|
Today's Fortune: |
   
|
Thursday, June 27, 2002
Sounds good to me, as long as I can wear one too. My religion also requires that I wear gloves when being fingerprinted. Is that acceptable?
Talk about an easy way to pass under someone else's ID. I'm sure TABC would love it.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 6/27/2002
I don't know, Jeremy. There's a poetic quality to the line, "Make not of the byte change." As if it were maybe part of some greater text:
Go ye into the wilderness twenty days hence. Sate thyself with locusts and honey, but make not of the byte change. On the nineteenth day, select device/configure. Load ye the buffer with the customer file, making not of the byte count. Beseech ye the Rock of Vagueness, making naught of the byte count and change.
.: posted by andy 6/27/2002
I don't have any problems with immigration. I think it's fine and blah blah blah. It's just difficult when you're a technical worker and you rely on extremely precise language to describe a problem or a solution. I think it's shameful that universities allow engineering students to graduate whose english is hardly intelligible. This is the kind of thing that I have to decipher on a regular basis.
Load the buffer with the customer file. Make not of the bytes count. Select Device/Configure. Make not of the byte change.
I think what was intended was:
Load the buffer with the customer's file. Take note of the number of bytes (in the file). Select Device/Configure. Take note of the change in the number of bytes.
It took me about 10 minutes to figure out he meant note instead of not.
This was just in the instructions for one of my assignments, so no big deal, i can go yell at my boss and tell him to take an english class. Sometimes this kind of shit ends up in official technical documentation though, which is supposed to be checked and rechecked for clarity and accuracy. kill me.
.: posted by Jeremy 6/27/2002
An odd Letter to the Editor from some guy in atlanta to the Wall Street Journal about outbidding Saddam Hussein for palestinian children.
.: posted by Jeremy 6/27/2002
In other, good news, scientists may have found a way to kill about one third of human cancers, using folic acid and yellow dye. For their next trick, they're going to achieve cold fusion using a AAA battery and a Pepsi bottle.
.: posted by andy 6/27/2002
Today we were listening to the radio while we did room checks. I think it was a country station, on FM. They played an ad sponsored by some organization that's against a state lottery in North Carolina. The person in the ad said we shouldn't have a lottery because a "Hispanic migrant worker" might win, and as soon as a "Hispanic" has the lottery money in his hand, there will be "a proliferation of Hispanic culture" in our so-called beautiful North Carolina cities. They finished up the ad by asking if we want our state to turn into another San Antonio or San Diego.
In a state that is practically bankrupt, where the school system is consistently ranked in the bottom ten percent of the nation, these hillbilly incest-monkeys are afraid to have a lottery because a Mexican might win.
You know what's even worse? My two hard-working, non-complaining Mexican helpers were right there next to me when that commercial came on. I know one of them didn't understand a word of the commercial, but the other one heard and understood every word of it. Between community college and vocational training, he's got more education than anyone I've met since I came to this state. He's the guy who, when I thanked him for his help one day, turned around and thanked me for letting him work. And these white trash assholes are afraid of that? I guess I would be too, if I were as lazy and indolent as most North Carolinians are. These hillbilly bastards always complain about Mexicans coming in and taking their jobs. Maybe if the average North Carolinian laborer was worth two pieces of shit in a ziplock bag, he wouldn't have to worry about it. As it is, they'll probably have to create some special racist legislation to protect their livelihoods from an influx of honest, hard-working people.
I hate this state. I hate living here. I hate about three quarters of the backassward people who live here. North Carolina's entire culture is based on a self-righteous and prideful ignorance hardwired at birth into each and every one of these inbred window-lickers. I will be leaving at my earliest opportunity.
.: posted by andy 6/27/2002
Wednesday, June 26, 2002
I wonder if the Supreme Court will decide to pick this one up, or just let it be. I always thought "one nation, under god" was religiously ambiguous, and pretty much innoffensive to everybody... Unless you count the zoroastrians and animists, which there aren't too many of in this country anyway, and if there were, they could just change the damn line to "one nation, under god(s)."
.: posted by Jeremy 6/26/2002
Funny, a friend showed me that trick with the $20 bill not two hours ago. The part the site left out was, when you unfold the bill, there are creases forming an X on the picture of the White House, supposedly where the fourth plane targetted.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 6/26/2002
Tuesday, June 25, 2002
Woohoo! Conspiracy Theories! This one is really blowing my coworkers' minds (the comment about the new dollar coin is the best part).
More along the lines of Steph's links, here's a link I think I posted a while back. This site suggests that a passenger airliner didn't hit the Pentagon at all, and challenges you to find any evidence to the contrary, from a small handful of photographs they've carefully chosen.
For a while I was really into the theory that Bush's administration knew about the attacks beforehand, but chose not to prevent them. I was into that theory because I thought the attacks gave our government a convenient excuse to take control of Afghanistan, a key country in the tug-of-war over the Caspian oilfields. In other words, I thought our government was pretty much controlled by a confederacy of oil interests and defense-type contractors (Haliburton, which is currently under intense scrutiny for shady accounting practices, along with its sometime partner, Arthur Anderson). But then I realized that any chump, even a presidential one, could foresee the disasterous effect such a large-scale attack could have on our economy. If the government is controlled by greedy old white men, don't you think they would try to preserve their existing fortunes instead of risking it all on such a long-shot? Maybe they would have let a dirty-bomb into the inner city, but I doubt they'd sit idly by while some desert wack-jobs crashed jetliners into the figurative headquarters of American capitalism.
I still think Halliburton owns our government, I just don't think they knew in advance about the attacks.
.: posted by andy 6/25/2002
Monday, June 24, 2002
Andy, wasn't it you who liked conspiracy theories? you might get a kick outta this one. i busted out laughing when i first read it cause it seemed so ludicrous.. but i'll let you see what you think.
we don't have issues with telemarketers here in japan (happily), but there is this other rather strange phenomenon going on. its a scam called wan-kiri. apparently an underground network of 'companies' has sprung up to call peoples cell phones, hang up immediately after it rings, and then the called--presumably attempting to identify the caller--presses the callback button and gets pegged with a user-pay recorded phone message (usually obscene material) and a big bill. the interesting thing is that it's not quite illegal yet though it's really pissing a lot of people off. i bring it up because i, myself, get an unidentified call from Tokyo on my cell phone about once a week that i presume is linked to this racket. as i don't know anyone in tokyo, i usually don't get too worried about it, but i could see how the system would cause a lot of confusion for people who live in that area. it's sick i tell you.
.: posted by aida 6/24/2002
Sunday, June 23, 2002
I've noticed that about the pause when telemarketers call. Beth says that pause helps them tell if it's a computer answering the phone or not. I've noticed that if I say, "hello" right as I pick up the phone, the telemarketer won't pick it up, and will hang up. If they do hear me, I usually give the phone to Beth. None of that matters now, though, because we're SCREENING OUR CALLS! It makes me feel important to say that I'm screening my calls, but realistically we're probably just too lazy to get up and answer the phone.
Whenever I leave the shop (at work), I always tell the secretary to hold my calls. I like to think that it brightens her day to hear that from the lightbulb changer.
They're having a big war exposition in Europe right now. Jane's has a little minisite for it (username: flooz password: flooz), but their IDEX site was better.
.: posted by andy 6/23/2002
Google
DrinkBoy
Modern Drunkard
DMOZ.org
The Agonist
Metafilter.com
Fark.com
RobotWisdom.com
Memepool.com
Plastic.com
news.google.com