Blog

Site updates and anything else related to the technology of blogging and my site(s).

On This Day: Feb 12

by

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 26 posts previously published on February 12th

  • 2024
  • 2021
    • 📚 7/2021: Bone Silence by Alastair Reynolds ⭐️⭐️⭐️ #PKDickAward nominee 1/6 A satisfying end to the Revenger trilogy. Not all questions answered, but those most central to the main adventure are. If the “high seas adventure in space” conceit works for you, it’s a good series. ➡
  • 2020
    • Picard Theory (Probably Wrong) 🖖 Spoilers for episodes two and three of _Picard_ follow, but probably not for anything beyond that, because I'm usually wrong about these things. :) ➡
    • Someone Built a Distraction-Free Cellphone With a Working Old-School Rotary Dial: “Haupt’s creation seems like it was brought to Earth from a parallel dimension where mobile phones took an entirely different evolutionary route, and where technologies like touchscreens never came to fruition.” ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 12 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 12 ➡
  • 2019
    • Bed used in hotel honeymoon suite for 15 years then discarded in a parking lot, rescued by an antiques dealer, and initially believed to be Victorian, turns out to be Henry VII’s marriage bed. ➡
    • Book fifteen of 2019: The Book of Merlyn, by T.H. White. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 📚 A curious coda to TOaFK, mostly serving as an argument against humankind’s warlike tendencies. Not critical to finish Arthur’s story, IMHO. ➡
  • 2016
    • Kicking off this long weekend with the latest Bond flick. Doo doo, doo dooooooo… (43/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Turned into a gorgeous day, 48 degrees and snow melting off everywhere, and the sun is even above the hills at 5PM! Are we sure it’s not spring yet? ➡
  • 2010
    • Links for February 3rd through February 12th Sometime between February 3rd and February 12th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • Now You Can Facebook Chat Through iChat • How to Create a Google Buzz Desktop App • Deckle Edge in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction • Pepsi Skips Super Bowl TV Advertising for Social Media • Confused by the 'Lost' Premiere? Never Fear! Damon and Carlton Explain a Few Things About the Start of Season 6 (SPOILERS AHEAD) ➡
  • 2009
    • Good Twitter Marketing is Communication The single most important aspect to marketing successfully on Twitter is having a real person behind the account. Many companies seem to see Twitter as little more than an RSS reader for people who don't grok RSS readers, and that's a rather sad outlook. ➡
    • Links for February 11th through February 12th Sometime between February 11th and February 12th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • Darwin Survives as the Fittest • Evolution and Facebook's "25 Random Things About Me" Craze. • Czar Struck: Obama’s Brilliant Pick for Drug Czar • 15 Companies That Might Not Survive 2009 • Surprising Stories Behind 20 Muppet Characters ➡
  • 2007
    • Which Super Villain am I? Which super villain am I? 'You fear the persecution of those that are different or underprivileged so much that you are willing to fight and hurt others for your cause.' ➡
    • Wanted: One Apology from the Seattle PI The PI's public vilification of the crane operator was a slimy, sleazy way to grab eyeballs and sell papers at the expense of his reputation. Trial and conviction should be handled in the courts, not in the headlines. ➡
  • 2004
    • Atom feed now available Seeing as how an Atom-enabled beta of NetNewsWire just hit the 'net, I took a few moments to get an Atom newsfeed up and running for Eclecticism. ➡
    • Biggest breakup of the year I'm talking a breakup of real importance here — one that will be inspiring headlines in all the rags, sending the talk-show hosts into a flurry, and prompting a whole slew of rabid fan sites lamenting the passing of such a long-adored perfect couple. ➡
    • The Grey Album Vocal tracks from Jay-Z's 'The Black Album' + samples from The Beatle's 'The White Album' = Danger Mouse's 'The Grey Album'. ➡
    • Good advice Kids, this is all the shit I had to learn the hard way. Now that I’m retired it’s time to pass it on, so you won’t have to suffer the same indignities I did. ➡
  • 2003
    • Patriot II raising ire Finally, some good movement happening on the polictical front — a very welcome change from last week's ranting and raving. It seems that the recently-leaked 'Patriot II' draft, in addition to getting attention in the blogging world, is also raising eyebrows on Capitol Hill. ➡
    • Recommend me? Actually, I'm not out to be a boyfriend right now — pretty happy staying single for the foreseeable future — but I can think of plenty of times when I wouldn't have minded getting a recommendation on greatboyfriends.com! ➡
    • Awww – how sweet! Just a little 'Wüdi love' from me to my readers, in honor of the coming Valentine's Day. Yeah, even I can get a little mushy from time to time. Who knew? ➡
  • 2002
  • 2001
    • If? What is this if? If I were a lesbian, she would make me go straight! ➡
    • Hannibal I just don't think the script gave much to work with, and I can say that I definitely agree with both Jonathan Demme and Jodi Foster's decisions to pass up on returning to this film. ➡
  • 1994
    • [From Usenet: 2.12.94 0400] I got a shirt a while back only because I thought it was great (person with bird's head mask holding a naked woman upside down by a knife through the foot, says 'Some have to dance, some have to kill' on the back), and someone recently told me it was a Psychic TV shirt. ➡

On This Day: Feb 11

by

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 27 posts previously published on February 11th

  • 2024
  • 2022
    • 🎥 Eternals Really long. Lots of things happened that involved a lot of fancy glowy effects. ➡
  • 2020
    • Recommeowndations Movies for Cats - Forest Songbirds ➡
    • Got my copy of the new #StarTrekPicard novel today…but can’t (well, won’t) read it until I’m finished with this year’s #PKDickAward nominees. So many books, and only so much time to read! 📚🖖 ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 11 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 11 ➡
  • 2017
    • Chucks of the day (49/53): #pride edition black hightops with rainbow specks, soles, and heel plate. Was quite thrilled to find a pair of these today! #converse #chucks ➡
  • 2016
    • Mmmm…ending the day with a warm drink is nice. (42/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • I will have my chocolate tonight! (Not the whole thing, though.) ➡
    • She’s nekkid! I’m shocked; shocked, I tell you! ➡
  • 2010
    • Seattle Metro Tunnel Beating This is one of the most disturbing local stories I've seen in a long time. A 15-year old girl was beaten on the platform of the Seattle Metro Bus Tunnel, while security guards and witnesses stood around and watched. ➡
  • 2009
  • 2005
    • Ugh. Ick. Bleah. On the bright side, one thing I love about working five blocks from home is that I've got time on my one-hour lunch break to leave work, hit Subway, grab a sandwich, come home, eat, hop into the shower and soak under hot water for about 20 minutes, then get back dressed and head back into work. That's probably about the only thing that made the latter half of the day bearable. ➡
    • Captain’s Blog, Stardate 47751.2 Today's comic from Joy of Tech is a must-see. ➡
    • Washington Post article on Blogging and Jobs About two weeks ago, I spent some time being interviewed by Amy Joyce of the Washington Post about my expulsion from the Microsoft campus for an article she was working on about the potential pitfalls of blogging about one's job. The article went live today: Free Expression Can Be Costly When Bloggers Bad-Mouth Jobs. ➡
  • 2004
    • Relationships One of the things that's always bothered me (and many other people) about social networking sites such as Orkut, Friendster, or any other *ster meme-of-the-moment is the binary nature of their setups — either someone is your friend, or they aren't. That's it. Those are your only choices. ➡
    • Own 1/1100th of a supercomputer! Now that Virginia Tech is upgrading 'Big Mac' to the new G5-based XServes, some of the original 1,100 dual 2Ghz G5 Power Macs that were part of the cluster are being sold through MacMall for $2799. ➡
    • Help the CIA find those pesky WMDs! How wonderfully thoughtful — the CIA has posted a handy little online form so that people can submit tips on WMD locations (and other Iraq-related intel). ➡
    • Like, I guess I’ll just have to, like, get used to it now 'It really is a wonderful, useful word,' says Muffy E.A. Siegel, an associate professor of English at Temple University in Philadelphia, who has studied the use of 'like.' ➡
    • Brother for sale …the words 'sewing machine' were accidentally dropped, leaving a 'BROTHER' for sale ad. ➡
    • Sponsorship I'm experimenting with something that I found via Snowman on the TPUG — sponsored weblog entries. Three posts on my site now have small, fairly unobtrusive text ads at the bottom of the post, for which I get some small amount of compensation. ➡
  • 2003
    • Still tempin' My boss got back to me with Xerox's employment offer. What did they use to try to entice me into the Xerox family? A whole lotta nuttin'. ➡
  • 2002
    • Hold on, please. Whenever a phone solicitor calls in the middle of dinner, don't get sore. Don't slam down the receiver. Don't hang up. Just say, 'Hold on, please.' Then gently set the receiver on the table and go about your business. ➡
    • Possibilities of moving? If I can come up with the money to make the move, I think it could be a good deal -- a larger, newer place for the same price, more varied experience on my resume, and being able to stay with a landlord that I know I'm on good terms with. ➡
    • You couldn’t pay me enough Ever since I started working here, I've been able to watch day by day as a new skyscraper is built about two blocks away from my building. When I started last August it wasn't much more than a hole in the ground as they worked on the foundation; now there is a steel framework stretching up about 25 floors, with a central concrete core that's going up what looks to be at least another ten floors or so. ➡
  • 2001
    • The un-what? It's our job...we have to be nice to the unfuckables. ➡
    • Quicker archiving, twins, frustration Seeing as how I'm actually starting to update this thing on a more regular basis, I figured I'd drop the archiving settings down to weekly so that this page didn't just keep scrolling on and on and on and on and on.... ➡

On This Day: Feb 10

by

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... ➡

On This Day: Feb 9

by

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

by

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... ➡
by

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!

On This Day: Feb 7

by

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. ➡
by

For some reason, my micro.blog hadn’t been picking up my posts for a few weeks. @manton has been very kindly dealing with the weirdness in a trouble ticket, even when the answer was nothing more than “well…that’s bizarre…”. But suddenly it’s working again! It’s good to be back!

On This Day: Feb 6

by

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 37 posts previously published on February 6th

  • 2024
  • 2021
    • Lawyer finds a ‘treasure’ of old photos, suffragette portraits in a hidden N.Y. attic: “Among the turn-of-the-century photos and equipment is a framed portrait of Susan B. Anthony” ➡
    • 📚 6/2021: Shadow Captain by Alastair Reynolds ⭐️⭐️⭐️ The central book of a trilogy, between two #PKDickAward nominees (one in 2018, one this year). More YA adventures on the high seas but in space, in a far-future pseudo-18th century society among a shattered solar system. ➡
  • 2020
    • Star Trek: Picard S01E03 The End is the Beginning 'Engage.' ➡
    • For some reason, my micro.blog hadn’t been picking up my posts for a few weeks. @manton has been very kindly dealing with the weirdness in a trouble ticket, even when the answer was nothing more than “well…that’s bizarre…”. But suddenly it’s working again! It’s good to be back! ➡
    • Daring Fireball: Our Long National Nightmare Is Over: Netflix Makes Preview Autoplay Optional: Oh, thank god. Or, rather, thank you @netflix for finally giving us this option! ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 6 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 6 ➡
  • 2019
    • Idle curiosity: What other biological mutations would Dumbo have needed in order to fly, particularly given an elephant’s weight, the lack of bones to give the ears structure to support the body, and their forward placement meaning the body would tend to droop below the head? ➡
  • 2018
    • Book seven of 2018 (and first #pkdickaward nominee): After the Flare, by Deji Bryce Olukotun. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2017
    • I’m really tired of this (we got around 8″ yesterday), but I’ll admit it’s pretty. ➡
    • Another inch or two, and the wall around our bird feeders and the bird bath stand will be entirely buried. Make it stop! ➡
  • 2016
    • The second funniest thing about watching Grey’s Anatomy (after the completely nonsensical geography) is how often the rain is accompanied by thunder. I’ve heard thunder more times in ten shows than I did in ten years of living in the Seattle area. (37/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Not actually wearing the mask today, but I wanted to try it out properly. Gotta admit, if I had a need to be out in the cold for a while, this would do a great job of keeping my face warm! Prairie still thinks it just looks creepy. ➡
  • 2009
    • Links for February 5th through February 6th Sometime between February 5th and February 6th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • Universal Studios Home Entertainment: Caprica on DVD 4/21/09 • Dollhouse: Dollhouse's Sexuality Is Creepy on Purpose • Base System • Movie Review - Coraline - Cornered in a Parallel World • All the Way Through to "Kerplunk" • Neil Gaiman's favorite bad review for _Coraline_ ➡
    • 25 Random Things Meme Oh, alright already. Naysayers be damned, here's my entry into the 'twenty-five random things about you' meme that's currently flying around Facebook (and, to a limited extent, creeping out into the rest of the blog world). Some of these, people will know. Others...perhaps not. ➡
  • 2008
  • 2007
    • Seven Deadly Sins… ...and twenty-one not-so-deadly combinations. ➡
    • Blarch Badness: Me! Admittedly, I'm not quite sure how I ended up in the West Seattle round (will I have to move if I win?) -- truth to tell, I think I've been to West Seattle once or twice, and have only lived on First Hill and up here in Northgate -- but hey, no complaints! ➡
  • 2006
    • ENG101: In-Class Writing: Analysis: Ed Schools vs. Education My second paper for my ENG101 class. This was an in-class essay analyzing an editorial by George Will, 'Ed Schools vs. Education'. Final grade: 100% (plus a smiley face and the notation, 'Couldn't have said it better myself!'). ➡
    • The Ciccones: Lies While most of the all-Madonna mashup album is fairly hit-and-miss, this is by far the standout track. Over the music for "Live to Tell", audio quotes from the justifications for the Iraq war are juxtaposed with the song's original chorus. ➡
  • 2005
    • Network Outage Thanks for calling Speakeasy. Some of our broadband customers in the greater Seattle area are currently reporting a network outage due to a vendor failure. We hope to have this resolved within 30 minutes. (pause) (big sigh) If we're lucky. ➡
    • Comments/TrackBack down until further notice Comments and TrackBack pings are currently disabled at the server level for all sites I host (www.michaelhanscom.com, www.hanscomfamily.com, www.geekmuffin.com). As I've done this at the server level, this is not reflected in the sites themselves: they all still look like they accept comments, but they won't work. ➡
    • Muppets are scary! Remember how I was talking about my overactive imagination about a week ago? I had a conversation with Prairie yesterday that reminded me of a couple of perfect examples of this. The freakin' Muppets used to give me nightmares. How sad is that? ➡
    • Then and now At one time we had sex, drugs, and rock and roll, now all we have are STDs, antidepressants, and techno. ➡
  • 2004
    • Average Monthly Job Growth Robsix and Hurin, knock yourselves out. ;) ➡
    • Marcel Marceau’s Greatest Hits! …while we're amused by the fact that Apple is charging 99 cents for a song full o' nothing, we're even more amused by the fact that said track contains the usual digital rights management code to prevent you from playing it on any unauthorized systems. ➡
    • RSS Templates for TypePad Pro/MovableType I just had someone ask how I was able to create the four RSS feeds for my site. Here's a quick rundown, along with the templates themselves, should anyone else want to do the same thing. All the templates are RSS 2.0, and have been checked with the RSS Feed Validator. ➡
  • 2003
    • What if they're right? I'm just not sure if I can unequivocally condemn the drive to oust Saddam. There should be a better way than what we're facing — the concept of the end justifying the means has never sat well with me — but should we enter into this, I just hope it's over quickly, with as little bloodshed as possible, and that this time, it's successful. We didn't get Saddamn out before. We still haven't found bin Laden. I can't even remember if we ever actually ousted Kaddaffi (going back a few years to the Reagan days). If we must go into this conflict, as the powers that be seem to be convinced, can we at least just get it right this time? ➡
    • Solving the problem The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself? ➡
    • Surfin' Safari More companies need to realize that this is a real, effective way to encourage their users. We know that Safari is being worked on, we know that it's being worked on by someone who genuinely cares about the project, and we know that they care about and listen to what their customers want to see in the product. I can't think of a better way to build and keep customer loyalty than that. ➡
    • First floor: mens wear, ladies undergarments, and zero-g toilets Forget the roar of rocketry and those bone jarring liftoffs, the elevator would be a smooth 62,000-mile (100,000-kilometer) ride up a long cable. ➡
    • th3 10rdz pr4y3r Our Father, who 0wnz heaven, j00 r0ck! May all 0ur base someday be belong to you! ➡
  • 2002
    • Archive tweaks, search engine online I went into serious geek mode for a few hours tonight (which, unfortnately, caused me to miss Enterprise because I got lost in code and didn't realize what time it was until Candice called at 8:30pm) and have made a few improvements to the site. ➡
    • Archives back online So, for the _truly_ bored (or possibly just masochistic), you can now use the archive links towards the top right of the page to go through a month-by-month listing of everything I've babbled on this site, from November of 2000 to now. ➡
  • 2001
  • 1997
    • [From Usenet: 2.6.97 0000] Discarding the philosophical ramblings being touched on here, I'd say...no. If it's the same promo CD i've got, it's only got two tracks. ➡

On This Day: Feb 5

by

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 5th

  • 2024
  • 2023
    • 📚 January Fifteenth by Rachel Swirsky No review, as this book is a Philip K. Dick Award nominee, and I am the coordinator for the award ceremony at Norwescon. While I have no input into the selection of nominees or judging, I want to be sure to avoid any appearance of influence. ➡
  • 2020
    • Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open: “I don’t care whether anything materially bad will or won’t happen as a consequence of Wacom taking this data from me. I simply resent the fact that they’re doing it.” ➡
    • Why You May Never Learn the Truth About ICE: “The National Archives is letting millions of documents, including many related to immigrants’ rights, be destroyed or deleted.” This is horrifying and infuriating. ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 5 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 5 ➡
  • 2019
    • I’m as much of a fan of Rent as any other average theatre nerd, but I swear I’ve had that damn earworm stuck in my head for at least 525,600 minutes by now, and I really need all of you to stop making references to it, okay? 🎵 ➡
  • 2016
    • Now this is a good way to wrap up a long week. (36/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • A hat and two hoods (hoodie and jacket) makes for good insulation, but also rids me of any peripheral vision. Prairie kept giggling and poking me in the noggin. ➡
    • Huh. Well, would’ja look at that. Somebody snuck a bootleg @norwescon poster in here. How’d that happen? ➡
  • 2007
    • Initiative 957 If passed by Washington voters, the Defense of Marriage Initiative would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriages annulled. ➡
  • 2006
    • Steelers take the Superbowl Neither Prairie nor I really know much about football, and we don't really _care_ to know much. However, that didn't stop us from kicking back and having a fun time watching the game and doing our own form of silly armchair quarterbacking. ➡
  • 2005
    • Pigface, Sheep on Drugs, and MY BIRTHDAY The Pigface Free For All Tour is going to be coming through Seattle. Pigface and Sheep on Drugs (and Nocturne, and possibly The Damage Manual and The Countdown) in concert -- and they're performing at the Fenix Underground on Tuesday, May 3rd. ➡
    • Emerald City ComiCon 'I'm not funny — I'm freakishly obsessed!' I burst out laughing when I heard this (thoroughly embarrassing the girl who'd said it, I think), but it seemed as oddly appropriate as it was amusing while I wandered around the Emerald City ComiCon this morning. ➡
    • Naked robbery warning! WARNING: A scam is being pulled, mainly on older men. What happens is that when you stop for a red light, a young nude woman comes up and pretends to be washing your windshield. While she is doing this, another person opens your back door and steals anything in the car. ➡
    • Are we about to be without a Governor? This mess just keeps getting worse and worse. A local judge declared yesterday that the Republican suit to overturn the election will proceed, and might end up voiding the election — but he wouldn't order a new election. Would that leave Washington without a Governor? ➡
  • 2003
    • What Al said, in tiny bits. I've seen this all over the 'net, but had yet to make a link to it. As it's far past time I did so, here it is: Why Al says that 'E' is the same as 'MC2', as told so that each word has four jots or less. ➡
    • Networking sex he average amount of information per ejaculation is 1.560*109 * 2 bits * 2.00*108, which comes out to be 6.24*1017 bits. That's about 78,000 terabytes of data! As a basis of comparison, were the entire text content of the Library of Congress to be scanned and stored, it would only take up about 20 terabytes. If you figure that a male orgasm lasts five seconds, you get a transmission rate of 15,600 tb/s. In comparison, an OC-96 line (like the ones that make up much of the backbone of the internet) can move .005 tb/s. Cable modems generally transmit somewhere around 1/5000th of that. ➡
    • Work, work, work I finally got a chance to talk with my boss about my possible future with Xerox, a conversation that I'd been itching for for a while now. When working for Xerox, a temp such as myself can be used for a maximum of 18 months before the situation needs to be re-evaluated. I've known that the tail end of my 18 months was coming up fairly quickly, but wasn't at all sure about what I'd be looking at when it it. Some of my questions finally got answered today. ➡
    • The case for war Gen. Powell made his presentation to the UN today, giving America's (ahem…Bush's…) case for going to war with Iraq. I haven't had time to look over the full thing yet, but the US Department of State has the entire presentation available on the web. ➡
    • Bush sets new record Well, Bush has gone and set a new record by plunging the U.S. into a $304,000,000,000 deficit, which is only likely to get worse and worse (I've seen some estimates eventually putting us at the trillion level) should we start turning Iraq into a molten slagheap. Can we just get to the next round of elections please? My single vote might not be enough to get Bush out of office on its own, but I'm sure itching to do my part to try. ➡
    • More on Animatrix Back in October, I mentioned an upcoming DVD release called 'Animatrix' — a series of short animated films set in the universe of The Matrix. It turns out that of the nine shorts that will be on the disc, four are going to be released to the web, and the first has just been posted. ➡
  • 2001
    • 1941 toepick cannibal line Now -- the newest additions to my movie library. Big surprise, huh? ➡
    • Occasional downtime I'm working on my CD collection again, which often necessitates switching my 'puter over to Mac OS 9. As my webserver only operates when I'm running Mac OS X...well, no webserver when I'm working. ➡