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"Home is where the Frito Pie leaks." -- StinkyLulu
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TWO KIDS STRANGLE THEIR MOM, dismember her, decapitate her and toss her body down a ravine. Cops say the kids got the idea from an episode of The Sopranos. Best reaction I've seen so far, courtesy of Title Bout: I can buy that they were inspired by The Sopranos to chop off her more easily-identifiable parts, though there are plenty of shows from Law and Order: SVU to Quincy, M.E. that have expressed the same conceit. But when trying to figure out why the woman's children killed her in the first place, it might be helpful to look a little farther than what was circled in the TV Guide. "LESSON LEARNED: Weak systems may appear perfectly healthy until neighboring systems break down. People with allergies and back problems may go for months without suffering from either one, but suddenly an attack of hayfever makes them sneeze hard enough to throw out their back. You see this in systems administration all the time. Use these opportunities to fix all the problems at once. Get RAID on all your PCs and do backups, and don't use EFS and always get hard drives that are way too large so you'll never have to stop to upgrade them, and double check the command line options to rdist. Install the draft inducer and insulate the pipes. Move your important servers to a secure colo facility and switch the office T1 to Verizon." Translation: Joel had a really bad week. Did inspire me to RAID my next system, though! I can connect to work again, only now I don't want to.  W32.SQLExp.Worm is now getting the attention of the security companies, who must be very disappointed that it's invulnerable to typical virus scanning software and is therefore unlikely to make them any money. And despite my hubris of early this morning the worm finally did mess with me; I was VPN'd in to work this afternoon when my connection slooooowly spun down to a crawl before disconnecting completely. Attempts to revive the patient were unsuccessful.And OAKLAND CIVIL DEFENSE NOSTALGIA FANS can enjoy the real thing once again, thanks to the terrorist-inspired revival of the local emergency alert sirens (pdf). Starting February 5th, we'll be treated to a hearty "test" blast of the horn on the first Wednesday of the month, making that the single most likely time for the terrorists to strike! Causing us to miss the Enterprise/West Wing/Law & Order troika that evening and possibly for ever and ever afterwards! It's so sad! EFFING INTERNET WORM is holding up inbound email -- only two spams arrived in the last hour, as opposed to the usual 20-25 this time of night. I hear it goes after IIS, which means studio-nibble.com is safe of course. No news on the major sites yet but maybe by the morning... CURRENT TIVO SEASON PASSES (ANNOTATED)
FLIMSY MODERN KEYBOARDS ARE THE WORK OF THE DEVIL, so a few weeks ago I ordered an old IBM Model M on eBay. It was originally just a nostalgia thing -- it's been at least ten years since I typed on one regularly. After a few days of using it, though, I'm ready to order another one for work and a third for Amy to use at home with her laptop. Between the audio feedback (when a keyboard has its own echo, can you doubt its badass-ness?) and the way you can rest your fingers on the keys without mushing down into an inadvertent keypress, this baby has probably doubled my sustained typing speed. Added bonus: drowning out the Raiders-loving neighbors when they sideshow their cars in circles in the intersection down the street. Since then I've run across a few sites that lay on the Model M worship a little thicker than I care to here, including modelm.org and 3m3718.com (check out the blue logo model gallery for photos of the model I got). You can pick up old Model M's for next to nothing, but if you do any real typing they're one of the best system upgrades you can buy. BAY AREA HOUSING COSTS are loosening up, or so says The New York Times. And a quick pop over to Craigslist confirms it. The current Studio Nibble digs are extremely convenient to BART and have a great view across Lake Merritt, but we moved here in August of 1999 and are still paying August 1999-style rent to prove it. Perhaps the dog would like some outdoor space to run around in. Perhaps we'd like to wash our socks without scrounging for quarters first. Now, if we lived in Los Angeles, the choice would be easy... (courtesy boingboing) OKAY, VH-1 CLASSIC is the official cable channel for the new millennium. While MTV is busy trimming down to a tight three- or four-video playlist, in the three weeks since VH-1C showed up on our system the only thing I've seen twice is "Charlotte Anne" by Julian Cope. Julian Cope!  They're actually going back to old MTV aircheck tapes for some tracks, so apparently even the videos that played exactly once at 3:42 on a bleary Saturday morning back in 1984 are ready to roll at your request. If they play Tony James' late night Sigue Sigue Sputnik VJ stint I'll be able to die right that minute a happy man. Enjoy it before they start digging out episodes of "Remote Control"! |
Playlist Espionage 24x7
Free AJAX-driven Texas Hold-Em at gpokr.com ... Party Ben (mixing as Dean Gray): American Edit: easily the mash-up of the year ... New eps of The First 48 (tv's best reality cop show, though their most interesting detective was promoted out of Homicide this year and now only appears in reruns) ... Serenity (does it make sense to love a movie to death and still wish like crazy you'd never seen it?) ...
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