dannyman.toldme.com


Politics, Religion, Technology

2005: A Good Start for Fags

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/02/2005-good-start-fags/

The site godhatesfags.com has been hacked and shut down by Swedish hellbound faggot defenders, “in cooperation with Activist JudgesTM.” For future viewing pleasure, I have archived the page.

Thanks for the tip, Adam. (more…)

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FreeBSD, Technical

HOWTO: NDISulate Windows Drivers on FreeBSD

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/05/freebsd-howto-ndisulate-windows-drivers/

This is the second time I am going to use NDIS to allow FreeBSD to load the Windows drivers for a Dell laptop to access the built-in wireless. As this is my second time, it is good to make my own crib sheet of what I have to do, so I can do it even quicker next time, and because you, the reader, might find yourself here thanks to Google.

In both cases that I have done this I have been starting with FreeBSD 5.3. According to this crib sheet, you need to be fairly current with 5.x to do this. That crib sheet is also my main source of reference.

If you have already done this to your system and find yourself having to re-do NDIS after an upgrade, you may find my “rendis” script handy.

If you have already done this to your system, and are tracking -STABLE I have read that you no longer have to follow these steps, but merely run:
ndisgen (more…)

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Good Reads

Apartment 1A

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/08/apartment-1a/

Alright, thanks, Jess, as this Best of Craigslist post is a damned fine read. It is a missed connections post to the girl upstairs, whose interesting girl-on-girl sex life mysteriously employs a vacuum cleaner:

“It was certainly better than the incredibly routine and uninspired Trixie-on-Chad hetero-fucking I’d heard through the walls of my old apartment in Wrigleyville.”

Awesome.

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Jokes, Technology

How exchanges outside POWERLOADER

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/17/how-exchanges-powerloader/

Last week I was working in Washington, DC. Before I left, I had to write up instructions for other staff to exchange a tape robot, called a “Powerloader.” The instructions were pretty straightforward and I was fully confident that the staff could do the work without any trouble. So, in case they wanted a challenge, I produced another set of instructions by running the document through Babelfish to translate from English to Chinese, and then back to English. Every time I read these instructions I giggle, so I share with others who may have a similarly perverse sense of humor: (more…)

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Unsorted

Year 29

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/18/year-29/

I am a year away from thirty. Twenty eight has gone well. I have married, and I have moved from a good job to a better job. I spent a fair amout of twenty eight with a looking-over-the-shoulder paranoia, or skepticism, or lack of confidence, left over from the tumultuous work experiences of previous years. I can kind of feel that slipping away now. I have started thinking the big thoughts again about what is possible, and what the opportunities are. My brain is starting to roll back in to that optimism about what grand things are afoot, and what I can do as part of the perpetual technological revolution, whether it be creating some Next Big Thing, supporting a company, merely sitting back and observing the bustle up close, or simply collecting a few bucks while making preparations to retreat to some Shangri La that would be a good place to raise kids.

This is how I used to think, back around the first time Bush had become president. And I think that if these things are to happen then I am in a better position to engage them . . . a little more patience, a lot more experience, and with Yayoi, I hope, more inclined toward stability. Here’s to the next round!

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Lyrics

Ripple

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/18/ripple/

A tune in my head of late:

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung,
Would you hear my voice come thru the music,
Would you hold it near as it were your own?

It’s a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken,
Perhaps they’re better left unsung.
I don’t know, don’t really care
Let there be songs to fill the air.

Translation?

While we all wish that creative expression could transmit our thoughts and emotions from artist to audience, that doesn’t matter so much. If you enjoy creating, or you appreciate what is created, than that is good enough.

Others have analyzed this song a lot more.

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Free Style, Good Reads

Orpheus at the Plough

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/19/orpheus/

“Nature is not seperate from me; she is mine alike with my body; and in moments of true life, I feel my identity with her; I breathe, pulsate, feel, think, will, through her members, and know of no duality of being.”

Bronson Alcott
Orphic Sayings, No 35
via The New Yorker, January 10, 2005
_Orpheus at the Plough_

Put me in mind a bit of Speed:

“Life is a matter of a miracle, that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each others’ presence . . . The world is an exam, to see if we can rise into the direct experiences . . . Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write a hundred stories.”

Time now, to drift off, and enjoy a dream or three, before returning to the plough tomorrow, and tilling, once again, before the dancing exuberence.

2 Comments


Testimonials

Advice for Women: BYOC

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/20/women-provide-condoms/

From a recent conversation on IRC: (more…)

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FreeBSD, Technical

FreeBSD HOWTO: Software Mirror System Disk

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/24/freebsd-howto-gmirror-system/

A new feature of FreeBSD 5.3 is the ability to set up a software mirror of your system disk. This allows you to boot off either of a pair of hard disks, which will then function as a RAID1, which will ensure system uptime in the face of a single disk failure. (more…)

41 Comments


Sundry, Testimonials

Right of Way

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/31/right-of-way/

8:12AM, Ygnacio Valley Road at California

So, what just happened was that I took a look out for cars while crossing the right-hand turnout to the main crossing. An older lady in a red sports car came whizzing up to the turnout, took a look at me, and kept going. As I stepped in to the turnout, I smacked her red spoiler and continued on my way. I heard a honking behind me, as a few pedestrians already waiting at the main crossing looked around. After a moment, I turned my head too, to see the red sports car drifting lonely down the street.

I figure that if you fail to yield to a pedestrian, then the wholesome smack of flesh on plastic is a healthy reminder that plastic smacking flesh is highly undesirable. A healthy way of saying, “Good morning, and thank you for flirting with vehicular manslaughter.”

5:02PM, Bishop Ranch Bus Stop

I got downstairs late for the 4:54 bus. A co-rider suggested that we missed it. Then the bus pulled up, and we got on board. I did some reading up on web performance tuning, trying to think of more ways to debug the causes of trouble for one of our European clients. The bus roared along, and my studying was cut short, because by 5:20, the bus was already at Walnut Creek! It took another three minutes before the traffic light allowed the bus to cross Ygnacio Valley Road and drop us off at the BART station. As we waited, I noticed, out the window next to me, a guy in a blue Volkswagen shuffling papers in his lap, twitching with his transmission, and chatting on the cell phone, pulling a foot or two forward every few seconds, waiting eagerly for the light.

I figure that if you want to get work done on the ride home, you can take the bus. It works for me. “Can you believe that guy,” I said to the passenger in front of me. “And I have to walk home through that!”

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Free Style, Religion

Friday and the Sun God

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/02/04/friday-sun-god/

I am having such a Friday. I have been really productive lately, which heightens the sensation of coming in one day, and sitting at one’s desk, and really not doing anything. Not even slacking off, just sort of in suspended animation.

So, let us slack off for a bit. It is important to do. I’ll tell you that this morning, as I was walking across the foggy parking lot to get to work, I looked up in to the sky and saw a sphere. The moon, so late in the morning? But it was pure white, and a bit larger. What an interesting moon. Unless … it is … the sun! I was staring at the sun!

Normally, staring at the sun is a bad thing that will make you go blind. Don’t stare at the sun! But today, the sun was weakened by fog … it was stripped of its wrathful power, and was just an orb in the sky. I thought to take a picture of this, because it was eerie and alien, but when I pulled my camera out a moment later, the sun was gone. It had become invisible in the fog.

Talk about eerie.

As I finished my trip across the parking lot, I thought about how the sun is totally manifest each and every day, even when you can not see it. It is so powerful that usually you can not look at it directly or it would destroy your eyes, but you can feel it shining warm on your body, touching you and everything from up high. No wonder the early people revere the sun as a God. But then, the fact that you can not look at the original Sun God, and you can experience the sun even when you can not see it, well, that opens up people to the idea that you can experience other Gods, even when you can not observe them directly.

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Technical, Technology

Project Idea: Referer log Zeitgeist

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/02/04/referer-zeitgeist/

So, take a look at backlinks. It is kind of a mess, culled from my web server’s Apache log, but gratifying to browse. Apparently, I am the top hit on Google for such things as:

I owe such “fame,” I think, in large part, to WordPress’ clever habit of putting title keywords in to the URLs of my posts. Google seems to lend a bit more credibility to URLs that match keywords as opposed to goofy URLs. “What’s in a name? Would a Rose, by any other name …”

Anyway, another thing you’ll see in there is some spam referers that companies will wrap in to HTTP requests with the expressed intent of appearing on a public “backlinks” page to boost their own Google ranking!

I have been thinking to hack up a little log-file parser that pulls the referers out, and checks on them to make sure they actually link to the pages they say, and if the referer is a search engine, to check the results on that search engine and report the ranking. It is nice to:

And, thinking 1.1, it would be neat to track this data by week, or month, and see gaining keyword hits, and declining keyword hits. A personal site “zeitgeist” if you will.

Has anyone ideas on implementation, or if it has already been implemented, or other features that would be nice, or how best to arrange the results? Drop me a line or comment here. Thanks!

-danny

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Testimonials

My Sister Kicks Butt

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/02/04/my-sister-kicks-butt/

Well, it started as a gigantic screw-up. Getting pregnant, right? Well, these things happen, even to responsible people.

And, there are a number of ways to handle such a screw up. My sister has come a long way, I think, nine months is one way to put it, but I think she has come farther than that.

Though she is not prepared to be a Mom, she decided to have the baby anyway, and place it with an adoption agency. Well, on February 2, with the help of our Mom and my sister’s awesome boyfriend, (who is not the father,) my sister gave birth to Evan.

Being pregnant, and giving birth, and then giving the baby away . . . of all the tough things you can do in life, that is up there on the list. I’m proud of my sister, and I am very happy that things seem to be working out great.

(And I’m a little frustrated that I can’t be around, but this is nothing new.)

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Testimonials

seatguru.com

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/02/04/seatguru/

Dave is flying to China for two weeks for business.

Another Dave suggested SeatGuru.com for advice on selecting seats for his sixteen-hour flight.

I will have to remember this, for I will have to fly to Japan in May.

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Sundry

Halfway Through Friday

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/02/11/halfway-through-friday/

So, as you can tell from the lack of activity here, it has been a somewhat hectic week at work, so as I return from lunch, I point out to our office manager that I’m half-way through Friday!

And I got the weekend ahead of me.

And, a friend calls, totally bummed out about work. I share my philosophy about how you can work your 9-5, and then forget about whatever you don’t like about work, and go home, and revel in the beauty, or the problems, I guess, of your home life.

Enough upbeat energy and positive thoughts and my friend seemed a lot more cheerful.

Which makes me happy too.

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