/dev/null/kevin

As P@ noted, we had an earthquake in California again. I didn't even feel it. As I previously noted, I don't understand why people are so afraid of earthquakes, but they will put up with hurricanes and tornadoes. Someone commented that you get a warning with hurricanes. You want to know what would happen if we all got earthquake warnings? We would walk 10 feet to a doorway and wait out the 60 whole seconds that an earthquake takes. We wouldn't have to pack up the entire house, drive hours on packed roads, and then drive home days later.

I'll still take earthquakes any day over hurricanes.
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September 28, 2004 11:28 AM PDT Permalink | |

Several sources are reporting that HP is terminating its Itanium based server line. The graph above is from the The Register and displays HP's ever-diminishing Itanium sales projections.
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September 24, 2004 10:54 AM PDT Permalink | |

If you can't be silly with your kids, you can't be silly.

As far as I know, *I* said that. If you'd ever met me, you'd know I'm a pretty stoic person who basically only moves when I have to. You'll rarely find me on the dance floor or anywhere else where I have demonstrate my lack of grace. Thus, it was with great surprise that I found myself dancing around like an idiot in front of my 16 month old daughter, just because it made her laugh. Whereas I'm usually painfully aware of what's around me, I had no idea who was watching, nor did I care. That was kind of nice.
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September 23, 2004 02:12 PM PDT Permalink | |

The big story this weekend is that Kryptonite bike locks can be picked with a ball point pen. You can see how it's done in many videos available on that site and the original bike forum where the story broke.

All I can say is "yikes!"

Update: I tried this on my old 1989 KryptoLOK and wasn't able to pick it. I destroyed two pens trying. The shaft of the lock is too large to fit into the pen. Also, the position of the lock is different than in all of the videos I've seen. Mine in on the of the tube, while the videos all show locks with the hole in the middle of the tube.

Kryptonite has offered to let people exchange their locks, but only on models from September 2002 on. Maybe I'll keep mine.
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September 20, 2004 03:38 PM PDT Permalink | |

Is the urban legend coming true? Microsoft products may be vulnerable to malicious JPEG files. Is anyone else besides me getting annoyed at, yet another, buffer overflow exploit? I think every programmer in the world needs to have the words "boundary conditions" stamped in permanent ink on their hands and monitors.
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September 19, 2004 11:34 PM PDT Permalink | Comments [3] |

Ah, the Church Sign Generator. It still makes me laugh. It's been around forever, but they have a second design you can choose from now. However, the real gems are the real signs. Not only is the truth stranger than fiction, it's funnier.

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September 15, 2004 05:59 PM PDT Permalink | Comments [2] |

To quote my dad, "The Democrats want to make the poor richer, and the Republicans want to make the rich richer. Both want to do it by making me poorer, and I'm supposed to choose?"
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September 15, 2004 03:34 PM PDT Permalink | |

Reading watt's blog (and the comments) on George W. Bush got me thinking. I used to watch the SciFi show Babylon 5 and some of the stuff Bush does gives me flashbacks to one of the long story arcs in the show.

In the story, Earth's evil president is looking to maintain power, so he demonizes a group of people, creating an enemy that people will fear. He uses that fear to create programs that "protect" the people, but also remove their rights. There is even a government organization called "Home Guard" which is just too similar to "Homeland Defense" for me. And while Babylon 5 is, of course, fiction, the ideas are all based on historical happenings such as the rise of the Nazi party and the McCarthy hearings.

So, while I'm not saying that Bush is this bad, I do feel like he and the Republicans are manipulating the American people, using fear tactics to stay in power. It's also scary to see dissenting opinions labeled as "un-American" or "unpatriotic." For the record, I support a war on terror, but a smart war. It seems like we're fighting a dumb war at the moment.

Would John Kerry do any better? I can't really say. However, if weren't talking about things we fear, mine is how much the rest of the world hates us. I don't think Bush can, or even wants to, repair that damage. Kerry at least says he does.

For those who think I'm just another Democrat, I'm not. Technically, I'm registered Republican because (1) I believe in the concept of smaller government, and (2) because I can vote in republican primaries. Almost all Democrats are the same since the really "out there" liberals are all in the smaller parties like Green, Peace and Freedom, etc. However, There is no Green Party equivalent for conservatives, so the Republican party has everything from moderates (like me) to really scary, wacko, religious right psychos. Thus, my objective is to keep the more reasonable Republicans in the final elections.
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September 15, 2004 03:30 PM PDT Permalink | Comments [4] |

The folks at thinkgeek.com are solving problems that I never knew existed.  But I guess if your mouse hand gets all sweaty from those marathon sessions of Doom 3, then this mouse is for you.  It has a built in fan that keeps your hand cool.

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September 12, 2004 08:31 AM PDT Permalink | |

As a kid, I was introduced to the text-based adventure games in the late 1970s. My father took me to his office at Hewlett-Packard and let me play games on the HP1000 and HP3000. The hot new game, of course, was ADVENT (aka Colossal Caves or Adventure). Almost everyone has heard of this game, and there are plenty of ports available today, as well as source code. You can even play adventure (as well as other Infocom games, like Zork) using AIM by sending an IM to infocombot[23].

There was, however, another text-based game that I played, and unlike advent, never solved. This game was known to me only as mansion. Unlike the mostly rigid format of advent, mansion had more random elements in it. It also had a spookier feel (at least to a kid). I went looking for it several years ago, but couldn't find much about it.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to find that someone recently dug up the old FORTRAN source code and made a C port. The game is officially called Mystery Mansion and it's mostly as I remember it. It's smaller, and not as good as advent, but at least I can close this chapter of my childhood as the only adventure game that I never finished is finally solved.
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September 11, 2004 10:44 AM PDT Permalink | |

Since Jonathan's blog brags about Java and the Mars rover, I figure I can post this.

My 10 year old cousin, Brandon, watched a NASA webcast about building a model rover. He sent a picture of his model to NASA and they put in on the website. Of course I told him that the Rover runs Java and even offered to teach him.

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September 10, 2004 04:36 PM PDT Permalink | |

Nice video of the Genesis pod crashing to earth. Requires Quicktime.
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September 09, 2004 01:03 PM PDT Permalink | Comments [1] |

I've lived in California all my life, so I've constantly heard people say things like "I could never live there, I'm scared of earthquakes." What is it about earthquakes that scare people so much? Why are earthquakes so much worse than hurricanes or tornadoes? An earthquake of any significance hits maybe once every 20 years. Hurricanes hit several times a year. Yes, not in the same place, but you know what I'm talking about, Florida. Why this bias against earthquakes?
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September 07, 2004 09:51 PM PDT Permalink | Comments [4] |

I find it interesting that more than 100 years after the American holiday of Labor Day started, people still disagree on who started it.  Was it Peter McQuire or Mathew Maquire?  The similarities in their last names is no doubt part of the reason for the confusion.  Still, it's a nice holiday.

I do find it ironic that the only people who have to work on this holiday for the working class are working class people: all of the police and fire fighters, and of course, the people who answer the telephone help line for the George Forman Lean Mean Grilling Machine.


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September 06, 2004 08:42 AM PDT Permalink | |

Think all of the good domain names are taken? You're probably right. But if you don't care, you can find some free suggestions here.
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September 02, 2004 05:53 PM PDT Permalink | |