Month: February 2020

On This Day: Feb 10

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 24 posts previously published on February 10th

  • 2024
  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
    • Book fourteen of 2019: Assignment: Eternity, by Greg Cox. ⭐️⭐️ 📚 An average Trek romp, marred by the author trying too hard to drop “clever” references to other Trek and pop culture events, and (worse) using a PNW indigenous people’s name for the name of a planet (Duwamish). ➡
    • A Theory About Saru (ST:DSC) 🖖 I’ve come to a theory about Saru on Star Trek: Discovery. Obviously, spoilers ahead (at least, if you haven’t seen all of ST:DSC to this point, and if I’m correct). ➡
    • 2019 Seattle Snowpocalypse, Sunday Update Ventured out from the homestead to make the trek over ice and snow to the local mercantile for provisions. Though the skies were clear, ‘twas still bitterly cold, as the winter sun brought no warmth. The footing was treacherous, but no spills were taken; scavengers were seen, but we gave them a wide berth. Some ... Read more ➡
  • 2018
    • Book nine of 2018 (and third #pkdickaward nominee): Bannerless, by Carrie Vaughn. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2017
    • Book thirteen (and third #PKDickAward nominee) of 2017: Consider, by Kristy Acevedo. 🌟🌟🌟 ➡
  • 2016
    • Book seven of 2016: After the Saucers Landed, by Douglas Lain. ⭐️⭐️ #PKDickAward nominee. #douglaslain (41/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Best part of snow: living on a cul-de-sac after the plows come through. King of the hill! ➡
  • 2010
    • Managing Inbox Overload with Google Buzz From now on, rather than getting flooded with inbox messages every time a new Buzz response pops up, you'll have a little 'Buzzes' filter sitting to the left of your screen. If it's bold, you've got a response waiting for you. And that's it! ➡
  • 2006
    • Olympics Opening Ceremony Good and bad points regarding the first 2/3 of the Opening Ceremonies for the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Torino, Italy. ➡
    • Humor in Tragedy All I could see in my head was a Toon Town riot, and I couldn't help laughing. Wrong, and I'm going to hell...but funny. ➡
    • Bruce the Wonder Yak I think it's a hilarious little random screed -- and my guess is that they just took every little 'in-joke' from the FCP programming team and tossed them all semi-randomly into a single text file. ➡
    • Bush’s hit list These are the proposed cuts in Bush's 2007 budget. A lot of things in here make me wince, but it's the education sections that really make me made. I want my 24.6 seconds back. ➡
    • Unfortunately Michael More fun with Google: Unfortunately Michael... ➡
  • 2005
    • That’s a lot of text Fun fact for today regarding this weblog: a full export from MovableType of every post and every comment results in a 12.7 Mb text file containing 3,117 posts and 8,178 comments and trackback pings. Wow. ➡
  • 2004
    • Wartime President There is a dark joke in Courthouses about a man who killed both his parents, then asked the judge to go easy on him as he is an orphan. ➡
    • Star Wars Parts IV-VI on DVD Sept. 21st! The good news: the 'first' three movies in the Star Wars trilogy (parts VI [A New Hope], V [The Empire Strikes Back], and VI [The Return of the Jedi]) will be released on DVD on September 21st. ➡
  • 2003
    • Impeach Bush? Could it be time to start thinking about impeaching Bush? Realistically, we're probably not at a point where it's going to happen, but that hasn't stopped some people from considering the idea — including Johnson Administration US Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Mr. Clark has drafted articles of impeachment, outlining the crimes and misdemeanors that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft should answer for, and the Vote to Impeach website is collecting 'signatures' to move the process forward. ➡
    • Cookies finally fixed! Thanks to a comment answering a question of Jonathon's, I'm about 95% sure that the cookies for djwudi.com are finally being set correctly, so that the comment forms will actually remember your information, instead of just teasing you with the possibility that they might remember one day if they feel like it. ➡
  • 2001
    • First steps… First steps into a field I haven't investigated in years: job searching. ➡
  • 1994
    • [From Usenet: 2.10.94 0308] Personally, I wouldn't mind a little more info on these guys...I've got what I can find by them, including the BLBT single (is this really out of print?), but am wondering if there are any singles from the new album...especially Butterfly Wings or Trigger For Happiness. Any info? ➡
    • [From Usenet: 2.10.94 0256] Have to agree here...in the midst of all the Enigma-bashing that's popped up, I like the new disc a lot...especially track three, Return to Innocence. Don't really mind the male vocals on other tracks that much, either... ➡
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Me, not long ago: “Okay, my ‘to-read’ shelves are full. No more books for me until I read more of these and open up some space.”

Me, today: “Well, I guess these can go on top of these, and these go behind these, and that gets today’s additions on the shelf….”

📚🤷🏼‍♂️

On This Day: Feb 9

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 24 posts previously published on February 9th

  • 2024
  • 2022
  • 2021
    • Look, it’s simple. That lawyer was legally required to inform the judge that, contrary to appearance, he was not actually a cat. Otherwise, he could have been charged with purrjury. ➡
  • 2020
    • Me, not long ago: “Okay, my ‘to-read’ shelves are full. No more books for me until I read more of these and open up some space.” Me, today: “Well, I guess these can go on top of these, and these go behind these, and that gets today’s additions on the shelf….” 📚🤷🏼‍♂️ ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 9 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 9 ➡
  • 2019
    • 2019 Philip K. Dick Award Rankings As I've done for the past few years, I've read all of the nominated works for this year’s Philip K. Dick Award. Following is my ranking, from least favorite to my favorite and pick for the award. ➡
    • Book thirteen of 2019: 84K, by Claire North. #PKDickAward nominee. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Set in a distressingly plausible near-future dystopic Britain, the unrelenting dreariness was difficult for me. As with post-apocalyptic fiction, I’m not a big fan; I prefer more hope in my futurism. ➡
    • Seattle Snowpocalypse 2019 Saturday morning update: Went out for a short walk to enjoy the scenery and scoff at the people driving too fast for conditions. That’s enough outside for us for a while! ➡
    • Seattle-Tacoma International Airport had 6.4 inches of snow Friday, according to the National Weather Service. It’s the second most snow recorded in the area in a day for the past 20 years, and nearly beat our yearly average (6.8 inches) in a single day. ➡
  • 2017
    • We only got a little rain today, but it was enough to give everything an icy gloss coat. The world looks plastic. ➡
  • 2016
    • From earlier today. Dentist’s offices are the height of ’90s cyberpunk fashion. (40/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Approaching the end of the weekend. Not entirely convinced that going back to work tomorrow is really the best idea, but I don’t think I have a choice. ➡
  • 2009
  • 2005
    • Grandma’s Memorial Mom and dad just got back from their trip to Florida for Grandma's funeral, and dad posted this photo (with more to come, he says). ➡
    • Another day, another Doocing Another one bites the dust, as they say — this time Mark Jen, formerly of Google. TDavid has a good wrapup of information on this latest 'blogger gets fired' story. ➡
  • 2004
    • Examining Bush’s military record More and more, people are getting to the bottom of Bush's military record — the real one, that is, not the glossed-over propagand-ized version he'd like us to believe. ➡
    • Ilium Oooohhh &dmash; a new book by Dan Simmons! Being a big fan of his Hyperion series, this is very good news in my universe. ➡
    • GarageBand is evil I've poked around with GarageBand a bit since I got it, but haven't created anything major yet. However, it is way too much fun. ➡
    • Issue with my comments-only feed I have no idea if anyone other than myself is currently subscribing to my 'comments only' RSS feed, but I've noticed an odd issue with it that I haven't been able to troubleshoot yet: comments displaying with the date of the parent post, rather than the date of the comment. ➡
  • 2003
  • 2002
    • More political cartoon uproar The cartoon depicts President Bush's budget plan as an airplane veering towards two buildings labeled 'Social' and 'Security'. Not surprisingly, this has led to a fairly large uproar, to the point that White House spokesman Ari Fleischer issued his denouncement to reporters. ➡
  • 2001
    • Doing Trekkies (-ers?) proud It's been known for a while now that Paramount was going back and doing some work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for its upcoming DVD release -- we just weren't entirely sure just what that meant. ➡
    • Ups and downs, and some possible changes Yesterday was not exactly the best day I've ever had -- not the worst overall, but certain moments may have some fairly large impact on days to come. ➡
  • 1994
    • [From Usenet: 2.9.94 0549] The only one I know of is _Solid Gold Hell_, available as an import from Cocomelos Records. Decent enough, although I wouldn't rave about it. ➡

On This Day: Feb 8

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 32 posts previously published on February 8th

  • 2024
    • Year 50 Day 282 The quiet of the afternoon was almost eerie. ➡
    • All Your Images Are Belong to Zuck If you have what you consider to be a hard-line stance against AI-generated images, and you post your photos and/or artwork to Instagram, Threads, and/or Facebook, you should likely either rethink that hard-line stance or stop posting your images. ➡
  • 2022
  • 2021
    • Samer Recognized A Fart Online: “This afternoon in Slack, our work chatroom, Patrick shared a cute little viral video, as we do from time to time. None of us were prepared for what happened next.” ➡
    • The two top things I want from Apple’s Music (formerly iTunes) app: Functional search. The drastic decrease in functionality in the iTunes to Music transition is incredibly frustrating. Either a ‘tag’ field, or for the ‘Genre’ field to be tags, rather than single-value. 🎶 ➡
    • Difficult Listening Hour 2021.02.06 Unrehearsed, seat-of-the-pants, let's-see-what-happens mixing. You never know what might fall into one of these! ➡
  • 2020
    • At the next to last ConCom planning meeting before Norwescon 43. We’re getting closer! ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 8 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 8 ➡
  • 2019
    • 🖖 #StarTrekDiscovery S02E04: A marked improvement over last week (no Klingons makes a big difference). Mysteries, science and technobabble, pissy fungus blobs, Number One, and reasons for no holograms on the Big E and (potentially) for no spore drive! Much better! ➡
    • Seattle Snowpocalypse 2019 status check, Friday afternoon. ➡
    • I’ll admit that I’m not a big fan of four-wheeling as a recreational activity; it seems to me wasteful and often damaging to the environment. That said, I can allow a little leeway if you have the chance to do it on the moon (gorgeous stabilized 60FPS video). ➡
    • Prepping for Snowpocalypse 2019 Survived my first experience with pre-*pocalypse shopping last night. The shopping itself wasn’t actually all that bad – we knew what we were getting into, and apparently so did most other people; it was definitely unusually busy, but people weren’t being unusually obnoxious – and it was amusing to see the many empty shelves where ... Read more ➡
  • 2017
    • So done with this. That big pile (top left) is actually taller than me. So freaking much snow! I left Alaska for a reason, dammit! 🌨❄️😜❄️🌨 ➡
  • 2016
    • 2016 fitness update: Finished level one of the Gorilla workout app yesterday (again), and moved on to start level two tonight. Graduated from modified push-ups (from the knees) to real push-ups…yay? Exercise is healthy and good, though. My weight’s been holding steady at 170 for the past two weeks, and Prairie says that she can ... Read more ➡
  • 2014
    • It snowed at least two inches while we were in the show; here at home, the snow is deeper than the car’s clearance (as evidenced by the marks between the tire tracks). We’re getting much more of a dump than I expected! ➡
    • Braving the winter weather for a night out at the opera! ➡
    • It’s been snowing all day, but it’s coming down nice and strong now that we’re out and about! ➡
  • 2009
    • Vinylicious Introducing a new blog: Vinylicous! I'm no hardcore vinyl collector, but I do keep an eye out for fun oddities to add to the collection I do have, and I'm planning on using Vinylicious to share some of the goodies I've found. ➡
  • 2007
    • PostSecret If you haven't run across [PostSecret][1] yet, you really should check it out. The concept is incredibly simple: people write their secrets on a postcard and send them in. Every Sunday, a new batch of secrets is posted on the site. ➡
  • 2006
    • The IT Crowd British humor and geek jokes (_lots_ of 'em, too, from Flying Spaghetti Monster posters to RTFM t-shirts to EFF 'Fair Use Has a Posse' stickers...essentially the entire set dressing) combined. ➡
  • 2005
    • Laurie Anderson: Mach 20 Now imagine, if you will, four hundred million blind and desperate sperm whales departing from the Pacific coast of North America, swimming at fifteen thousand miles per hour, and arriving in Japanese coastal waters in just under forty-five minutes. ➡
    • What about [some other blogging tool]? After reading my rant about comment spammers, Joel asked me if I'd thought about switching over to another weblogging system. Here's a (somewhat expanded) copy of what I sent back. ➡
    • The Al-Can Highway is no more! At least, according to Google's nifty new Google Maps page, that's the story. Realistically, I'm quite sure that this is simply because Google Maps doesn't have the Canadian highway system in their database at the moment. Hopefully that's only a temporary thing, as that is a search that returns good results in both Mapquest and Yahoo! Maps. ➡
    • The Spammers Have Won (for now) Until I have time to get in and do some rather major work on my webserver, I'm afraid that comments and TrackBacks are turned off. I really don't like doing this -- I like the interaction aspect, both getting into discussions and just knowing that people stop by here from time to time -- but the attacks on the server have been too severe and too regular, and I'm tired of battling them. ➡
  • 2004
    • So much for that secure entrance… Hey…could you help me? There's this crazy guy wandering the halls. He keeps banging on the doors…I don't know what to do. ➡
    • This is so juvenile. I’m very sorry. My computer doesn't like my Prick. ➡
    • Uff-da After fourteen trips down and up six stories to get three loads of laundry done, I really wish that they'd just go ahead and get the damn elevator in this place fixed. ➡
    • Geek backlash It was bound to happen eventually. It actually probably started happening a few years ago, but now it's actually getting news stories — 'geeks' are tired of fixing people's problems. ➡
  • 2002
    • Search back up Okay, the new search engine is installed and running. The pages don't mesh visually with the rest of the site yet, but I'll get that fixed up some other time -- Candice should be over sometime soon, and I wanted to be done with tonight's 'geeking out' before she got here. ➡
    • Search disabled I've just temporarily disabled the search function as I upgrade to a more powerful and full-featured search system offered by the same company. It should be back up within a couple hours at most (if all goes well). ➡
  • 2001
  • 1994
    • [From Usenet: 2.8.94 0325] If it's the same 'Cold Hearted Snake' as I'm thinking of, it was Paula Abdul, a few years back. Is the cover good? Might be interested in hearing it... ➡
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📚 nine of 2020: The Outside, by Ada Hoffman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #PKDickAward nominee

Humankind is out in space, limited to mid-20th century tech while super advanced AI gods control advanced tech, FTL flight and comms…oh, and Lovecraftian energies are destroying people. Fun!

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Just a quick note of kudos to Malia M. at Dreamhost customer support, who was able to recover a directory I accidentally (and quite foolishly) deleted this morning, and did so with a backup from yesterday. Great customer service!

Difficult Listening Hour 2020.02.06

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Week three of my unplanned, unrehearsed, seat-of-the-pants goofing around. As a way of getting back into practice and doing something regularly, I’ve started doing regular Twitch broadcasts on Thursday nights. These are the results. Anything goes.

Read more

On This Day: Feb 7

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 30 posts previously published on February 7th

  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2021
    • I AM THE DESIGNER OF THIS RESTAURANT’S OUTDOOR SEATING SPACE, AND THIS IS MY ARTIST’S STATEMENT: “… the elaborate act of justifying why all of this is okay takes about as much energy as the rest of it.” ➡
  • 2020
    • 📚 nine of 2020: The Outside, by Ada Hoffman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #PKDickAward nominee Humankind is out in space, limited to mid-20th century tech while super advanced AI gods control advanced tech, FTL flight and comms…oh, and Lovecraftian energies are destroying people. Fun! ➡
    • The Erasure of Elizabeth Warren Continues: I’ve been noticing this in a number of the articles I’ve seen — not just post-Iowa, either, though it’s become more obvious and egregious — and it’s been ticking me off. ➡
    • Just a quick note of kudos to Malia M. at Dreamhost customer support, who was able to recover a directory I accidentally (and quite foolishly) deleted this morning, and did so with a backup from yesterday. Great customer service! ➡
    • Difficult Listening Hour 2020.02.06 Week three of my unplanned, unrehearsed, seat-of-the-pants goofing around. ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 7 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 7 ➡
    • Magic Debug Values: “…are specific values written to memory…so that it will later be possible to tell whether or not they have become corrupted…. Memory is usually viewed in hexadecimal, so memorable repeating or hexspeak values are common.” Though not a programmer, I’d seen some of these in various other contexts. Particularly fond of 8BADF00D, ... Read more ➡
  • 2018
    • Book eight of 2018 (and second #pkdickaward nominee): All Systems Red, by Martha Wells. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2016
    • Gotta keep practicing! (38/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • A book and a fancy hot chocolate. Not at all a bad way to spend a Friday evening. ➡
    • The first decent snow of the winter, and rain is predicted by the middle of next week! ➡
  • 2009
  • 2007
  • 2005
  • 2004
    • Don’t drop out, Dean I'd love to see Dean stay in the race even if he doesn't pick up Wisconsin. I think it would be great if he could do essentially what Sharpton has been doing the entire time — just doggedly hang in there, show up for the debates, and make sure that his voice gets heard and that the questions that need to be asked are asked and don't get brushed under the carpet. ➡
    • Caucus Time My particular precinct had twenty-four people show up, split roughly 2/3 for Kerry and 1/3 for Dean, which ended up being the final delegate split (two delegates for Kerry and one for Dean). I'm expecting that that was probably the rough result for the rest of the precincts in the room. ➡
  • 2003
    • Just in case things weren't tense enough North Korea is entitled to launch a pre-emptive strike against the US rather than wait until the American military have finished with Iraq, the North's foreign ministry told the Guardian yesterday. ➡
    • Blacker than black Researchers have created the blackest black ever made on Earth, by bubbling a shiny metal plate in nitric acid for a few seconds. It reflects 10 to 20 times less light than the black paint currently used to reduce unwanted reflections in instruments. ➡
    • Rebutting Powell If one believes everything Colin Powell said to the Security Council on February 5th, one's first response ought to be that there's no reason to fight a war, since US surveillance capabilities are so awesome that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) can easily be found. And one's first question should be why has the United States for over two months withheld this apparently so damaging evidence from those weapons inspectors, who could have verified conjectures and destroyed WMD stocks and production facilities. ➡
    • better a terrorist than a republican better a terrorist than a republican…at least the terrorists are fighting for a real cause ➡
    • Saying what you feel Y'know, sometimes, whether or not it's polite, whether or not it's 'politically correct,' you just need to say what you feel, in all its uncensored glory. ➡
    • Following in Lott's footsteps Rep. Coble needs to apologize. And the rest of America's electorate really need to realize that these short-sighted, racist, and inflammatory remarks are neither likely to 'slip under the radar' as they did in pre-internet days, nor are the people they affect going to just shrug them off. It's time to grow up. ➡
  • 2002
    • Do you have slack? The only difference I've been able to see between Discordians and SubGeniuses, is that SubGeniuses get laid. ➡
    • Who wrote the bible? Here's some fascinating stuff courtesy of The Straight Dope -- a five-part series covering the primary theories on who wrote and edited the Bible. ➡
    • Word of the day: amanuensis I generally think of myself as having a fairly good vocabulary, but yesterday at a department meeting Carrie tossed out a term that I hadn't ever come across before -- _amanuensis_, which she said was a synonym for secretary. ➡
  • 2001
    • Shadow of the Vampire Not bad at all, though not quite as good as I'd hoped it would be. The previews had made it out to be a little more creepy than it ended up being -- while it wasn't strictly played for laughs, it wasn't as much of a 'horror' film as I thought it might be. ➡