Wednesday: In the wonderful meeting that was supposed to be 9am Tuesday, sandwiches are served around noon. About 3 bites into mine I notice a crunch- and spit out one of my [veneers]. When I get to the restroom I realize that it came from one of the teeth that just had a root canal, and there was pretty much nothing left. I save the veneer in a cup of water and make some calls to get into the dentist and endontist. Thursday: The endontist (root canal specialist) takes a look and decides to send me to my dentist. Friday: From the car to the denist I manage to drop the envelope with my veneer in it, and after 10 minutes of searching I find the envelope but it's empty. A toothless homeless guy is eyeing me as I search. Not good. Now the dentist has nothing to put in place in my giant, gaping smilehole. The doctor creates a temporary tooth and puts that in, and sends me onto the endontist (again) to get the first steps of the full reconstruction done.
I woke up this morning unable to move anything on my right side. I write it off to sleeping the wrong way. Both times I'm getting poked and prodded by the dentist and endontist I develop oncontrollable twitches on my right side. For the past few weeks I've noticed sudden jerks when sitting still and twitches. I have a family history of MS. [ 2/28/2003 05:15:16 PM ] [ ]
Tuesday, February 25, 2003
For those who find the commander in chief entertaining.....
Me:"Where is everyone?" R:"Everyone? It's usually this empty this early" Me:"Did I miss the meeting?" W:"Meeting?" Me:"The meeting this morning with developers from -insert company name-" W:"No that's tomorrow, not today. All day tomorrow." Me:"Tomorrow." Me:"So I didn't..." R:"Have to wake up early? Me:"...at 6 and go through more than an hour and half of traffic in the rain to get here on time. Yeah".
Update!
It turns out that the meetings were switched and I was put in another meeting today at 9, that was at 9 changed to 11, and has nothing to do with the work that I do. The person in charge of these meetings is apparently trying to waste everyone's time. Lovely. I am listening to loud, angry music and restraining myself from going off on people who are deviating from the path to corporate profitability. Did I mention none of these meetings have agendas? [ 2/25/2003 10:01:53 AM ] [ ]
Monday, February 24, 2003
A swiftly tilting planet....
Reading about [MixMinion] (there was a presentation at [CodeCon] that, yes I missed, since I didn't go to this cool conference), I remember a time when a lot of people considered remailers important to the [future of the internet].
A remailer is a computer service which privatizes your email. High-quality remailers are in sharp contrast to the average Internet Service Provider [ISP] which is terribly anti-private. In many cases, ISP could accurately stand for "Internet Surveillance Project". Almost every ISP can monitor, store, and share your web wanderings and email with many "authorized persons" without your knowledge. In many countries ISPs are monitored constantly by government agencies.
Which is a little harsh, but pretty much true. A lot of people are very passionate about privacy and anonymity on the internet for various reasons. Anonymous remailer services were once very controversial for the usual reasons - supposedly they were used by various bad people, and anyone using them must, of course, be a bad person. If the original protocols that drive the internet had received the same scrutiny, they almost certainly would have gotten the same kind of response. Since the early and mid 1990s when remailers were receiving a lot of attention they have probably become more necessary than ever. Today or tomorrow's remailers should have things like p2p networks. Stegonography. Distributed application space. Email, as a whole, needs to be rethought. On the receiving side, POP3 and IMAP are pretty good for now, but for sending we're still stuck with just SMTP. We can do better. SMTP can be done better - most people don't realize that they shouldn't be using sendmail, that postfix and others might meet their needs better. Why don't SMTP server quarrantine malicious emails like VBScripts? Why don't they tell other servers about IPs that are probing for open relays?
Anyway.
My new video card for the PowerTowerPro at home came today, and since I was working from home I got a chance to install it. While it's not the best card I could have gotten (a [Radeon 7000] is the best Mac PCI card out there, I got a used [Rage 128]), it's not like I'm doing a lot of gaming on that machine, and what little I do uses the VooDoo 2 i've had in there a while. So some of the wierdness I was seeing with the old, hacked RagePro VR seem to have disappeared.
What I really want to do is give the PowerTowerPro a full makeover. I've been thinking about doing that since before I even got it - and I've even got an old case from an SGI Octane that I was going to use at one point. Then I saw this: The [Alienware Predator], which is pretty much the case I want. Maximum PC had a good article on it, it has pretty much everything I want, and my PowerTower Pro is actually ATX all over. So the case, a new power supply with some more juice behind it, a new [USB/Firewire combo card] with ports for both on the inside of the card so I can put in an a hub/repeater for firewire and usb ports on the [front of the machine], where they belong. And once that's done, even my own [internal drives can be firewire too]. Yup, neato.
She's got a sinus infection, which I'm all too familiar with. It sucks to be so far away and helpless to take care of her.
Best line so far from Comedy Central's "Porn n Chicken": "First kisses have to be original!" "It's a kiss, not a t-shirt!" [ 2/24/2003 09:10:56 PM ] [ ]
Looks like bluetooth may have found it's killer app:
Clicker lets you remotely control your Macintosh from a compatible Sony Ericsson phone. Here are some ideas on how to use Clicker:
* Control PowerPoint or Keynote when giving presentations. * Control DVD Player or iTunes from your sofa or bed. * Use AppleScript to control anything you like!
Further, Sony Ericsson Clicker has a built in "proximity sensor", allowing you to trigger actions when you leave or come back to your Mac. Again, here are some ideas:
* Pause iTunes when you leave the room, turn it on when you come back. * Use AppleScript to let your presence (or absence) control anything you like!
Kickass. Finally found some info on Lucia Cifarelli's new solo album on Universal, apparently due April 15th [check it out] Lucia went from her own band, Drill, to MDFMK and Schwein, to now KMFDM.... and I have to say, she has one of the best voices I've ever heard, and the Drill show opening for Chemlab and SMG was one of the best I've seen (we bought the band drinks and got to know em afterward and learned the story of their cover art). they are
1337
[ 2/23/2003 06:35:03 PM ] [ ]
It was more than a little disappointing to get to Rose Cafe at 2:55 and have them tell me they were closed for brunch since their clock said 5 after. And no, their counter didn't have eggs benedict. The Firehouse ended up surprising me with a novel hollandaise sauce that was part hollandaise, part thousand island or something and it was quite good. For whatever reason, the service kinda sucked today, and unfortunately my Newton was out of batteries so while waiting for the orange juice that never came, no dopewars for me, no sir.
CJ reminded me last week that the Newton is still full of good UI ideas that could be useful for Evil Toaster, so I'm trying to get into the habit of using it more. I still need to find a better case/holster for it than the standard leather one I have (standard for the smaller 120 series, that is). Now a [drop-leg] Newton holster that attached to the omnibelt of my packs, that would be ideal. Maybe sometime I'll [make my own.]
