Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/02/12/big-turkey/
We are moving! Starting in March, we’ll have nicer digs at the same price we are paying now. The move was inspired by an effort on the part of our current landlord to raise the rent, despite their stunning mediocrity. One of the few advantages the current place has is a hot tub, but as we visited it yesterday, we were soothed by the fact that the hot tub is merely a warmish tub. When we moved in last year it was hot and half the jets worked. Now it is merely warm, and only two of the jets work. And the construction noise next door is ramping up. The new place is a condo sublet, which a nice old guy wants to keep occupied by nice tenants until he is ready to sell it in a few years. Two levels, lots of closet space, a big ol’ kitchen, 1.5 baths, a fireplace!
So, yeah, we are totally looking forward to our new digs. This morning we found a “goodbye” gift in front of our door, of a half-drunken bottle of Miller Lite. Our neighbor down the hall got an even bigger surprise, as someone vomited a spaghetti dinner all over his newspaper. You’d think we were back on Walton!
Also, I am super big in Turkey! I have been getting a lot of heartfelt comments letting me know that Allah, who is great, is watching me . . . and that good Muslims will have sex with Danish cartoonists. It is all very exciting. The best part is that the Turks, in addition to leaving nice comments, also click on my ads. So, my AdSense revenue is up a good deal this month! I think that these Mohammed cartoons will eventually buy me a sandwich, so while I don’t really approve of disrespecting anyone’s religion, I gotta admit–blasphemy pays!
This might be a neat time to demonstrate the niftiness of Google Analytics. Here is a pie chart of traffic on this web site for the past week, showing us that, this week, at least, my audience in Turkey is larger than my audience in the United States:
(more…)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/02/07/cartoons-last-word/
(Well, hopefully last word . . .)
There’s some good discussion taking place over on Flickr. I like to think I’ve summed up my thoughts as well as I am going to, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dannyman/94765982/?#comment25268804:
I really value the discussion here. I think the correct answer is “Yes, these cartoons are offensive to a fair number of people, and it is rude to publish them.”
The reason I am violating this ethic is because I feel that there is a serious problem in the Muslim response. People are overreacting, hysterical … it points to a real problem with many followers of Islam.
I am an Atheist. My religious beliefs call for respect for everyone, but I know that we often fall short of these ideals. Among the greatest disrespect you can give to someone is to claim that their words are worthy of death. Death threats? No, words that bring about death threats must be repeated. The speech that brings about death threats needs to be louder than the death threats.
If Muslims–and many do–complain about these cartoons in a polite fashion, that’s all the more reason to withdraw the cartoons, apologise, and leave this issue behind us. Unfortunately, the radicals are getting all the press, and I for one am completely sick of it. Let us publish these cartoons far and wide until they would have to kill everyone! Let their hysteria grow ever louder, until the majority of people, who do have at least a basic intelligence, ask themselves “wait, we’re going to war … over cartoons?”
The cure for darkness is light. If the wackos want to scream and yell, I’ll scream and yell back. I think that ultimately, this helps illuminate the pettiness of religious zealots that have enslaved the lives of so many Muslims.
It may have started as an issue as to whether it is proper to publish a cartoon. Some of these cartoons, yes, they should not have been published. But now it is an issue as to whether Muslim faith is stronger than an offensive cartoon in a remote, non-Muslim country, or whether Islam is just a bunch of screaming, hysterical cry-babies who issue fatwas, threaten beheadings, and use the sligtest excuse to resort to violence, because that is not religious faith. It is evil, and evil has no place in my world.
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/01/30/gapers-cubicles-redeyes/
The past week has been good. Saturday was the excellent Birthday Party #30. Sunday I got some work done, then I was getting up to pick up Jessica at the airport when she called and reported that her Southwest flight had landed 40 minutes early! So, I met her at the BART instead. Monday and Tuesday I was out-of-sync, and Tuesday at work was spent doing some emergency resuscitation of a dead laptop . . . Wednesday morning, I think it was, I was back on my game, and on the bus ride in to work, I saw something really cool: a full traffic break.
I had been wondering why the Southbound traffic was so sluggish. Then, all of a sudden, I saw the traffic evaporate in the Northbound lanes, which were led by a Highway Patrol car, weaving to a full stop, four lanes of traffic behind him. Everybody stopped, and the officer got out in the middle of the highway, to remove some chunks of wood. A guy in a white pickup truck at the head of the third lane hopped out to help remove debris, as our Southbound traffic sped away. “Northbound 680, all lanes stopped at Danville to remove debris. Gapers Southbound,” is how that might have been reported on Chicago radio.
Gapers. Gapers is a traffic delay that you get when drivers slow down to gape at something interesting along the highway. “Something interesting” usually means a traffic accident. And in many cases, it is only reasonable to slow down, just to make sure people aren’t leaking from the incident into the traffic lanes. For my part, I thought the full traffic break, during rush hour, was a sure sign that we are civilized: we empower a single cop in a patrol car with the power of Moses, to part the rolling seas of a busy highway, to make 70MPH a dead stop. I heard an opinions piece on the radio some months back, a guy from India felt that Stop signs were emblematic of America’s true power. In India, nobody would ever stop at a stop sign, so the government doesn’t bother with traffic control. In America, people will come to a full stop nearly every time, even if they don’t really need to, because our civilization is in such a state that people respect and understand the legitimacy of our laws. (more…)
2 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/01/22/good-times/
Danny blows out the candles! (Thanks, Lea)
Yesterday was a fantastic gathering of friends.
Today we get to relax, and recuperate.
I love you, Yayoi. Thanks for organizing, and getting a fantastic cake, and cleaning up while I slept in today. And thanks to everybody who came by, and brought presents, and conviviality, and thanks to Brian, who treated nine of us to dinner.
Everything and everyone was fantastic. I am a fortunate person.
There are future events that will encompass Dim Sum, and “Axis and Allies” . . . those who may find such things interesting and would like to be added to such activities, let me know.
And thanks to those of you who sent e-mails or cards just to wish well.
And now . . . I have some work-work to catch up on, and my sister to pick up at the airport this evening.
It is good to be older. :)
-danny
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/01/18/30/
“Well, spank my ass and call me thirty.”
Do I have to start acting like a grown-up now?
3 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/01/16/just-another-monday/
Lift every voice and sing
’til Earth and Heaven ring
Ring with rejoicing sounds of liberty!
Let our rejoicing rise,
High as the listening skies!
Let it resound
Loud as the rolling sea!
Sing a song . . .
Yes sir, I grew up in the public schools of the Chocolate city. Unfortunately, I’m working in the vanilla suburbs, so this cracker doesn’t get King day off. Oh well, that’s alright, I have work to do, you see.
And on Wednesday, I’ll be thirty years old. Neat, huh? I’ll have to start acting like a grownup.
If you haven’t received Yayoi’s e-mail invitation, and you would like to help us celebrate on Saturday, drop me a line and I shall send you details.
“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/01/13/sysadmin-brain-dump/
MAN!
I am not at all on my game today. I went to kick the tape robot, right? Then I check on the backups server to see if it can see everything, and it seems like it lost its SCSI capabilities. Huh? Reboot the server, and get kicked off IRC. Stupid Sysadmin brainfart! I was on the wrong server.
I hope maybe my brain comes back soon, I got work to do.
Yayoi’s been working at the cafe, which tends to mean she’s out for the evening. I love spending time with her but a little quiet time to myself is good for non-work geek productivity. I’m worried if maybe my brain has a finite capacity to function and I used it all up last night working on my WordPress Flickr plugin. You can see it taking shape. I am very excited about that. And, no, its not that my brain has finite capacity, its just that maybe its too busy being excited about other things. The least of those being PHP code. (more…)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/29/i-am-lame/
So, I discovered yesterday, that if one goes to Google, and types i am lame, then my web site is the first hit. Don’t that make me feel special?
But I didn’t drag you here for my inverse ego thing, here’s some cool videos that I have seen recently:
Internet Musical — World of Warcraft Monsters praise the Internet, in song. Best. Video. Ever!
Climbing Russian Kids — Man, talk about making good use of a post-utopian wasteland. Hollywood should steal these kids for stuntmen.
Sushi Documentary — Everything you shouldn’t know about sushi.
Devil Dogs — Lucian Reed went to Iraq to take photographs. This video is a valuable glimpse at how our folks are doing over there.
I have decided that Google Video is mostly tolerable. It’s not standard CODECs in files . . . probably they have some decent reasons, but unlike RealVideo, or QuickTime, they don’t require you to install spyware on your computer and watch the video in a little 2″ window. So, well, okay, maybe forcing you to stream . . . why? Maybe that is somewhat evil, but it is definitely less evil than “Video on the Internet” that has come before, and easier for the masses than Bittorrent . . . though it’d be neat . . . give it time . . .
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/23/akita-sushi-buffet/
It would seem that the dinner sushi buffet is back for Walnut Creek, on weeknights, for a limited time only. When it first opened, the dinner sushi buffet was a wonder to behold! Giant servings of raw, delicious fish. It was too good to be true, and indeed when they realized how much money they were losing, they stopped it.
Well, tonight I was thinking “spicy tuna roll” and found the buffet back in action. But it is a far cry from “too good to be true” . . . more like “dude, what do you expect from a sushi buffet? Fool!” Oh well. Maybe Gourmet Sushi will actually re-open soon. The sign says he will open before Christmas, but last I seen, the windows were still covered with newspapers and there was an envelope from the IRS sticking out of the mail slot. If he skips town . . . well, restaurants come and restaurants go, but that guy has this intense aura about him that kind of reminds me of Basil Fawly, except with inscrutable Asian powers. I’m going to miss that guy.
I’m not feeling too good . . . but if I survive the indigestion I get to fly to Chicago tomorrow, and see the fam.
Happy Solstice Holidays to you!
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/19/crazy-naked-woman-yay/
You know . . . I have uploaded over 3,000 images to Flickr, and I occasionally like to check out which are most popular.
Of the images that I have taken, the second most popular is this: (more…)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/05/early-retirement/
I think my mom once said that she tried to send money to one charity a week. I thought “hey, that’s a neat idea.” So, I tend to cut checks . . .
. . . but, honestly, I’m sick and tired of the massive volumes of direct mail I receive as a consequence of my good intentions. My favorite are the environmental charities that send me mailing labels . . . I have like 6zillion mailing labels already, right? So, let’s kill s’more trees.
Well, here’s the final straw: (more…)
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/11/29/sysadmin-brain/
Well, the holidays were nifty but they are chased with half a week on the East Coast redoing the install I did last month that needs redoing for a variety of reasons you don’t want to be burdened with. So, move from the uber-chill four-day weekend without a lot going on beyong setting Grandma up with her new Mac (early Christmas present due to the death of her old Mac) and enjoying family time, especially wifey time . . . and we’re back in the data center demonstrating our mastery of the Linux operating system. Nyahh!!!
So, just an anecdote, I caught sight of a baby breast-feeding. How wholesome, I felt, hooray for breast feeding . . . that must feel intensely wonderfully intimate . . . hey, without my notice, baby is on the other breast, and I had my SysAdmin brain moment.
“Oh good, load balancing.”
Thank you, and goodnight.
-danny
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/11/19/you-might-think-i-am-lame/
. . . because I tend to post stuff on Friday evenings. Friday evenings!? I mean, sheesh, does this man have no life?
But Friday evening the wife is at class, so it is one of the few times I can get the place to myself to dork off.
That said, I kind of feel like kicking back and doing something passive, like read, or watch the next episode on my Netflixed Firefly DVD . . .
Though, UTC, I think it is almost Saturday Morning, so if you look at the timestamp you can just assume I am drunk.
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/11/09/universal-time-dammit/
Yayoi has heard me quote this bit from The Simpsons a dozen times now, but:
“Welcome to Japan, where the local time is tomorrow.”
Today I noticed that my blog timestamps were now one hour off, because WordPress does not support the abomination that is Daylight Saving Time. So I went in and said “stick with Universal Time,” which I think should be the standard time zone for everything anyway. Standard Time zones are an inaccurate fiction, invented as a convenience to schedule trains. Daylight Saving is a silly kludge built on that fiction. When I’m elected dictator, we’ll all use Universal Time for coordinating schedules, and everyone’s time-keeping device will also accomodate local solar time, so you can coordinate pre-industrial activites like eating lunch around noon, or heading home from work some time before sunset.
I am a crackpot who is fifty years ahead of his time, so don’t mind me.
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/11/01/fear/
So, I spent last week in a hotel near Dulles Airport in Virginia setting up a new network. Most things went great, but we had a vendor, whom we are paying a lot of money, crash and burn on a support call. In a fantastical way. I mean, it was like dealing with a telco. We managed to complete everything on time, I even got to visit the Air and Space Museum before my flight back. But the bad experience shook our confidence in the vendor. Badly.
I spent a lot of time upset over this . . . actually lost sleep in my disillusionment. I wrote up a list of stuff I was upset about, and on Monday I took some time at my own office to re-write a more professional list of things that I want addressed. I sent this off to the responsible parties, and immediately got calls back, which I did not want to take. We have established that they have until Wednesday to answer my concerns and restore confidence.
But the thing that sticks in my mind was when I checked my voicemail last night, was that shortly after I had sent my list of concerns off, was that the guy who called back, his voice had fear in it. Like I’d caught him in the cross-hairs. Granted, he probably has the most riding on this . . . but I want him to succeed, and this is something I tried to convey in my message, though I made it clear that we were entirely prepared to cut our ties with the vendor if I were not impressed . . .
There is a little gratification to be had in the knowledge that you have scared someone, because fear is a powerful motivator. But, things happen . . . support and communications screw up from time to time . . . I don’t want to hear from someone who is working from a place of fear, I want people who have the confidence that they can see a way out of the problem . . . fear has its place, I suppose.
Well, I hope things work out. While giving the vendor time to get their story straight, I have also lined up some alternatives.
Fear?
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