Bytes
Actual conversation from work yesterday:
Coworker: Hey, the vendor put the wrong video card in this box.
Me: Could be worse, they could have just put a ham sandwich in there.
CW: Yeah, could lead to hardware incompatibilities.
Me: Well, maybe if it had a PCI-X interface…
CW: The good news is that Mac OS X and Windows 7 already have the right drivers.
Me: Yeah, but the Mac drivers really only work best with the iSandwich.
CW: The iSandwich tastes awesome, but it’s a bit pricey, and a few breads don’t work well.
Me: I hear iSandwich 2.0 will be able to handle double-deckers and tortilla wraps.
CW: Either way you’ll have to get permission from the Condiment Industry Association of America to send sandwich description files to your friends.
Norf Wind Bwoah!
Somehow, Starr has lived this long without seeing “Duck Amuck” or “What’s Opera, Doc?“! Luckily, Turner Classic Movies put on a special Chuck Jones tribute tonight, and a Tweet from kittykatya alerted me to the fact. Starr’s cultural education is now increased.
Luckily, she’s the type of person who can properly appreciate a classic Looney Tunes short, and her reaction to each consisted of “This is my new most favorite cartoon ever!” The woman has taste. It’s amazing how funny a cartoon can be without focus groups, Nielsen ratings, a merchandise line, or a stream of “notes” from studio executives. The folks at Termite Terrace just made films they liked, and hoped other people would too. It worked.
I note that Daffy Duck used the “D’oh!” exclamation long before Homer Simpson. Also, Starr will never again hear “Ride of the Valkyries” without the word “wabbit” echoing in her head. Heh heh heh.
Brief updates
- 14:35 Just got verbally approved for the house loan. Stomach doing acrobatics. #
- 21:04 @jephjacques The correct response to that is to blow him a kiss and say “thank you” in your best “Queer Eye” Carson Kressley voice. #
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Brief updates
- 12:00 Is Londo’s line “pecked to death by cats” or “nibbled to death by cats”? There’s been some debate about this. #
- 13:05 Google isn’t sure, but Twitter and Facebook say “nibbled.” Kind of a shame, I think “pecked to death by cats” is funnier. #
- 13:32 Converting my elfie mail access from POP to IMAP, since these days I read my mail from different clients at different times. Thanks John! #
- 14:22 @SJGames Every time I speak up and say, “Well, I’ll admit that I really really like *this* Microsoft product,” they cancel it. #
- 14:57 Dear universe: thank you for turning up these items for which I’ve been searching all these months. Would still prefer the item I need NOW. #
- 17:35 @fuzzface00 You’re executing Plan L: “I no longer know what the L I’m doing.” #
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Geek magic
Harry Potter and the Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack
Hermione: Hey, I was thinking…
Ron: Not again!
Hermione: (ignoring him) None of us want to say You-Know-Who’s name because he knows when you do it, right?
Harry: Yes, he’s magically linked to the sound, it automatically draws his attention to you so he knows what you’re saying about him. Why?
Hermione: Well, back home this summer I was reading about a website called Slashdot…
Ron: What’s a ‘web site’? Not more spiders, ugh!!
Harry & Hermione: (Ignoring him)
One week later…
“Daily Prophet” barker: EXTRA! EXTRA! Harry Potter gets entire wizarding world to say Voldemort’s name at once! Dark Wizard found dead in lair with brain cells leaking out of his ears! Read All About It!
(inspired in part by the Luna-C performance at MarsCon of all seven books in 45 minutes, and by Starr)
My Life for Aiur
If you can understand this guy’s comedy routine, without speaking his language or checking out the title of the video…
then you might be a fan of Blizzard’s computer games.
(I had the Battlecruiser captain stuck in my head the other day. It was a strain not to start conversations in his accent.)
Stand back, I’m doing… stuff.
Most weeks I wait impatiently for my Kingdom of Loathing turns to build up to a useful level. This week, I’ve been sitting at the max of 200 turns for days, but I don’t have time to mess with it. I guess it’s a sign I’m using my time well… KoL isn’t exactly productive… but on the other hand, you can’t be productive all the time. Makes Jack a dull boy, you know.
On that note, I am going to watch a movie this weekend. Either in the theater, or from my list of DVDs to watch or re-watch. I don’t remember sitting through an entire movie since we watched “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” together.
One of the two 400MHz CRT iMacs that have been sitting in my office gathering dust since I left Decipher has found a good home – it’s in the possession of Starr’s youngest sister. She’ll probably want to give it an external FireWire HD and/or a memory upgrade before long, it’s only got a 10GB drive and 256MB of memory. But it’ll do Word and Photoshop and play DVDs, and she seems thrilled with it, so happiness all around. I need to find some old games to pass along that don’t involve serious mayhem.
Speaking of productivity, I am attempting to do something personally productive at least once a day. Either spend at least an hour on a personal project, or sit and write something with some thought in it (thus the recent outbreak of philosophising every week or so in my LJ). It doesn’t come easy: I am a slacker and procrastinator. But time moves with or without me, and I’m not going to be left behind.
Curiously, the last thing the squirrel thought was, “Oh no, not again.”
Ready for more LHC humor? (Beats the uninformed paranoia, right?)
Evolutionary Acceleration Research Institute Ready to Start “Squirrel Smasher”
Dallas, TX – Scientists from the Evolutionary Acceleration Research Institute (EARI) announced that the first test of the Giant Animal Smasher (GAS) will begin on December 19, 2008, the 41st anniversary of the premiere of Dr. Dolittle.
Dr. Thomas Malwin, head of the research project, said, “The first test runs will only accelerate microscopic life-forms like bacteria and viruses to high speeds, but theoretically the GAS can handle animals as large as squirrels, hence the ‘squirrel smasher’ moniker.”
Biologists from around the globe hope the GAS will unlock the secrets of the so-called “Darwin particle” that could unlock the secrets to life.
“If we discover the Darwin particle we could possibly create new life-forms, or accelerate evolution to unimaginable levels,” said Malwin.
The GAS is a 25 mile tube buried ten feet below the surface, and accelerates the animals at rates up to 6,000 meters per second using a series of pulleys, levers and fusion reactors.
Think of the possible discoveries, not only in the field of evolutionary biology, but also those of children’s book illustration, furry fandom, and perplexing Far Eastern toy manufacture!
