I was using IM to communicate with my brother. He uses a Windows machine, I use a Mac:

srp: OK. I need to re-boot (windows memory problem, go figure).
pete: uptime 6 days, 22:19, 7 users, load averages: 1.19 1.41 1.15
AIM: srp has logged off

Ah, if only I’d been logged into the old Linux box under my desk, I could have said: uptime 123 days, 21:44, 2 users, load average: 0.04, 0.04, 0.00 ;)

As someone who didn’t feel like they fit in while in college, I’ve enjoyed Aaron’s writing about his time at Stanford.

This has to be one of the strangest paragraphs I’ve seen yet though, on Day 67:

We meet outside the teacher’s office to discuss our project plan before we pitch it to the teacher. Sara, fidgety, sits on her skateboard. As we talk, she leans backwards while sitting on it, causing her tight, short shirt to rise up past her navel as her head hovers just above the ground. We agree on the idea of doing a poll about freedom of liberty, seeing what people think. We head upstairs. Sara bends down to place her skateboard on the floor. This time her pants ride down, revealing the top of her butt crack. We head inside. The teacher approves the idea. Now we just have to find a way to do it over Thanksgiving.

There’s such a contrast in subject matter, and how it’s juxtaposed, and it’s all delivered so matter-of-factly.

I tell ya, that boy is a genius at something, I’m just not sure what….

Happy Birthday Madeline!

Just 10 more years until you can drive! (ack!)

Just 12 more years until you can date! (heh…)

In using SCP to move files between machines, if the path or file has spaces in it, this will not work:

scp foo.com:/home/fubar/some\ folder/file.txt ./

And neither will this:

scp foo.com:"/home/fubar/some folder/file.txt" ./

But this will:

scp foo.com:"/home/fubar/some\ folder/file.txt" ./

So be sure to use double quotes to enclose the path and escape the spaces with a backslash.

orjustdontuseanyspacesatallever

Oh sure, I know, there are people (and companies) out there that don’t like Apple, or those pesky Macs they keep making. (Weren’t they supposed to go out of business 10 years ago?) Now when it comes to companies not liking Apple, you might think Microsoft tops the list, unless you think of Apple as Microsoft’s R&D Department. Anyway, from what I hear, if you want to find Mac-hating, look to Garmin.

Dig through the macmap Yahoo! Group and you’ll find many messages about this subject, here’s a good one that mentioned how Garmin has never supported the Mac and has no intention of doing so.

So what are Mac-owning potential GPS buyers to do? Well, we can either hope that Garmin changes it’s tune and supports the Mac at some point (unlikely?) or try to find another company that will support the computers we use. (doubtful?)

I’m considering the purchase of a GPS this year, and Garmin is making it very hard for me to send any of my money their way since there seems to be little chance they will support my choice of computing platform.

Garmin = Jerks

Things have been a bit quiet around here lately, don’t worry that will change…

Without getting into too much detail, 2005 will be a time of great change. I will most likely dump the landline phone, and rely on cellular and VoIP solutions, I plan to use the canoe a lot this summer, exploring the rivers near me, I’ll get a new digital camera that I can actually take with me and use for photography, and maybe even a GPS. I’ll replace the old Dodge with something a little more reliable, and most of all I’ll try to work smarter, which may mean working less sometimes, and working more other times.

So the times, they are a changing, and it’ll be interesting indeed.

You know how people ask you to do something, and it’s a simple task for you, and you do it, and email them back with something like “Done!” or “All set!” and then you get their response, and it’s one of those “Thanks” emails? You know, the kind that usually just says “Thanks!” and nothing else?

I’ve already gotten 4 of those today. I’m on fire! Watch out! I just might help you out, and then you’ll be sending me a “Thanks!” email…

(It could happen…)

I was quite saddened upon hearing the news of Johnny Carson’s passing. He was an early influence on my comedic stylings. As a youth in the 80’s I was very much into Late Night with David Letterman, but I think overall Johnny had a bigger impact on me and how I view television and comedy. He really was the King of Late Night.

In recent years, every now and then when the Tonight Show would come on, I’d say “I miss Johnny” and now I guess we’ll all miss Johnny.

(Insert Obscure reference lost on younger viewers here…)

It’s time… Time for me to clean out the old Computer Museum, which means it is time for me to unload the NeXTStation.

I know, it’s sad indeed, but what can I do? I’ve had it for years and never got it up and running very well. It used to work ok, but something went wacky with the OS, and while I do have all the neccessary CD’s, I do not have a CD-ROM drive to connect to it.

So if you are a NeXT freak looking for a monochrome slab and MegaPixel Display, let me know… Hey, you could be the next TBL!

(I’ve also got what I think is an original “IBM PC” if you want that instead…)

Wow, I’m so proud… my first comment spam!

We just moved over to WordPress recently, and slowly but surely we got a few (legit) comments on a few posts. That is, until today.

We noticed 5 new comments. Hey! We’re really building a community here! Conversing and discussing! Oh, wait, it’s comment spam. Ugh!

WordPress put them into moderation, as it should, so luckily you didn’t have to see them, and it was quick and easy for me to delete them.

Hopefully I’ll soon implement the “nofollow” for new comments coming in just in case a spammy comment slips by. (I have plenty of thoughts on the “nofollow” thingy that I will write up later.)

It’ll be interesting to take part in the War of the Comment Spam, that’s for sure…

Over on 43 Things people write up the things they want to do, things like be happy or relax. I wanted to add some things that I don’t really want to do, but thought doing an experiment in social software was worth trying, so I added get shot in the leg, fall down a flight of steps, and total my car. It’ll be interesting if people say “I’ve reached this goal” for any of those, or better yet people who reply with “I’ve done this” and then mark it as “Worth doing!”

Any takers?

I learned a bit more about email today, from some folks who deal with email all the time. Not the spam kind, just the marketing/newsletter kind. Here’s are some tips… See, when people who deal with email want to clean their lists, and remove what they think are bad and/or fake emails, they look for certain things. So, I’m just saying, if you have your own domain, and want to have some fun, use something like delete.me@example.com or no.email@example.com, or if those don’t work, try to use profanity. I’m sure you can come up with your own examples.

Now, as you might know, when email is sent, they will include an image, and the URI will have a query string that uniquely identifies you. So take your mail app, and modify it to strip off the query strings of all URI’s and you might still get to see the images while they won’t know if you read the message. When I brought this up they seemed a bit perplexed, so that was interesting.

Ok, that’s all I got for now, more email fun later.

By request, here is the code I used to get my Gmail. (I hope you like Perl!) Download gmailpop.pl

(See Also: The Gmail API)

Here we present to you the first official post written in WordPress.

WordPress is a fine open-source weblogging application written in PHP, which is not Perl, but we’re using it anyway. ;)

In fact, while we’ve hacked on PHP a bit in the past, we’re quite excited at the prospect of doing more. So this should all work out fine. (Unlike other things going on elsewhere…)

Oh, expect parts of this site to be broken until the transition is complete. I do not have a date set upon which the transition will be complete, but if things are broken for too long, feel free to bug me about it.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank all the WordPress developers, contributors, and supporters. Feel free to leave a comment, which is something that hasn’t been possible here since 2000 or so…