February 28, 2006
Render unto Caesar
There's a church near my workplace that regularly displays corny puns on their streetsign. This week, the sign says "Jesus can turn your E-F-I-L around." Of course, since it's that time of year, I immediately thought, "Jesus can turn my e-filing around? Is he any faster or cheaper than H&R Block?"Who needs a mantissa?
Today at work a coworker handed me a xeroxed copy of a dittoed copy of a raunchy math story called "Impure Mathematics". Since we're now in the 21st century, I can share it with you just by googling it.February 25, 2006
Why the Finder sucks, vol. 299,792,458
This evening I decided to make a compressed backup of my Virtual PC List folder, which contains my 2.35 GB main Virtual PC image. I immediately thought of two ways to complete this task. 1. Use the Finder to create an archive of the Virtual PC List folder. When I tried this, it immediately tried to allocate many gigabytes of memory, which sent even my mighty dual G5 with 2 GB of RAM into a thrashing spiral. When the beachball went away, the Finder thought it was compressing 4.71 GB of data. This is when I hit Cancel. 2. Open Disk Utility, select New Disk Image from Folder, and create a compressed disk image. Disk Utility calmly shrunk my data down to 1 GB while never using more than 60 MB of memory.Well I'll be...
It's true you learn something every day: Steven Frank just taught me an Office for Mac trick. Cool!February 23, 2006
February 22, 2006
Quote of the day
Isn't offshoring port management and security sort of like offshoring the shore?--Josh Marshall
Seal the deal
Dear Apple and VMware, If and when VMWare ever comes out with a version of VMware Workstation ported to Mac OS X, I will immediately purchase a copy, along with a MacBook Pro. It's money on the table, guys! Love,Jeff
"How can I avoid this problem" indeed!
I think any arrogant Mac user will get a kick out of this screenshot from Microsoft Windows Vista.February 17, 2006
Cutest song ever
Ok. Follow these directions very carefully. Subscribe to the They Might Be Giants podcast, download the latest episode (3A), and skip ahead to time index 6:48. I hope everyone has encountered a "Miniature Sidewalk Whirlwind" before, or else you won't find this song as funny as I did.Mac memory question
Has anyone tried installing Corsair XMS memory inside their Power Mac? I'm about to buy some Corsair memory to replace the unreliable crap inside my machine, and I'd like to know whether I should buy the expensive XMS chips or the "System Select" chips recommended by the Corsair Configurator. UPDATE: No response... so I just ordered the XMS chips.February 16, 2006
A touch of the flu
Based on this technical description, I think we can officially say that there's a virus for Mac OS X. Of course, that depends on how you define "Trojan horse", "virus" and "worm". Based upon Wikipedia's definition, we're clearly dealing with a virus -- it's self-replicating, but requires human intervention to spread. Thus, the Symantec threat description page for this virus is wrong -- the software is not a worm according to Wikipedia's definition. (Calling this a worm is an insult to true worms like Slammer.)February 13, 2006
Solely for literary value
Here's a great short story that has absolutely no relevance to current events. Likewise, here's a fantastic song that I link to for no particular reason.That 78-year-old came out of nowhere!
If I ever get hauled in front of a judge for vehicular manslaughter, I'm going to use the Cheney defense: "Honestly, your honor, I'm not responsible! It was that crazy pedestrian who positioned themselves directly between me and Best Buy! How could I not hit them?"Catch, dammit!
You know you have a case of the Mondays when your exception-handling code throws an exception.February 12, 2006
I smell venture capital
If you roll your eyes anytime you hear the term "Web 2.0", I bet you'll enjoy this changelog.A history of violence
Today's news proves what The Party Party claimed all along: Dick Is A Killer! UPDATE: I feel ashamed. Firedoglake's entry title is way better than mine.February 8, 2006
Calling all VBA geeks
Ok, I need some VBA expertise here. I'm writing a bunch of macros inside Microsoft Excel, and I came across an unfortunate catch. Let's say you start a subroutine like this:Sub XYZ()
Dim abc As Integer
abc = WorksheetFunction.Lookup(yada, yada, yada)
Now, if you make the next line
Dim lookup As Variant...then you will "poison" your namespace such that the previous line will immediately change to
abc = WorksheetFunction.lookup(yada, yada, yada)Deleting the "Dim lookup..." line doesn't fix the problem -- it appears to be a permanent change. The only fix I can find is to create an entirely new workbook and manually copy over all my modules. Anybody know how to, in essence, repair my namespace?
February 6, 2006
Cornerites, he's one of your own
Andrew Sullivan gets a lot of grief for speaking out against the Bush administration and endorsing Kerry in 2004. But make no mistakes, Andy is and probably always will be a conservative. Don't you remember this golden oldie?My own view is that progressive taxation is immoral. The government should treat all its citizens as equally as it can. Punishing people for being successful is morally wrong and counter-productive.That's clearly not a liberal perspective.
I think I know how to eliminate the federal budget deficit
This story of defrauding a senior citizen (via Obscure Store) didn't evoke any sympathy from me:...Schetter said the case is unusual because the caller appeared to have personal information needed to pull off the scam. "That's a little different twist," the investigator said. "It's spooky because they had some family background, apparently."... ..."The chances of getting my money back are pretty slim," Flentje admits. "It's a complete mystery to how this guy found out I had a grandson and how he knew my phone number."...Really? That's all you need to know about the elderly to get them to wire you $4,000? I need to start cold-calling some numbers in the telephone directory...
Copy
A page at the Maxtor Online Store claims:1TB holds over:**Sorry, that product won't do... I need to be able to store at least yyy,000 digital photos.
- xx hours of DV video
- xxx,000 digital photos (JPEG-normal)
- x,000 hours of high quality digital music (MP3)
February 4, 2006
You guys are dicks
Since I claimed that Al Gore "invented the Internet", I guess it's only fair to show him some love and link to his new business venture.Go on! Check your connections!
Heh. This is completely evil -- I love it. (However, I suspect it won't actually work in practice with the technically savvy; doesn't PowerPoint 2003 put a little translucent icon in the lower-lefthand corner? That would be a dead giveaway that PowerPoint is still on the screen.)You should see his silhouette dance
First Al Gore invents the Internet, and now George W. Bush invents the iPod!...The Internet has changed us. It's changed the whole world. It's an amazing example of what a commitment to research dollars can mean. The iPod -- I'm a bike guy and I like to plug in music on my iPod when I'm riding along to hopefully help me forget how old I am. [laughter] But it was built -- when it was launched, it was built on years of government-funded research and microdrive storage, or electrochemistry, or single compression -- signal compression. See, the nanotechnology research that the government is helping sponsor is going to change the way people live.
Ooh! I want!
I've often said I think tattoos are ugly and I'll never get one. This tattoo is leading me to change my mind. (Of course, if I got that tattoo, I'd have to get a caret symbol on the other arm so my fists could be "command and control".)Quote of the day
"Don't talk to me about the post-modern age. We're not even in the modern age yet for Christ's sake. There are still 150 million people in America who believe in Genesis."— Simon Critchley [Found on onegoodmove]
