Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/06/14/outrage-fatigue/
Joe told me he made a deliberate effort to stop reading political blogs, and I said that I never really did bother to read political blogs, because they generally don’t go past provoking self-righteous outrage at the other side, and since about 2003 or so I have definitely had “outrage fatigue.”
But that doesn’t mean I still don’t pay attention, and that doesn’t mean that I am ignorant of the outrages. I get a trickle of the worst, usually from The New Yorker, and that’s when I feel compelled to re-tell the stories of the greatest outrage.
Amnesty International recently referred to Guantanamo and other prisons like it as “the gulag of our times” or words to that effect, and the Bush Administration and conservatives flipped out over that . . . (that outrage!) because really, our suspending the Geneva Conventions and inprisoning a classified number of people throughout the world based on classified intelligence without ever charging them with a crime is nothing at all like the Soviet gulag, where millions of Stalin’s own citizens were worked to their deaths.
And you know, they have a point, or maybe I was daydreaming about something else when I read the chapter in “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” that was similar to this passage, from Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker, May 30, 2005: (more…)
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/06/13/dear-jesus/
A while back, I signed a petition for the American Family Association to oppose Ford’s support of gay people. I didn’t do this because I agree with them, but as a subversive act to put obviously bogus names on their petition. The idea being that if anyone ever reviewed their anti-gay petition, they would see that “Jesus McChrist” was definitely opposed to Ford’s gay ways.
Every time I see this e-mail, I get a little chuckle: (more…)
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/06/11/perl-convert-celsius-and-fahrenheit/
I recently had a need for two quick temperature conversion algorithms in a Perl script. I asked Google, but did not immediately get a great answer, so here’s my answer:
# Two quick helper functions: CtoF and FtoC
sub CtoF { my $c = shift; $c =~ s/[^\d\.]//g; return (9/5)*($c+32); }
sub FtoC { my $f = shift; $f =~ s/[^\d\.]//g; return (5/9)*($f-32); }
The regex is to untaint the input datum, and could be eliminated if you know that your variable is clean. This code has been incorporated into a systems health and data trend monitoring script for FreeBSD. For the vaguely interested, here’s today’s perldoc: (more…)
5 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/05/20/catholicism/
The words of Cardinal Joseph Bernadin, of Chicago:
“If one contends, as we do, that the right of every fetus to be born should be protected by civil consensus, then our moral, political, and economic responsibilities do not stop at the moment of birth. Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker. Such a quality-of-life posture translates into specific political and economic positions on tax policy, employment generation, welfare policy, nutrition and feeding programs, and health care. Consistency means we cannot have it both ways. We cannot urge a compassionate society and vigorous public policy to protect the rights of the unborn and then argue that compassion and significant public programs on behalf of the needy undermine the moral fibre of the society or are beyond the proper scope of governmental responsibility.”
(more…)
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/05/18/george-galloway-american-patriot/
If you’re frustrated with the American government, then you may enjoy reading, hearing, or seeing George Galloway, a British MP falsely accused of oil profiteering, call our government for what it is, a pack of fabricating, war-lusting, profiteering liars: (more…)
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/26/awesome-blog-idle-words/
Now, I don’t believe the words “awesome” and “blog” should ever go together, but sometimes you have to make an exception. Maciej Ceglowski takes the time to write some truly enjoyable prose, putting weird and other pleasantly engaging images in my head. I enjoy reading every word, and you might as well. From his recent survey of New York Pizzas:
Back in the heady post-Soviet days, it used to be possible to get really bad pizza in Warsaw. Vendors in the little plastic booths on every corner would sell you a hot dog bun spread with tomato paste and pressed ham for about ten American cents. Then the Vietnamese showed up, with their cut-rate lunch specials and even smaller booths, and the Warsaw pizza market was no more. Finally the Health Department got funding, shut everyone down, deported the Vietnamese, and now the nation’s capital is a desolation of McDonald’s and hipster cafés.
If “The Unbearable Thinness of Crust” gives you a clue as to what may inspire Maciej’s writing, then that may help you determine if you will enjoy reading “Idle Minds” as I do.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/22/i-am-all-powerful-muhaha/
Increasingly, prospective and existing customers are interacting with corporations electronically, both for research and purchasing purposes. Those that ignore online inquiries are alienating consumers–especially young “affluents,” the 24- to 33-year-olds earning $75,000 or above who are the heaviest Internet users (and most likely to be asking the questions). In fact, our research indicates that 70 percent of consumers go to a competitor’s site if they don’t receive a timely response to an online inquiry. And losing those customers is a faux pas few companies can afford.
I don’t really need to read the rest of this CNET article because I already know all I need. Companies, fear my “affluent” wrath!! MUHAHAHA!!
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/18/sticky-riddle/
What is long and brown and sticky?
(more…)
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/14/blacksmith-poet/
There was this poet, who decided to retire from poetry.
He went and enrolled in blacksmithing school.
He learned all about smithing, and pounding, and metals and all that, and became a master blacksmith.
He was later interviewed by The New Yorker magazine, and was asked,
“Why did you leave poetry to become a blacksmith?”
(more…)
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/12/best-buy-2-dollar-bill/
I just read the most stunningly bizarre story in the Baltimore Sun. It is about Mike Bolesta, who bought a car stereo for his son, but Best Buy gave him one that was too big for the car, then offered him a cheaper one, waiving the installation fee because they shouldn’t have sold him the wrong one in the first place. Then they called him up and said that if he didn’t pay the installation fee, they would call the cops. So, irritated, he goes in there the next day and pays in $2 bills.
He gets arrested.
Not only is every last employee at that Best Buy stupid, but the Baltimore Police are evidently wack-jobs as well. After some hours in handcuffs and leg irons the Secret Service comes along and explains that his currency is legal-tender, and that yes, it is not unheard of for a bit of ink to rub off of legitimate US currency.
ObTip: Use BugMeNot to bypass compulsory registration. It actually took me a few tries.
ObIdealism: stratusmonkey declares April 13th is “Two Dollar Bill Day” to commemorate the life and career of President Jefferson, and remind the American public that the paper money bearing his likeness is legal tender.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/08/biz-vs-gov/
Mayor Michael Bloomberg on the contrast between business and government:
“In government, everyone thinks that in business you say jump and everybody jumps. That’s not the way a good company is run. Good companies are run by leaders who delegate and build consensus. In business, people think that everybody in government is lazy and incompetent. That’s also not true.”
(more…)
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/03/20/america-still-relevant/
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I wont say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
Having a poem in your head is like having a song in your head, only quieter and easier to identify. This morning I had Ginsberg’s “America” in my head, so I went to read it again. I like this poem so much that I have a copy right here, on the web. (more…)
2 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/03/18/microsoft-security-efforts/
I have been surfing a lot this morning, trying to track down some technical, hence professional blogs that I can look at from work. That way, when I feel the urge to “slack off” by surfing the web, I can turn my slacking in to learning. I will try and summarize some of the publications I have found, but for now, I need to recommend Richard Bejtlich’s excellent review of current Microsoft security efforts. Even for Unixy people like me, it is useful to know what Microsoft is thinking, and this is a great summary of what Microsoft is thinking. (more…)
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/03/09/jilted-by-google/
Back in late 2001, after I lost my job with Tellme, I looked for work at, among other places, Google. I had long been impressed with Google, which by all accounts offers a great working environment. And like me, they were also in Mountain View. I submitted my resumé and a recruiter contacted me and said they had a Junior position available, and the salary would be about 2/3 what I had been making at Tellme, where I had worked as an underpaid technical lead. I explained that I was more interested in and better qualified for some of the more senior job postings they had open on their web site. “Well, this is the position we have available,” was the ultimatum offered by the recruiter. I politely declined.
Two months later and it was very clear to me that the job market was terrible, and that if Google was willing to talk to me about a junior position, that was far better than the stresses of being broke and idle. I contacted the recruiter and she set up a phone screen, which was followed by an on-site interview. (more…)
2 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/03/04/like-programming-a-vcr/
I am trying to install some software that isn’t working. So, I’m trading messages with the company’s technical support, who suggested I add an argument to a wrapper script, which I tried, but nada, so they clarified:
Hmmm, when you add the -nosetjmp make sure you go through custom install using ___setup and select 2 for run setup utilites then select 2 again Perform ___ configuration then select each step except number 3…this will override your changes that you made to the script. Once that is all done you can add -nosetjmp to the ___v9.cfg file and let’s see what happens.
All this while walking back and forth to the machine room to swap through a series of three CDROMs. Ah, the glorious work of being a SysAdmin!
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