Month: October 2006

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Punctuation

Defective Yeti with punctuation-related Bushisms… and spinoffs:

“I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, [the current violence] will look like just a comma.” (cf. original comma quote )

“The only way to stop the sectarian violence is to find a bridge between the Sunnis and Shiites, a hyphen that will join the two separate parties into one compound nation.”

“Victory is still possible in Iraq — albeit a victory enclosed in scare quotes and followed by an asterisk.”

Music: The Carter Family :: The Grave On The Green Hillside
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Just Throw It In There

Amy and Miles at the nursery, picking up some plants. Miles picked out one of his own to grow. An attendant putting a bag of soil into our car: “Should I put something down first?” Amy: “No, it’s OK, just throw it in – the rubber mat takes care of the dirt.” Miles, hearing this, takes a step back, cocks his arm, and throws his young plant into the back of the car from six feet away.

Music: Mission of Burma :: Man in Decline
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Halloween in the ‘Burbs

Miles was a brave knight in shining armor. Of course I ended up carrying the shield and sword most of the way, but he made quite a haul. At a couple of doors, for no apparent reason, when prodded to say “Thank you,” he instead broke into song: “Knights are brave and strong, and queens are never wrong.” At one point, heading up towards a dark-ish porch, turns to me and says “No daddy, you stay back there” – wanted to approach the door by himself. Of course that was the house where he was greeted by a big hairy gorilla and a robotic Frankenstein singing a mash-up of a Men-At-Work song. Scared the brave right out of my little knight (who wouldn’t be?)

Just after returning home, heard a thud and a clattering sound coming from the back of the house. Went out to find the lower leg and foot of a mechanical skeleton, electrical cord dangling, just landed in our back yard. 13-year-olds screaming off into the darkness of the next block.

Music: Plus-Tech Squeezebox :: MILK TEA
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Devo Live

Miles Flowerpot Posted back in June about the fact that Devo are touring again. Embarrassing or not, knew I had to get me a slice of that goodie good good Jocko spud gravy. Went with Roger last night to see how the Boojie Boys sounded in their mid-40s / early 50s. Missed start of the show, but arrived in time to hear Smart Patrol / Mr. DNA, Wiggly World, and a few other choice “Duty Now for the Future”-era bits. They weren’t exactly spastic (one could call that a necessary condition for true de-vo), but neither was it the slightest bit lazy, sad, riding-the-coat-tails-of-the-past pathetic. A big chunk of the Devo catalog has real lasting value, and manages not to sound dated (either that or my ears haven’t evolved). And yes, it rocked.

Above: With absolutely no prodding from me, Miles arrives independently at the idea that flowerpots make great hats.

Music: Cab Calloway :: Boog It
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Carbon Fest

Didn’t get around to cleaning the grill at the end of last summer (I usually try to do it once every year or two), and we were treated to a conflagration last night. Actually the fire was relatively small, but thick black smoke was just billowing out — enough to result in neighbors running over to see if everything was OK. Which got me wondering: How often do most people deep-clean their grills? I don’t mean “wire brush the surface” — I mean remove all the pieces and get down and dirty, scraping the Flavorizer bars, catch basin, etc. Or do you just let it burn off from time to time? If you answer, please also leave a comment guesstimating how often your grill gets used.

How often do you clean your grill?

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Edgy Eft

Ubuntu Linux 6.1, aka Edgy Eft, has been released, and Birdhouse is proud to announce that we’re functioning as a seed for those downloading the distribution via BitTorrent from one of the official mirrors. The seeding occurs through an installation of the web-based TorrentFlux client, managed by mneptok.

Birdhouse is providing space and bandwidth for the seed as a small token of appreciation to the open source community for the innumerable ways we benefit from the efforts of OSS developers every single day. My life would be very different without the LAMP stack, both at home and at work. A moment of silence. ;-)

Now, go grab it while it’s hot.

Music: Bix Beiderbecke And Frankie Trumbauer :: There’s A Cradle In Caroline
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$380,000 per Minute

Nicholas Kristof for the NY Times:

In the run-up to the Iraq war, Donald Rumsfeld estimated that the overall cost would be under $50 billion. Paul Wolfowitz argued that Iraq could use its oil to “finance its own reconstruction.” But now several careful studies have attempted to tote up various costs, and they suggest that the tab will be more than $1 trillion — perhaps more than $2 trillion. … Just to put that $2 trillion in perspective, it is four times the additional cost needed to provide health insurance for all uninsured Americans for the next decade. It is 1,600 times Mr. Bush’s financing for his vaunted hydrogen energy project…

Not to beat a dead horse, but this horse ain’t dead. Every minute we spend losing a war that not even the generals think we can win is costing us $380,000.

via pseudorandom

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Geeks, Nerds, and Dorks

Having some Ajax fun lately, digging into the Dojo toolkit. Came across something in the documentation, where the developers are trying to explain whether Dojo is actually a toolkit, a library, or a framework. While some people might think the three are functionally equivalent, there are differences. They illustrate by example:

Geeks, Nerds, and Dorks: A geek has a very focused knowledge of a subject (that guy that memorized the language of Myst), a nerd is a master at many subjects (that girl you go to when you need homework help), and a dork is just plain socially inept (Napoleon Dynamite).

Music: Tom Waits :: $29
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Foot Measurer

Walked into Miles’ play area this morning and found a big aquamarine rectangle scribbled in marking pen on the bamboo rug. And an aquamarine ghost drawn on his play table. Uh-oh. But where is Miles? Door to his room closed, a sign. Open it and find him sitting on his bed, evidence grasped firmly in hand. A big fat aquamarine polka dot scribbled on his bedspread. Aquamarine smudges all over his hands, neck, pants and shirt. “Miles, we need to talk about something.” He comes out to the play area and tells us “This isn’t really naughty Daddy, because see, it’s an invention for measuring your feet, like at the shoe store, see?” And he plops his foot down over the rectangle to show me that it fits, so proud. No need recounting the rest of our conversation here.

Spent the morning with Oxy-Clean and Murphy’s Oil Soap, scrubbing. Fortunately kids’ markers do come off with good detergent and a lot of elbow grease.

Music: Edith Piaf :: Non, je ne regrette rien