Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)

The spectre of Spinal Tap

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We opened and closed the show, starting after a film sequence featuring a businessman searching sand dunes for a half-buried laptop, and a gravelly-voiced man saying in a so-baritone-it-must-be-important, film-trailer way, “There was a search for an internet business…”

The rest of the sequence was always lost to me as I was concentrating on standing upright and not wetting myself with laughter: Gravel Man was our signal that the revolving circular stage we were on was about to turn us briskly to face the audience and, we suspected, hurl our much ridiculed, old before his time guitarist into the front row like a ball off a dodgy roulette wheel. The spectre of Spinal Tap never leaves a rock band.

— Jesus Jones frontman Mike Edwards describing playing corporate gigs, in the Guardian Unlimited

(via kottke)

Cattle Call 2004

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Cattle Call '04 plot

Roughly every week or so, Daily Kos presents a Cattle Call ranking of the presidential candidates. A quick summary of his opinion of their current position in the Democratic presidential race, usually with a few notes about whether he sees them as heading up or down the chart, and why.

Having watched this for a while, I started to wonder just how the various candidates have fared over the months. So, with a little browsing through the Daily Kos archives and some tinkering in Excel, I can present a (fairly ugly) little graph of each candidate’s potential to grab the Democratic nomination, as ranked by Kos.

It’s actually fairly interesting to see. To me, the three most interesting lines are those of Richard Gephardt (light blue), Joseph Lieberman (medium blue), and Howard Dean (bright pink). Seeing Gephardt start fairly slow, then bounce around towards the top of the chart; Lieberman start strong, stumble for a couple months, then regain a top spot; and Dean’s fairly steady upward climb is a lot easier this way. I’m fairly sure that Kos will continue with the Cattle Call posts up until the Democratic nomination — I’ll keep updating my spreadsheet to see how all this turns out in the end.

Oh, this'll be fun

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I need to print, read, internalize, and (possibly hardest of all) understand the [Apache mod_rewrite documentation].

Why?

This is why. If I’m understanding what I’ve read so far, everything I want to do can be done purely through mod_rewrite. But, as of this writing, I have no idea how.

This could get interesting.

diveintocrappyteenagepoetry.org

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mother do you think thy child is sick?
why are my walls built so very thick?
i hide myself so i can feel no pain
but you crack my walls again and again
bringing emotions, people who care
when all i can do is sit and stare
while the feelings i try so hard to suppress
escape, exerting so much stress
that the walls explode, and i feel the pain
of love, and i build my walls again

This drivel was written sometime in high school, while I was bored in my typing class, and it was (obviously) heavily inspired by Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”.

Today’s bit of nostalgiac tripe has been brought to you courtesy of this comment of Mark’s on his Apple //e post.

Blaster

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Y’know what?

I never got touched by the Blaster worm that’s taking down machines all over the place (yes, I own a PC as well as a Mac).

Y’know why?

When that little “Windows Update” icon blinks at me on my PC, I pay attention to it, download, and install the updates. It’s a pain in the butt, especially since there seems to be a new “cricital update” every week, but sometimes those critical updates really are critical.

I’m sorry that this is hitting so many people. But at the same time — look, you’re dealing with Microsoft software. Bugs aren’t an unfortunate side effect, they’re a gaurantee. The patch for this particular exploit has been available for over a month on Microsoft’s site. Rant at Microsoft all you want for writing shitty software (it’s often well deserved), but at least in this instance, the fix was discovered, publicized, and patched in plenty of time to protect your computers well before Blaster was released.

Yeah, so I’m a little snarky this evening. I spent all day barely restraining myself from beating the ever-loving crap out of my work PC for various other bugs and oddities, which has left me in no great frame of mind when it comes to PCs or Microsoft in general. But at least in this one instance, they did what they could.

Three hours later…

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You may have noticed that I’ve put a surprising number of posts up for this early in the day. That’s simply because I’ve spent the past three hours watching Windows XP chew through security updates, software patches, and other sundry changes to the OS. Running a web browser was about as intense an activity as I wanted to tax the machine with during that process.

Now, three hours later I can finally get to work doing what they pay me for — but that’s only because I got sick of watching a stalled progress bar, force-quit the Windows Update program, and told it to sod off. My security updates were done anyway, it was just chewing on some less critical patches, so I’m not too worried.

Frustrated, and quite willing to toss the computer out a window, if only I had one.

But not worried.

Texas ANG Bush Action Figure

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Texas ANG Bush Action Figure

This is great — an eBay auction for the Texas ANG George W Bush Action Figure! I’ve taken the liberty of posting a screenshot, as it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see the auction pulled before too long.

This figure probably stands 14\” in height, and is exactly as the future Leader of the Western World(tm) appeared during his service defending our Nation’s borders from Mexicans and Bahamians.

Comes with detailed uniform (as imagined by base commander), sealed discharge papers, Coors Light keg, and “licensed to chug” bumper sticker.

[…]

The winning bidder will also receive TWO bonus gifts: the George W. Bush “Afternoon of September 11th 2001” tennis ensemble, and a genuine “First Lady Laura Bush Serving Sandwiches at a VA Hospital” action figure!

(via natasha)

Fair and balanced

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Comedian Al Franken has a new book coming out soon: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.

In response, Fox News has decided to sue Al Franken over his use of the term “fair and balanced”.

So, in order to honor this fine legal milestone, and in the company of many other weblogs, this weblog’s tagline has now been changed to “Fair and Balanced”.

Feel free to join in the fun!

Brass knuckles in nursing homes?

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How in the world does anyone, anywhere, at any time, come to the conclusion that this is acceptable behavior?

An aide in an Arkansas nursing home allegedly beat an 81-year-old woman with brass knuckles because she had been “disrespectful,” police said Friday.

[…]

An affidavit filed by sheriff’s detectives charged that Ryan was beaten on July 30 in her room at the Dallas County Nursing Home by Gayla Wilson, 44, who used brass knuckles.

The affidavit said Wilson complained that Ryan was repeatedly “disrespectful” of her.

Wilson allegedly recruited a second nursing aide, Shermika Rainey, 17, to hold Ryan during the attack.

(via Bill Maher)