September 2004 Archives

Why is it that sometimes people who are otherwise really smart tend to hold onto, and repeat mercilessly, really dumb ideas?

No, Tom, Gore didn't win. He lost. There wasn't a single official Florida vote-count which he won. Even a couple newspapers who did independent counts afterwards said the same thing, he still would have lost (oh, he'd've won if you only recounted the precincts the DNC wanted recounted, but that's not quite fair, now, is it?)

Personally, I can't believe that people still continue to "insist" that Gore won. They must really have sad and empty lives if, literally, that is the boneheaded mantra they choose to repeat over and over again.

As I was heading to the laundromat to pick up my laundry this evening, I passed by the strangest sight. There was a crowd of people all on the front lawn of one of the houses in Port Ewen. That, in and of itself, isn't that unusual in Port Ewen. It's a nice little village, but it's got its share of white trash. What was unusual was that no fewer than three of the people on the lawn were kneeling, sobbing their guts out.

Now, none of these people are attired as though there was a funeral or something like that. The level of shock and pain on their faces is consistent with like some sort of sudden/immediate death (to put it bluntly, the faces were like those faces you see when the reporter takes pictures of the families at accident scenes and such). But, there's no cops, no ambulances, and no signs of an accident.

I passed by them twice, and even after twenty minutes in between, the scenario hadn't really changed at all.

I hate not knowing what the hell that was all about.

Via The Paper Chase:

House Republicans managed to push through the Pledge Protection Act, which says, essentially, "No, Judicial Branch, you don't get to rule on whether the stuff we wrote as a law is legal or not."

It's not expected to pass the Senate, but even if it did I think it'd be funny to watch even the conservative Scalia piss all over that law's constitutionality.

Now, I can freely take the blame for why my package destined for Goshen ended up in Colonie/Latham area. I transposed the ZIP code digits "10294" into "12094", which misrouted the package in a big way.

But what makes me laugh is that they somehow think they figured out what truck it goes on and have sent it out for Delivery. I think I'll be even more impressed if someone signs for it.

Where would a person shop for movie prints? Not as in "8x10 glossies" but as in "eight reels of 35mm technicolor glory".

I would have thought that'd be an eBay thing, but can't find anything similar on there. And I have to believe that there's a market for such things...

So, it looks like I'm getting an impromptu roommate for a couple weeks while a friend of mine looks for a place to stay and a job to support that place to stay. It's karmic for me, since when I was in a similar spot out in Fort Wayne, a bunch of my friends from college did the same thing for me, letting me crash on their living room floor for over a month.

But, it means I really need to straighten up significantly and make room for an additional body. I was going to do it yesterday, but I had a shipment that really had to go out the door, and I'd already scheduled the pickup from the office, so that wasn't going to happen. I chose to take today off instead.

When I told one of my co-workers yesterday that I was taking today off, he instantly assumed (probably not without significant cause) that the reason for my absence today would be more related to the release of the Star Wars DVDs than it would be to making the apartment presentable.

Here's the sad commentary: I'd almost completely forgotten they were coming out today. I didn't get that excited about them because, as any Star Wars geek will tell you, they're not the original trilogy.

So I suppose that while it's true that I'll be spending a day-off like at least some percentage of the geek world will be inasmuch as "yeah, I'll probably go get them this morning and watch them while I clean", it's certainly not true that such was the impetus for my taking the day off in the first place.

What bugs me is that I don't think anyone will believe me. Ah, well, I know the truth.

I tend to watch TV series on DVD, or on TiVo. One way or the other, I make the shows fit within my schedule, not the other way around (although there's one or two notable exceptions, shows I subconsciously insist on watching live).

I never got into Farscape, because I hated starting in the middle of the show, and because the Farscape box sets cost just way too much ($100+ per season, due mostly to their completely crappy DVD layout, requiring 10-12 discs per season), to buy just on the speculation that I might end up enjoying the show.

But, I recently decided to get back on the Netflix wagon, so as to keep my DVD late-charges in check, and thought "well, grabbing the first couple DVDs from Farscape would be a good test as to whether I like it or not".

My first 5 DVDs, containing 10 total episodes, showed up on Friday. Between yesterday and today, I burned through all ten episodes, and am eagerly awaiting more. It's clear that the first season "builds up slowly" in terms of writing and such, but many first seasons of shows are like that. (And come on, let's face it, if someone can get through the first season of Babylon 5, they can get through the first season of anything)

I've got all the first four seasons now queued up in Netflix, and am hoping to somehow manage to figure out how to get through them all in time for the mid-October premiere of Farscape: Peacekeeper Wars, which is a mini-series to resolve unanswered questions, etc. Obviously, these are questions I don't even have yet, but I will. :-)

Somehow I don't think I'll make it, though, and I suspect that said mini-series will be sitting on my TiVo, tying up space until I finish watching the DVDs. That's just my prediction.

A small anecdote to explain "why it is I don't hold the door for strangers".

I was walking into Blockbuster this evening. Now I'm arriving at the door about the same time a family is. Two parents, two kids. The father is ahead of me and is holding the "inner" door. I see the mother trying to drag along two kids and I decide to be nice and hold the outer door as well, and let her just go on in. She starts to walk into the doorway.

Except that -- even after seeing that "some stranger is holding the door open for her" -- she decides to start having a conversation with someone outside. While I'm holding the door.

I wait, patiently.

I wait, impatiently, to see if maybe she'll just take hold of the door on her own.

Finally I say "Not going to do this all day" and let go of the door and walk past her husband into the store.

The door swings closed, hitting her.

And she has the gall to fucking glare at me about it. As if I should have just stood around their like her doorman until she decided to finish her conversation.

I hate people.

Now, Brian mentioned how we all re-cast Star Wars once using different actors, chosen mainly because we'd love to see them performing certain lines.

Today's Friday afternoon entertainment was putting Arnold Schwarzenegger into a variety of roles he should never ever be contemplated for. Some examples...

• Willy Wonka
• various people in Animal House
• various people in Princess Bride
• Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral
• Jason Mewes in any Kevin Smith movie
• The Elephant Man
• Either Dumbass from Dude? Where's My Car?
• R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket
• Tom Cruise (or Cuba Gooding) in Jerry Maguire

Use your imagination...

I've been talking about it for a while now, about how the United States' invasion of the sovereign state of Iraq was illegal, etc., etc. The Bushies all shouted "p'shaw!" and such, about how I was a bastard for not wanting to invade, etc., etc.

Looks like Kofi Annan, though, has finally reached the conclusion that it was in fact, a violation of international law. (Original BBC article here).

It'd be extremely spiffy if someone in the UN decided to start trying to punish the US for its illegal activity. If we contravened the UN Charter, we could in theory be kicked out of the UN.

*drool*

*TWELVE* MPx. I'm so in love. Too bad it'd cost me my first born female child I suspect.

I went to check on the long-overdue status of my new computer. I ordered it from Apple in June, basically as soon as they announced the availability of the dual-2.5 GHz G5s. Three months later, and it still hasn't shipped. Even though I could walk into a retail store and buy the same thing (although I wouldn't get my very choice Apple Developer Connection discount that way, so that's not an option).

But, taking three months (plus) to ship an order isn't today's complaint.

Today's complaint is a "Check Order Status" web page, that will only show you the last 90 days worth of orders, and offers you absolutely no insight into how to see any orders past that date.

So, this morning, as I did my morning ritual of "see what the status on my G5 is", guess what I discovered? I have no idea what the status is because the web interface will no longer tell me.

For a company that invests like a gajillion dollars into user-interface design, you'd think they could have figured out that this might be a problem some time ago....

I ordered myself up for delivery (insert gasp of shock and awe here) their chicken combo thingy that has a whole chicken and some sides (can you say left overs?) All is well, and I think to myself that maybe just maybe Boston Market will redeem itself in my eyes.

I get a call a couple minutes later. Apparently, "they have a whole chicken, just no white meat" ... I don't bother going into how what the phone guy has just said is biologically impossible, but it's clear he wants me to OK him just sending me a bunch of dark meat. Being a white meat kinda guy, I tell him "ya know what, just make it ham instead of chicken and that'll be fine."

So he starts to recalculate the price. I'm thinking to myself this is to see if the ham is a better deal or something. He is having trouble of some sort and says he'll call me right back with the amount.

Ten minutes later he calls me and, sounding all gracious, tells me "well, we can't seem to void out the old order, so we're just going to bring you the ham instead of the chicken and make it cost the same, ordinarily, it'd be a couple dollars more."

And here I am thinking to myself, "That's good, because if it'd cost one penny more than the order you originally sold me over the phone, I'd've told you not to bother and that asked to speak to a manager to go over the hows and whys of why Boston Market sucked fetid dingos' kidneys."

Ugh.

California used to have a tax-credit for teachers who paid for school supplies and such which the district could not or would not provide for them. It appears now that they've discontinued that tax-credit.

This quote from the article summed it up completely:

"What are we going to do, tell the kids, `Sorry, there's no paper today,' or tell them they can't print because there's no ink?" Seelig asked. "I know I couldn't do it."

Yes, Ms. Seelig, that's exactly what you need to do. As long as there are teachers like you -- who will happily foot the bill for the entire class instead of letting the taxpayers shoulder the burden like they're supposed to -- the school will continue to take advantage of you.

The district itself was able to take advantage of you for years, because they knew the State was going to reimburse you instead of them. Now the State is getting out of the game as well. You need to stop and say "No! This is it! I'm done!"

When little Johnny goes home and says "I need paper, pens, crayons, a copy of this textbook, etc., etc., etc." and rattles off a long list of stuff, many of which should be provided by the school, that's when his parents will get involved, and that's what you want, because unlike little Johnny, they vote (or at least are capable of voting).

If you want to sit there and keep bending over for the government and being its banker, that's your own business, obviously, but don't have the balls to bitch about it.

This morning, I was driving on the Thruway heading to work. When I looked up in my rear-view mirror, all I saw was chrome. I swear this rig had to have been like five feet from my ass-end, tops. So I wait about 10 or 15 seconds, expecting that he's like pulling out or something. I look back, still there.

That's when the fun begins.

Now, it's a 65 MPH zone, I'm doing 75 and I'm in the slow lane. I don't think he's got any right to bitch about how slow I'm going.

So I pump the brakes. Hard. As in "my Jeep decelerates almost immediately to the 65 MPH speed limit".

I hear the screech of air brakes behind me, and I see his ass-end and cab swinging slightly in the same direction as he veers a bit so as not to impale me with his truck.

Now, he's all pissed, comes flying up on my side, laying on the horn, etc. etc., like I'm some kind of asshole.

I am, but not nearly as much of an asshole as he thought. Why? Because I caught sight of something as he drove by...

The phone number of his employer. No, not one of those lame "How's my driving?" stickers, but the actual painted-on-the-side-of-the-cab phone number.

So I called. The guy who answered was pleasant enough. I explained what happened. He asked me "can you catch up with him?"

"Sure," I said. And proceeded to do so.

After reading off to him the truck number, the pleasant southern-sounding gentleman explained to me, in no uncertain terms, that, are you ready, this wasn't the first time he's gotten a complaint against "Bob" (he told me his name, but I honestly forget).

"Bob," it seems, according to the pleasant gentleman, is going to eventually get back to the depot, and find himself with an appointment at the unemployment office.

Fucker. Serves him right.

Boston Market has great food. Of that there is no doubt. But their customer service is somewhere between "non-existant" and "abysmal".

The Kingston location delivers to my apartment. This is good, especially when I'm hungry for "real" food, but too lazy to cook. Because, let's face it, as "fast" food goes, Boston Market is pretty decent stuff.

Except that when I say "they deliver to me", I mean that only in the vaguest of terms. As in, "whenever they feel like delivering". Of the last four times I've called to place a delivery order, take a guess how many times I've had nice Boston Market food delivered to my door.

Zero.

"I'm sorry, our delivery guy went home."
"I'm sorry, our delivery guy has today off."

... and variations on that theme. Apparently, they have one guy who does delivery. And obviously he needs days off and such, so there's going to be days you're guaranteed you can't get service.

What a bunch of cocksmokers. If they're going to advertise "delivery" as a service, the least they could do is actually do it!

I've talked about this before, but I can't help myself. Because a part of me wants to figure out exactly what it is you're supposed to do with people who are, without a doubt, among the most inconsiderate people on the face of the planet.

Last Night:
Derek: Hey, I'm bored. Come hang out.
George: Can't. Got a job interview at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning, so I need to get to bed at a decent hour.
Derek: What's on your agenda for tomorrow?
George: Nothing.
Derek: Then come over after the interview. You can catch up on West Wing [he's been watching my season box-sets, trying to come closer to being caught up].
George: Sounds like a plan.

Noon today:
Derek: Hey, what happened to you?
George: I had to come home. The wife is doing some stuff this morning.
Derek: You going to come over and watch the game? [ 1 pm game ]
George: Yeah, I should be there a little after first pitch.
Derek: Cool.

4 pm:
Derek: "A little after first pitch"? You think you'll make it before the end?
George: I told the wife I'm heading out before 6.
Derek: Gotcha.

7:30 pm:
Derek [to George's wife]: Hey, where's George?
Wife: He's sleeping, and told me not to wake him.

.... Seriously. What a fucking asshole. I pissed away an entire fucking day waiting for this dick to show up. The sad part is that he's not intentionally rude, he's just, I dunno, too clueless in the realm of common sense to recognize that "if he tells someone he's going to be somewhere, maybe just maybe they set aside time for it, and gave up doing other things."

I've half a mind to invite him over one night and just go out and let him show up here while I'm not around. Make him drive down and back for nothing.

I was reading this story about a guy who got arrested for failing to leave a gratuity, and it made me think about something I've long held.

Now, as previously noted, I am an awesome tipper. Waitresses take note, you want to handle my table, you really do.

However, Merriam-Webster defines a gratuity as:

Main Entry: gra·tu·ity Pronunciation: gr&-'tü-&-tE, -'tyü- Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural -ities : something given voluntarily or beyond obligation usually for some service; especially : TIP

Now, by definition, you cannot have a "mandatory gratuity". It's like having a white sheet of black paper. It's just not possible.

The proprietor of the establishment is quoted as saying "They shorted the check and didn't leave any money at all for the waitress. This is not a vendetta. This is just about standing up for my waitresses."

Sorry, no, they didn't. They paid the bill, they just didn't volunteer to pay your waitress extra money. If you feel that your waitress is underpaid, perhaps you could take her off the tips-scale of minimum-wage and put her on the "normal" wage scale.

I don't begrudge a waitress her tip, but I do begrudge people who try and make it "mandatory". If you believe that your wait-staff is so overworked that you need to impose a "mandatory gratuity", then maybe, just maybe, you need to improve the wages for your staff, instead of trying to pass the burden directly onto the customer.

I'd love to come up with a little notepad:

  Dear Waitress/Waiter:

  You would have made $_________ as a tip, but since

  your employer has dictated a mandatory gratuity, you are 

  instead only making the "mandatory" $_________ tip. You 

  may want to take that up with your boss and try to get him

  to pay you the difference since his stupid-ass policy screwed

  you out of the difference.

  Cheers!

so I could leave that behind. Instead, since I don't have any of those, I just don't deal with "mandatory" gratuities except where I have no choice (e.g., I will pay the mandatory tip to room service people because there's a monopoly and I can't "shop elsewhere" easily).

The local grocery store is observing "moments of silence" today at the various times things happened -- when planes hit particular locations, etc. New York City is having a "reading of the victims' names" ceremony thing, and all that.

I think we, as a country, need to decide something. It's a fairly simple decision: Is 9/11 worthy of being treated as a national holiday of remembrance?

My complaint is not that people are planning elaborate ceremonies or anything like that. My complaint is that places are doing so because they feel like they have to, because everyone else is. Whoever "stops doing it first" and "moves on" looks like a callous jackass.

I think if we're going to continue to have this societal expectation that "people take time out to remember" on 9/11, and take moments of silence or whatever, that we should just make it a Federal Holiday and that will be that. "Remembrance Day" or something, I don't necessarily care what you call it.

I guess I'm sick of people not moving on. If, as a society, we're going to have this be a regular thing indefinitely, let's formalize it and make it "real". Personally, I don't care which it is, but sitting here with forced-by-guilt rituals kinda annoys me.

I put the pictures online that I took at the Yankee game. There's also a couple other pictures in that "roll", including a couple pictures Pete took of a really cool looking moon one night, and the shots I took when George and I went to the Empire State Building (on Labor Day when the Devil Rays screwed us).

You can find the pics here.

Let's say I have a document at:

http://www.example.com/foo/bar.html

... as I read HTML & XHTML : The Definitive Guide, the following should be legitimate:

<a href="https:../cgi-bin/cart.pl">

or simply

<a href="https:/cgi-bin/cart.pl">

which would utilize the same server-part of the URL, but would switch to using HTTPS as the scheme and a different path.

This looks... just somehow wrong to me, but I can see a lot of use for it in some templates I'm writing (and re-using between sites). Is this valid HTML? Anyone know for certain?

I know it doesn't actually work in either Firefox or IE, I tried, but I'm just curious if there's something wrong in the way those browsers are handling the absolute URLs, or if there's a significant bug in the ORA book (because it actually goes into detail showing how you can transmogrify an HTTP URL into an FTP URL using relative/non-absolute URLs.

Seems like a lot of work to go through if the authors weren't sure that actually was valid HTML.

I should be working at this moment, but I have to interrupt that to say something about the new gig that just couldn't wait until tonight when I get home.

I was talking with a co-worker about how I have to call the Yankees box office this morning (that's what TicketMeister said to do) and my boss overheard me. A few minutes later, I approached him about what the "long distance calls" policy was (since some companies will fire you for it, but then at others, it's treated almost like a perk, "call whomever you want", etc.)

ANYHOW... he comes over to my desk and says "Here, if you're a fan, you can use these tomorrow night. You won't find better seats."

Field Championship Box Seats. They don't get better than that. Apparently, the company owns a set of 4 season tickets down there in the great seats. (See the image at the right for "what my view will be")

And, to speak to how cool the work environment is in general, another co-worker came over to my desk a few minutes ago, offering up 2 out of the 4 tickets he'd acquired for this evening's game. "Gotta share the wealth," he said.

This is the sort of thing you just can't make up. Or if you did make it up, it still wouldn't be as cool as the reality.

Ya know, I've been thinking about this for a while...

Bob Costas should be the next commissioner of baseball.

He doesn't have any vested financial interests in any particular team, nor do any of his family members. He's got great ideas for how to reform the "business" to make it more about "the game". I read Fair Ball a couple years ago, and it still holds true.

I don't know what it would take to make him be considered for the gig, or even if he'd want it, but as a fan of the game, I'd love to see him in the role.

As of around 11:30 a.m. yesterday morning, the official story was still "The Devil Rays are heading to New York and will be there in time for the 1 p.m. first-game which was rescheduled to 3 p.m."

When, after 90 minutes on Metro-North and 15-20 on the subway, we finally arrived at the stadium, it was approximately 2:30, and the announcement over the P.A. was something like this:

As of 12:30, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have not left the Tampa-St. Petersburg area. Thus, there will not be a game starting at 3 p.m. A final decision will be made at approximately 2 p.m.

(yes, it was already 30 minutes past that time).

After consulting with some ticket-gate staff, the end result they told us was "the best-case scenario right now for baseball today is one game starting at 7 p.m."

George and I looked at each other and headed back for the subway. A 1 p.m. game I could do. A 3 p.m. game I could do, grudgingly. But a 7 p.m. game would get me back home exceedingly late compared to when I have to get to bed in order to get to work the next morning.

Meanwhile, though, since they did play the game, I'm anticipating a long drawn-out battle with Ticketmaster towards getting a refund on the tickets. Apparently, you can exchange the tickets for any remaining game this season (except that I don't have any other available weekends this season).

I have this strange feeling I'm going to end up having to pull out the "hole card of business transactions", the credit card chargeback. I think MasterCard will go for the "I paid for a day game, not a night game, so they didn't sell me what I paid for" logic. The credit card company doesn't care, they still get to keep their merchant fees on the transaction, so keeping me happy is pretty much the only thing on their agenda.

I made some changes to the rfc-ignorant.org site the other day, which included me adding some:

<br/>

tags. In case you're not familiar with the syntax, the revised HTML spec makes "single-element" tags include an XML-style closing "/" before the closing >. The theory is that when HTML documents become valid XML documents, then the parsing engine for them becomes infinitely easier (because the parser doesn't need to understand tag semantics, only the rendering engine does).

Well, apparently, many older browsers are confused by this. Allegedly, you can work around these antiques by doing instead:

<br />

Somehow, the added space makes Netscape 2.0 figure it all out on its own.

But, I honestly can't be bothered. A certain amount of backwards compatibility is good, but this spec has been in place for a number of years now, it's time to join the Third Millennium and get with the program.

Once upon a time, I was extremely active in the anti-spam community. Partly this came about because I was working at a huge company known for spamming and harboring spammers, but partly because I found it fascinating in a certain way.

As time wore on, though, I became less and less enthusiastic. I realized that the "anti-spam community" was doomed to failure, because -- by and large -- they can't even agree on what it is they consider "spam", let alone how to make it stop.

During the "Great Mailing List Purge of '02", when I unsubscribed myself from nearly fifty mailing lists, I dropped off of all but one anti-spam list. The one I stayed on had a slightly higher signal-to-noise ratio than the rest, was invitation only, private, confidential, etc. In other words, there were some people on it who were incredibly bright.

Over the last few months, I saw the usefulness even of that list being reduced to zero and, after receiving yet-another-snarky-email from one of the listmembers, decided it was time to bid my adieu to the anti-spam community permanently.

I say this in all sincerity: the way the anti-spam folks "treat their own" is enough to seriously make me start looking for zombie networks and orphaned CIDR-blocks to become a spammer myself just to piss them off.

(insert image here of me throwing up my arms in disgust and walking away)

A couple weeks ago, George was lamenting that he hadn't been to Yankee Stadium in a while. I pointed out that I hadn't been to the stadium much either myself.

He revealed he hadn't been to a game since before the renovation, which puts his last attendance somewhere in the twenty-plus-year category.

So, I started combing TicketMeister and found that there were really good seats for the Labor Day game available. I decided to treat, and bought a pair of tickets.

Later, it turned out that my investment doubled of its own accord, as a make-up game was added to the schedule and the day-game turned into a single-admission-double-header. Life was good.

Except that right now, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays are stuck in Florida, pinned down by a big whopping hurricane that doesn't appear to be going anywhere in a hurry. It's moving incredibly slowly and probably won't even reach Tampa until this evening. Whether or not the Rays can get out of town tomorrow in time for the game is in serious doubt.

I feel so petty caring about "missing a double-header" while the weather destroys so much property, but I was trying to do something nice for someone, and it got completely screwed by the weather. This sucks.

What sucks even more: Even when TicketMeister takes the tickets back, they're still not going to refund their heinously-high service charges and crap.

Do you remember that person from high school, the one you would have sold your soul and your best friend's soul along with it for five minutes of completely unadulterated debauchery?

I remember mine. I saw her in Adam's today, and it was disturbing in a way how I had exactly the same thoughts. I guess it's lucky that I was distracted by someone else I knew while waiting in line at the deli, completely taking my mind off it.

It's especially lucky because she had her kids with her. Somehow I don't think she'd enjoy having to explain why the strange man wanted "debauchery" -- and what word meant -- to a pair of like six year olds.

How can this be illegal?

Woman goes into store with clearly fake novelty money of a George Bush $200.00 bill. (note that there is no such denomination, note that the pictures on the back of the bill are clearly quite silly).

Store clerk exchanges novelty note for $200.00 worth of merchandise.

I'm sorry, but I fail to see the problem. The customer did not misrepresent that the novelty note was money, because clearly there is no $200 bill, and George Bush does not appear on any of our currency. If the clerk accepted the Funny Money, it was simply a barter for goods. "One Funny Note in exchange for some Pretty Clothing"

We should not be protecting people from their own stupidity, I'm sorry.