Saturday, October 27, 02001
Well, I'm down in the Twin Oaks computer office. It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I'm fine, Debby seems to be doing well. Even the milkman seems OK. Dinner was good. I don't know if I'm going to spend the night yet. For the first time in months things don't seem all that crazy anymore.
Posted at 07:16 PM EST [Link]
Well, against my better judgement and the opinions of the people I asked, I'm heading down to Twin Oaks now.
I've been invited all weekend, so I'm bringing an overnight bag, but I expect to be back later tonight.
Posted at 10:38 AM EST [Link]
By now everyone knows that the FBI is considering shipping their suspected terrorists abroad:
Among the alternative strategies under discussion are using drugs or pressure tactics, such as those employed occasionally by Israeli interrogators, to extract information. Another idea is extraditing the suspects to allied countries where security services sometimes employ threats to family members or resort to torture.
Keep in mind that shipping your investigative tasks overseas probably involves many of the same problems encountered with offshore software development projects.
A better approach would be to notice that the current crop of investigative agents don't seem to be doing their job very well. If it's not lost guns and laptops, it's spies and domestic terrorists running amok. Perhaps it's about time to open up the H-1B Visa Program to allow foreign investigative agents.
Wouldn't a good crop of young, cheap, naive agents from say India or Russia light a fire under the existing group of agents ? Think about it - they're new to the country so they don't have anything to do except work, they'd be afraid of being fired and shipped back to whence they came if they didn't put in ungodly hours. They'ld be afraid of questioning any stupid request made by upper management. And, hey, if one fo the H-1B's end up doing a better job than some slacker agent who's got time to make statements like the quote above, well that agent should have been looking for a new job instead of blabbing to reporters.
Hey, if it's good enough for the tech industry, it should be good enough for the blossoming homeland security industry.
Posted at 10:21 AM EST [Link]
Friday, October 26, 02001
Happy Halloween
Because OCT 31 == DEC 25.
Posted at 10:32 PM EST [Link]
Sorry to anyone unfortunate enough to view this blog under Netscape 4.x over the past couple days. I stumbled across it today, and it was a ghastly sight. It should be less ugly now, but I'm clueless as to why it giving me a huge gaping space in the middle, or why the lefthand border is stunted. I will figure it out eventually. I've been playing around with various options today and been shocked a couple times to see how jumbled the Netscape pages get for relatively small stylesheet changes. Perhaps I should try and find out how contorted these pages look under IE.
In other news of he banal, my spare tire almost went flat today as well ! Some nice grounds keeper came in and told me it was looking bad. So that entailed a midday trip to the filling station. I have an appointment at the garage for 7:00 AM (!!) tomorrow to get the old tire fixed or replaced. The car almost has 100,000 miles, so it's probably about time for some new tires.
I also managed to eventually get my glasses this morning, and they seem to be doing their job. My eyes seemed a lot more relaxed than normal as I was driving home today. That's one good thing in an otherwise stunningly bad day.
Also, Debby's invited down to the collective for the weekend. It's been almost six months since we broke up. I haven't decided if I'm going yet. I don't know if I really want to see her again. General consensus is that I should stay away. The tire situation and work may keep me from going anyway.
Posted at 12:26 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, October 25, 02001
So how can I top last week's adventure with blindness. How about by almost having my car topple on top of me in the side of route 66 ? Almost immediately after getting on the highway this morning, I noticed I had a flat tire, so I pulled off to the shoulder and started changing it. Unfortunately I did one of those things the owners manual tells you not to - I pushed too hard, and the jack flew out under the car. It was one of those finger and toe counting moments. Yes, everthing's still there. One scratch, not bleeding that much. I think I'll live. The jack however, is toast. I'm not even going to try explaining how it got mangled. Just just say it's supposed to turn in a certain way, but that's never going to happen again.
So by this time I'm all sweaty and grimy, bleeding a little, and I decide to throw in the towel and call AAA, when suddenly the helpful Virginia Roadside Assistance car pulls up. He has an automatic jack that does it's job in about 3 seconds. Tires are swapped, and I'm back home for another shower, and to pick up my glasses, which I was planning on doing later in the day, but since my morning was whacked, I might as well do it now.
Posted at 10:35 AM EST [Link]
I've been playing with Haskell again. I'm not sure how much I like it anymore. Random numbers and Haskell really don't mix well. I'm assume there's a trival way to put a shuffle a list of integers, but this is what I came up with. Accept it in the spirit of Halloween, and cringe in fright:
shuffle :: [Int] -> IO [Int]
shuffle [] = return []
shuffle (a:[]) = return [a]
shuffle (top_card:rest_deck) =
(getStdRandom (randomR (0, length rest_deck))) >>= \insert_at ->
(shuffle rest_deck) >>= \rest_shuffled ->
return (let
(left_half,right_half) = splitAt insert_at rest_shuffled
in
(left_half ++ [top_card] ++ right_half)
)
Posted at 12:33 AM EST [Link]
Monday, October 22, 02001
Beware the Boredom Bomb?
Posted at 06:14 PM EST [Link]
Sunday, October 21, 02001
Anthrax zanthrax. You know, at it's root all terrorism is pretty much biological.
Maybe we should just get over fluoride and start wondering about which anxiety drugs we should start adding to the water supply.
In the meantime, check out Jaron Lanier's GBN interview, especially the "Medicating the Globe" section around page 11.
Posted at 06:39 PM EST [Link]
Luckily I haven't seen any of these prayer stations around Arlington yet. Let's hope it stays that way.
It sounds similar to what was going on after Columbine.
Vultures, the whole lot of them.
dr hits it on the head. (warning: potentially offensive)
Ken Kesey hits it on the head even better ! (warning: most definitely offensive)
Posted at 06:14 PM EST [Link]
The Washington Post has some coverage of the antiabortion anthrax hoaxes. There's some unfortunate "blame the Internet" rhetoric in the article, but at least they manage to fit in the phase "domestic terrorist".
Posted at 02:18 PM EST [Link]
