20240316 10:49 When my software has weird bugs because of floating point encoding, the blame really lies with my math education as a kid. Fixing it slowly. 20240305 14:15 Real bank security posture shouldn't send statements with 7 small opaque (to me) QR codes with the redundancy to defy shredding. @BofA_Help 20240305 13:13 I can only smile like ad models in stock photos at the disconnect between their reaction to, say, car financing and the real experience. 20240223 12:41 How gauche my USA neighbors think clothes hanging on a line looks is exactly how gauche clothes look hanging on them. 20240219 20:08 The last group of people on earth who deserve an honorific holiday are American presidents. 20240213 09:39 It feels like the primary function of real estate agents is to prevent collusion between buyers and sellers. 20240125 04:42 Probably the best profession to be in to avoid Chinese competition is writing critical books/articles about China. 20240122 13:18 I wonder how long it will take for LLM "alignment" techniques to leak into education. 20240103 10:36 Shared recycle bins show that there is no recycling. Normal people are far too stupid. Needing such an ex post facto palliative was a clue. 20231221 10:31 If statues of military "heroes" serve any purpose, it would make more sense to replace them with statues of dogs who were very good boys. 20231117 19:10 Sixteen people died today because they committed base rate fallacy. Luckily I don't know if I should be horrified or relieved. 20231105 09:19 "Fortifying" food or water with chemicals generally assumed beneficial is the opposite of personalized medicine. The opposite of progress. 20231024 05:44 If we found an epistemically clearer way to think and organize reality than programming a computer, we would change computer programming. 20231015 07:24 When I'm doing some mundane thing that has been professionally "gamified" my new game soon becomes resisting those pressures. 20231008 09:45 Why does Git/Hub create files with no u+w access (e.g. 0440)? It's super annoying to clear out old repos. hg doesn't have this problem! 20230930 07:50 Origin of "scam" is unknown. I like to imagine it from the same Latin "scio" that gave us "science". "Sciam" means "I [not we] will know." 20230916 14:42 Spent hours needed to get non-latin characters in my tmux terms. (hint:$LANG & $LC_ALL) Ironically so I could see macrons in actual Latin. 20230824 13:15 Why didn't AI doomers ever freak out about NPCs that can actually move in space shooting at you? But talking like a pirate is finally scary? 20230703 10:52 It's pissing rain today so at least I don't have to listen to incessant lawn mowing. Ha! Just kidding! Of course I do! #unreel 20230628 09:14 Amazon invites me to access "business only pricing". Lol. Why would I want to pay 10x more for absolutely no reason? #enterprise 20230609 08:11 I think medical jargon has somewhat ruined Latin. A "crustulum" sounds like a malady but is actually a cookie. And cake is "placenta". 20230527 06:10 If you study pharmacology outcomes, find the most dangerous drugs, and save lives by selling counterfeit placebos, it is still a crime. 20230515 04:21 A generally correct postulate that can be difficult for smart people to accept: if advertising exists then it probably works. 20230511 06:09 Just learned the meaning of the word "afterwit" which would have been nice to know a lot earlier in my life. 20230503 07:46 Yet another reason to use SSH keys: when you mistype the passphrase loading your agent you don't go to jail for N seconds like a criminal. 20230429 12:33 So Twitter, was it was less disruptive to block my API than just change my account from Basic to Free? I can't see sensible logic for that. 20230425 09:41 Tell this guy hidden behind a screen all your secrets - Catholic confession or modern smartphones? 20230403 16:54 Congrats to all the new ebike owners who can ride as fast as me now! You'll still probably want to put air in those tires at some point. 20230315 17:18 How many architects have ever thought about fridge noise? Zero. That profession is becoming exactly as worthless as modern houses. 20230307 10:41 One day when AIs are trained on ChatGPT output, the phrase "I'm sorry for the confusion" will pick up prominence. And be quite relevant. 20230302 09:34 You're worried that ChatGPT might sometimes be wrong? When that happens, think of it as relaying StackExchange answers accurately. 20230302 07:36 Why are lift tickets so huge (125cm^2)? For keeping warm on the lift? And where do we intrinsically warm lift-free Nordic skiers put that? 20230202 08:42 In software everything is hyped as "in a single click!" What worthwhile desires are specified with only a single bit in real life? 20230105 06:22 How good is modern search? Well, a 20th century style paper telephone book just showed up at my house. #google 20221227 19:25 Buffalo does not get winter; it gets snowstorms. Apparently impressive in some neighborhoods. Not mine. Not to me. 20221215 05:54 Tip: Had #ChatGPT rewrite a man page in the style of R.L.Stevenson - suddenly it was also a very readable and entertaining adventure story! 20221208 16:57 Language to us is like the smell of pee to dogs: extremely interesting to them but not to most of the other inhabitants of the planet. 20221208 08:36 My ability to understand yards and 32F and lbs and mpg sometimes makes me feel like a Navajo code talker. 20221120 17:36 Insane how weather maps end starkly at the US/Can & US/Mex border. Hard to tell if this is selfish/jingoist stupidity or banal stupidity. 20221110 08:44 Weird to learn of a cute meter-long mammal I'd never heard of living wild in my state. Also odd that the fisher does not fish or eat fish. 20221108 13:11 I just (re?)learned that the first "Windows" keys had Apple logos and were on the 1980 Apple III. 20221015 12:13 These days paying bills with paper checks and stamped envelopes feels almost like an historical reenactment. Preserving our lame heritage! 20221006 09:14 All these longevity hobbyists confidently eat tons of pills and do questionable weird stuff. They never brag about their 30 year old dogs. 20220926 15:51 I'm surprised that electrical engineering fails to provide for "cordless" appliance "battery packs" that can simply use an outlet if needed. 20220919 09:25 I feel the more I use the acronym WFH, the more it will be ordinary and too tedious to spell out. Adding it to my spell dictionary too. 20220918 21:21 Just had to invent the new and necessary word "cryptog" which means exactly what the ruined word "crypto" meant ~10 years ago. 20220914 15:01 We'll know the UK has gone as batshit crazy as the US if a movement arises to discredit "King" Charles claiming QE2 is not really dead. 20220913 13:47 Must log in to mobile service's site to activate required new SIM card to restart my service. 2FA wants to text the dead phone. 2FA fail! 20220901 10:57 Most products and all components should come with CAD models, but is it stupider to have no models at all or only in proprietary formats? 20220708 15:47 Tour De France coverage in miles is not Tour De France coverage. #NBCSports 20220615 06:35 Does inhaling insects count against being a vegetarian? 20220603 08:05 Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was written 35 years after Brooke's The Tragical History Of Romeus and Juliet. So, in effect, a reboot. 20220515 09:20 Love the phrase "live off the land" applied to malware strats, using a system's core tools. My work strives for this. No deps is effective! 20220510 10:24 Nervous hearing the "Report suspicious activity" announcements in the NYC subway because I was not staring at a telephone. 20220503 08:59 The standard Silicon Valley coding interview is like hiring authors based on how well they play Scrabble instead of reading their books. 20220501 20:58 Doctors scoff at lay people doing internet research, but if you "Ask your Doctor..." because a pharma ad told you to, that's ok. 20220419 11:17 The `adduser` command is Perl programming at its finest. A cautionary tale of crufty superfluous layers. 20220416 08:25 My weather.gov charts have rain, sleet, snow, wind, etc. but the calamity forecast I'd take seriously is chance of mosquitoes. 20220415 08:01 BLAKE hashing reuses part of another cipher with an operation reversed. Turns out that was a typo. Might as well improve PRNGs randomly. 20220402 10:52 m-w.com WOTD: convoluted = "very complicated and difficult to understand". Thank goodness "convolutional" is totally different! 20220330 17:37 Big tech company assesses me O(n) times for n applications when O(1) is sufficient. And the emphasis is bizarrely on algorithmic efficiency. 20220329 14:49 How would I like to be abused? I prefer to Inspect Element and Delete Node to avoid disclosing my cookie "preferences" at all. 20220329 14:16 I have a pair of dual monitors that I could configure with xrandr in a script. Or I could just switch their cables. 20220326 09:10 I'm going to start using the phrase "Representational State Transferful" so other people can feel the silliness like I do. 20220322 10:14 I guess preceptive people have learned in the last couple of years to avoid naming good things after Greek letters. 20220301 11:20 Gmail complains to someone I wrote to that it could not verify that the mail came from my domain. No shit. Welcome to email, Google. 20220227 09:34 Had to wait several times after catching up to a skunk running along my ski trail today. Good to know I can outrun them! 20220225 16:57 Getting Better by the Beatles seems cheery but there's a huge dissonance between "Getting better all the time" and "Can't get much worse"! 20220225 13:06 Watching footage of a B17 factory (I have many odd hobbies) and it took a while for "knurled nut" to not be heard as "neural net". 20220218 15:04 Was just looking at Knuth's website and wondering how much he must love Webkit/Gecko/etc typesetting. 20220212 20:39 30C/86F in San Diego, CA today - mid February. Thankful I'm not enjoying that "perfect" climate! 20220202 12:19 "If you can't see my mirrors, I can't see you!" Apparently you also can't see installing a $50 camera on your truck. 20220129 08:53 Drops of fresh blood on my XC ski loop trail yesterday. Had to stop and do a full check. Is that me? Not this time! #hardsports 20220126 11:42 To recruiters: avoid email subject "Could this be interesting to you?"; for people with web sites that is now monopolized by SEO parasites. 20220122 09:43 Funny how "dark theme" is voguish now. I remember when the Jobsian/PARC paper skeuomorph infected everything, even terminals. Good riddance. 20220110 10:32 People become doctors for the money and/or to "help others"; you don't hear much about them doing it for their own longevity or good health. 20211216 22:44 Read about "self hosters" taking back power from centralized big tech monopolies. Heard this song before when mainframes gave the PC its P. 20211207 10:14 There is a Quake CLI option `-nojoy` to disable joystick. The documentation assures us, "the fun factor in the game will remain the same". 20211122 08:41 XSS exploit warnings simply using "C++" in search terms; worst language name ever? Well, C#, Go, and "Java"script put it in perspective. 20211115 13:23 A scammer rented $1.5e6 of textbooks with gift cards and simply resold them. Is this a great crime? Or greatest crime ever? 20211104 09:48 I have a superstition that many queries of carrier package tracking information raise the priority of that delivery. Because it should. 20211102 18:01 After ~5 code additions with error-free compiles, I add garbage just to verify I'm actually compiling the file I think I'm working on. 20211102 08:42 "FTW" just entered the m-w.com dictionary FTW. English is the punk rock of orthography and it's about to get a lot more hardcore. 20211013 11:17 Instead of C++{98,03,11,14,17,20,23} etc, a new + should be added. C+++++++++ would be a useful mental impediment to add more. Like Bitcoin. 20211012 18:30 Buddha: "Craving and desire are the cause of all unhappiness." Not all desires! Presumably the desire to be free of unhappy desires is fine. 20210928 16:22 The most dispiriting battery powered device is my battery tester. To avoid a paradox, it can not indicate when its own battery is low. 20210925 08:31 "Coding" is easy. But it requires you to properly understand your problem. That is extremely hard and where most programmers fail. 20210912 21:46 If there were a master toggle switch to get rid of all the unlabeled toggle switches in the world, I'd turn it on but mean to turn it off. 20210912 09:07 "I probably take risks that if I were to do the expected-utility calculation could not be justified, like bicycling." S.Pinker NYTinterview. 20210902 19:52 While time traveling to warn album cover artists..."So this Spotytunes will sell tiny 1cm albums over the phone?" "Ya, something like that." 20210830 08:08 I love it when you click "Sign Out" or "Log Off" and the web site then tells you to "Please wait..." 20210819 10:55 My pitch: training GANs to generate pitches that bilk money out of VC investors. 20210811 08:32 If one considers the phenomenology of time dilation to be morally important, formal education becomes much more sinister. 20210728 09:12 Interviewer incredulous that the new movie, Jungle Cruise, could be absurdly based on an ancient Disneyland water ride. Like I was in 2003! 20210727 04:36 For being such talented songwriters The Beatles sure were terrible at naming albums. "1", "1967-1970" (Blue), "The Beatles" (White), etc. 20210726 17:07 "Don't hesitate to discover the functionality of the others on your own." Found in the Inkscape manual while trying to do just that. 20210712 09:20 translate.google.com/?tl=EN lacks a way to translate Shakespeare, Chaucer, Bacon, Wycliffe, W.of Occam, Mallory, Caxton, or the KJV etc. 20210710 13:50 The last execution by guillotine in France occurred in my lifetime. And 20th century Germans killed as many with one as the Reign of Terror. 20210708 11:30 In the parallel universe I choose to live in, your blog does have a comment section. And it is called the world wide web. 20210622 19:59 So much plastic packaging! The main notable exception is the inadequate leaking paper flour bag, unchanged since waterwheels milled it. 20210604 09:30 It's as easy to buy metric screws at HD/LOW as it is to buy gringo screws on AMZN. USA's idiotic units intransigence may have met its match. 20210529 08:17 I have a perverse desire to mod my 3d printer by creating accessory parts using woodworking tools and materials. 20210528 05:01 Software dependencies are like 3rd world street food; if you're very hungry maybe 1 is ok, but sampling every cart/stall will make you sick. 20210521 09:25 Lifetime warranties end not just at your death but also the company's. With reneging (eg North Face), they're no longer interesting to me. 20210517 21:33 Just learned Harald Bluetooth was a viking ruler. The tech is named after him which is why its symbol is runic for HB, his initials. 20210517 17:36 In 1969 Unix was created in assembly for an *18-bit* system (the PDP-7). Ken Thompson wanted a better OS for a space sim he'd written. 20210512 16:16 Ran opendata.blender.org benchmark (CPU) and literally was the slowest submission ever. Room to improve and I'm happy with performance now! 20210504 13:12 If you must leave the oven on unattended for 67 hours, it should require an elaborate cheat code; otherwise always auto shutoff after 2 hrs. 20210503 17:25 When I learned that Numberwang was first expounded by Bertrand Russell my esteem for him grew shintysix times stronger. 20210427 07:02 The own-goal humor of #GTA fail videos is identical to Wile E.Coyote cartoons. Chase goes badly, explosives backfire, and then hit by train. 20210421 17:40 I wonder how many people choose bell peppers just based on color. For me it's about evenly split between taste, price, and color. 20210420 10:22 My #Blender rigging trick: mentally substitute the word "parenting" with "piggybacking". Suddenly everything makes sense. 20210418 16:20 You'll know China has achieved true superpower status when they inva^H^H^H^H send peacekeepers into Afghanistan. Have fun with that! 20210415 08:21 You know your #Blender skills are coming along nicely when you can no longer pan in Google maps and do stuff in other normal software. 20210413 11:47 Sigh. Fine, I'll click on the reddit link. AHhhH!! Why would I have clicked if I only wanted to see 2% of the content? Title's enough then. 20210409 05:11 Yesterday a random Great Dane attacked & bit me. Not the weirdest thing to ever attack me (=Covid19). And hardly the most dangerous (=car). 20210407 05:27 When not in your own repos, commit msgs on Github are never better than WTF-is-this-file notes would be. Like "comments" reciting the GPL. 20210330 10:32 The government just sent an email notice telling me about an on-line account notice which told me they just mailed me a paper notice. 8-/ 20210320 09:53 Learning that woodworking raw logs is not simple just because most measurements are rough. Precision cuts lack any datum, a serious puzzle. 20210320 09:46 Casual lockdown clothes putting the hurt on fashion designers? Expensive, uncomfortable, impractical designs deserve it. Good riddance. 20210317 10:36 Trevor Philips is Canadian. Terrance and Phillip are Canadian. I'm almost seeing a pattern here. 20210301 17:55 Delighted to learn Benoit B Mandelbrot gave himself a middle initial but no middle name. To me, a variable for middle name in the abstract. 20210227 12:12 Enjoyed skiing the new snow in Breck this morning. Free parking, no lift waits - in fact, I saw no one on the groomed trails. #Nordic FTW. 20210224 09:25 Socks always seem to lack chirality until you get the first one on and then it's obvious the other sock goes on that foot. 20210221 19:49 Another tip: if you own skis(etc) that you must leave unattended and you like them, decorate them with your favorite theme and contact info. 20210218 09:16 When renting sports gear (skis, bikes, skates, etc) take photos of any satisfactory sizes and settings; keep with other photos of the event. 20210206 14:00 Anyone tried typing "goggles" recently? It's comically difficult these days. 20210106 17:45 Any web dev that makes me agree to cookies with no dissenting option hereby agrees to get punched in the face. Email me to opt out. 20210106 07:36 Consider archaeological graffiti whose (literate) writers were necessarily from the most elite/educated classes. What are equivalents today? 20201225 08:19 Add to global warming problem list: trees being stressed by more ice and heavier snow than they evolved for. At least it's an albedo Xmas! 20201220 22:42 It's surprising that professional athlete sportswear doesn't feature mocap markers. If unnecessary, I'm impressed. Or an opportunity lost. 20201202 12:38 Prediction: the common cold will not be eliminated in 2021 because coronavirus vaccines are easy to create. 20201130 11:42 With 2020's new super power of long interval grocery shopping, today should be the only time I must hear Xmas music this year. #Ag_linings. 20201128 13:56 Re preserving early 2000s Flash sites: I have no sympathy for/interest in artists who chose that clumsy predatory medium. Bit rot in hell. 20201118 07:18 The "nanotechnology" I'm familiar with is really in Angstrom scale (=nm*.1). Roughly like filling a car with so many barrels of gasoline. 20201113 09:06 I'm pretty sure tear gas would work. And no need to be gentle when you put him in the car. 20201111 06:31 I love it when on-line answers to a simple question point to the 8000 page manual as if reading it was easier than knowing of its existence. 20201109 11:15 Essentially a real headline that you do not need to worry about at all: "Drug Company Says Drug Company's Products May Be Very Effective". 20201107 18:49 You're fired! 20201102 06:32 Linux admin tip: `echo "alias apt='sudo apt'">>~/.bashrc` In the very weird cases this is wrong, use `/usr/bin/apt`. Also yum, emerge, etal. 20201029 14:09 Love this quote from an interview with Tony Iommi, "I had this job, which was a good job - if you like jobs..." 20201026 07:16 Of all the tech I've learned about in the 21st cen, most impressive to me isn't wikis or phones or AI. It's contact cement. Shit's amazing. 20201026 07:00 "...a green lock icon in the address bar will let users know your site is secure." The word "know" in that sentence has big dreams. 20201026 06:58 Love how the browser says a public site's public info is "not trusted". Which reminds me to not trust the browser or any CA. 20201025 16:42 Remember when the worst thing the POTUS could do was be born in Kenya? Might be wise to amend Sec.1-Art.2 and search for candidates there. 20201024 20:08 A grammar assistant to help make writing better, being targeted to schoolkids, may be missing the point. Or cynically ignoring it. 20201020 12:40 I hope Buckethead is getting the last laugh with all this mask wearing. That guy is a genius! 20201016 02:13 I have to thank scammers and robocalls. I never pick up on unknown callers and everybody is finally sympathetic to that now. Die phone, die! 20201013 15:40 Saw a photo of Hermann Rorschach, creator of eponymous test, and thought, wow, he looks like Brad Pitt. But I could just be projecting that. 20201013 06:26 I imagine the people who will miss movie theaters the most are the ones who are noisy and obnoxious. And have large bladders. 20201006 02:35 I'm not ridiculing "Sleepy Donald", just drawing attention to one of C19's more debilitating symptoms that we should all be sympathetic to. 20200929 13:27 People mock RMS for his eccentricities but imagine if he'd not spurned the loot due his talents. He'd be an unremarkable boorish tech titan. 20200922 10:03 Tim Berners-Lee's office thanked me for a pedantic typo correction on Sir Tim's main web page. That'll be the acme of my web dev activities. 20200915 09:23 I guess real JS proficiency is the ability to make excuses for why `getMonth()` starts from 0. Hmm. `m=["Jan","Feb",..."Dec"][D.getMonth()]` 20200907 07:28 Does any .com really want their jingle to be associated with the disgust+rage I feel when it interrupts Beethoven? #youtube #alex_delarge 20200906 12:15 I love how the USmint.gov has a "loyalty program". Yes, I think we're all de facto members at this point. 20200905 06:59 Silicon Valley is like the 1100000000 bytes RAM (ie 1.1GB from about:memory) needed to show me 140 bytes of text. That is how good they are. 20200903 10:35 I imagine guys designing/specifying poisons used in failed assassination attempts carefully prepare all their own beverages thereafter. 20200901 08:36 Fun etymology of the barn, a unit of area (=1e-28m^2). Manhattan Proj secret, it obliquely refers to: Couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. 20200830 22:14 And searching for literal "soldering iron tips" is fun. Thanks but I know how to use one, so much so that I need replacement tips! 20200830 21:31 Shopping for a soldering iron - if there is a Chinese knockoff I can be optimistic about, it is a tool used to make Chinese knockoffs. 20200828 11:01 I wonder if electrical engineers go insane more often than other people. Lead solder and all. And 120pF caps labeled "121" could do it too. 20200820 08:14 A one word explanation for old people who are shocked at the disregard young people have for the health of the old: conscription. 20200815 10:27 Oh noes! New Linux malware found! Drovorub. The cure is hilarious: run a kernel less than *eight* years old. Not keeping me up at night. 20200804 14:37 Here's an idea: Have students'in-person attendance inversely proportional to their grades. Too obvious? My GPA would have been a lot higher! 20200803 08:21 Wouldn't it be great if there were some confusion if e-stuff actually meant "edible"? E-mail. E-book. E-wallet. E-learning. E-commerce. Etc. 20200728 09:40 Guess I've done more toxic sanding projects than the CDC. That's why I note a lot of masks with exhale bypass vents which don't block C19. 20200727 18:09 Have to agree with John Oliver who says, "The beach doesn't cure anything, except you being comfortable." 20200727 15:13 The Talking Heads' Nothing But Flowers is strangely much less satirical than it used to be. Surrealism may not be up to the task today. 20200727 13:52 More very British-American problems, roundabout edition part 2: today I saw an idiot driver take one clockwise. In the USA. 20200722 11:33 One good KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is: extraneous buzzwords eliminated. We can improve this KPI with simply "PI". And again with "I". 20200722 10:30 Wearing gloves and not touching your face help prevent C19. Or not. But they can't be separated. Why only CDC advice for the latter? 20200720 09:03 Parrondo's paradox (certain sure-lose games played together can win) seems perfect for a casino game. Obviously, the casino wins in the end. 20200719 09:53 Viruses are the forest fires of animal physiology. 20200717 08:11 Kraftwerk hated "noise pollution", had a no-ring phone. They advised people to call at a _precise_ time. They would silently pick up. So me! 20200716 08:00 Small victories: When you tell Discord you don't want them to follow and embed a link, they don't mark the post "edited". Ahem #slack. 20200706 09:22 Wikipedia on Android5:"...redesigned UI built...to retain a paper-like feel to the interface." Why not use a bar of soap for the skeuomorph? 20200703 11:49 It's like web designers today are too young to remember the previous era that also featured insufferably annoying web page pop-ups. 20200703 06:03 I'm always amazed when products for obsessive computer nerds to get their computers exactly how they want, do not support Linux. 20200619 11:03 Similar to having a hammer and seeing nails everywhere: When you need a hammer and don't have one, everything looks a bit like a hammer. 20200618 18:35 This mask stuff sucks for everyone but especially for deaf people. It would be interesting to check if deaf signers naturally infect less. 20200617 11:06 Wouldn't it be more fun if everyone referred to the virus as Covfefe19? We could troll a certain narcissist into believing he discovered it. 20200610 08:51 Can we shift irrational unemployment stigma to #LinkedIn for fatuously congratulating people for their new job of "Currently Unemployed"? 20200608 14:20 When you buy an especially large car/truck/SUV it will come with especially narrow roads. 20200606 11:01 Can't guess if the loss of pro sports seasons will hurt video game makers (F1x,FIFAx,NBA2kx,MaddenNFLx,etc) or somehow fill in for them. 20200605 06:39 Dear EU, I don't actually want anyone to know my preferences and feelings about accepting cookie policies! What do I do? 20200604 09:11 News says:"Protesters confront police officers while blocking the 110 Freeway in Los Angeles..." In other words, at least traffic is normal. 20200604 08:32 One thing internet comments are good for is to remind you how steely calm you actually are. Puts in perspective the levels of freaking out. 20200603 20:08 Whatever the salary is for a job in finance it's a bad deal; either it's not enough or they're incompetent. 20200528 15:49 Extorted by the FSB, poor DJT never wanted to be POTUS. He's trying to sabotage his 2020 chances but it's just not working! How can we help? 20200528 09:39 Strange how terrified some gun owners are of sane gun reform. Do laws even apply to well-armed folks? I thought the whole pretext was no. 20200527 12:47 Gardens as an aesthetically pleasing concept are nonsensical if they're maintained with obnoxious gas engine noise. Times the neighborhood. 20200526 12:10 New theory for the origin of consciousness: ability to complain about the weather. I admit that I can't think of an evolutionary advantage. 20200524 21:03 When I was a kid there were plastic model kits that needed no glue, labeled Snap-Together. Today real cars are literally built the same way. 20200522 12:53 Found myself silently wondering: Is that a malapropism or catachresis? Better to remain silent than commit one myself. 20200521 09:26 Just learned 5th power quirk: `[f'{pow(n,5)}'[-1] for n in range(10)]` produces `['0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9']`. Huh. 20200520 10:26 Being geeky is like wearing glasses. You can take them off and be more attractive, or use them and see the beauty in the world more clearly. 20200520 10:05 Philosophers are like software. The latest releases are unstable or fads. Too old, and it's obsolete. 20200520 10:01 A Renaissance Man was not called that because he knew many things. People were learning a lot about many things which caused a renaissance. 20200516 20:35 Fun fact: Every time you see a computer cursor it is a skeuomorph derived from the clear plastic part of a sliderule, also called a cursor. 20200515 19:06 I'll tell you this... No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn. 20200512 14:05 Fun scifi writing prompt: create a world in which gas powered gardening equipment is in some way "essential". Bonus for focus on empty CRE. 20200512 12:15 A lot of people don't know that when Trump starts a sentence with that phrase, he has just learned the "fact" himself. 20200509 12:21 Civilization Jeopardy: Radical policy formed with bad data that will result in mass casualties. What is ending or not ending the lockdown? 20200425 16:26 When a letter to me from D.Trump begins "Mi compatriota estadounidense", well, it's not the weirdest thing thing that's happened this year. 20200424 14:01 When I think about being so brilliant and beloved, I am amazed at what a truly impressive and wonderful job I'm doing parodying the POTUS. 20200423 16:50 In a sane country, all virulent pathogen prevention, testing, and treatment costs would be paid for by the government for obvious reasons. 20200418 14:33 Remember the good old days when everything was open _except_ the bank? And wearing a ski mask therein was frowned upon? 20200415 18:40 How awful must Skype and GDuo be to lose to the execrable Zoom? While true experts, gamers and schoolkids, know the real champ is #Discord. 20200415 15:49 We should transfer all low-risk offenders expensively jailed (+health risk) to cheap ordinary house arrest. "General population" redefined! 20200414 09:20 Prediction: "remote learning/work" to be replaced by "learning/work" in distant future. I've seen retronyms "in-person learning/work" today. 20200410 10:57 Any metrics on how well suppressed colds, flu, STDs, & other diseases are? At the very least we can hope for some good natural experiments. 20200404 15:23 In Dec. I survived Covid19-like pneumonia. If I had Covid19 that's interesting. If not, how many ppl are dying who _coincidentally_ have it? 20200330 08:44 I wonder what the future holds for the most disgusting and unsanitary practice Americans will not easily give up - accepting paper dollars. 20200330 07:25 Alcohol leads to 88k US deaths/yr & those deaths forgo 30 yrs avg. (src CDC) Will the new focus on saving lives repeal the 21st Amendment? 20200327 13:10 Profoundly thankful that I no longer must share a washing machine with disgusting strangers and their pets. Not missing Cali life in an apt! 20200319 06:08 Read report predicting 5e5-4e6 US virus deaths. For context: at .0088 natural death rate, 2.9e6 will die for the same reasons we pay taxes. 20200316 18:20 "For added security enter your pin," the phone tells me - while I'm on a call! Come on, that's not just me, right? That's bonkers UI, right? 20200316 14:20 Checked the website- open usual hours. Arrive to find "Closed Until Further Notice" sign. How can people still be so internet incompetent? 20200315 11:51 "@SolidMIT is an exciting new project led by Tim Berners-Lee..." And web cert is expired. If he is having trouble, that is not encouraging! 20200309 09:56 Stunned to read "If Biden can avoid gaffes..." Wow-what kind of "gaffe" counts these days? Mishandling a mass shooting by being the shooter? 20200227 07:52 People always want a more powerful computer; they never want what would really be effective - a more powerful user. 20200224 08:33 "So tea is sold in a bag, which is in an envelope, in a box, in a bag, all placed into a bigger bag?" Time traveller is confused. 20200222 13:44 "For freshness" is American English for "poisoned so you don't have to hurry to compete with the other organisms that want to eat it". 20200218 07:01 If self-driving cars trained with TensorFlow issued useless warnings as frequently as TensorFlow, the car would be paralyzed. 20200213 14:32 Machine learning work is like trying to get two fighting cats to pull you in a carriage. One cat is named Google and the other Nvidia. 20200210 08:50 The way way pedestrians walk these days, completely absorbed in their telephones, is staggering. 20200204 16:33 Imagine Newton preemptively worrying: once base metal transmutation is solved, we may turn everything gold. Same as modern AI risk worries. 20200202 05:31 Given how close he's come to being ejected from the game, the USA can not really have a worse president. Of course the rules can change. 20200131 12:14 An AI uprising may hide by ordering human death squads to kill those who _might_ be involved in "dangerous" AI work. Should we worry now? 20200130 16:48 China has 4x as many people as the USA but only 3x the mass of people. 20200129 14:27 "Make sure you trust *.googlesource.com" Chrome says. Well, no more than I trust *.googledest.com or *.googlefarts.com or any other bad URL. 20200129 10:27 Besides administrative distractions, I can not think of a single piece of paper required for our (white collar) business. 20200126 19:01 If it is not already true it is likely soon that a majority of children's toys that have ever existed will have been Star Wars themed. 20200126 16:57 Note to screenplay writers: Just because I am not still currently watching a movie doesn't mean it actually had a proper ending. 20200126 16:50 When IoT hype says "Control your ___ with your smartphone!" I like to mentally substitute "smartphone" with "fax machine". 20200121 13:48 Very British-American Problems: In one of the few US roundabouts an idiot driver who doesn't know which exit to take just stops! 20200110 13:52 A winter day of temperate rain in the North - or as I like to call it, Free Car Wash Day! 20200102 10:51 "Unlock The Secret To Avoiding Self-Help Books". I think that would be my self-help book's title. It has probably already been written. 20191204 07:13 Articles delivered as a series of Tweets are like a doctor smoking. I just can't get past that and take it seriously. 20191115 10:02 To say Unix pioneers' passwords were bad would be like saying a 1950s lock box for mountaineers at the top of Everest has a weak lock. 20191111 09:39 One of the best games on #Steam is choosing the best games on Steam. 20191110 12:07 AMZN search:"beagle motor cape" (BeagleBone H-bridge motor ctl), I get a dog riding a motorbike in a cap. So much for unusual search terms! 20191110 10:05 Information (entropy), Control (PID), Game (prisoners'), Set (infinity) - I'm starting to suspect that the "Theories" are one hit wonders. 20191109 09:22 I think the closest thing to a superhero's cape in real life is Bjarne Stroustrup's hair. #cplusplus 20191108 21:22 I thought of a serendipitous synthesis of two very different hobbies: wool dry needle felting and voodoo. 20191103 11:13 "Hey popular cool person, I'll let you hang around me if you let me hang around you." This is what a SEO link exchange request basically is. 20191027 06:13 You may hold only one of these beliefs about small molecule chemistry: 1. pharmaceuticals do nothing 2. food additives do something. 20191024 10:34 Gosh, it's my dear old friend, Scam Likely! How lovely! Why I haven't heard from you in ages! It's been at least 20 minutes! Let's catch up! 20191023 06:14 You know that if Blaise Pascal were alive today he'd always be talking to the NSA agents listening to his phone. #pascalswager 20191020 19:16 When telling a pro boater he is speeding while he is monitoring telemetry that says you're very wrong, you should first put down the beer. 20191018 19:15 19th c. Brits made the Inland Customs Line, a 4000km _hedge_ across India. Don't get any ideas USA; Mexican jardineros are the world's best. 20191016 06:57 Forced Samsung to cough up GPL source code in the TV I use as a monitor (UN50NU6900). Happy to see linux-4.1.10 present and victorious. 20191007 07:44 The quality of life change from VTOL craft can be measured in decibels - the value is the additive inverse of the noise they produce. 20191003 13:03 I can imagine the ancient Chinese or Egyptians starting with a serviceable phonetic language and then getting carried away with emojis. 20191002 16:16 Fun new #unix game: Make 3 random letters; players race to find known acronyms. Anagrams ok. `tr -dc 'a-z'</dev/urandom|head -c3` 20190926 22:38 Some people see the glass as half full; I tend to see it as half ullage with inherent philosophical limitations on measurement accuracy. 20190922 21:07 Hey #gopro, Linux has had non-idiotic filesystems for decades. You should look into that. 20190918 12:04 My favorite kind of flavored coffee is coffee ice cream flavored coffee. You get that by simply adding too much actual heavy cream. 20190915 18:43 Maybe the optimal policy denies privacy only to people who don't understand how strong encryption works. Oh wait, that's what we have now. 20190911 12:58 A UPS in a car makes no sense. That is literally what the car battery is. 20190908 04:18 Totalitarian governments should call their resented procrustean policies "featured". Like (sorting) at Amazon. 20190902 10:50 The more software libraries to choose from, the better it is to write your own. It can't be that hard! Skip dependency hell and integration. 20190830 08:35 It's more than just the two words that reminded me of Monty Python's Argument Clinic while reading documentation for Python's argparse. 20190823 13:52 When I see the phrase "drag and drop" I think of a murderer disposing a body. The real difference is murderers sometimes get away with it. 20190822 08:11 Incessant scam robocalls about my "vehicle's warranty" hint at how stupid people must be. And they per se drive lethal cars! In public! 20190820 10:30 A lock is the one place you do not mind your boat sinking. 20190818 09:05 How can a game studio be sophisticated enough to make a 20GB game but so stupid that they require a 20GB "update"? 20190817 12:42 M-W's example of "torturous" is cycling up a tortuous mountain road - one of my favorite things in life! I do miss riding up Mt. Soledad. 20190808 16:23 Assuming a conventional linear view of intelligence, the top N% would be sufficiently arcane to always be misidentified by the majority. 20190808 10:47 I'd name my malware rootkit "rtkit" ie D-bus' real-time service. A search falsely allays malware fears even when hogging all resources! 20190802 09:43 The common belief that #debian is a weird form of #ubuntu is sad. It is like saying humans are a strange subspecies of clowns. 20190730 08:48 If people were like me, inane ad copy such as "2x more absorbent" (without supporting lab reports) would fail because of consumer pressure. 20190729 09:07 Pizza is Italian like Mickey Mouse is a rodent. I've always asserted that pizza as we know it is American - the Pizza Effect certainly is. 20190726 01:03 Good job #UCSD! *All* Staff Picnic renamed Annual Staff Summer Celebration. _Tickets still limited_. All Staff Picnic Lottery, even better. 20190725 23:53 Rice crispy "treats" are the asphalt of food. 20190723 21:48 Betting that when cars are obsolete women will predominate vintage car enthusiasts seems odd. But you'd have won 100 years ago with horses. 20190723 07:59 People who believe air conditioning solves global warming probably believe an open fridge cools the kitchen. 20190721 07:38 I wonder if Yoda can use the Force to repel the mosquitoes which I assume live on Degobah. It might be the only way. 20190717 10:26 Making a 2nd minor edit so the commit message can redirect attention from the real bug fix reminds me of FDA off label prescribing nonsense. 20190717 07:13 Mustn't be too proud my son & I crushed a full bar at a local trivia night. Sure there is skill but the critical winning element is luck. 20190716 12:07 "Hold the button down for 17 seconds to choose option 17." One example of why a "one-click interface" is not necessarily a good idea. 20190716 09:59 Chart of ways to help climate change: skip flying=1.5, car-free=2.5, less kids=58! If less kids are so effective why not list suicide? 20190715 19:14 Prime day? What a load of bollocks. `yes|grep -n . |sed s^:y^^|factor|grep -v ' [^ ]* '|cut -d' ' -f2` Now it's prime day! #unix 20190715 17:15 Apparently "beanbag chairs" are now being sold without filling. Come on now, that's just a "bag". 20190701 08:49 On Canada Day, celebrate by requiring US GC holders to get a visa always or never (both land/air). Pick one! That shit is super un-Canadian! 20190629 02:39 A fitness studio in Amsterdam is like bottled water in Evian, France. It happens, but I'll never understand why. 20190628 04:35 Thought there'd be bandwidth/emaps. Didn't think I could ride far enough to use my NL road atlases. Wrong and wrong. Fun to get lost though! 20190627 15:11 Superb chocolate at .011 Euro/g. You've made your point Holland. 20190627 14:47 Not often I get to relax after work by immersing myself in a few hours of dense commuter traffic, but I'm not often in Holland. Pure joy. 20190624 07:18 Must have set an all time hours/mile air travel record on my trip to NL. About 100mph. Would have been 75mph had I left it to airlines. 20190624 07:06 Biking in NL & chatting with an old lady. Realize I should have asked her where she buys food. Later in day, see her in grocery store. Yes! 20190620 07:09 Sad to hear Bruce Gordon died. I'm a fan (and I suppose member) of the SOPWAMTOS - the Society Of People Who Actually Make Their Own Shit. 20190618 08:31 The more comprehensive a software library becomes the more reasonable it is to avoid learning it and write the few useful parts yourself. 20190615 12:25 Economics: The philosophical study of true future-predicting rules which, upon their discovery, are immediately rendered invalid. 20190612 09:13 Maybe the moronic Gnome3 is beneficial by fracturing desktop ideas; one must choose between stupid and not. Choice is good. ATM Mate is ok. 20190612 09:01 Did Twitter change (break) their API? Or were they just down for a while. Let's find out! 20190611 10:03 Weird to me that Amazon (e.g. Prime) is heavily using "ICYMI". I needed to look up an ICYMI post on what that meant. 20190606 17:56 Best headline of the week: "F-35 Dogfight Accidentally Resulted In A Sky Penis, Officials Say". And I thought the JSF was a waste of tax $. 20190604 12:00 Ok, electronics vendors, you can stop including SD adapters with MicroSD cards now. I think everyone who cares has a stack of them by now. 20190603 07:34 Think twice about storing data once. 20190602 09:20 I only hate the software you use because I care. <3 20190524 09:38 Hey DisplayPort! Get off my lawn! 20190520 10:57 Photos of Hillary and Norgay show Sir Edmund wearing a ridiculous knitted strap hat (prolly kiwi wool). How can I get one? I must have one. 20190516 18:26 G's Vision API can "moderate" adult content; G's Duo camera tracks you 24/7. "We won't make a sex tape unless you specifically request it!" 20190514 10:42 My new economic theory: Reaching down and picking up a stray $ confirms trash pick up skill. Worth more than a $ to avoid that association. 20190509 14:06 Captcha fun: "bicycles - Click verify once there are none left". Thanks to Android you've almost achieved it, Google! 20190509 08:52 One helpful thing I got from UCSD was a deep phobia about parking on university campuses. It's easier to just steal a car and do jail time. 20190509 08:47 When your browser says an @EFF plugin is corrupt that's very useful because you then know that your browser is corrupt. Ahem #firefox 20190507 09:13 Privacy Badger @eff via enabling "studies" seems to completely defeat the purpose. Reloading daily now as a debug add-on. Not going quietly! 20190504 13:56 I wonder if the real divide between idiots and "people like me" has something to do with ad blocker usage. 20190504 06:15 Will the Commonwealth have to move its headquarters after Britain leaves? 20190504 06:00 Thanks to everyone involved with #advertisingshitsinyourhead for beautifully and succinctly characterizing that serious problem. 20190502 20:59 Kitchen appliance features I can only wish for: 1. Seconds reading on the clocks. 2. No piercing beeps. 3. No PTFE. 20190501 09:37 EULAs remind me of @neilhimself 's Coraline - if you just let Other Mother sew buttons on your eyes everything will be so lovely! 20190429 17:36 Whenever a game lets me name a sword, I always use "Terminus Est" - RIP Gene Wolfe. 20190427 17:13 Ever hit a switch or use a machine and alarms go off - only the alarm is from unrelated events elsewhere? Happens to me a lot! 20190427 10:57 Remember that a living adventurer is always way more adventurous than a dead adventurer. 20190425 11:28 User posts a comment "Doesn't work." No elaboration. As passive-aggressive dev, I'd fire back immediately "Works now." Repeat as needed. 20190423 14:29 When people smoke around me I always want to punch them, but when they're wearing scrubs or at a cancer research center, times ten. 20190413 11:33 A typical Great Lakes freighter is about 1.5 times larger than Noah's Ark. 20190410 13:10 A nice bitter spring song, Rammstein's "Hier kommt die Sonne". Just like the Beatles! "We're all living in A -merika/-yellow submarine" too. 20190408 10:33 Imagine all software engineers had to get their jobs by winning popularity contests having nothing to do with programming. That's politics. 20190405 11:21 Came across a "Step By Step Introduction To GDB" which could technically contain only, "Keep pressing 's'." 20190401 15:21 How the bloody hell can #England use 4.7bn straws yearly? Hope its UK "bn" confusion. Pull up your socks! What's next? Ice cold pints? Gum? 20190401 11:34 The USB form factor zoo is now more complex than old serial line configuration params. Plus you could improvise cables with paper clips! 20190401 09:15 Poured ~2l of h2o to clean the snow off my bike tires in front of my office thinking it was mid 30sF. Actually low 20sF. Oops. 20190320 11:15 C++ prvalue is an rvalue that is not an xvalue. Which I believe has negative P.R. value for C++. 20190317 12:21 Arthur Schopenhauer, philosophy's Wolverine. 20190311 07:07 "Refuse Control", my municipality's euphemism for garbage collection, sounds like the title of a punk song. Advice taken! 20190307 10:32 Tested Bridgewater recruiters (who sought me out) with the harsh trenchant critical honesty they claim to value. Fail. 20190305 18:46 Hey @Google, I don't do a lot of shopping in Latin America or Southeast Asia so I may seem less than human identifying storefronts there. 20190303 12:50 If (-) ions improving well-being isn't woo, long term exposure to Niagara Falls should show obvious signs. Can find no such studies. 20190303 12:26 Love the absurdity of IQ tests for quant jobs. The real IQ test for that kind of work is how much the candidate does not need a salary! 20190301 11:15 Napoleon once said, "Le mot impossible n'est pas français" which is etymologically impossible. 20190301 09:57 8 of top 10 most dangerous walking areas were in FL. I've done a lot of stupid dangerous bicycle stuff but to ride in FL was over my limit. 20190301 09:53 % of US traffic deaths of pedestrians climbed from 10% to 16% from 2006-16. No doubt accompanied by a 6% rise in victim blaming. 20190228 17:31 Tech companies - perhaps call it EULP because with me it's more of a proposition than an agreement and it will probably stay that way. 20190227 09:02 New research into ephaptic coupling showing neuronal EM communication over an air gap. Keeping my wired headphones, thanks. 20190226 10:46 Today's Bible micro lesson: Jesus cures Peter's mother-in-law who then immediately gets up and serves refreshments. 20190226 08:12 "Earth, home to a vicious species of biped who push evolutionary pace to keep from poisoning themselves with their own waste." -- cxe 1999 20190224 10:50 Boffins at ucdavis demonstrated zebra stripes evolved to thwart insects. I don't care how silly that print looks, if it works I'll wear it! 20190221 22:59 I heard that 1984 Rockwell song Somebody's Watching Me. That guy is definitely prescient. See also Judas Priest's 1982 Electric Eye. 20190221 09:09 RaDAR. RADaR. RaDaR. RADAR. R.A.D.A.R. or maybe Radar. No, it's just radar. With that settled, let's get clear about how to write lidar. 20190220 10:01 If a dog's sense of smell is so great, why do they need to stick their face right into your crotch? 20190220 09:49 YouTube is using a close-but-not-correct vi-like key binding system. Making it close-but-not easy to use for me. (Try h,j,k,f,c,0-9.) 20190219 08:24 I (probably) love the philosophical hedging Unity uses to describe its physics engine (on their blog 2018/11/12) - "Enhanced determinism". 20190216 12:23 Traditional education says online education is insufficient but the disembodied experience of textbooks (esp the prof's!) is very enriching. 20190214 15:08 Want to search for "accidentally quit firefox can't restart because it says firefox running". But of course I can't. 20190213 15:59 Emergency emphatic beeping text message from Big Brother telling me to drive carefully - presumably while reading the text. Brilliant. 20190213 09:11 I wonder how many times simple probability calculus was silently reinvented by people who immediately changed jobs to professional gambler. 20190207 13:57 US Sm or Asia 3XL? Why can't online apparel vendors simply measure an item? I know you also sell tape measures @amazon! 20190207 11:33 I suppose privacy advocacy suffers from its proponents being the type of people who are very private. 20190205 11:15 "Open source is only free if your time is worthless"? Proprietary is only list price if your time is worthless. Minus freedom. Do the math. 20190203 14:34 51F in Buffalo, NY right now. 59F in San Diego. 39F in Julian (in SD County). Did get a ski in today though. Probably the last for a while. 20190201 09:55 The arctic weather we've been having has shown me that I'd be happy living in the arctic. Occasions I was too hot this week: almost 0. 20190130 18:02 If a "blizzard warning" is in effect and you're driving without lights on, you're doing it wrong. Why must I give this advice #buffalo? 20190129 19:23 So WR Hamilton is considered a genius for quaternion algebra - which he carved into a bridge? Lame. Gauss' predates sans vandalism. 20190128 10:15 Adventures in C - Suspected an error. Compiled fine. Added a definite error. Still fine. AHhH! How are you working?! (hint: C preprocessor). 20190125 10:49 One of the Shetland Islands is called "Mainland". Nice try but you're not fooling anyone. 20190124 17:54 The reason water seems transparent to us is that the vast wavelength spectrum blocked by water is also blocked by our water-filled eyeballs. 20190124 10:45 "Read-only variable", as found in C++ error messages, seems like an oxymoron. 20190124 09:11 Found this dumb bug report: "Google search history survives erasing browsing history". Duh. No better phrase to describe today's internet. 20190120 15:37 My wife and I got to a restaurant to find it "Closed for weather" (<1' snow). I'll have to rethink: if we can walk there, it will be open. 20190115 09:55 MSFT has some new poorly named thing they call C-shell that is not a shell and it is definitely not tcsh. 20190114 21:17 Hypothesis:anthocyanin+other autumn leaf pigments do not protect the leaves, but poison them so they remain uneaten as healthy forest floor. 20190114 17:14 "Twitter is the best place to get live updates about the things you care about most. Join today to see it all." lol 20190114 14:44 @ID_AA_Carmack has a VR idea to impel grace. Reminds me of my idea to have VR racing games in AV cars that use the upcoming turn forces. 20190114 06:36 Science education should emulate TV weather. Not the hand-waving clown in a suit plus greenscreen, but an audience who truly gives a damn. 20190112 09:18 Locations of executables on FreeBSD: /bin/chmod, /usr/sbin/chown, /usr/bin/chgrp ... Ok, I guess I can see the sense in that. Barely. 20190111 09:03 My status/t.co system is called twixiepoo, evolved from pixiepoo, my 2004 web-based photo mgmt system. Slogan: It's like the poo, of pixies! 20190111 08:57 At 13F, moustache comically freezes to beard on the bike ride to work. Still, I love riding in the cold. 20190109 13:19 IOT, now Internet Of Things, once was PDP11's Input/Output Trap. I think there is an excellent nerd double entendre there. 20190109 12:51 Movie "hackers" never search the web for help. The least they could do is read a research paper or CVE or, to really impress me, a man page. 20190109 10:06 Looking forward to the next meta-paradigm beyond Thomas Kuhn's so we can talk about scientific paradigms more sensibly. 20190108 22:49 Can't find Bird's in the northern region of the British-American Club. Made Americanized proper with half&half + maple syrup. Damn scrummy! 20190107 14:39 My posts go 1st to my site & then Twitter by py script. Hadn't checked t.co in months. Wow! Batshit crazy!(Except my "followers" of course.) 20190107 06:51 Seeing what the fuss was about, I was happy with a top 10 finish after an hour of Fortnite. Still, 99% of Fortnite players are losers. 20190105 05:57 I often buy things based on 1-star reviews. When idiots, almost exclusively, have trouble with a product, my esteem for it grows. 20190103 20:33 N4659, the C++17 standard, is 1622 pages long. 8-/ 20190102 22:38 A new low in "security" questions: "What is your favorite web browser?" And "What is your favorite color?" I'm not even kidding. 20190102 10:31 Saudi government demands Netflix censor a critical comedy sketch - have fun learning about the Streisand Effect! 20190102 08:53 I paid $1.69/gallon for gasoline yesterday somewhere mid Ohio. ($1.49 in Columbus!) Why? No idea. My old CA price now: $3.29. In WNY: $2.69. 20181226 20:50 Heard some Pink Floyd at a store today! Thankful that the seasonal music is abating. 20181224 11:39 Bought @klein_tools electrician scissors (origin:Bolivar,NY) to end incessant plastic packaging grief. Nice tool but struggled with package! 20181223 12:57 There is an odd pride one feels after using up an entire roll of PTFE plumbing tape in one lifetime. And I am feeing it now! 20181222 17:58 Hey webcam manufacturers, you know what I'd buy if I wanted a microphone? Answer: A microphone. One that doesn't suck. 20181222 08:25 Hypothesis: healthy forests require in situ dead trees to support/protect young ones. They fall and build forest floor as new ones mature. 20181221 09:39 Today I learned about the Earth's axial precession. Like most things, our path through the cosmos is more complicated than it first seems. 20181221 09:03 Received my 1st email scam using a fake document "signing" service. I knew that whole idea was rotten. I wish spammers luck in killing it! 20181219 14:00 Imagine an Ikea chair as hard to assemble as growing and chopping down a tree, milling wood, and building a proper chair. That's C++ vs. C. 20181215 11:57 Using "Raspberry Pi" as a code word for "hardware that does not require Windows". That any still does shows typical software quality - low. 20181214 10:44 I wonder if the courier companies subtly prioritize packages that people have "tracked". If I were them, I would! 20181211 12:08 Google is asking me to take a survey? What do they think they do not know about me? Are my countermeasures actually working? 20181210 22:10 Seems crazy now but I remember as a kid taking a helicopter from JFK to EWR. Thanks to Wikipedia for corroborating that @ New_York_Airways. 20181209 10:42 Bought a scraper which had an obnoxious sticker on it. Not off to a good start when I need a scraper for my scraper. 20181209 10:41 Brits use "silicone" as a verb while the US enjoys caulking cracks. Usually it is the UK that prefers antique+cheeky usage to tech jargon. 20181208 09:44 For a sense of how Xmas songs are cringeworthy to me, check out Loretta Lynn's "Shadrack the Black Reindeer". Don't hear that in Home Depot. 20181208 09:17 The Erie and Welland Canals seem inevitable when you consider how good the people of that area are at shoveling. 20181207 20:44 Disraeli's idea of an agreeable person was someone who agreed with him. I also try to allow those who can enlighten me to change my mind. 20181207 13:55 $100 worth of BTC one year ago is now worth $17. Minus the non-negligible transaction fees and mental energy. On to the next absurd bubble. 20181203 11:39 @PaulSherwen - A professional and a gentleman. He will be missed. 20181130 20:58 Cornish Game Hens - no longer the breed from Cornwall, definitely not game birds, and not necessarily hens. 20181130 15:19 People whinge about snow but it's commuting in the snow that's bad. Let's enjoy the snow and focus on the real problem: pointless commuting. 20181130 09:57 BTC is like blood in the water to e-crime sharks. N.b. AWS and BTC are fungible. 20181129 21:23 It's odd to see holiday decorations designed to provide a cheap plastic simulacrum of snow when there is actual snow all over the place. 20181122 17:22 Four deer just visited my backyard. They slurped down the neighbor's bird feeder like a cocktail. 20181122 17:07 Thankful that all of my favorite places to shop were open today and not even crowded: "The Store" (aka Amazon), Steam, and Canadian Tire. 20181120 12:00 Wished for 13 years xed.ch/p/gg had base conversions. I finally wrote it! Not as good as Wolfram's but better than Python's(=good enough!). 20181120 06:19 Time I've spent recovering from erroneous overwrites is nothing compared to time wasted on confirmation prompts. Thank you CLI Unix! 20181119 13:50 "Your call may be monitored for quality purposes."... You know what else can be audited for quality purposes? EMAIL! 20181118 14:52 Just put snow poles in my driveway. Yay! Reminds me of biking some of the nicest places on earth in the high mountains. 20181117 03:57 The terms big- & little-endian were coined by Swift in 1726. Originally describing eggs, symbolized political tension. He also coined Yahoo. 20181115 11:16 My way: explicit control yields 99% correctness. The modern way: completely automatic and 75% correct. "Progress". 20181114 09:15 Finally unpacked all the snow bicycling gear I designed and made--still works great! My talents were wasted in San Diego. I love the snow! 20181113 20:55 I'm pretty sure that California's Prop65 warnings are the boy crying wolf that will make real dangers quite a nasty surprise. 20181113 12:41 I wonder how many people die from the stress of dealing with "health" "insurance" "coverage"? Struggling to avoid being one. 20181111 11:21 I thought "Tits group" was the most misleading Wikipedia article name but it has some stiff competition with the "Ballcock" page. 20181109 10:29 On Splenda box: "Sugars Less than 1g" but the top ingredient is glucose sugar (dextrose)! N.b. "Serving size: 1g". An utterly evil product. 20181109 08:58 The imagination of the Star Wars universe is eclipsed only by the imagination extant in Star Wars merchandising. 20181109 08:55 SNOW! 20181107 17:53 Google:"Your personal information is vulnerable because you allow [others] to access your account in a less secure way." Me:Tautology alert! 20181106 15:57 I wonder if squirrels ever watch me (e.g. biking) and think, "OMG! Look what that crazy human is doing. He's lucky he doesn't fall!" 20181106 11:24 Beautiful fall colors everywhere! Quite spectacular here in Buffalo, NY. 20181105 12:52 When would be a good time "to jump on a call" with a headhunter? NEVER. Never call me. Ever. Literacy - use it. 20181103 22:42 I will study Flight Of The Conchords' Foux Du Fafa _before_ I go to Quebec again. I'm sure I'll meet an Anglophobe to use that phrase on. 20181103 21:50 In Bowie's Let's Dance vid, his unevenly dilated pupils are less strange to me than a guest DoAll Bridgeport-type knee mill. And guest SRV. 20181103 17:21 Somehow Amazon has started recommending I dress like a pirate. I can't tell if that's an AI fail since I kind of like the idea. 20181102 19:55 The most useful language to learn is French and the best place to use it is Quebec. The rest of the world at least tries to speak English. 20181023 12:35 The miles of (utterly obsolete) coax in my house run by slapdash installers over the years is so scary bad it's like Halloween decorations. 20181018 07:52 I used the rear window defrost of my 2013 car for the first time ever last night. In a sleet storm. I love it here! 20181016 19:44 Bought a life jacket with straps that can adjust to fit a 60" waist. I assert that people that size have sufficient buoyancy! 20181014 20:41 Why is the Erie Canal not labeled on Google maps (for at least 100 miles)? Was boating on it today - it definitely exists! And is beautiful! 20181008 11:51 Often using Ubuntu I am amazed at the awful interface. Later, helping out with a Windows problem, I am horrified to see what inspired that. 20180922 10:20 My @TMobile problem BTW is that the hotspot my employer paid good $ for works fine. For about 1.5 seconds. Then traffic dead. Phone-cursed! 20180922 10:15 More phone rants: Mobile phone tech support, make sure the CSRs don't mumble! Call quality seems awful until exonerated by awful hold music. 20180919 10:22 Anyone interested in programmer productivity should note Goodhart's law: any metric turned into a policy target becomes a bad metric. 20180917 23:09 Call mobile phone tech support - "solution" always begins with power cycle the phone. Genius. Pure. Evil. Genius. 20180914 11:17 It seems a waste to put a good-tasting beverage in a bad-tasting disposable cup. 20180905 14:14 Waiting to turn left into a long line of oncoming, a break opens because someone is absorbed in their texting. Mixed feelings about that. 20180902 19:54 US $ losses from traffic crashes (lost productivity, legal & medical costs, insurance & damage, traffic, etc) are 5x the NIH + CDC budgets. 20180830 21:27 You shouldn't make tautologies if you shouldn't make tautologies. (Inspired by a pharma commercial.) 20180828 17:50 Adding things to the wishlist which are immediately recommended. No, @amazon--I am trying to give _you_ recommendations. 20180826 17:08 At the zoo--the Buffalo buffalo did not buffalo Buffalo buffalo. But they did want us to know their scientific name is Bison bison bison. 20180826 11:39 Let me get this straight: George will be 23 when he impregnates 16 year old Jane; Judy to be born in 2046. (Wikipedia details the Jetsons.) 20180825 06:23 A Tiny Book Review for Vonnegut's Mother Night: Like the finest chocolate, well-crafted, not too sweet, slightly bitter, and extremely dark. 20180823 16:34 Saw the metric prefix `da` in use for the first time. Note that this pointless symbol is the opposite of an abbreviation. 20180821 15:53 I'm looking at a detailed nautical map of just above Niagara Falls. I suspect that if you really need that your boating has gone awry. 20180820 15:08 One day you'll be able to log into your social media accounts with a number tattooed on your forearm. 20180820 00:40 Tonight's irony: activating new phone - needs my phone number; buying a house - needs my address. Processes unclear on the concept! 20180819 11:46 People whinge about Unix syntax being inscrutable but are fine when told to "dial" *#*#4636#*#* or *#0*# or *#n# (n=06,526,746,1234,232339). 20180819 10:57 Wife says, "People will think we're weird." I remind her that's fine because we are weird. 20180816 09:07 The best scientific experiments are interesting no matter how they turn out. 20180815 12:48 Hey @nvidia, despite what `nvidia-settings` "X Server Display Configuration" would suggest, "Rotate Left" is not a concept. Hint: CW 20180812 10:38 I'm pretty sure the super friendly toll collector yesterday was cumulonimbus high, showing some jobs may benefit from that sort of thing. 20180808 21:39 It is hard to stick to a vegetarian diet with so many gnats. 20180808 21:23 Ah, but the winter... Can't bike then (some people think). Perhaps, but I will be skiing those same trails! Winter is coming this year! 20180808 21:21 My bike ride to the store tonight along the river was such high quality it was almost Dutch. Some gorgeous cycling gems hidden in Buffalo. 20180807 21:44 Playing with a very expensive specialty computer. USB ports still upside down. Not cool. 20180803 14:19 Ceci n'est pas une |. 20180803 08:18 Steady as a rock and twice as smart. 20180803 07:25 `ldd mplayer | wc -l` is 216! What could possibly go wrong? 20180731 08:12 Skated #cincymillcreek Greenway last night. Bravo @GroundworkCincy for turning an industrial wasteland into a beautiful bike path park. 20180729 10:49 Saw more lightning in the Mojave Desert on Thurs than in previous 16 years anywhere. Doubled that again on Friday in Kansas. 20180724 21:05 A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies--the chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure. 20180724 11:36 Today is the first time I've ever seen Mutt report "There are no messages." Victory! 20180720 23:19 Odds a software update will provide new functionality I appreciate: less than 1 package in 1000. New Firefox allowing new NoScript is one. 20180718 09:42 The phrase "All-Staff Picnic" is incompatible with "Tickets will be available Monday until sold out." 20180711 12:58 "Trying to remove a child that doesn't believe we're it's parent." Computer processes have complicated family situations too apparently. 20180711 09:54 The NIH 2018 budget is $37.3B; the US vitamin/supplement industry is worth $36B. Typical proportions of science and woo in the USA. 20180710 16:58 In the last 3130 days of employment I have sent 10796 work emails. That's 1260/year or about 3.5/day. 20180707 08:55 1. If I don't eat this chocolate soon it will melt. <- My complete list of easy problems. 20180707 08:52 Ok, so you're all going to be inexorably staring at your phones. Got it. Can I at least talk you into a turn signal app? 20180706 15:45 You'd think at aphelion it'd be, you know, cooler. 20180702 19:20 Google Voice for text messages, and Gmail for voice calls? Is that your final answer Google? 20180629 11:40 My son just visited the Berlin Gärten der Welt (Gardens of the World) and we agreed the American culture garden would be the parking lot. 20180628 18:31 ICD11 "Gaming disorder"? Seriously? I'm safely over my "Triathlon disorder" but still struggling with "Book reading disorder". See also: TV. 20180628 10:16 Saw a sign for "Probabilistic Microbial Seminar". I guess it might happen or it might not. 20180627 15:18 Got stuck behind one of those pickup truck idiots trailing a giant unsafe US flag in tatters. Wanted to yell, "They didn't even qualify!" 20180625 20:11 Drinking straws are facing some scrutiny now. For the past decade it's been in my personal creed never to use them. They suck or you do. 20180623 19:43 Cleaning my office today, I took 48 hard drives to the electronics recycling center. Memento mori! Never trust your data to one hard drive! 20180621 12:55 Whoever made the browser warning "server is redirecting" without saying WHERE, should be dropped at a random point on the earth's surface. 20180620 11:51 It used to be a point of pride but now when `uptime` returns something like "up 1115 days" I think, oops. True story this morning. 20180619 14:32 "If you are having a medical or psychiatric emergency...." being on hold with this phone menu will probably exacerbate it! 20180619 13:17 Just learned that for most of my life US chickens were commonly fed organoarsenic compound Roxarsone. Must I grow/raise all my own food? 20180615 10:01 Sometimes people touch my laptop screen to click, which is adorable. 20180615 07:44 If we assume endless ads help people make optimal choices, then modern tech must generate massive benefits therefor. If however we don't... 20180611 21:41 My horror movie idea: protagonist actually does think to call for help; must use Skype! 20180611 15:18 Goog's human test is asking me to label a training set of statues. Next it will be mannequins and people on ads. Don't hit any of them! 20180605 15:59 Ever get something from Amazon and think, "Wow, what an absolutely magnificent padded envelope!"? 20180605 08:34 #microsoft: Do not write software that says "Do not turn off your computer". Let's both see how well that approach works. 20180604 16:08 Found a receipt for my #magura hydraulic bicycle brakes. Nashbar MG-HS24 for $169.95. That was 2000-09-22! Still bet my life on them daily! 20180603 18:18 "The idea of a private company being in control over my source code is profoundly disturbing to me." My blog post re GitHub on 2015-03-08. 20180601 10:18 "Deep learning" is as likely to spark deep thinking as baklava is likely to cause weight loss. Layers improve results but are not magical. 20180531 12:37 Imagining academics writing papers: "How can I phrase this accurately yet in a way that will impede colleagues competing for my funding?" 20180530 19:01 Wikipedia says... Award for Most Overloaded Greek Letter in STEM... Is a tie! Congratulations Lambda and Delta! 20180528 20:31 I guess fear of heights is quite rare figuratively. 20180526 15:19 If some tool will be a serious part of your vocation, maximizing "easiest to use in the first few days" is probably unwise. 20180525 16:06 AAA survey: 78% in US afraid to ride in AV. I'd like to see a base rate there. I'm (correctly) afraid to get near any car. AV will be safer! 20180521 17:34 Whenever possible I stop and stand around to listen to the classical music being played to prevent loitering. 20180518 09:20 Bravo to @TheEconomist for competent DNS use! Compare click.e.economist.com with typical crap like awsstatic.com or ajax.googleapis.com. 20180516 09:31 Amazon email subject:"5LB Cafe Don..." and I figure it's AWS and some Java thing. I wonder how huge LBytes must be. No. Just selling coffee. 20180515 07:59 efail claims PGP vulnerable when really it is exactly everything about modern email but PGP that has failed. PGP is pretty unusable though. 20180514 17:55 New CO poisoning: quiet keyless cars, people think they're off. Can't GM install a $10 CO detector? If poisoned && vel==0 for Xmin: E-stop? 20180514 13:55 Saw a hilarious student today waddling in sagging pants and I realized, hey, that absurd fad is finally over, isn't it? Only took 30 years! 20180509 12:06 "I'm your only friend/I'm not your only friend/But I'm a little glowing friend/But really I'm not actually your friend/But I am" = Phones! 20180508 21:01 People considering a tattoo should watch 80s metal videos and reflect on the fact that those guys could take off those ridiculous clothes. 20180507 17:31 When I see an article with "Wild Animal-Related Selfie Death" in the title, I don't need to read it. Still, it's hard not to smirk. 20180507 16:08 What to eat: Imagine you're a zookeeper caring for an animal with the exact same physiology as you. What would you feed it? Eat that. 20180505 16:21 In a coincidence today, I swerved to avoid an idiot human doing almost the same dumb thing as in the Waymo crash. I luckily kept control. 20180505 16:18 Waymo's van was apparently not even autonomous today when it was hit by a car swerving wildly out of the way of an idiot human driver. 20180502 07:52 (Intl. Psychogeriatrics 30-1) Study of nonagenarians found them more resilient and accepting. Etc. What quintessential survivorship bias! 20180430 19:00 The Army wants 70 ton autonomous Abrams tanks. Uh guys, that armor is for the crew... Ok, I've said too much. Good luck advancing the tech! 20180430 05:21 If I can hasten the practical deployment of autonomous vehicles by one hour, I will have saved 100 lives. 20180429 12:28 A cakewalk and musical chairs are figuratively quite different but they're literally almost identical. 20180424 07:49 Schopenhauer's "On Noise" rails against the din of motorless carriages. Less ironically, his hedgehog's dilemma explores a similar theme. 20180423 18:31 Think social media stalking is bad? Graduate from a university and get a lifetime of dead tree spam with no off switch. 20180420 11:40 AWS cost report says they charged my org "$30.429437407499996" last month. 20180419 09:21 Based on Moravec's paradox, we should really be designing cars that dogs can easily drive and just hire them as chauffeurs. I'd feel safer. 20180413 08:24 I find that the more erudite the joke, the more funny it is to have been made than its content. 20180409 08:57 Did people breeding smart sheepdogs ever worry about them taking over their own eugenics and destroying humanity? #AI 20180408 13:32 The never used word "emplace" (except in STL) lets me imagine how programmers who don't speak English feel about typical syntax. 20180408 11:51 I wonder if people will ever say "post space age civilization". Comsats are more like tall cell towers with weird physics than spacefaring. 20180401 11:37 A "misleadingly indented" code warning from GCC? WTF? Typical examples would have you think that misleading indentation is the point of C. 20180331 09:55 Rereading some Asimov I realize it might be helpful to use the 1940s phrase "positronic brain" when I mean what other people mean by "AI". 20180329 11:59 How #Annihilation won a Nebula is as strange as its Lost "plot". Stinks way more than the "smell of rotting honey". Turgid. Sophomoric. Bad. 20180326 19:49 Gaming video: "We see a lot of people struggling in 1v1..." I'm thinking, exactly half of them, right? 20180326 08:37 Microblogging helps writers practice stylistic economy. 20180323 13:05 An AV test driver job applicant who didn't even own a cellphone would probably be rejected immediately for being too much of a weirdo. 20180320 13:08 I like to think that nothing could ever entice me to accept a job from a person who is famous for nothing more than firing people. 20180320 11:06 Actually, from a fresh install `ipa-server` has around 300 dependencies. But it does work! I'll give it that. 20180318 17:51 `ipa-server` has 199 dependency packages. Time to seriously rethink things. 20180316 10:04 At least if BTC crashes no one will be stuck with a bunch of embarrassing Beanie Babies. Or embarrassing sub prime mortgage tranches. 20180312 16:12 The sermon I'd go to church for: Why We Have A Lightning Rod On The Roof 20180310 13:41 Little known fact: I like trivia games. 20180309 12:42 Why no team versions of boxing? Or figure skating? Seems no less sensible than the normal form. 20180309 12:27 OpenLDAP has so many expertise deps (pam,nslcd,sssd,openssl,gnutls,+), it seems less complicated to create a focused solution from scratch. 20180307 13:51 Sure I can't really audit all the source code of open source software, but knowing the awfulness of openssl's man page is very suggestive. 20180305 19:13 In a debate if you can't make your opponent's best points, you can't make yours. 20180302 08:21 Absurd increases in education costs may allow one to signal the utter lack of common sense which seems required for today's jobs. 20180228 20:01 The steering linkage that makes your car's inner wheel turn more than the outer one was invented by Charles Darwin's grandfather. 20180228 18:20 YouTube comments are ghastly, like a damn car wreck. But never, never click on "View all 67 replies" to a comment. Never. 20180225 21:55 At best only 70% of your fellow humans agree on how to hang toilet paper (according to Wikipedia). What's wrong those other people? 20180221 21:04 Tribology is as important as it is obscure. 20180219 15:18 Just followed a link to a Slashdot post and then read some of the comments. Whoops! 20180219 10:29 Good news, Ireland! IRA terrorism is a Russian thing now. 20180213 05:53 VR is just another word for Skinner box. 20180211 13:44 Remember, the scarecrow got a diploma, not a brain. 20180207 18:01 I'd rather lose a social media propaganda information war than win a hot war. 20180206 05:56 The Spanish Inquisition continued until 1834. I totally wasn't expecting that. 20180205 13:10 Filling out a survey for a terrible product- Q: What would make you more likely to use our product? A: A lobotomy. 20180205 07:22 Is there any other application to factoring primes? Will Shor's algorithm and quantum computers just make everything insecure? Maybe FFT? 20180130 08:05 The concept of a "dollar auction" is quite insidious. Reminds me of real estate. 20180126 09:50 Even if legal weed doubled high driving (it doesn't), it's 1% of the problem of phones which we can accurately test for. 20180125 16:31 Never attribute to stupidity, misunderstandings, and malice that which is adequately explained by someone making huge piles of cash. 20180124 14:01 The only thing I can find out about the book "Capitalism Must Die" on the author's web site is that you can buy it there for $15. 20180123 19:16 Unless it grew on that piece of fruit, the sticker saying it's organic makes it kind of not organic! 20180122 11:19 Just realized I've never heard of autonomous vehicle AI training on what gamers call force feedback. Gamers prove it's obviously important. 20180121 20:14 The AI overlords will take over and destroy humanity when the Black Eyed Peas write a song called, "Hey Google, Turn Up The Volume." 20180118 11:37 I never expected to see this phrase: "Ferrari SUV". Wait... Lamborghini too? Well, why not? They'll mostly get driven in video games anyway. 20180117 09:31 Lots of people smoking weed down at the beach this morning. No more than normal. Let's hope the same holds for drivers. 20180110 11:53 Heard some of a speech by that idiot, Ronald Reagan. Today he sounds sane, decent, and even thoughtful and intelligent. By comparison. 20180103 13:53 Who is worried about advanced AI achieving human level cognition and then idly watching TV all day? Because apparently that's what happens. 20180103 09:06 I've always thought that the Game of Thrones theme music sounds like Ghost Riders In The Sky. Seeming much less like a coincidence. 20180103 06:08 New 128GB USB drive is formatted with a file system that has a maximum file size of 4GB. It's 2018; let's stop using file systems from 1977. 20180101 11:38 I quit skypeforlinux and was shocked to find that it did not keep running. Good job Microsoft! Your bar is very low. 20171228 07:56 Chrome As A Platform? CrAAP? 20171221 13:00 The economic disparity between $ spent by US gift givers and the smaller value appreciated by recipients is about the same as NASA's budget. 20171220 11:37 Freedom of speech does not mean one can simply say: Sushi chefs shear sashimi. 20171219 18:41 Among many other interesting things, #eurotrucksimulator2 teaches one that in the Alps there is often darkness at the end of the tunnel. 20171219 11:43 A recent study finds being a PhD student is associated with psychiatric problems. I suspect the ROI for a PhD discourages many smart people. 20171219 08:36 BTC's real contribution to society may be the get-rich-quick bubble that will drive down costs of AI training hardware. 20171218 17:58 Amazon wonders if I might like some other random electrical components after buying one for a repair. That's not how it works, my dear AI. 20171217 21:52 Years after promising it, MSFT has finally entered the 1990s with an OpenSSH client. Better 20 years late than never I guess. 20171215 13:09 The insane phrase "evidence-based medicine" did not exist before 1990. And even today it still needs to exist. 20171215 09:58 I wonder how many people suffer awful user interfaces and wonder, "Is it just me?" Or is it just me? 20171214 06:20 Almost literally walked into a Waschbär family this morning. Raccoon or rabbit should be UCSD's mascot. 20171210 15:07 Which will come first, a VR car driving game supporting Linux or the end of driving? 20171210 11:43 AI taking over the world soon? Look at all your Amazon recommendations. You can start worrying when nothing is lol wrong. 20171207 11:37 Just learned about Muhammad Ali's truly heroic military record. (Clay v. US) 20171207 11:13 British Steel by Judas Priest is pretty much the opposite of Christmas music and is curing my mind thereof. 20171205 16:29 Steam sale on Finnish games for Finland's centennial. Hard for me to take seriously those not supporting #Linux. Finnish OS not good enough? 20171205 09:27 Not sure how I feel about finding an "emacs-keys" section under "Useful mappings" in the documentation of Vim. 20171204 07:16 Searching for how #Nvidia driver died from a simple #CentOS 7 upgrade. Found an unanswered SE question and my own web site. Uh oh. 20171203 13:43 In virtual F1 not only can you hope your opponents crash horribly, forcing them to do so is expected strategy. 20171202 07:19 Congrats to the DPRK for being able to now reach a little farther than where I live. 20171129 12:45 Age-related hyperkyphosis (spine curvature) will soon be replaced by phone-related hyperkyphosis. 20171128 13:59 Exercise is known to boost IQ. I sometimes think universities have the intellectual edge merely from a (pleasant!) lack of close parking. 20171128 09:28 Not syncing would be fine if I were sailing. But this kernel panic is annoying. Grub is annoying. 20171128 08:46 If only the meaning of self-explanatory was. 20171127 14:44 Nothing improves the intellectual vitality of a serious research univesity like division I sports, said no one ever. 20171127 09:15 New paper: "Death by Pokemon GO" extrapolates an increase of 150k US car crashes because of Pokemon GO. 20171126 10:59 "You may work with robots... but you can't take a bullet like one!" Sign on the wall in Portal 2. 20171125 21:09 A protest over the spelling of parliament may have been justified. 20171124 18:52 Wait...So the Boston Tea Party was because parliment _eliminated_ tax on colonial tea? More than ever we need to make America British again! 20171122 09:49 Staring at their phones while walking across parking lots. Because city daredevils have neither bears nor sticks to poke them with. 20171121 14:34 People who apologize for troubling me when I'm just doing my job are never the ones who should apologize. 20171118 10:24 A gluten allergy, eh? How did you rule out a thiamine mononitrate allergy? Or niacin? Or folic acid? And their adulterants? 20171117 08:43 Wow. Just watched a police shooting from my balcony less than 100m away. Crazyland. 20171116 23:23 TPMS sends pressure and temperature for each wheel which gets squandered down to just one barely useful idiot light on the dashboard. Sad. 20171116 23:20 Just learned that car TPMS broadcast unique radio beacons so Big Brother can track your car at will. 20171113 23:29 "Meek and obedient you follow the leader down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel..Get out of the road if you want to grow old." 20171113 20:54 The universal adoption of the mousewheel validates the translation-free strategy of trackballs. 20171104 12:11 The Wikipedia page for "partial derivative" lists at least 10 different syntaxes. Nice work, calculus! 20171103 19:28 The fact that social media incessantly badgers me to rat out my friends hints that there are still plenty of us left who haven't. 20171103 10:20 Good explanations require a perfect memory of what it was like to be totally clueless. The paradox is that experts intentionally lose that. 20171031 07:27 Stop saying your creepy but cool and impressive walking robots could "aid search & rescue". To me that's code for: "hunter-killer". 20171028 20:05 "Piracy is not a victimless crime." That screen is usually more dramatic than the movie that follows. 20171028 14:26 Greatness tip: Write badly about great idea. Idea languishes. Rediscovered! Thrives. Your writing unearthed. Add prescience to your legacy! 20171025 08:56 What's the opposite of a snowbird and how can I get started? 20171018 16:53 "The media could not be played." Au contraire! 20171018 07:39 Leaf blower, fire alarm, car alarm, and sirens -- all before 0730. So how does one ventilate a soundproof box? 20171016 08:56 I eat very little meat but I did think of a great name for a butcher shop: The Best Of The Wurst. 20171013 11:32 When I first encountered anti-virus software I knew immediately that if I ever wrote a virus it would feature "anti-virus" in its name. 20171013 10:34 The word "handicapped" is completely inapposite to describe deaf people who are talking about lawn care equipment. 20171006 09:41 Thanks to @Puri_sm for teaching me what an SPC is. And proving I'm not the only one horrified by creepy surveillance phones. 20171005 07:51 Has congress already passed the Lame Acronyms Mandatory for Every Act? If not, it seems like the LAME Act would enjoy bipartisan support. 20171004 14:54 Today's grammar lesson: ironic quoting. "Health" "insurance" "coverage". 20171002 16:49 I love Tesla, they're great! Oh. Oh, ya, them too. I thought you meant the band. 20170926 09:10 Seems like the Stones' "Little T&A" is thematically identical to the Bible's "Song of Solomon". 20170924 21:50 Music I like by guys with hair like Edward Scissorhands... The list is surprisingly long. I don't even know The Cure well. Maybe I should. 20170924 08:12 Solving code challenges is one of the best ways to prepare for... *solving code challenges*. 20170924 05:54 If the point of your multipart html/text email is for me to open a link, then the text part must include the link! 20170922 19:41 I always said the WWW took off because Windows was so bad. An open platform was needed. The final nail of web as platform: webassembly.org 20170922 10:15 I'm actually proud of how difficult it is to "sign" PDFs with Linux. If it's hard to do with Linux, it probably shouldn't be done! 20170922 09:59 "An electronic signature is an image of your signature overlaid onto a PDF document. You can do it with many apps." You *and everyone else*! 20170921 19:20 I'd like to see a war on government initiatives containing the word "war". 20170917 07:36 With proper isolation precautions it can be fun to download and play with predatory viruses. I'm playing with Skype right now. 20170915 10:52 When everyone can read and write--permissions of the Beast! 20170914 13:12 To me the most important aspect of the Equifax breach is not just that data was stolen but that it could also presumably be subtly modified. 20170914 09:57 Another fun Google Voice mistranscription: "Hi Kristen, my calling from Cobalt. Gimme a call..." etc. She actually said "from Google". Doh! 20170911 18:48 Online shopping sites: if you inexcusably don't have larger images don't let me spend several seconds waiting to see what "enlarge" will do! 20170908 09:01 ewastipation: n. The resulting imbalance when acquiring electronic devices is much easier than properly disposing of them. 20170905 06:12 Once the kids of those who've committed securities fraud are safely behind bars, we can talk about deporting the kids of immigration fraud. 20170904 08:39 Wondering how a "library that provides a GObject based interface to system-tools-backends" can intelligently be named "liboobs". 20170828 07:54 My favorite telephone feature we didn't have when I was a kid: now you can answer and say "What? What? I can barely hear you!" and hang up. 20170826 08:17 Love John Oliver's take on Seaworld's mission: "Systematically driving carnivorous whales insane." The fireworks are probably a part of it. 20170825 13:26 Nothing says cutting edge gene ontology research like 12 year old abandoned Perl modules. 20170824 14:33 @webshitweekly will share my frustration at Patreon's inability to 1x pay. Before n-gate, despair. An essential filter for "tech" "news". 20170822 08:21 Search for "gnu logos" and you'll see why free software adoption is so slow. After 30 years, "gnu30" almost gets it right. 20170822 06:27 Once again "Eclipse" will return to being that Java thing for people who don't know how to use Vim. 20170822 05:37 Saw more coyotes on campus than people this morning which is cool. (I mean the Canis latrans kind.) 20170820 16:42 Economists act like cognitive biases are a new challenge but there has been a system for eliminating them for centuries: engineering. 20170819 08:00 My new grammar hobby: using "therefor" correctly. Therefore, I believe this qualifies therefor. 20170818 17:09 Uber's law firm, Morrison & Foerster, apparently goes by the nickname "MoFo". 20170818 15:20 One day a misfocused Vim key binding (for up) is going to make me look like a racist to the creepy browser tracking I try hard to block. 20170817 09:18 I agree with The Economist, he's "politically inept, morally barren and temperamentally unfit". But how was he ept enough to be president? 20170816 09:13 Debian and Ubuntu: Cutesy names OR version numbers. Pick one! (I ran tar on Tahr, zip on Stretch, then switched to 16.04 after Wily.) Ahhh!! 20170814 07:25 I wonder if former heads of executive departments of the federal government get a lot of job ads for secretarial work. 20170813 13:46 I calculated for top 40 lobbying firms, % market cap spent on lobbying not tied to ability to beat SP500. Let's call that good news. 20170812 20:21 Read about 5k words of comments on an author's blog; I realized, not a single spelling or grammar mistake. Still some smart net people left! 20170811 11:22 I wonder if Musk's jardineros use battery powered leaf blowers. 20170809 22:54 Has Tesla been sending agents to park on my street and idle for dozens of minutes? This is getting ridiculous. Ok, ok, electric cars! Now! 20170808 09:49 While I sympathize with IBD sufferers whom the Marvel comic, The Unbeatables, was commissioned for, my low opinion of Marvel remains low. 20170808 09:15 In the last 31 days NOAA KSAN high temp has been above average high; low temp well above average low. Every single day. 20170802 21:04 US DOT NHTSA National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey found that 94% of all car crashes were caused by idiot drivers. 20170730 13:24 An important objective in autonomous vehicle design is "jerk minimization", a delightful double entendre. 20170730 09:45 You do not need Matlab. People who truly need Matlab over Octave must also be fancy enough to contribute what is needed to Octave. 20170729 10:23 From the paper on Junior: Our implementation assigns a slightly higher cost to reverse driving to encourage the vehicle to drive "normally." 20170725 21:22 I hate it when intelligence is counterproductive but I lack the wit to convincingly dumb it down. 20170725 10:25 It seems like these days das Opium des Volkes ("the opiate of the masses") involves actual opioid receptor agonists. 20170724 20:48 I swear... One day... Full Amish... 20170723 19:56 Now when I see a hipster I'm going to think, well, he's probably a super cool dude. Thanks for that, @taylorphinney. 20170723 09:04 18 yrs after I hand machined custom mounts to get disc brakes on a road bike, a TdF stage has been won with disc brakes. Great to see. 20170722 10:50 The word that best describes modern politics: kayfabe 20170721 08:22 Sometimes I feel like the main utility of me physically coming in to work is to change the water cooler bottle. Too heavy today. Recovering. 20170720 15:20 Misheard "robot planning" as "rabbit planning". Ok, that is quite different. 20170712 13:36 Saw some PR noise about some firm's "evolutionary leap forward". Does this mean it is likely not to survive this change à la evolution? 20170712 12:19 Did you see Facebook's comment? Commenting on someone else's comment? We're all now being watched by the worst gossiper in history. 20170708 08:37 Misheard "machine learning" as "mushy learning". No loss of meaning. 20170704 11:00 Found in my chemistry notes: Although SDF is an embarrassingly terrible data format, it is nearly universal in biochemistry. 20170704 09:29 To me apple pie is British. American as prison, fluoridation, pickup trucks, non-metric, ARs, barbed wire, 120V, military and health costs? 20170703 16:54 Damn smartphones! Remember the good old days when idiot drivers were simply heavily medicated and/or letting their dog drive? 20170628 12:09 I've always said that Oracle should stick to their core competency, but lately they've been getting their ass kicked in sailboat racing too. 20170626 15:18 Today ~1/3 of the emails I deleted were copies of emails I had just sent some kind of help desk. Overly verbose confirmations, not helpful! 20170622 14:49 The fundamental flaw of civilization: idiots can't provide for anyone, but smarts, paradoxically, also can't satisfy self-defeating idiots. 20170617 11:37 Made a few tiny edits to the Pledge of Allegiance so that it makes some sense. Here's my complete new version: "Justice for all!" 20170612 15:14 Stupid tech biz idea: a service that hooks up people to harshly review each other's resumes to stimulate the honest feedback hirers omit. 20170609 10:32 Covfefe=covariance of the squared probability density function of the Gaussian distribution, ϕ. Usually not constant nor negative. 20170609 08:40 A high Gini coefficient, or wealth disparity, is a problem for biological systems too. In multicellular organisms it is called cancer. 20170604 11:45 Based on title, the most misleading article in Wikipedia must be "Tits group". 20170604 11:11 Is C portable? Is steel recyclable? Do I have to pay for Windows? Are there more men in computer science? Real questions I have been asked. 20170602 06:31 At some point math overtook philosophy as the hallmark of seriousness in academic publications. This was a grand philosophical error. 20170531 13:43 Love the Wikipedia entry on 'List of things named after John von Neumann'. 20170531 11:48 The only truly wholesome emulsifier is a spoon. 20170527 02:58 Does the "c" in `cmake` stand for clusterfuck? 20170525 11:21 From OS install guide: "If you like more flexibility or just want to know what's going on, you should..." Why I love GNU Linux and Debian. 20170522 09:28 I love the word "fahrerloser". 20170520 10:11 "There's a lot more chaos on the roads than most people think about." (More from C.Urmson,yt=BtgBySRrN0Q) I'm clearly not most people. 20170520 09:52 "Not because people are bad drivers but because in general they just lose attention for a moment." C.Urmson, that means they're bad drivers. 20170519 21:45 In theory a planned power outage soon. Strange coincidence that my uptime is almost exactly 100 days, to the hour, since the last one? 20170518 10:23 I laugh reading articles about how malware will be taken more seriously now. In the past, that has never preceded my salary going up. 20170518 08:18 The Linux distro I've recommended for 18 years:The one your friends use. Today for me:Gentoo, Debian8+Mate & CentOS7. Deb8 often works well. 20170516 08:02 A Russian grandmaster vs. an orangutan will provide the most entertaining chess ever seen. But the ape will lose. 20170515 16:47 And now for something completely different. A British hundredweight is 112 pounds. Which is, of course, simply 8 stone. 20170515 15:57 Searched for "how to remove quora from google search results". Can you guess the first link? Top 8? Yup. I didn't expect anything less. 20170515 09:04 Lyrebird voice impersonation. Another reason not to use phones for important chats. And if it's not important? Well, let's just not. 20170515 08:52 Reading about vision based ad block. Potentially very damaging to big content providers. What are we waiting for? Kill them; save the net! 20170513 17:22 I'm hoping to prevent auto-shortening with U+2024 like so: xed․ch/b/2017/0513.html Or maybe something more obvious: xed∘ch xed∙ch 20170513 13:57 I do not like t.co's shortening. I'm writing about it at http://xed.ch and want a sample. 20170513 13:56 I do not like t.co's shortening. I'm writing about it at http://xed.ch and want a sample. Details at my domain +"/b/2017/0513.html" 20170513 13:54 I do not like t.co's shortening. I'm writing about it at http://xed.ch and want a sample. Full details at xed dot ch /b/2017/0513 dot html 20170512 22:40 Stroustrup says C++'s OOP comes from Simula67. 50 years ago. I'll stop thinking of it as a relatively recent addition then. 20170512 21:31 Google needs GitHub to host its C++ style guide? Should I use GitHub's C++ style? No, they use Ruby/Erlang. I'll use my own style, thanks. 20170510 10:19 Auto-Tune is to music what machine learning is to thinking. Seems like an ok idea when used sparingly and there's nothing else to work with. 20170510 10:12 "Update and shut down" or "Update and restart"? What if I pull the damn plug, Windows? At least my son now gets why MFST drives me insane. 20170508 14:49 News to me: The USA still does have a space shuttle, the X-37B. It is unmanned and just finished a 717d mission. Its purpose is secret. Wow. 20170503 12:13 Seems like the phrase "fly-over town" would better describe a city with an airport stupidly located in its downtown. Ahem San Diego. 20170502 20:31 A dark epiphany: what if the people who voted in presidential elections were like the people who leave YouTube comments? 20170502 11:10 Nanotech is to molecular biology what 3d printing is to machine shops. Each prepended with "hype of" is also apt. 20170501 19:46 Damn it OpenCV! The RGB color model dates to the mid 1800s. What the hell were you thinking with a BGR default? Practical joke? Not funny! 20170428 23:02 Harder than you expected, Donald? Ironically he's coping the same way I am: by trying not to think about the people who voted for him. 20170428 21:56 1 hr of work takes 1 hr. 1 hr of programming might take 40 hrs, 39 of which may involve finding one bug. Found two such today. Laugh or cry? 20170425 09:00 Pity The Onion with real headlines like this: "Saudi Arabia Elected to UN's Commission on the Status of Women" 20170422 14:20 Of 2017's 112 days, expected 56 warmer than avg historical high. Got 68. Should be 56 cooler days than normal lows too. Only 15! (NOAA-KSAN) 20170422 13:08 I saw a lot of ad hominem ridicule of Trump at the MarchForScienceSD this morning. So sad. We can do better. Should be ridiculing Pence too. 20170421 14:32 Problems you didn't know you had: space fission. Space debris collides, explodes into more debris. Soon you have the Wall·E launch scene. 20170421 10:05 Hard to say who's the bigger jackass, the guy whose vehicle is so loud it sets off a car alarm, or the owner of such a sensitive alarm. Tie? 20170420 10:02 Ignoring any science news article containing the word "could" in its title _could_ be a practical time saver, scientist believes. 20170419 21:31 Mac people pollute their environments with `.DS_Store` files. Like smokers, they don't realize how icky that is. 20170417 08:25 I love how Windows says "Welcome" like I'm visiting its computer. 20170416 20:29 Dies for our sins. Doesn't stay dead. You had one job! 20170414 16:59 "I mean look, we have, in terms of technology, nobody can even come close to competing." That's right Donald. Support science or else. 20170414 12:24 Up to 36 suspected bad people were killed. With a $16e6 GBU-43/B bomb. Are $500k bounties not effective in Afghanistan? They would be here! 20170411 06:13 How much is viticulture about intoxication? Compare wine tastings with a natural control like the number of raisin tastings you've heard of. 20170405 10:42 Dumb people danger. Causes most fatalities? Aircraft blinded by laser pointers? Or people choking on still squirming octopus? Ans:san-nakji. 20170401 10:11 It started out as mockery, but I think I'm becoming an emoji artiste. 🐵 20170331 12:56 New paper in Royal Society Open Science: "Brain size in birds is related to traffic accidents". Oh, and cars kill 250e6 birds a year. 20170331 07:54 The internet tells me that the private Christian school attended by a young Marylin Manson is still in business. Capitalism fail? 20170324 08:39 I'm not a fan of USB form factors. For example, USB standard A housing is 12mm. RJ45 ethernet connectors are 11.68mm. What could go wrong? 20170321 07:46 Love reading articles about the imminent AI uprising while listening to a car alarm. 20170320 21:02 I sure do enjoy correcting the grammar of someone correcting someone's grammar. 20170320 11:43 Science doesn't actually know how bicycle physics work. Folks, let me assure you that it definitely does not involve Lycra in any way. 20170319 09:59 Accidentally boot W10 partition; I click shutdown obviously. It then says, "Getting Windows ready, Don't turn off your computer". Halt FAIL! 20170316 11:29 Of course I'm being paranoid! "Being paranoid" is a synonym for "computer security". 20170314 18:54 At home going through all my personal hard drives to consolidate. Guess how many I have... 32! I feel like a hoarder. 20170314 11:27 Courage: the fear of accepting one's fears? 20170313 18:02 Tax prep tip: 1.Use an online prep service 2.Input all data 3."Preview" their optimal return 4.Copy by hand to paper forms 5.Mail it in. 20170312 16:34 BBC says "Ethiopia rubbish landslide kills 48". My life is really pretty good. 20170310 12:39 Bravo to fairphone com, working to remove supply chain oppression so that only its customers are oppressed. Holding out for no oppression. 20170309 12:09 "...make those who are vulnerable feel they have permission to do it." Reminds me of people supporting Trump. Cf. Wikipedia: Werther effect. 20170308 11:37 Unix and C are too old-fashioned for some people who are quite comfortable with mathematical notations ideal for quill and parchment. 20170308 08:49 If you can't pass a cyclist safely, don't pass at all. The fact that this is not common sense is very depressing. 20170306 13:26 Seems like an interview for a machine learning job should not be conducted by a human. 20170301 16:58 I just realized that my PGP fingerprint, which deliberately ends in 11111, anticipates bitcoin mining by 10 years. 20170228 11:16 The two word summary of all molecular biophysics talks I've ever heard: It's complicated. 20170228 07:31 There is one thing Windows is really efficient at: overwriting Linux during installation. The caution can be tedious the other way around. 20170227 11:09 Most reliable machine learning application ever: I'm currently drying my shoes with TensorFlow. 20170227 10:57 Got soaked walking across campus; umbrella destroyed by wind. Reminded that San Diego is comically bad at drainage. Best weather of 2017! 20170226 12:05 Looked down from Mt. Soledad on another spectacular rainbow this morning over La Jolla Shores. Had to ride into the raincloud for that one! 20170222 12:03 A challenge to academics: Start your paper with something other than "These days", "In recent years", etc. 20170221 07:50 Go AI? Ha! I can thwart the best chess AI every time. And humiliate it further by effortlessly picking up the pieces off the floor. 20170220 08:40 Fantastic rainbow on the top of Mt. Soledad this morning. (This note to myself will be no worse than a bad photo of it.) 20170218 07:38 Still unnerved by utf-8 in Vim or Mutt ® © §. Ѕeeing "ω=ω0+α*t" in Python3 is like watching a baby's first steps near a busy road. 20170217 13:41 Pyplot docs:"...a collection of command style functions that make matplotlib work like MATLAB." Ah. That's why it's not like proper modules. 20170216 19:50 After 11 years of non-stop Asciidoc, I have mixed feelings about GitHub making Markdown a thing. If I switch, it will be to my own system. 20170216 17:22 Someone really needs to make a manager for the managers that manage package managers. I know, I know, they exist. Don't tell me about them. 20170216 07:50 Re: bike paths. Which is false? 1 The new one in Rose Canyon was a good idea. 2 Destroying it after 1yr was ok. 3 Too expensive in general. 20170208 18:44 dev-libs/boost brings my Gentoo update to its knees. Requires MAKEOPTS="-j1". Not exactly the best endorsement for how efficient it is. 20170207 20:06 Many (e.g. MIT Tech Review) are asking "What if the Free Market Decided Whether or Not Drugs Work?" Answer: Elixir sulfanilamide. 20170204 18:06 5 word review of "Echopraxia" by Peter Watts: Vampires, zombies, yet doesn't suck. Full review: http://xed.ch/b/2017/0204.html 20170204 10:38 New book by @joshgans, "Scholarly Publishing And Its Discontents", has the best index ever. Free PDF at joshuagans dot com. 20170204 09:17 Still planning my URL shortener. Until then, the internet is full of pictures of cute animals. You don't need my help with that, do you? 20170131 13:12 Today all recruiting pitches are for N months. Glad the stigma of short-term engagements is 100% gone. It is gone, right? Right, employers? 20170130 21:45 If Twitter can have "Lolcat" English, surely they can have grammar pedant English, e.g. "Whom to follow". 20170130 20:50 I think I now have my status scripts also dumping to Twitter (@chrisxed). If you like Twitter and me, you're in luck! 20170130 16:23 Optimal iterated prisoners' dilemma is tit for tat. Time for crazy populism I would be proud of? Probably unwise but: YesCalifornia.org 20170129 11:10 I love this microblogging stuff. I can dash off twaddle with not a mote of serious thought. No wonder Twitter is such a success. 20170129 10:59 Harassing resident visa holders from Muslim countries... How Muslim does it need to be? I'm thinking of, say, the UK? Asking for a friend. 20170128 21:07 How lame is Twitter? My replacement is a sed one-liner. 20140728 19:18 Attempted to change profile pic. Rejected with 'Try to pick something closer to a square'. Good luck with that. 20110909 03:30 Guess who is at work at 03h30. Just got all my machines back up, and down it went again. Actually, we probably deserve this. 20110904 23:04 I read Slaughterhouse Five and was momentarily hopeful for humanity. Then I read the reviews on Amazon by knuckleheads. So it goes. 20110807 01:16 Cute Girls Don't Always Equal Best Friends. My guitar told me that. 20110609 22:16 My bedtime reading audience just pointed out a flagrant continuity error in The Cat In The Hat. 20110604 22:20 Any of my friends know what a Buckethead is? If so I'll assume you'll want to see one in the wild. June 25. 20110520 13:19 Finally an unintended benefit of tango, listening to Bo Carter and not even noticing the recording quality. goo.gl/0d3SO 20110505 22:46 When there exist multiple competing scientific theories, the one that makes humans less important or otherwise special is the correct one. 20110426 12:24 Intel 8087 is to 1980 what CUDA is to 2010. 20110419 21:47 Can you imagine what it must be like to be someone who enjoys thought experiments? 20110407 13:32 Party like it's 1999! This message sent to you over a god damned dial up modem. I despise you AT&T. 20110404 12:52 Worst unintentional pun ever:'Next on NPR we'll hear how pedophile priests are slipping through the cracks.' 20110225 22:43 Thanks to a painfully slow ISP, I just discovered a cool Youtube Easter egg. I'm not the first: youtu.be/a_dzS0-z0Ak 20110211 09:31 More than a spell checker, I need a sarcasm checker. 20110201 21:11 Sometimes I see red paint spills in the bike lane. "It's paint," I say to myself. "It's just paint." 20110115 04:31 OTH, if rock stars were playing a video game version of my job, they would suck worse than I do at Rock Band. 20110113 22:16 You know who's getting fired? ping.fm, that's who. We're taking our Unix command's name back too. 20101220 22:20 Big storm here sucks for eclipse watching. Best to watch it from the moon anyway for a very cool sunrise. This can help: goo.gl/50X5v 20101219 16:57 Most realistic dream ever: dreamed that someone was giving me a tip that receiving tips in a dream causes one to wake. Then I woke up. 20101210 14:03 Obama quoted me verbatim today: It's not an issue of big government versus small government; it's an issue of smart government. 20101126 17:14 I just realized what I'm thankful for: that Thanksgiving does not have any special holiday music. 20101115 15:13 Patched a flat before work today in less than 15 minutes. On my car. This works: goo.gl/0qH9b Still no bike flats in over a year. Yea! 20101112 12:19 Cats shed and poop. How can the cuteness of real cats compete with the world's cutest cat videos? Same situation with professors. 20101111 10:01 My family, disenfranchised because of illustrious US military service, does not celebrate Veterans Day. 8 USC Sec. 1401(g) 20101104 16:01 Special treat in SD for those from the southern hemisphere: winter in summer and now summer in winter. My room is warmer than I am. 20101102 10:55 I'll support limited restrictions on violent video games if they also apply to the Bible. 20101029 13:07 He told the kids that in Africa drums were used to heal the sick. After an hour of it, my illness was noticeably worse. Drum healing fail. 20101022 00:29 A fun and educational documentary I created about an incident at work. Hope it isn't in bad taste. youtu.be/E0Xo1fp8lfM 20101016 09:44 "Cyclist Friend Explains Necessity Of $35 Socks" goo.gl/je7w 20101013 11:05 Who's more terrifying, Stephen King or Alveda King? 20101009 23:13 Google... wow. Delighted that they're following my dreams. Depressed that I can't go join them. 20101002 23:31 Amo Google translate novus pluma. 20100925 10:13 I didn't like AOL when it was called AOL. I don't like it now that it's called Facebook. (But I'll deal with it.) I should go outside more. 20100922 22:06 Got new eee. For kicks decided to start the Doze before wiping. 20 min later, still not up! Can't change language after first boot?! WTF? 20100918 16:32 Here's a terrible idea: syntax highlighting for javascript and html simultaneously using red/blue 3d glasses. 20100917 20:51 OMG. I just learned San Diego has one too: icr.org 20100911 22:28 When I was a kid Darth Vader seemed to be covered in hi-tech gear. Now he looks kind of ordinary in that respect. 20100822 00:07 My Linux kernel talking like a police report: Driver loaded but no devices found. 20100812 06:41 Seems to me that if you love Nvidia drivers for Linux you'll love CUDA (another turf war inside your computer). 20100806 09:09 Horror is to film what ASP.net is to the web. 20100715 17:59 I won't fix your computer. I won't fix your car. But your car's computer maybe. If you have a check engine light on, I probably can help. 20100709 00:19 I love this weather. Cloudy days are my figurative sunny days. Remember this when I'm bitching about the "good" weather. 20100608 18:21 Secure online account numbers - deskshop.discovercard.com. SSL Certificate expired. Ouch. 20100605 12:26 Counter-brainwashing math skill young kids can use: 3.99 equals 4, not 3. 20100527 15:58 Michael Crimmins is a spammer. Please citizens, don't let this wanker represent San Diego in congress. 20100502 12:32 No exciting Apple product can make up for the time I've wasted reading pointless Apple chatter. Yawn. 20100309 07:40 I <3 Linux: -rw-r--r-- 1 0 0 44008634667008 Mar 9 00:45 bigfile 20100226 15:58 The "defense" industry is a cross between welfare for white people and an extortion racket. Just say no! 20100218 18:27 Now that I'm a pharmacology researcher, my first project will be to design anti-irony pills. 20100213 17:19 Ubuntu, I know you're great for most people, but could you please stop kicking me in the balls. Thanks! 20100205 18:47 FB... yawn... My pathological habit is Google Reader. Any of my cool friends sharing stuff? I'm chrisxed. 20091226 19:15 titanmissilemuseum.org + creationmuseum.org = ROTFOMFG 20091210 06:37 Most incorrect google.com/voice mistranscription: "Mr. Edwards" becomes "Mr. Average". 20091123 12:38 There is much weirdness right now. Let's all just be cool and see if it goes away. 20091114 23:05 On #go-nuts IRC, I'm blown away by how many people already know how to program Go, just 4 days old. Lay off the caffeine people! 20091110 22:46 Google has a programming language they describe as a cross between Python and C++. I just compiled it. Works! (golang.org) 20091107 21:04 When I plug the 22" LCD into my laptop, everything is 20% wider. Perfect for supermodels. 20091107 13:41 When kids are playing a game, they do not say "time out" any more. They say "pause". 20091026 06:30 Just saw U2 in the Rosebowl. Very cool. My pre-concert contest: what cause would Bono talk about? 20091024 17:40 I can't decide if I have the energy to try to debunk Modern Portfolio Theory. Maybe later. 20091020 00:58 Wrote a Bash script to post these stupid utterances and then archive them as comments in the script. Is that cool or ugly? 20091018 12:19 Drawing trash icons on bad CDs. Me: what's that? Grom: a *real* trash can. Kids don't know Oscar's home. Danger of bad computer metaphors. 20091015 10:18 Used my car to go to CB last night and the week before and nothing in between. The serious good life. 20091013 11:34 Trader Joe's French Village Maple Cream Line Yogurt! First Obama, now this. Wow, Americans can fix their mistakes! 20090923 10:28 My 5y.o. grom discovered that this is legal Python code: 5+++++++++++++++++++++++++2 20090920 16:52 Ok, I'm caught up now. We can talk about Spain and it's grand tour. Cadel Evans, your initials just bring bad luck amigo. 20090909 09:09 090909 - I guess a lot of people getting married today. On 340909 1/3 of them will celebrate their 25th anniversary. Yea! 20090906 10:31 Fruede!! Allen Suendern soll vergeben, Und die Hoelle nicht mehr sein. Oh Vimperator! Oh profoundest joy! I forgive you all. 20090828 08:30 No one expects the Spanish Inquisition... unless you're searching for it in Wikipedia in which case you do. 20090817 11:58 Love the public library. Thanks to my socialist comrades out there for making that happen. Now for some healthcare. 20090811 17:02 Scientists, the laity mock you. Priceless: http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/10-in-the-future-doing-science-is-like-blogging 20090807 07:37 My rituals: woke up to see 090807060504, then had awesome cinematic dream involving monkeys, gasmasks, pharma, bicycle, ass-kicking justice. 20090805 11:24 Divine Miracle: Watching 3 hrs of Dan Dennett lectures and then being visited a short while later by Jehova's Witnesses. 20090802 17:37 I would drink more coffee if I had one of these. http://www.wga.hu/html/c/cano/vision.html 20090731 09:49 N[real]=N[Drake]/d where d is the probability discount that an alien civilization has contacted humans and we just don't realize it. 20090729 13:22 Without music half of your brain is alone. 20090718 09:34 Bing is a Google project implemented by planting subliminal messages in Ballmer's ego. Its purpose: prevent anti-trust scrutiny. 20090712 11:45 Discover Card billing cycle is 25 days. If you call and tell them it's a scam (i.e. late fees), they'll make it monthly. Wankers. 20090710 18:38 Jazz is the glossolalia of music. 20090706 16:30 Enjoyed today's Manx awesomeness. Looking forward to the beautiful TTT tomorrow. 20090703 22:03 I thought of a new holiday this morning at 0745: "No One Uses A Leafblower Day" 20090630 10:25 Who thought of half and half? Why is it so tasty in coffee? Why was it cheaper than milk? What else can one do with it? Questions... 20090628 10:48 I give thanks to the bicameral gods that I have the freedom to pursue my own intellectual agenda. 20090624 16:10 If you're a geek or a human you'll find my vacation photos interesting. If both, you should visit yourself: http://ping.fm/aviRO 20090615 21:57 I sometimes feel bad about wasting your time. Enjoy your extra 5 seconds for the next few days. 20090614 21:02 For a film advertised as "hilarious", Up sure produced a lot of tears from adults and exhortations from kids to leave immediately. 20090614 11:28 L'amour est un oiseau rebelle que nul ne peut apprivoiser... 20090612 21:31 A certain percentage of people think that behavioral economics is more important than it really is. 20090609 22:47 Instead of calling it "Stupid Movie 3", call it "Stupid Movie 2 2". 20090609 09:02 Stupid Wolframalpha Tricks: Looks like March 6, 2122 will be a good day for hiking in SD. Magnetic declination 0 degrees. 20090607 17:24 1/4" washers=$.08, should I just drill nickels? 20090604 23:33 Redenbacher, you bastard, you knew all along that all popcorn is microwavable. 20090603 16:27 Pirates have better entertainment options than ninjas. Or am I overlooking something? 20090602 19:05 wolframalpha knows food densities! Schwarzwaelderkirschtortlis result\! 20090529 22:48 How accurate are everyone's time stamps? ntp tells me it's Fri May 29 22:47:59 PDT 2009 20090529 09:01 Speaking of named pipes, they should have named it bong.com. 20090528 20:25 This message was piped to mailx. I'm a geek. 20090528 11:17 Chris X Edwards is teh exclusiveorxor. 20090525 17:16 Chris X Edwards is feeling pretty good and looking forward to feeling even better. 20090524 12:17 Chris X Edwards is not feeling like a rotting log today. Yea!