India vs. New Zealand

by

Ever wondered what would happen if an English sports writer lost it while posting to a live website while covering a cricket match?

Well, okay, neither did I. But now we know…

It’s really simple: India are already through, New Zealand have to win.

Meanwhile, have you ever thought WHAT SORT OF LIFE IS THIS AND WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING BOARDING A TRAIN FOR MOORGATE AT 6.30 IN THE MORNING AND THEN STANDING AROUND FOR AGES WAITING FOR A TUBE WHILE STARING AT A SIGN TELLING YOU THAT IF YOU WAIT FOR FOUR MINUTES YOU CAN BOARD A TRAIN TO UXBRIDGE I’D RATHER WAIT FOUR HOURS FOR A JOURNEY WITH THE GRIM REAPER QUITE FRANKLY…

The entire thing is so worth reading. First the initial outburst, then the rest of the article is cricket commentary mixed with his responses to his readers’ messages. Wonderfully hilarious, and very honest.

If all sports writing were like this, I might pay attention more often.

Peaceblogs

by

Peaceblogs

I’ve just signed on with PeaceBlogs:

Peaceblogs.org is a site devoted to making connections between bloggers who oppose the impending war against Iraq. Regardless of your ideology or political affiliation, your nation of origin, or the size or scope of your site, if you oppose the war and use your weblog to express that opposition, your site is welcome among our listings.

(Via Stavros the Wonder Chicken)

Blogroll updated

by

I spent a little time tonight updating my blogroll (on the right, just underneath the WudiVisions icon) to more accurately reflect the sites that I check on a daily basis. It automatically sorts by how recently they’ve been updated, so the most recent bits will always be towards the top, with sites that have been updated within the last six hours bracketed by hyphens. Lots of new reading there — enjoy!

I hope this is a joke

by

I really, really, really hope this is a joke, but the website looks all too serious. In a move even more mind-bogglingly stupid than the call to rename the second Lord of the Rings Movie, “The Two Towers,” due to post-9/11 trauma, a guy by the name of Josh Wander has posted a petition to give the Statue of Liberty ~~back to France~~.

Located in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty was a gift of international friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States and is one of the most universal symbols of political freedom and democracy…

Now it is time to give it back!

They can have their damn Statue!

On the bright side, though, while the petition already has almost 500 signatures, it looks like the majority of them are from people who take this idea about as seriously as I do. Here’s a smattering…

I’ve been joking about it since Freepers starting pouring French wine down sewer grates, but now this nutter’s made it reality. So, I figured I’d better sign the petition. I mean, what with Ashcroft and Ridge running the Department of justice and the Office of Fatherland Security, we clearly have no use for symbols of freedom. I think we also need to take the blindfold off of Justice and stuff a big wad of \$100 bills onto one side of her scales, and stuff the Liberty Bell in a basement in Fort Knox. Since dimplomacy is over, I think pretense should be, too.

I propose a trade — they get the statue, I get Audrey Tautou.

…and let’s give back any stuff we got from the Germans too. And the Russians, Mexicans, … um, all of ’em damnit!

I think we should aboslutely give the Statue of Liberty back. We’ve had it with those commie pinko ideals of freedom, democracy, and equality! Bring on facism, christian zealotry and rampant ignorance! USA! USA! USA!

Yeah! Give it back! And stop drinking Pasteurized milk, too!

Hey, maybe they are more deserving of the Statue of Liberty since they DON’T want to bomb the holy hell out of a third world nation for NO APPARENT REASON. Sounds like their democracy’s in good shape and ours is the one that needs some help…

Ah, well. Hopefully, it’s just a hoax, and the guy’s angling to get some attention. If he’s serious…well, I guess we need people on both ends of the bell curve.

Damn straight

by

Most major Democratic presidential candidates also said they would abandon their criticism of Mr. Bush’s diplomatic efforts and support him now that it appeared the nation was about to go to war. One Democrat, former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, broke from the pack.

“This is not Iraq, where doubters and dissenters are punished or silenced — this is the United States of America,” Dr. Dean said in a statement issued shortly after Mr. Bush spoke. “We need to support our young people as they are sent to war by the president, and I have no doubt that American military power will prevail. But to ensure that our postwar policies are constructive and humane, based on enduring principles of peace and justice, concerned Americans should continue to speak out.”

Good for you, Dean. Speak out we will.

Random downtime fixed

by

At least, I hope it’s fixed.

I’ve had a recurring problem for a while now, where at seemingly random times, I’d lose my connection to the ‘net. It seems that this is some sort of odd problem with my Linksys router. Since I host this domain (and three others) off of one of my computers here in my apartment, I’ve had my LAN isolated behind the Linksys router (as seen in this diagram).

Unfortunately, for some reason, every so often when I’m browsing my own website from any machine on my LAN, the Linksys router will freeze up. Since it sat between my computers and the outside world, this effectively killed my network connection. I’d recently upgraded the firmware of the router to the latest version, hoping that it would fix the problem — unfortunately, that seemed rather to exacerbate the difficulties, where the Linksys proceeded to randomly freeze while browsing my website even if I was using a computer outside my LAN.

Needless to say, this is quite annoying. Especially on days like today, when it froze at five in the afternoon, and I wasn’t able to come home and restarted until after I got off work at 9pm.

However, my account with Speakeasy allows me two static IP addresses. I got ahold of them, got my second IP address configured, and rewired my network (here’s the new diagram) to take the Linksys out from between the webserver and the world.

Technically, this is a little less secure, as there is now a direct line between my webserver and the world, with no intervening firewall for protection, but OS X is fairly secure, and I’m willing to take that slight risk if it allows my sites to have better uptime. The Linksys does still protect the PC, however. Somehow I just can’t justify leaving a Windows box open to the world, even if I think I’ve got it locked down. So much for ‘trusted computing‘.

The speech follows no logical pattern

by

From Tom Tomorrow:

The entire situation is reminiscent, as someone pointed out on Atrios, of the old Star Trek episode “Patterns of Force” (in which) Federation history professor John Gill becomes the drugged leader of a Nazi planet:

GILL (seen on TV at a rally): If we fulfill our own greatness,
that will all be ended. Working together —

SPOCK: Captain, the speech follows no logical pattern. Random sentences strung together.

MCCOY: He looks drugged, Jim, almost in a cataleptic state.

GILL: …reach our goal, and we will reach that goal. (cheering) Every thought…directed toward a goal. This planet…can become a paradise, if we are willing to pay the price. As each cell in the body…works with discipline and harmony for the good…of the entire being —

Building 42

by

An entertaining little bit of trivia about Microsoft’s building numbering schemes over on Scott Guthrie’s blog produced this amusing bit of MS trivia:

[Building 42] is also a little unique in that it straddles the line between the cities of Redmond and Bellevue. This was apparently something of a challenge when getting planning permission — since Redmond had a town ordinance that prevented buildings from being more than three stories tall, while Bellevue allowed an unrestricted number of building floors to be built.

Microsoft wanted the new Building 42 to be a nice four stories tall — but despite the fact that 2/3rds of it would have lived in Bellevue, the planning permission folks in Redmond apparently insisted that it not be more than three. After a lot of wrangling, they finally reached a compromise whereby the 1/3rd of the building that lived in Redmond was built to be 3 stories tall — and the 2/3rds of the building which lived in Bellevue was built to the full 4 stories in height.

If you are ever driving past campus on 156^th^ Avenue, you can spot the exact Redmond/Bellevue city border by seeing where an otherwise normal, professional looking building suddenly changes height.

This isn’t my building — MSCopy, the Xerox printshop for Microsoft, is over in Building 123 — I just thought it was interesting.