable of the simple act of placing a CD into a drive. Throw away the
now-fingerprinted and useless media.
GRASPING IT GENTLY BY THE EDGES, place a new CD into the drive. Close
the drive by pressing the little button - don't push on the CD tray to
close it. After "using the tray as a coffee-cup holder" and "assuming
children will be gentle with it", pushing the drive tray closed is the
top breaker of CD-ROM and CD-Recordable drives.
Somewhere, hidden in the software, is a button marked "Record". This
may be a large button marked "REC", with raytraced, beveled edges and
three green arrows marked "CLICK HERE TO START RECORDING" pointing to
it, or it may be hidden under the "File" menu, under a submenu called
"Operations", under a menu item marked "Applications", in the second tab
from the left (labeled, obviously, "Excretia"), with a red button marked
"Destroy Media". Both of these examples, of course, are software that
*I* have used. Yours will be completely different. You should probably
read the manual.
On reading the manual, you will find that the software was either a.)
written by a 7-9 year old child, in which case you should ask the child
present for help, or b.) was written in the early '90s by an underpaid
software engineer in Tokyo, and the documentation translated to English
by a highly trained chimpanzee named Lawrence.
Take a Valium. You need it by now.
Now, there will be some form of "file select" icon or window or menu
item. Select it, and spend the next hour or so trying to track down the
data you'd like to record to CD. Panic, take three more valium, and
immediately discover that it's been right in front of you all along.
Select it and press the "record" feature (see above).
Eat the other piece of licorice. Smile at the child with your newly
blackened teeth. This will make the child remember that you are in full
control of the situation, or that you are the spawn of Satan, either of
which will have the desired effect of calming and quieting the child.
Over the next three hours, you will probably cause at least 6 CDs to
render themselves useless. These make attractive drink coasters for
your next wine and cheese party.
Eventually, you will have to use the washroom, the mild overdose on
Valium having a laxative effect. On return, you will see some sort of
window on the screen telling you that the burn was successful, or,
depending on the origins of the software, that your goat has orange
pretty sunshine. Thank the child - this is their work.
There. Now you know how to burn CDs.
I have work to do. The Venerable Muse and Resident Superhero will
return on Monday with more ramblings - and I WANT MORE USES FOR VELCRO!
:)
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 12, 1999
===================
Good morning, everyone.
Just to let you know in advance, today's rants are brought to you
courtesy of the Second Cup, Inc.'s raisin tea biscuits. If it wasn't
for this biscuit, my stomach would most likely be turning and seething
in that way that it does when the only food you've put into it in the
past 15 hours was New York Fries and a theater gallon-sized watered-down
pepsi.
Speaking of theater pop; I have a complaint to tender. We went to see
"The Matrix" again last night - the second viewing for most of our
group, the first time for a few. We went to the new - shoot, I'm not
very good with this part. Is it Paramount that owns the new "Coliseum"
theaters? Nevertheless, we went to the theater with New York Fries and
McDonalds and coffee shops and stadium seating and very, very big
speakers. None of this is worth complaining about. As a matter of
fact, it would be difficult to find anything to complain about.
No, my complaint stems from the gallon or so of Pepsi that I consumed
in the first half of the movie - and that is EXACTLY my complaint. Is
it really so necessary to have a large straw in your drink, so that you
drink it more quickly? Do the vendors REALLY make that much money from
people leaving the theater in the middle of the movie to get more liquid
replenishment? What if the movie is really great, and I have no will to
leave it to drink more, or, more pressingly, to go to the washroom? The
latter is the real stem of my problem.
But no, I sat through the whole thing. I squirmed and twisted, and
thought about other things, and sat up, and sat back, and crossed my
legs, and tried to get lost in the movie, and so on. I made it through
the whole flick, but most of you will probably guess where my first stop
was on leaving the theater, so I won't have to expand on this subject in
a family-oriented Musing.
My issue with all this is the sheer SIMPLICITY with which they could
put an end to this problem. All that is needed is a dispenser of
smaller straws, and perhaps some signs and publicity as to WHY they have
smaller straws.
When I actually BOUGHT the drink, I was thoroughly impressed with the
young man (with the pre-puberty child voice, natch) who actually asked
me if I'd like ICE in my drink. This is something McDonalds could learn
from - I'd personally like SOME ice in my drink, but not FULL of ice.
You'd think they would take some initiative and buy smaller straws.
Just think of the advantages of smaller straws in a theater! A drink
would last through the entire movie, and as a result of not quaffing
copious quantities of cola, the whole washroom thing (I'm sticking to my
guns. I refuse to say anything more about the washroom in this Musing.)
would be avoided, and hence the movie would be more enjoyable by all.
Nobody listens to my ideas. Perhaps I'm overreacting, but I think this
may be a job for Danger Boy.
Yes, I foresee an upcoming mission for Danger Boy and his Significant
Other, Salesgrrl. We will make our way, in full superhero regalia, to
the theater, boxes and boxes of thin straws in hand, and replace the
straws with our new superstraws! The world will hoist us up on their
shoulders and carry us triumphantly to the front of the theater, where
they will drop us unceremoniously on our butts and say "Don't come here
ever again!".
Ok, maybe just the management and ushers will do that.
Nevertheless, I'm out of coffee again. Recaffeinating.
*sluuurp*. Better.
So I didn't manage to find the time needed to get my DynDNS server
working this weekend. For the comp.sci.illiterati, dynamic DNS is - oh,
forget it. Suffice to say it's pretty darned cool and you should all
say "Shoot, Drew didn't have time to get it working.". I'll have to do
it this coming weekend. I did, however, manage to get my security
upgraded a bit - I had a hacker attempt to break in on Friday night.
This was just fun - my security system automatically shut him down and
sent me mail about it. When I awoke Saturday, I got the mail, and we
all started to investigate - I traced him back to his computer, and
noticed that - lo and behold! - he's running an FTP server. For those
of you that aren't hip to this cool new bit of 'net jargon, FTP stands
for File Transfer Protocol, and basically means that you're offering
files for the world to grab if they'd like.
This young high school student that tried to hack me had left a LOT of
information in his FTP site - up to and including pictures of him and
his friends, some of his creative writing, a decent collection of
pornography, and even a scan of his high school ID. We're still
deciding just how to go about approaching him about this.
It would seem that he's a friend of a friend - I will probably meet him
face to face eventually. I'm holding on to all this information in the
hopes that when we do meet, I can actually cause him to vacate his
bowels by spouting it all back at him. :)
Nevertheless, I must actually do some work, so I leave you with a
mental picture for the day: have you ever considered what would happen
to a slinky on an elevator?
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 13, 1999
===================
This is a test of the emergency broadcasting system. Your call is
important to us; please stay on the line and a customer service operator
will take your call in the order that it was received. The quick brown fox
jumped over the lazy dog. Eat at Joe's.
I'm writing this today on a different computer than usual - I'm testing
the keyboard for speed and ease-of-use. This time it's a Windows NT 4
machine - I've already crashed it once this morning. I'm not happy with the
idea of having to muse on this wannabe, but it'll have to do.
"But why, Drew?" you say plaintively. "Why do you have to use NT?
Doesn't that cause you physical pain to even look at it?"
Why yes. Yes it does. But that's not avoidable right now, as I have
(yet again) broken my link to the net. My wonderful little Linux ThinkPad
went bye-bye yesterday - though if I don't sound overly worried, there is a
reason. It's just down for the time being - somehow, being a Monday, the
Cosmic Forces That Rule All That Which Is Electronic decided to play with
me. The power supply, being a wee box with a long wire, that which causes
the laptop to recharge, decided to break. The long wire had frayed on the
inside - to make a long story shorter, I ended up trying desperately to
figure out which data was most crucial to my day's work, and ended up
grabbing about two-thirds of it before the batteries finally died.
So now, my only link to the net at home is my green-on-black dumb
terminal, circa 1981. It's rather awful, since the machine you plug a dumb
terminal into has to know exactly how that particular dumb terminal thinks,
and since it's so particularly old and obscure, my Linux machines know only
somewhat how to talk to it. I can type on it, but not use the arrow keys,
or the function keys, or the number pad, or...
Needless to say, it's been a bad week so far.
*sluuuuurp*.
At least the keyboard on this is decent - an IBM model 101 "Clacky".
Completely indestructible, with marvelous feedback - it makes an
excruciatingly loud "CLACK!" every time you hit a key. No fun to try to
sleep through when your roommate is typing, but wonderful fun to type on
yourself.
"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party". You
see? Wasn't that fun to type? Ok - you can't really tell how much fun the
creation was by looking at the finished product - which spawns all KINDS of
rants. Is the joy of creating the actual act of creation, or the finished
product? I tend to lean towards it being the time taken to create - the
finished product is kind of a certificate of authenticity, a "Yes, I
created" badge or trophy. Of course, this is completely up for
interpretation - I think it completely depends on that which you are
creating. Is the joy of having a child the fact that you've created a
child, or the sex? (and subsequent carrying of the wee bairn for nine
months)
I'm liking that word today - "wee". I think it needs to be used more in
common day-to-day life.
(No, really - I'm not going to say anything more than that about "wee".
It's such a small word - hardly worth the effort.)
Oh - I need to print a retraction from yesterday. In the end of the
musing, I said "Imagine a slinky on an elevator". This puzzled the hell out
of a friend of mine, who was staring at the elevator trying to imagine a
slinky on it when I came home yesterday. This SHOULD have read "Imagine a
slinky on an ESCALATOR". This slipped right by both me and my spell
checker. Fortunately, I don't have a nonsense-detector - it'd pretty much
be useless in the rants anyway.
Nevertheless, phone calls to make. Off I go.
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 14, 1999
===================
Good morning, everyone.
*sluurp*.
Ok - I have to apologize - it was pointed out to me by my lawyer (whom I
refer to as "Dad") that I mislabeled yesterday's musing as "v1.1.5", when,
in reality, that was the version number for the previous day's musing. I
sincerely apologize for any confusion this may have caused.
To be perfectly honest, I don't think any of you should have had any
trouble whatsoever - realistically, if you can count, you can keep track of
the version numbers, and if you've had any computer experience whatsoever
(past the "on" switch), you know how to use version numbers.
Feh.
Nevertheless - I got my new computer yesterday. It's a massive, old
AS/400 - valued at just over $275,000 in 1990. It weighs in at a whopping
299lbs, and makes an absolutely lovely end-table in my apartment. I still
have yet to get it to boot -- well, that's not really true. It boots, I
just can't see what it's doing, as I have no monitor or terminal that will
attach to this beast. I have to find a dumb terminal with a twinax
connector - for those of you to whom "twinax" is a new term; twinax is
basically coax with TWO wires in the center, and huge, ugly steel
connectors. For those of you who don't know what "coax" is - forget it,
it'd bore you anyway.
I'm really not sure what to do with this machine yet. *IF* I can get it
to boot, what then? It runs an operating system called OS/400, which is
useful for databases and not much else, and it's about the speed of a 286.
It was free, what can I say? It really *is* lovely furniture.
It was particularly hellish to get this machine home. My roommate came
and picked me up, fortunately, and the two of us wrestled it into the back
seat of his car. I brought along a small trolley with which to get the
machine into the apartment, and had to return that to the office this
morning on the C-Train. I love the C-Train. Really.
I've named the new system "Gollum". This is particularly fitting, as it
is old, ugly, has a magical "token ring" (*groan*), and getting it to work
is a serious riddle. If anyone doesn't understand the reference, that's too
bad.
Wow, I'm particularly cynical this morning! I'll try to tone that down
a bit, and help the comp.sys.illiterati with another installment of
"Computing for the Completely Inept". Our topic today will be "Computer
Viruses".
For this exercise, you will need the following:
Two small children (a "test group")
One small vial of the "Ebola" virus
A surgical "clean room" with HEPA-4 filtration system
Virology drysuit with internal rebreather
Two rhesus monkeys (a "control group")
Two syringes
Ok - my lawyer also told me that he hadn't noticed any slips into bad
taste in the past few musings, so I'll try to keep it that way. Perhaps
we'll skip the computer lesson and go straight into...
DAAAAANGER BOY!
VOICEOVER: Yes, kids, it's time for another exciting episode of the
enigmatic escapades of DANGER BOY (and his encampment of entertainment
engineers and their escrows).
(cue DANGER BOY theme song [see Musings Over Coffee v1.1.3])
VOICEOVER: In the last episode, DANGER BOY was left sitting in front of
the Paramount Theater with SALESGRRL, after a failed attempt to replace the
evil OVERSIZE STRAWS with SUPER NEW SLIM STRAWS! We join our hero now, as
he and SALESGRRL plot their next heroic act!
Camera pans down from Paramount sign to DANGER BOY and SALESGRRL,
sitting on the curb, looking minorly dejected. DANGER BOY looks at
SALESGRRL and shrugs. SALESGRRL shrugs back.
SALESGRRL: Coffee?
DANGER BOY and SALESGRRL stand and walk towards the Starbucks attached
to the nearby Chapters. The camera pans away, to a nearby corner, where a
sinister figure with a square torso peeks around the corner, then slinks
away. Camera flips to DANGER BOY and SALESGRRL, sitting in Starbucks,
enjoying a hot cup of coffee.
SALESGRRL: (heroically) So what shall be our next heroic act, Danger
Boy?
DANGER BOY: (heroically) I've just the thing, Salesgrrl!
SALESGRRL looks lovingly at DANGER BOY, and heroic music begins to
build. Suddenly, from behind the counter jumps MINIWHEAT, the good/evil
breakfast food!
SALESGRRL: (happily) Look, Danger Boy! It's our friend Miniwheat!
DANGER BOY: Watch out, Salesgrrl! He's showing his evil nutritious
side!
MINIWHEAT: (evil laugh) That's right, Danger Boy! And I'm here to rid
the world of the Caffeinated Couple* for all time!
VOICEOVER: Welcome to the HALFTIME SHOW!
DANGER BOY, SALESGRRL and MINIWHEAT retreat to opposite sides of the
room, where their shoulders are massaged by patrons of Starbucks and
Chapters, respectively. Each are handed a Cafe Latte with a straw, and a
towel draped around their necks.
VOICEOVER: And now, the HALFTIME REPORT, with our hosts, TIM and STEVE!
TIM: (announcer voice) Thank you, disembodied voiceover - we've really
seen nothing yet to suggest that this will be anything less than an epic
struggle between the forces of good and evil. Words have been exchanged,
and the general feeling of the crowd suggests that this match will be
nothing less than a clash of titans. Steve?
STEVE: (announcer voice) Thanks, Tim. Well, we've seen these two
battle it out in the past, and it would seem that Danger Boy definitely has
the upper hand here, with SALESGRRL in the ring. Though none of the
superheroes involved actually have anything resembling super-POWERS, we
still have a fight to look forward to. Tim?
TIM: That's right, Steve - past battles could be a factor in this. We
know that Danger Boy injured his shin recently while walking out of his
kitchen, so this could put a strain on his usual "kick them in the shins and
run away" tactics, which he used in his last battle with Miniwheat's evil
side. It's possible that Miniwheat could even have chosen this moment to
attack BECAUSE of this advantage. Steve?
STEVE: You're right, Tim, this could well be the result of a Miniwheat
holding a grudge against Danger Boy. And we're out of time - thanks for
watching "HALFTIME REPORT". I'm Steve...
TIM: And I'm Tim...
STEVE: ...and we'll see you after the game.
VOICEOVER: And now back to the fight.
DANGER BOY and SALESGRRL stand, looking at MINIWHEAT, who somehow looks
different. SALESGRRL grabs a coffee flavoring bottle by the neck and
smashes the bottom out, and advances on MINIWHEAT, snarling.
DANGER BOY: Wait, Salesgrrl!
SALESGRRL: What is it, Danger Boy?
DANGER BOY: Look at him!
SALESGRRL looks at MINIWHEAT, and realizes that it's his fun, frosted
side facing out now, smiling. They all smile and sit at the table again.
SALESGRRL apologizes to the Starbucks employees and pays for the bottle of
flavoring.
VOICEOVER: And that ends another semi-exciting episode in the
ADVENTURES OF DANGER BOY!!
(cue ending theme music)
(* - "Dynamic Duo" was already taken by Batman and Robin. In the interests
of not infringing on copyright laws, we will make up our own. Taken in this
context, however, doesn't it make you wonder just what Batman and Robin were
up to in the Batcave between episodes?)
Feh.
Nevertheless, I should do some work, so I'll leave you until tomorrow
morning.
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 15, 1999
===================
Good morning, folks.
Gah. I'm doing poorly this morning. I'm only on my second cup of the
day, and it's already 10:00am. I'm nonplussed. I really should start
earlier, get up at 6am and brew myself a pot. See, I'd tell you right now
that I'm going to do that tomorrow, but I'd be kidding myself - there's no
way in hell I'm getting up at 6am if I don't have to.
Work wants me to come and watch an installation of some massive database
and backup engines on a cluster of shiny new Sun machines for an oil
company. The catch - it's from 9am 'till 6pm on Saturday - the only day in
the past three weeks that I've had where it's possible for me to get some
actual life-type-stuff done. I have to go to Ikea, buy a bookshelf, pick up
some new computer parts, shore up my firewall, build the mainpage for
riotnrrd.com so that it doesn't look like it was thrown together by a
15-year-old with Frontpage, etc, etc. *sigh* - anything involving shopping
is pretty much out though. No fun.
So I'm pretty impressed with the amount of people on this list now!
There's just over 90 people signed up and receiving the Musings every day -
pretty good growth for a list that started with under 10 people. I think
it's time to start slipping subliminal messages into the Musings; there's a
lot to be said for the blatant and evil manipulation of unsuspecting email
readers.
Could we call subliminal messages in email a virus? If so, what does
that mean to the US Government? How strong is a subliminal message? If I
encrypt it, but put the subliminal messages into the actual encryption
algorhythm, does that make me a terrorist if I send it to someone outside
of Canada or the United States? I find that more than a little bit
ridiculous - limitations on the exportation of software.
For those of you that aren't aware of this kind of facism in the
government, here's the scoop: encryption is a technique in which an email
(or any data, natch) can be encoded into a stream of miscellaneous garbage,
so that it's unreadable by anyone except someone with a key to transform the
data back into readable text. Today, we'll discuss exactly how this works -
no children will be used/harmed in this demonstration - they just don't have
the mental capacity or attention span to work with this.
No - this exercise won't even require you to move from your chair.
We'll just discuss the ideas behind encryption and how it works.
Imagine you've got a friend who's completely paranoid about EVERYTHING.
The government is going through his/her garbage, a robotic mosquito took a
sample of his/her DNA and introduced a serial-number carrying enzyme
into his/her body last summer, Elvis Presley and the Abominable Snowman are
conspiring to exploit away his/her ideas for a perfect society - you know
who I'm talking about. You want to send them a secret message detailing
exactly how to thwart Elvis' insidious plans. How do you do this without
the CIA (or CSIS, if you're Canadian) reading the mail and changing it from
"You're going to be killed tonight at 2:45 am by a man in a black suit" to
read "I had a lovely vacation in Oaxaca, wish you could have come along"?
Encryption!
Your friend has a secret method of encoding the message.
Ok, I've changed my mind. Go get two children.
First off - you remember the old codes we had to use in grade 6 to pass
messages? Computers are really great at these - A=1, B=2, C=3, D=4, etc -
something to that extent, so that "YMEF UF P ERXO" becomes "THIS IS A
TEST" - just create a code that says "A=14, B=23, C=12..." etc.
Instruct the first child in the basics of mathematics - give him or her
an equation; say, "x+3". Don't actually give them the answer - just the
question x+3. The child, if given an electronic calculator, will figure
this out on his or her own. This will be your friend's "Public Key".
Give the OTHER child another equation; say, "x-3". This will be your
friend's "Private Key".
In the land of computers, a public key and private key are massive
equations, sometimes 1024 instructions long. A "Public Key" is used to
encrypt data, which subsequently can't be decrypted by (theoretically)
anyone without the "Private Key".
Encode a message, say "The Penguin will strike at midnight!" - turn it
into code using the "x+3" code. "A" is 1, "B" is 2, etc - after encoding
it, "A" is 4, "B" is 5, and so on. Your message will now read "Wkh Shojxlo
zloo vwunh dw plgqljkw!". Write this down and give it to the child.
Now, to actually convince the child that they are doing something
important, send them on a mission to find and deliver this message to the
other child, whom you have situated conveniently on the other side of a
football field filled with bullies. This will also simulate the path of an
email through numerous different servers before reaching the destination, at
any of which a hacker, or bully in this case, could read the message.
When the child arrives, they will give the other child a tattered,
blood-stained piece of paper - but since the bullies couldn't read it, they
assumed that it wasn't important.
Have the other child give your friend the message, and the second code -
your friend won't necessarily understand the procedure and may come directly
to you to ask what the hell you're doing sending him or her this meaningless
tripe. Ignore this fact, as it isn't part of the exercise. Explain to them
how to decrypt the message, and send them to the other side of the football
field again. They will struggle and finally understand the message.
This is how Public Key / Private Key encryption works - on a very
simplistic level. Your friend will probably want to reply to you with
another message, sending the other child into the waiting hooligans, but
since he doesn't have your Public Key, he can't send you anything encrypted!
The bullies will be able to read it just fine.
Nevertheless, I should do some work now.
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 16, 1999
===================
Good morning, everyone.
Ok, so it's late morning. I'm at home today, sitting in my living
room, typing on my (now fixed! Yay!) laptop. When I expressed to the
Office Powers That Be that I had a lot of errands to run on Saturday,
they replied "This is pretty important stuff for you to learn. Take
Friday off and come in on Saturday.". This worked just fine for me, so
I'm typing up a quick Musing before heading out to Ikea etc.
Last night was great - we all went to a place that supposedly had "All
you can eat" sushi for roughly $15/person. As it happened, it DID have
"all you can eat", but only from 11:30am through 'till 2pm - lunchtime
sushi feast? The fact that we arrived there at roughly 8:30pm hindered
our "all you can eat" pricing, but we were dead set on dead fish, so we
stayed.
All of the superheroes were there! Danger Boy, Salesgrrl, Nature Boy,
Miniwheat, Sarcasmo, Slacker Chick, and Cafe Chick - nobody really
exercised any particularly interesting powers, except for a brief
problem with Miniwheat showing his evil nutritious side for a moment,
and eating a large spoonful of wasabi.
Has everyone on this list tried sushi? If not, I really encourage you
all to go and try it - there's this wonderful garnish called "wasabi",
that comes as a bright green paste. Try loading up a piece of sushi to
the hilt with wasabi; it's a mild spice, so don't put more than the size
of your thumb on there, but it's very tasty.
I just got a phone call from Miniwheat - he's going to leave his day
job and join me for lunch in a few minutes. I'm not sure as of yet just
what we'll do or where we'll go, but it should be interesting,
nonetheless.
Well - being as it's a day off and I don't feel like musing at length -
I'll give you all the top five of the numerous email that came in with
uses for that all-powerful textile -- VELCRO!
These come from a variety of individuals, so here goes nothing.
(dun-dun-DUN-dun-DUN-dun-DUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUN)
5. The Refrigerator- Beer(tm) tastes better when it's been hung
upsidedown.
(Have YOU ever tried it? Then don't argue!) Plus it would free up space
for
more beer(tm)! - Jeff Keating (jkeating@nbnet.nb.ca)
4. Velcro wallpaper: Removeable wallpaper would lend itself to lots of
quick and easy redecorating fun. - Erin Caton (faery@riotnrrd.com)
3. All your girlfriends clothing so you can stick em on the ceiling to
enforce
nudity. - Ivan Dahlberg (aka SARCASMO) (flospiel@riotnrrd.com)
2. All your clothing to keep things interesting too...lmao
- Ivan Dahlberg (aka SARCASMO) (flospiel@riotnrrd.com)
1. Smokes Holder - Then I could put a strip of Velcro on the smokes and
on my shirt and never have to worry about losing them and I'll look kewl
like all the people who tuck smokes under their short sleve shirts :)
- Alan Milner (aka MINIWHEAT) (alan.milner@husky-oil.com)
And of course - one suggestion that tugged at my heartstrings and
brought a tiny tear to the side of my eye (interesting story there - the
last time I cried out the front of my eyes, I swore that I'd never do it
again. That was the last front tear. :).
0. Your mini Dangerboy action toys to toss at your Dangerboy wall o' fun
- Ivan Dahlberg (aka SARCASMO) (flospiel@riotnrrd.com)
Sarcasmo is so cool. :)
Anyhoo - I need some lunch now, so I'll be off. See you all again on
Monday.
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 19, 1999
===================
Good morning, folks.
Gah.
I think I'm tired because of Saturday night, but I can't be 100% sure
of that fact. I'm quite sure that this is actually the cause of my
rather sore eyes - they hurt on waking, and have continued to hurt right
up until the current. It doesn't help them to stare at an LCD panel,
but we do what we must.
So it was an interesting weekend, nevertheless. Friday I didn't work,
and ran around doing errands all day - well, all day being from noon
onward. I don't waste days off by jumping out of bed before necessary -
I stay in my bed until driven from it by basic instincts of self
-preservation, or at the very least, cleanliness.
I did get a chance to get to get to the Roland store and purchase my
new keyboard rack, though - this is a good thing. My
bedroom-slash-studio is starting to look like a flea market; there's a
definite need to get all the keyboards off the floor. I purchased a
five-foot-tall A-frame rack of anodized aluminum tubing - it'll hold ALL
my gear!
Oh - sorry. MUSIC keyboards, folks. Not computer keyboards. Those
are all in the living room.
*sluuurp*.
Saturday night, we all went to a rave called -- shoot, I honestly don't
remember what it was called. I think it was "Primary", but I can't be
entirely sure about that, so we'll call it "Primary" and hope that we
don't offend anyone. Great party, nevertheless - great location, not
too packed, and a really good attitude was upheld by all, with the
exception of the nazi-esque security. There's a new addition to the
list of superheroes; "Bitter Mimic" - don't ask. She was outside for a
moment, then when she came back in she was waved through by one guard,
then the other guard grabbed her and asked why she was trying to slip
by. She has bruises to show for this. Fascists.
*sigh*. I don't know what this week holds.
I think I'm scheduled to follow one of the guys here around an oil
company, installing the tape library that I watched them configure all
Saturday, but I'm not entirely sure. It should make for an interesting
time, nonetheless.
Gah! Looks like that's actually the case - I've just been told that
we're leaving to install it now. End of the musing for today, kids,
I've got work to do. I'll try to make it longer tomorrow.
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 20, 1999
===================
Good morning, everyone.
Gah! I'm SO tired. I didn't get to sleep until close to 1am last
night, even though I started trying to go to bed sometime around 10:30.
This wasn't by choice, but it's far too late to do anything about it
now. I'm following one of my coworkers around today, again, and for the
rest of the week, installing a backup system for an oil company, and
it's incredibly wearing on the brain. I'll have to take a nap before
people come for coffee tonight.
Last night was the Bitter Mimic's (insert theme song [or lack thereof]
here. Note to self: write her a theme song.) third birthday party -
her birthday was officially Sunday, so we celebrated on Saturday night,
Sunday night, and now Monday night. Last night's was the best of the
three, with everyone gathering for drinks in the apartment - nothing too
specific, but fun nonetheless.
I'm so not looking forward to actually working today! Gah! I'll have
to cut this musing a little short, as I have to be at the client site in
20 minutes. I can spew for another 10 minutes though, and I can think
of nothing more nonproductive to do with my time.
Ok, I'd like to share an epiphany I've had on the frightening new trend
of "cheap" tupperware. Have you all seen this stuff? Exceedingly thin
plastic tupperware, made by Ziploc, or Glad, or Tupperware themselves -
I'm not thoroughly impressed with the stuff.
Ok - my lack of impression is not what many people would call
epiphanic.
"Holy toledo! What a breakthrough! Wow, what a thought I just had!"
No. Lack of impression just doesn't fit into the "epiphany" class of
thought patterns. I digress though, and now return you to your
regularly scheduled musing.
My epiphany was this: when did we get back to this point? Disposable
plastic containers? Didn't we just LEAVE this fad? The whole hippie
greenpeace movement scared us away from jauntily disposing of cheap and
readily available plastic containers, by inundating us with pictures of
baby seals, and pelicans trapped in six-pack rings, and old ladies that
swallow dogs (to catch the frog to catch the spider [that wiggled and
jiggled and giggled inside her], to catch the fly. I guess she'll
die.).
When did all of that go out of style? Why are we suddenly back to that
which we shunned in the 80's and early 90's, but with a new marketing
spin and fresh new image? I don't care if the new dishes are recyclable
-- how many of you actually recycle everything that has those three
arrows pointing in a triangle imprinted on the bottom?
No, the recycling center is at least 10 blocks away, and I'll be damned
if I'm going to carry a bag of garbage and extra 10 blocks just to make
the world a better place. I'm only going to be using it for another 30
years or so anyway; I'll opt for the garbage chute just outside our
apartment door.
Feh.
I want a pet lemming.
Have all of you played the game "Lemmings"? Marvelous program from the
early 90's, everyone and their dog had a copy of the little
blue-and-green morons who marched stolidly to their deaths.
Realistically, nothing like the real thing -- think of large,
hamster-colored hamsters (strange, that.) running maniacally around in
large crowds - a herd of lemmings. Is there really anything more
dangerous? Psychologically, a herd of 300+ lemmings throwing themselves
off a cliff into the waiting depths of the ocean below -- it can't do
much for the mental stability of onlookers. I wonder how many people
have actually witnessed this spectacle and lived to tell the tale? How
many were so incredibly depressed at the tragic fate of the lemmings
that they threw themselves into the ocean after the tiny creatures?
I wonder how good of a pet a lemming would be. Without the herd
mentality, would it be quite so suicidal? I don't really have any
cliffs around the apartment; could I look forward to watching it jump
off the couch every few weeks?
Nevertheless, I must go to the client site and do some work.
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 21, 1999
===================
Gah.
Ok, it's 48 hours late, but here's v1.2.2.
Allow me to explain my situation.
Yesterday was probably one of the worst days of my life. I was tired,
had a headache, and the day just went ON and ON - I literally didn't have
a second to myself from 7am until roughly 7pm, then we went rock climbing.
Work was exceptionally trying yesterday - nothing really interesting
happened, so it wasn't necessarily BAD, it just wasn't GOOD. I ended up
trying to stay awake for a longer period than I felt was necessary - I was
SO tired in the afternoon, but I made it 'till the end, and then went home
- I rebooted my router, and somehow a change in the server that I'd made a
month ago (the system had actually been up for just over two months)
decided to puke all over my routing tables.
This probably makes no real sense to many of you. I can understand
that. I felt pretty bored writing it too. Nevertheless, it's late, but
it's a musing.
So, rather than bore you all further with a play-by-play of what
happened to Drew the Hired Geek for the day, I'll let you in on a day in
the life of DANGER BOY!
(music swells, a dark afternoon comes to view and the scene fades to a
second-floor office in an old building. No lights are on, and a fog can
be seen outdoors.)
So I'm eating my Froot Loops and contemplating superheroic things when
this chick walks into my office in the Superhero Towers. Some blonde
chick, or so it seemed - then she turned. Her hair was dyed in the front,
and I thought it looked kinda cool, kinda like Cousin It had dipped his
head into bleach, and somehow grown a face. I was amused; she got my full
attention - or at least the full attention of the part of my brain that
wasn't absorbed in my Froot Loops.
"I've got a job for you", she murmured, and slunk across the floor.
"I'm kinda busy..." I replied. I studied my Froot Loops thoughtfully.
"Though I could be swayed if the price is right..."
"I don't think you'll have any arguements with my payment plan", she
said. I looked over at her - she had a CURLING IRON, plugged in, and
dangling precariously over my tank of rare and extremely expensive
invisible Malayan ghost fish! I blanched - this wasn't how the first of a
superhero's day was supposed to happen!
I played it cool - it's always best for a superhero to play it cool
when faced with a threatening nemesis; it bugs the hell out of them.
"So what's the job?" I casually tossed my Froot Loops out the
conveniently-situated open window behind me, kicked my legs up onto the
desk, settled back into my armchair and gave her my full attention.
"You have to deliver these to my client - they need the protection,
and UPS won't come within 10 yards of them." She fumbled the curling iron
into another hand and pulled a package out of her pocket - a brown legal
envelope, thick with unknown contents. "Do NOT open this, they're
extremely dangerous." She pulled out another handful of items - a
cigarette holder, a cigarette, and a beret. She twisted the smoke into
it's holder, and lit it, blatantly disregarding my "No Smoking!" sign on
my desk, and pulled the beret onto her head. ALL nemesises have berets;
it's one of the first ways you learn to identify them. Danger Boy didn't
sleep through his Superhero Preparatory School classes! I knew instantly
that I was in the same room as my arch-nemesis, SALESGRRL!
(Some of you might note that historically, Salesgrrl has NOT been the
nemesis of Danger Boy, but possibly even a co-hero or sidekick. In
episode 1, we saw them fight side-by-side against the formidable opponent
Miniwheat! This is a story inconsistancy, and, like Danger Boy himself,
is best ignored.)
I was in a bind, but my superhero instincts kicked in. I calmly
walked over to her and took the package from her. I jumped back suddenly
and kicked my superhero chair over in front of her, and tore open the
package, strewing a leaf of strangely metallic paper all over the room.
"You fool!" she cried. "You've just released the full, awesome power
of a wave of transformable robots! I watched in shock as the papers
folded themselves into a small army of vicious man-killing cyborgs!
I remember watching a serial show as a young child, in which the hero
constantly found himself in a situation at the end of each show where it
seemed that there was no escape. One episode, the hero was bound and
gagged, handcuffed to the steering wheel of a speeding car, about to
careen off a 100-foot cliff into the tumultuous ocean below. In this
particular episode, there seemed to be absolutely NO escape. I anxiously
awaited the next episode to find out how he escaped from the car, as the
previous episode ended exactly as the car careened off the cliff. In the
next episode, it showed the car hit rocks far below and explode - and the
hero's hand suddenly showed up climbing over the cliff. It never really
explained how the hero escaped this seemingly inescapable situation.
As I walked away from the destruction I'd wrought of the masses of
killer robots, I thought about how I'd felt ripped off by that show, and
dismissed it as bad writing.
Nevertheless, I must get myself to work.
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 22, 1999
===================
Well, good morning, I guess.
This is the musing for the day that I missed, being yesterday, or
"Thursday" for those of you joining us late.
As it happened, I had one of the worst days of the year to date on
Wednesday, and didn't end up with a conscious minute to myself. I say
conscious in that by the time I had some free time with which to muse at
you all, I ended up falling asleep instead. Apologies, but it was
necessary, as I had a nasty headache.
The headache didn't fade with sleep, and I woke the next morning
to the sound of a small band of marauding wildebeests having some sort of
sing-along in my cranium. Not a pleasant feeling, and with a trip to the
bathroom to see if I looked as bad as I felt (which, incidentally, I did),
I made the decision to forfeit work for the day.
Nevertheless, it is now Friday, and I'm catching up on the
back-musings that I should have been writing while sicker than a dead dog.
Probably there are those among you who won't check their mail until Monday
morning, in which case, I bid you a good Monday.
I've been considering the possibilities of caffeine as a
condiment. Is it possible to dilute pure caffeine with sugar or something
similar, to create a powder or grain that can be sprinkled liberally on
any boring food, to provide both taste and awakenness? Imagine caffeine
as sprinkles on your morning doughnut? Or as steak sauce? Caffeinated
ketchup?
Mmmm. Caffeinated flavored body massage oils. I'll just stop
right there.
Nevertheless, it's Friday afternoon, and this is the musings of
Thursday, so I'll try to put into words the thought-pictures and random
cruft that was dribbling through my head at this time yesterday.
*moan* - my head hurts! Poor, pitiful little insignificant worm that I
am, what did I do to anger the Powers That Be? Why me?
Ok - yesterday was probably not worthy of a musing, so I'll stick
to today. I feel much better, and have had both food AND sufficient
caffeine to make my conscious mind capable of typing my subconscious.
I have one of those headsets with one headphone and a microphone
on a little bendy boom-thing on my desk. I'm not entirely sure how I
appropriated it, but it's here, and since possession is 9/10 of the law
(this should be interesting, my lawyer reads these musings, and I expect
an email telling me exactly what percentage of the law "possession" is.
Last I looked, "possession" was punishable with a large fine and possible
jail time.) I consider it mine.
It's got two jacks on the end; one would assume that one jack is
for the headphone, and one for the microphone. It doesn't label them in
any way - however, they are easily distinguishable, as the manufacturer
politely color-coded them. Unfortunately, without the benefit of a label,
or pictogram, or hieroglyphic of some type, there's no way of knowing if
the black one is the microphone and the ungodly-shade-of-florescent-green
on is the headphone, or vice-versa. This, in my opinion, is bad design,
and should be punished by forcing the manufacturers in question to
implement a call center with a 1-800 number, force the designers to work
in this call center, and post the number in the same retina-damaging shade
of green on the side of the packaging, under the words "ANY QUESTIONS?
CALL TOLL-FREE!".
On closer examination, it seems the painfully-colored plug does,
in fact, have a raised image that, if you squint, could possibly be a
microphone. I must have missed it, what with wearing sunglasses and all
just to LOOK at the plug. Gah.
Nevertheless.
It's FRIDAY! I like Fridays; the day in which all the happy
office-workers loosen their respective ties, kick off their heels, and
tell middle-management to go someplace warm. (Note: The previous sentence
contained two gender-specific actions; however, in the interests of
equal-opportunity Musings, no discrimination will be made to either sex.)
We'll probably all be meeting at the Penguin, as usual - those of
you's in the Calgary area, feel free to meet with us for beer.
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 26, 1999
===================
Good morning, folks.
Well, I'm still backed up by one Musing; I'll try to get that out to
you as a supplemental sometime this week. I thought I'd have a chance
to get one done this weekend, so that I wouldn't have to completely skew
my versioning system, but, to be perfectly honest, it completely slipped
my mind.
This week, I'm not doing too much spectacular.
I think I'll have to work out something with Miniwheat in the way of
"superhero games" for this week. We were talking last night and Nature
Boy pointed out the fact that Miniwheat has a set of those Radio Shack
headset walkie-talkies. We're not talking about the el-cheapo oversized
ones with "technology" molded plastic casings; these are the bona fide
issue, the real deal, the magical tomato themselves! He tells me that
they work for at least 1/2 a kilometer on the highway; I'm assuming
that'll do fine for hunts through Prince's Island Park.
Nature Boy took me rock climbing again yesterday. I'm having serious
troubles moving my arms, and my fingertips are sore. Having a stiff
keyboard on this notebook sure doesn't help matters much, but since it's
my own damned fault, I really can't complain.
That's a bit of a silly statement, now isn't it?
"How are you today, Drew?"
"Oh, can't complain..."
Wouldn't that dictate that you actually CAN'T complain, and in which
case, isn't that worth a complaint? What could possibly be so awful
that you just "can't complain"? Or, moreover, what could be so entirely
good about a morning that there would be nothing to complain about?
I'm always suspicious of those people that go around smiling all the
time, and never seem to have a care in the world, regardless of what's
happening in their immediate vicinity. You've met these people -
self-satisfied smirk, spring in their step, bounce in their pocket, and
fly in their coffee. But no! These people will NEVER have coffee; it
doesn't suit the idiom.
Ok, so that's not true - I don't hate these people, 'cause they're NOT
like this all the time. I hate the people that are like this at 8am,
when people shouldn't be able to communicate coherently past the "two
cream, two sugar" stage, with minor grunts as punctuation and body
language and fumbled gestures (at either "Columbian Supremo" or "French
Roast", natch) in the way of advanced enunciation. Unfortunately, these
people, the "Morning People" (one can liken them to the "People Under
The Stairs", or the "Village People", or any other group of similarly
scary individuals with the word "people" in the name) have no such
problems, and tend to assume that the rest of the world is playing some
sort of mass joke on them EACH and EVERY DAY.
"Good MORNING, Mr. Thompson! How ARE you today! Did you have a nice
weekend?"
"Unng. *cough* Ugh." (waves hand at office)
"You have three messages, they're waiting on your desk..."
"Nuuugh." (slams door).
What? Are you one of those people? Have you just ASSUMED that it was
some kind of running joke to act tired and incoherent every morning
until after your first cup of that wonderful caffeinated beverage? I've
heard that some people don't even DRINK coffee, and that thought scares
me more than anything I've heard in a long time.
Do you ever form conspiracy theories between two unrelated but nearly
equally scary sources, to make a single, doubly-scary conspiracy?
I think that the non-coffee-drinkers HAVE to be working for someone.
There's a definite link between the Impending Date of Doom bug and these
unfathomable people who can't possibly relate to the morning experience
of Joe Average Techie.
Yes folks, those "Morning People" have actually engineered this event
to keep us from having too good of a time on the night of the largest,
coolest New Year's Eve party since 1899 - and, realistically, in 1899
there just wasn't the technology to fully enjoy a party of this
magnitude.
No, these bastards have engineered this spectacle so that all geeks
will be forced by Upper Management to come to work on January 1st, 2000
(which, incidentally, is a Saturday, hence my use of the word
"bastards") to verify that all the machines are in good working order,
and have cycled over to the proper date, and haven't mysteriously
spawned an artificial intelligence with a conscious mind and a
self-preservation instinct.
I'm thoroughly nonplused with the whole thing.
Nevertheless, work to do.
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 27, 1999
===================
Good morning, folks.
Forgive me if I'm not enthused this overly-bright and cheery morning.
It's absolutely beautiful out today; the sun is shining, birds are
singing - this is that particular time of year where hedges have somehow
grown a full, leafy plumage, but while the trees that stand six feet
away from the abovestated hedges aren't even budding yet. It's not a
particularly defined time of spring; it would seem nature is having a
bit of an identity struggle.
It's a beautiful day, and it is from this fact that my non-enthusiasm
stems. Another fact: it's Tuesday. Put both of these facts together
and you'll realize that I won't get to enjoy this day until roughly 6pm,
at which point I'll have absolutely no inclination to actually do
anything other than sit on my couch and numbly watch the Simpsons.
Don't get me wrong - there's nothing that strikes me as intrinsically
*wrong* about Tuesdays. They're one of the two odd days in the week
where noone really knows just what to think. Mondays are simple - hate
them, and you'll be accepted by the majority, which, in reality, is
probably your best bet. Love your job, but follow the majority.
Wednesdays are the halfway point - charmingly referred to as "hump day"
by some of my more colorful friends. Fridays need no explanation, nor
Saturday. Sunday is a little strange - it's almost a spare day, one in
which you can't do overly MUCH, and you feel slightly wistful about it,
but you still try and make the best of it.
Tuesdays can almost be lumped into the same category as Mondays. If
Tuesday was an ice cream flavour, it'd be "Chocolate Broccoli Surprise"
- not quite as bad as "Spinach Broccoli Surprise", but definitely not
"Double-Chocolate Death with Chocolate and Chocolate".
Thursdays are by far and away the strangest day of the week. I wonder
if StatsCanada releases any of their more esoteric statistics to the
general public - I'd love to know the amounts of fatal car accidents on
Thursdays, as opposed to the rest of the week. Of course, we'd have to
bar accidents in which alcohol was an issue, because then Friday and
Saturday would throw our stats out the window. No, I want statistics on
car accidents that happen "just because" - Joe Average Citizen is
driving down 5th Ave, when Mary-Beth Pedestrian walks out onto the
sidewalk without checking the lights. "Why, Drew?" you ask. "Why did
she have to walk out without checking the lights?" I'll tell you why -
because it's my story and I feel like having at least one fatality in
this Musing, and rather than kill off a superhero, I'll kill of a
generic extra character in an anecdote. Live with it.
Nevertheless, Mary-Beth is killed, simply because she wasn't paying
attention, or perhaps had just come from the mall where she'd found
simply the most dashing pair of crocodile pumps for 30% off, and was
simply dying to get to the dressiers to see how well they'd match with
the Hostee Maudite original they'd imported from Paris for her.
(This previous paragraph was designed specifically for those with a
weaker-than-average sense of moral justification. Those of you that
thought I was overly harsh may now find it easier to grow a backbone and
realize that not everything is all candy and flowers. Life is tough,
kids - get a helmet, or at least watch where you walk on Thursdays.)
*sigh*.
Nevertheless, I think I'll do some work before I work myself into a
serious, frothing rant - which I really should do anyway, but it can
wait until tomorrow.
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 28, 1999
===================
Good morning, folks.
My head hurts today. Actually, a lot of me hurts today, and I'm not
overly sure why. I'm pretty sure I slept wrong on my shoulder last
night, so it's aching. I've got a bit of a headache, and I'm tired.
I'm pretty sure I'm coming down with a cold (it can't possibly be the
flu after the bout I had in the month previous), so upon arriving at
work I slammed back two bottles of orange juice and a Tylenol Cold &
Sinus. Now I've moved back to coffee and am trying to plot out which of
my umpteen tasks is most pressing.
*sluuurp*.
Nevertheless, I can't really focus myself to get down and dirty and
hack perl code without some kind of focus-building activity - hence the
Musings. Just as a sidenote, this morning email is sent to over ninety
people now, with quite a few forwarding it to other people. If you're
reading this and it's got loads of little ">" thingies over on the far
left, send mail to musings@riotnrrd.com and we'll add you to the real
list.
So why is it that I'm doing this every morning? To be perfectly
honest, I don't think I would if I wasn't getting death threats from
people who'll rip out my lungs if I stop. However, it started as just
something to do with the first few minutes of my morning - a way to spew
myself onto an LCD screen for no better reason than to have a record of
rants. There's over 170k of Musings now! That's pretty scary, but I'll
keep them coming as long as I'm capable.
Nevertheless, musings about Musings are hardly as interesting or
thought-provoking as musings about, say, the origins and ingredients of
McDonalds "Orange" drink - you know the stuff I'm talking about. Yes,
that stuff - cheap, simple - comes in a 40-gallon red plastic
cooler-thermos thing?
I shouldn't bother musing about such an obvious recipient of abuse.
It's not as if everyone hasn't shuddered at some point, when two
underpaid employees of (insert minimum-wage company here) enter the room
burdened with thirty-five or so gallons of mildly radioactive orange
gook.
No, the reason I have this on my mind today is not for games of "Abuse
the Beverage"; it's not for Electric Acid Koolaid testing, nor for video
effects of children swimming in the stuff. I'm afraid I have to come
clean here; I have a horrible, frightening secret.
I *like* the stuff.
Before you shout "EW!" and my mailbox is suddenly flooded with emails
with the subject line "REMOVE", allow me to at LEAST explain myself.
Nevermind, it's not possible to excuse, so the explanation will have to
be written in such a way that, though you probably will never forgive
me, at least you'll have an insight even deeper into That Which Is Drew.
*sigh*. Where to begin.
In high school, I had a job, which I kept for the fantastically long
duration of six whole weeks. This is the first real, not-for-neighbors,
not-for-vegetable-stand job, and I was quite proud of the fact. Yes,
folks, I was a bona fide McDonalds employee; bright-eyed, pimply-faced,
and ready to take on the world of pre-cut meat patties.
I was *fired*.
To this day, if a prospective employer asks me if I've ever been fired
from a job, I'll happily tell him yes. If he needs someone to monkey
with his RS/6000 servers or route his network through Timbuktu and back,
I can happily oblige. If said prospective employer wants his or her
supper warmed, I warn them that I'll very probably burn it to a
blackened lump.
However, though my firing is important, in the grand scheme of this
it's ever so much more important to detail to you exactly why it is that
I like the Orange Gook.
Interjection: Does anyone actually know the real name for the Orange
Gook? I know it's something like "McDonalds Generic Orange Drink #7" or
some derivative thereof, but I'm not entirely sure.
The reason I like Orange Gook dates back to the time I spent in
McDonalds...
Ok - in the midst of this musing I must stop and tell you of why it is
so late. I was typing away happily when I got called away to an
emergency in the server room of one of the oil companies - it would seem
that their server suddenly refused all connections, spontaneously. The
server, who's name, incidentally, was "Bastet", after the Egyptian god
of the same name. When the window-cleaner folk arrived to clean the
interior windows the other day, they happened to knock over the cat
shrine to Bastet, causing a deep disturbance in the force.
For those of you unenlightened, server admins are deeply superstitious,
and anything that *might* have a good effect on the functionality of the
servers is implemented immediately. In this case, a shrine to the gods
after whom the server was named was found to be beneficial.
Nevertheless, on to our story.
The scene - a dark and cloudy afternoon, but you wouldn't realize that,
as the blindingly-bright lighting in the cooking area doesn't permit
such things as sight of the outdoors, hiding of filth of any kind, or
freedom of thought. A young Danger Boy is dressed in full McDonalds
regalia, performing generic McDonalds-type activities.
Buzzers sound from all sides - Danger Boy, showing miraculous calm,
realizes that this simply means that the fries are done, and removes
them from the pits of boiling oil. He walks them to the front, dumps
them and yells "Fries are up!", to which the counter person replies
"Thank you!", giving the illusion of people who actually care about
their vocation.
Break time finally comes. Danger Boy sits in the break room and reads
the ingredients list from a paper marked "Ingredients for McDonalds
Orange Drink #7 -- CONFIDENTIAL!". Realizing that he can't pronounce
two-thirds of the ingredients, he comes to the conclusion that
McDonalds, being a multinational corporation with a reputation of
cleanliness and nutrition, would never put anything into a drink that
wasn't good for you. Happily, he drinks deeply of the orange liquid,
noting the fact that the name "Orange Drink" stems simply from the
color.
I didn't say it was a particularly GOOD story.
I have work to do now - until tomorrow,
Cheers,
- Drew.
===================
April 29, 1999
===================
Bleh. Morning.
I'm sick.
I'm not sick in the "hacking up a lung" way, nor the "multicolor
expulsions" way, or even in the "just feeling blah" way. It's ever so
much worse than that.
No, folks, it would seem that I have a sinus cold. Have any of you
ever had one of these? It's when a horde of virii that look strikingly
similar to spiny blowfish invade your sinus cavities, then block them
and begin to multiply. There's no problem if your immune system is up
to fighting them off before they can fill your cavities - but if you
insist on giving your immune system the day off (in the way of "heavy
drinking", or "lack of sleep"), watch out. The spiny blowfish fill the
sinus cavities to capacity, and then inflate themselves, causing a
feeling not unlike having your eyeballs pushed out from the inside.
I managed to make it to work, with the assistance of "Tylenol Sinus" -
but realistically, these don't do as much as I'd like. My eyeballs are
still sore, and I'm coughing occasionally - which in itself is loads of
fun. Each time I cough, I can actually FEEL my eyeballs expand and
threaten to escape and bounce off my laptop keyboard. I have some
Sinutab and Dristan, but I think I'll wait for a while before taking
them - I feel miserable, but turning myself into a remedy *censored*tail is
probably not the answer.
I've nearly got my SPARCstation working. Of course, about half of you
aren't going to know what a SPARCstation is, so I'll enlighten you. A
SPARCstation is a computer made by Sun Microsystems, and is now old
enough to be very close to completely worthless. However, being me, I
feel that no computing device is without merit, and have nearly gotten
it working.
Unfortunately, none of this is truly Musing; it's just news of my life
so far.
So I've been thinking about geese lately. There's a couple of Canada
geese nesting on a 3rd-floor open "garden" thing, the likes of which you
see a lot of in Calgary. This particular garden-thing , to my
knowledge, has never been used by humans, and the birds are nesting in
the dirt around one of the 10' decorative spruce trees.
This is strange - geese have adapted to city life now. I've adapted
fairly well to living in the city, but then again, I can read signs,
have the pre-learned knowledge of when to cross the street, and when NOT
to, and a general idea of where home is. The poor geese - they have the
"internal compass" thing going on, but do they really realize the
significance of living on the third floor of 140 4th Avenue SW?
Of course, there IS no real significance to their address - it's the
right address for where they're living, but at the same time, they
probably don't receive much mail from relatives wintering in Florida. I
won't make the obvious bad puns of "air mail".
*sigh*.
I'm still miserable.
Nevertheless, I'm going to bail on you all early today, and get some
work done.
Cheers,
- Drew.
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