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A rather lot of babbling. With links!

10:07 AM 4/18/2007
If I ever say anything even remotely equating to "I was pretty sure I typed my password in wrong, but I tried it anyway in case I got it right!" ... slap me, and save IT the trouble.

10:14 AM 4/18/2007
My first sent e-mail of the day: a "reply to all", containing the text of the original e-mail (14-month-old badly burned, for each e-mail forwarded, $0.03 to the cause), the link http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/billgate.asp , and the stripped-down version of my signature.

No commentary was really needed, I think. Why bother to annoy people by making comment when you can annoy them by just being right? ...but then, I'm a sarcastic bastard when I'm not trying to be a sweetheart. I make an effort to be charming and caring because I'm enough of an attention whore to realize that being nice to people gets me more of the kind of attention that I want than being a royal bitch to people gets me.

11:03 AM 4/18/2007
On the other hand, I'm perfectly capable of saying "You're so very wrong in thinking that the social implications you put on this particular piece of technology apply globally to all users of this piece of technology," and doing it with a smile.

12:07 PM 4/18/2007
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008856.html -- oh gods yes.

12:19 PM 4/18/2007
Hey, look, a sane response to the racism wank!

If you don't mean to be racist but you've been raised in a racist culture, there are going to be unconscious racist influences in your work, whether you like it or not, unless you're really looking for it and you have the education to combat it. Getting the education to combat it is a major part of that. I don't think that any well-meaning person really intends to be racist, and it's such a loaded word that any accusation of being racist is like any accusation of being a liar -- the person so accused is going to stand up and defend themselves to the death about why they are not being racist, even if there's something so blatantly obvious that a five-year-old should be able to point it out. And then enter the wank.

Yes, there needs to be a stigma associated with racism; it's another antisocial behavior that needs to have gone away yesterday. But not everyone exibiting racist behavior is aware that they are, or means to be that way. They do need to stop it, and the first part of stopping it is education, presented in a way that makes it more likely that they will stop, not presented in a way that will make them jump on that contested point like it's the True Word of God and defend it.

1:06 PM 4/18/2007
A very possibly preventable tragedy killed at least 32 people.

1:32 PM 4/18/2007
OMG that perfect moment of balanced peace when you have accomplished a little thing that you thought you would never be able to do, due to all the crazy factors involved. I have solved the bug that the monitor trainee pointed out to me on Sunday; now all that's left is the patching of the existing data and the complete rewriting of the database to make future pulls invisible.

...speaking of crazy factors. http://xkcd.com/c250.html Snopes!

http://www.homeonthestrange.com/view.php?ID=196 has a title that I'm not going to view at work.

1:44 PM 4/18/2007
I want to get the LF started on this.
The concept has been out there for a while, but it looks like it's starting to have products more in the appropriate price range.

Oh, and Yahoo mail is starting to have talking banner ads. Not just banner ads that make sounds when you roll over them or turn them on, but ones that start telling you that you've been selected for a free iPod!!!1!!11 when they load. You can turn them off if you see them load before they start talking, and they only talk for about two seconds, but I think it's a bad trend that should be discouraged. Too little, too late, but I want to keep being able to use my primary e-mail address.

2:06 PM 4/18/2007
Holocaust Survivor Saved Students' Lives (from multiple places on the friends page)

2:22 PM 4/18/2007
Savage Love for the week: http://rss.citypages.com/feed.asp?articleID=15354&author=1107

2:39 PM 4/18/2007
"It's the problem of building something new at the bottom of the JengaTM tower." That's what I said to Snarky Lady about what I'm plotting to do to my database. There are so many things that depend on other things being as they were, or as they are, and sometimes you're never sure what connects where without starting at all the outputs and tracing them back through to the sources, through all those damn queries and if it ends at a created table it's even more fun.

It holds true for all other sorts of programming problems, really. I keep a little mental list of technical analogies to use with the non-technical. The one I keep coming back to in getting the right data out of a database when all the source data is in the database, is the analogy of shaking that child's toy that's the ball with the shapes around until the shape you want falls out the hole that it was put in through. It verges toward the inaccurate (you usually have a better idea of the places to pound on the DB to make the information fall out; you can specify which information, but the trick is to get the questions right) but it
addresses the frustration level.

2:51 PM 4/18/2007
elorie: Domestic violence shouldn't mean "back off and it'll be contained".

3:33 PM 4/18/2007
O'Reilly's embarrassed, and ditches his Blogging Code. The rest of us won't forget quite so quickly, especially as it's giving rise to a call for actual active moderation in places that wish to remain actively fun to participate in. If you're in a position of internet power, please to think before running your mouth off and making sweeping statements, just like in any other position of power. If you get there, you do lose the freedom to have public bad or ill-thought-out ideas without consequence.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm playing catch-up from Monday's serious evening of work in suggestions.
Gone away, gone ahead,
Echoes roll unanswered.
Empty, open, dusty, dead.
Why have all the Weyrfolk fled?

Where have dragons gone together
Leaving weyrs to wind and weather,
Setting herdbeasts free of tether;
Gone, our safeguards, gone, but whither?

Have they flown to some new weyr
Where cruel Threads some others fear?
Are they worlds away from here?
Why, oh why the empty weyr?

-- "The Question Song", Anne McCaffrey
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