Monday, April 29th, 2002 8:47pm

Remember, the best thing you can do with your money is give it to me. But the second best thing you can do with it is give it to a worthy cause. Here is a couple that I have donated to recently:

• AbiWord: AbiWord is an open source word processor. It is light, fast, and has most of the features of Microsoft Word. It runs on almost every PC Operating System, uses a completely open file format, and is very stable. Help support its development, click the link and scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on "Support AbiWord" Download it and try it out.
• The EFF:From their website: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was created to defend our rights to think, speak, and share our ideas, thoughts, and needs using new technologies, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web." The EFF provides legal services and other kinds of help to those who are fighting for internet and technology freedom. They have been fighting the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) and other draconian laws that threaten the advancement of science and technology, free speech, and freedom of expression.

Saturday, April 27th, 2002 11:37am

Here is a good article on practical network-device security and the problems people have with vendors who don't know or want to do anything about security. It also illustrates that just beause someone got a degree in engineering, it doesn't mean they know anything about security or networking.

Friday, April 26th, 2002 8:29pm

This link was so special that I created a special category in my bookmarks file called "Stupidity." Read though it, it takes a while to get to the point but it is fun to see how poor some people are at physics/math/logic and science in general.

Friday, April 26th, 2002 3:16pm

Yesterday afternoon my throat was sore before I went to bed. I woke up at about 2:00am and it was very swollen. It hurt a little but it was more swollen than anything, especially my left tonsil. I gargled with warm salt water and that helped. The swelling went down a lot in the next few hours and I scheduled an appointment with the doctors at RIT. I went in at 10:00am and they checked me and did a throat culture. My throat was quite red and I may have strep-throat, the results from the culture will be back on Monday, so I should know then. Frink. Being sick sucks.

Thursday, April 25th, 2002 2:56pm

"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." -Oscar Wilde

Last week I had my Fine Arts:Music midterm. I did really bad on it, everyone did. I missed Music class on Monday. When I went to class yesterday we took a second test to replace the first one. I found out about this second test 35 seconds before it started. Needless to say, I did not do well. Frink.

Monday, April 22nd, 2002 10:45am

If you learn nothing else from this site, learn this: Never go over your total earnings for the last 6 years. When you see how much you have made and how little you have now, it will throw you into a fit of depression from which you will never recover.

Monday, April 22nd, 2002 7:02am

If I find it surpriing then it must be truly FUBAR. This is probably worth reading, disturbing.

Monday, April 22nd, 2002 4:11am

Huge Corporate SNAFUs amuse me. ETrade's SSL Certificate expired yesterday and they have not gotten a new one yet. I wonder how much that is going to cost them when businesses on the east coast open in about 4 hours.

Monday, April 22nd, 2002 3:09am

Because it is a wonderful thing and I don't want it to go unnoticed or disappear. I have mirrored Nosepilot. Have a look.

Sunday, April 21st, 2002 9:29am

Being a perfectionist is frustrating. For my Internetworking and SysAdmin courses I often have to make diagrams. I spend absurd amounts of time getting them just right, with all the information that might be needed, making them aesthetically appealing, and clean. When I make a page for this site I spend WAY too long on the very simple HTML to make sure it looks just like I want it to look. It is a frustrating process but it does feel very satisfying when I am done - as things are just as they should be in my view.

Saturday, April 20th, 2002 11:11pm

Further proof that some people are too stupid to live and mandatory darwinism is a VERY good idea. Steve and MysticWriter883's Conversation.

Friday, April 19th, 2002 8:05am

Things I've learned this morning:

• Wandering around a friend's website to see what you uncover at 6 in the morning is ok. Wandering around your own site is not.
• Putting a pan of hot rice on the top of a notepad is unwise. As it can melt the wax and result in a very messy desk/keyboard/pan.

Friday, April 19th, 2002 6:57am

Well if you haven't seen it yet Audhumla.org (run by my friends Gabbard and Mariah) is up.

Damn you Gabbard for ruining my productivity! Mariah's Chemistry Poem is quite neat though!

Thursday, April 18th, 2002 5:34am

From Slashdot: A new bill introduced by Senator Mary Landrieu(D-La.) "would set up an Internet domain (such as .prn) for material harmful to minors and requires all websites containing such material to register on that domain name. Any websites currently on other domains (such as .com, .org, etc.) would be required to close down those sites and move to the new domain." You can see the announcement here.

This is a BAD thing. There is no good definition of "material harmful to minors." No one has ever been able to explain to me why pornography is harmful to minors. I see no reason why it should be treated any different than any other material. As far as regulations go, I see no reason why a story about a sex act should be treated differently than a story about a fishing trip. If someone can enlighten me as to what the thinking behind that portion of the bill is, then I'd like to know.

Thursday, April 18th, 2002 4:46am

It has been very hot here in Rochester the last few days, and so the heat has sucked the energy out of me. I have been unable to concentrate at all, which has tunred out to be a very bad thing. I had my Fine Arts: Music test today. I think it is the first test I have failed at RIT. Not a good thing. I attempted to study for it the last few days, but as I said, I couldn't concentrate. Blah. Heat is annoying.

We purchased a Brita water pitcher today, as Steve was informed that Rochester has a high lead content its water.

Tuesday, April 16th, 2002 3:06pm

Today's Fact: Rochester has the 5th highest airline prices in North America.

It is currently 84 degrees outside. 86 in my room. It is also fairly humid, so it is very difficult to stay cool. I want a swimming pool filled with ice right now.

The new Crypto-Gram is out. As always, full of good information and informed essay's about security issues.

Tuesday, April 16th, 2002 10:42am

Patent Granted on Sideways Swinging (as seen on Slashdot.org)

This was probably meant as a joke, but it got approved. So one can now be sued for swinging sideways on a swing without the proper license. If the US Patent Office is allowing things this obvious to be patented then we are all screwed.

Sunday, April 14th, 2002 5:07am

Most of the spam I receive consists of tips on how to increase my penis size. Some of the spam advertises tips on how to avoid paying taxes. But this is the first piece of spam I've gotten that asked me to help with time travel:

Subject: Time Travelers PLEASE HELP!!
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 07:36:05 +0000
From: webmaster@bl.uk

If you are a time traveler or alien and or in procession of alien or government technology I need your help! My case is truly genuine! I seek to work with someone who is of a good nature, someone I can call my savior as well as a friend. My life has been severely tampered with and cursed!! I have suffered tremendously and am now dying! I need to be able to: Travel back in time. Rewind my life including my age back to 4. I am in great danger and need this immediately! I want to work with you in any way possible. I am aware of two types of time travel one in physical form and the other in energy form where a snapshot of your brain is taken using either the dimensional warp or the brain snapshot device and then sends your consciousness back through time to part with your younger self. I'm almost certain the dimensional warp would be the safest and best solution. Please explain how safe and what your method involves. I have a time machine now, but it has limited abilities and is useless without a vortex. If you can provide information on how to create vortex generator or where I can get some of the blue glowing moon crystals this would also be helpful. I am however concerned with the high level of radiation these crystals give off, if you could provide a shielding this would be helpful. I believe the vortex would have to be east-west polarized, North-south polarized vortexes are used for cross-dimensional time travel only. If you have this technology and can help me please send me a (SEPARATE) email to: jimer013@shrimer.com

Thanks

My INBOX is at least as interesting as any hospital mental ward...

Sunday, April 14th, 2002 4:07am

"Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about." -Benjamin L. Whorf, 1897 - 1941, Linguist

Saturday, April 13th, 2002 1:54am

Because the website with the Lego Church went down and people should see it:

This project is dedicated to my cat, Precious, who passed away January 8, 2002, the same day construction was completed. May this church, of such amusement to My Little Chirper, express some of the joy she brought me.

"I thank my God upon every remembrance of you" Philippians 1:3

About this project

I got back into LEGO building after a twenty-year "dark ages" as a means of dealing with grief after my first cat, Murray, passed away in June, 2000. I also adopted Precious, my third cat, at that time. She loved to be amidst my building from the start. She didn't disturb partially assembled LEGO objects, or even piles of bricks, so I only had to concern myself with cleaning up loose pieces when I was done working, and I could leave her to play around my assembled work without too much fear of damage.

My first project was to be a large house, about 4 feet by 2 feet in size. I drew floor plans, and then built much of the front wall as a test of concept. Then I set about creating a pattern for the floor that was to become the living room. I quickly came up with a double row of crosses that reminded me of the center aisle of a church, and building a church suddenly seemed like a more interesting project.

And so the Abston Church of Christ was conceived as my first LEGO project in twenty years. As the picture above shows, Precious continued to enjoy my building, and as you'll see in the Cats in Church pictures, she and her sister, Anya, made this project quite a lot of fun. Read about it in the construction log.

As chance would have it, I only had a few hours of work to complete after Precious passed away, so in her honor I wrapped it up that same day. I didn't have a chance to do some small revisions or to build a piano for the church because I wanted to leave it as it was on that day.

I hope you enjoy this church, because that's how I get to share the memory of My Little Chirper with you. I like to think of this as Precious's Church.

Some people have the kind of time and legos that I should have.

On another note: Graham was kind enough to inform me that Zarek is now to be called "bitchface", instead of useless POS, bastard, dumbass, or any of his previously popular names.

Tuesday, April 9th, 2002 5:29pm

I got an e-mail from the US Government today to let me know that my SAR was ready and to tell me where I could go to obtain it. (If you don't find that funny then, well, forget you read it.)

Tuesday, April 9th, 2002 5:02pm

There are truly few finer things than knowing you've finally surpassed ftp.cdrom.com in storage space. (Now if only I had as much bandwidth...)

The warm weather here in Rochester was just to warm up the clouds so they'd drop rain on me instead of snow. Frink.

Tuesday, April 9th, 2002 11:24am

I can only assume that the cold weather in Rochester has moved down to hell. It is 68.9 degrees outside!

Sunday, April 7th, 2002 1:52am

Bloody hell! RIT's mail server is not working properly and I am unable to send or receive mail from many people. So until further notice, please use rph7945@it.rit.edu to send e-mail to me. This happens on the weekend where I have to communicate with other RIT students about 2 LABs and 4 Experimental Psychology projects - Damn it!

Thursday, April 4th, 2002 11:20pm

The secret to staying up for 35 hours while still being fully functional and alert is caffiene, red meat, multiple showers, and Led Zeppelin. In the right proportions this combination will support the human body, without sleep, for at least 40 hours and quite likely up to 55-60 hours. Very useful information for ultra-busy college students. Note: It is not reccommended that this be repeated several times in a row, as it will result in laughing fits and singing of songs from Willie Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (I think I scared my lab partner).

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2002 2:28am

To continue my recent trend of depressing and absurd news stories - A mother is trying to sue a game company because her son, who played their game 12 hours a day, committed suicide. Story on Kuro5hin (with links to other news on it).

I don't know what happened to make so many people think that everyone but themselves is responsible for their actions, but it seems to be a very prevalent way of thinking these days. Has it always been this way? Have people always said "I should blame everyone but myself for my problems"? I hope not. If there are so many parents thses days (and there are) who think this way, what are their children going to be like?

I bet these are the same people who say "Remember Johnny, the world is a happy place full of rainbows where nothing bad ever happens." And then shelter the kid so much that the kid grows up to be a moral infant. It is impossible to make good decisions about something that you know nothing about. But people do their best to avoid learning about anything they think they might find offensive or not like...

Monday, April 1st, 2002 9:01pm

You can take my coke when you pry it from my cold dead hands! - Junk Food Taxes and the Libertarian Party Press Release on it. Click on the title on the ABC article to watch the video.

Monday, April 1st, 2002 7:49pm

In the news today: RIT will be increasing tuition for next year by 4.5%, because they want a new hotel and cenference center for the RIT executives, the wiskers in my beard are now 4 inches long, and a person from Microsoft came to campus today and gave a speech - unfortunately I found out about it too late to purchase a firearm and get a balcony seat.

Last Friday I put on my "Windows NT User Obliteration" Shirt, went to a bookstore, purchased a new book on Richard Stallman (RMS), and payed for it with my Linux Fund credit card. I wonder what subculture I belong to...