Песец

A furry clock?

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:32:31 GMT

Shouldn't there be four more digits in the corner?

I love the Internet!

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:42:36 GMT

So I was reading my LJ ƒuriends list, ya dig, and I came across yet another self-congratulatory post from Wil Wheaton. 'Cept this time he had a good reason to pat himself on the back. Wil announced today that it was he who had voiced all the Romulans in Star Trek: the Reboot! He announced this today because "some meddling kids and their dog at Viacom said we had to give me credit".

So I went to Wikipedia to find out if this was actually "old news". And thar she blows, at the end of Wil's Filmography: a credit for "Star Trek (film) (2009) (voices various Romulans)[31]", where footnote [31] is a link to the blogpost I was just reading! Page history says the footnote was put in an hour ago, in response to a complaint that the credit was unsourced.

We're living on Internet time, folks!

Apparently the DVD goes on sale November 17th, so it might show up at my local library a month or two later. I generally don't sit through movies (they take too long to watch and I'd rather program computers) but maybe I should make an exception for this one...

The post I didn't make last Friday

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:17:57 GMT

In the "American style" for writing dates, last Friday was 10/23. Some of the people who celebrate "Pi Day" on 3/14 also celebrate "mole day" on 10/23. Did you know that there are the same number of molecules in 2 grams of hydrogen gas, 12 grams of soot, and 64.458 kg of hemoglobin? Yes! There are roughly 6.02214179 × 10²³ molecules in each of these things.

So what does this have to do with the star-nosed mole pictured at right? (* Waves paws wildly *) I've been having shrew problems again. Recently there was a shrew who got into my basement and apparently couldn't find his way back out again. Eventually there was a little squeak as he found the extrance to the "weeping drain" which leads out from the basement. Now shrews aren't moles (moles eat earthworms, while shrews eat centipedes, which I dislike more than them), but both moles and shrews are small black-furred mammals that make tunnels under the snow, so I'm calling them "close enough".

Speaking of dates, I wish the Canadians would just pick a system and go with it. If you go to the grocery store and a canned food says its expiration date is "09/11/09", did it expire last month or will it expire next month? Even the "Canadian standard" dates are ambiguous: does "09 JL 10" expire last July 10th or next July 9th? Would it kill them to add a little extra ink to show the century at one end or the other?

A left-wing rant

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:59:07 GMT

(Continuing with our occasional series of "not the post I intended to make today…")

http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/10/25/top_stories/doc4ae4b76d07e16766677720.txt

At the time, which was at the height of Merck’s controversial drive to have the vaccine mandated in schools, Dr. Harper remained steadfastly opposed to the idea and said she had been trying for months to convince major television and print media about her concerns, “but no one will print it.”

Same old story. This is what happens when you live as a serf in a country run by feudal lords. It's a wonder she hasn't received death threats, like the people who spoke out against calcium channel blockers.

The CDC acknowledges that there have been 44 reported deaths.

But think of the children! And all the money to be made by scaring them into buying our vaccine product!

The most tragic case involved a 14 year-old girl who dropped dead in the corridor of her school an hour after receiving the vaccination.

Well, there's too many people in the world, anyway. Unless the girl's parents are rich, her death doesn't matter much.

The Bulletin, 1500 Walnut Street, Suite 300, Philadelphia, PA, 19102
The Locally Owned, Independent Philadelphia Newspaper

No large paper can afford to mention this story, for fear of losing their drug advertising.

It's the same issue with small tea-bagger protests getting lots of coverage, but large gay-rights protests being ignored. Money talks very loudly and believes that expressing contrary views is disrespectful.

I do not have "flying pig flu", or any other kind!

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 03:35:35 GMT

Randy Cassingham writes the most popular email newsletter in the world (now that Boing Boing has become an RSS feed). He says:

[G]enetic sequencing has shown that the current H1N1 pandemic virus is an amalgam of four different strains: North American swine influenza, North American avian influenza, human influenza, and a swine influenza virus typically found in Asia and Europe. In other words, half swine, a quarter bird, and a quarter plain ol' human influenza, strains found around the world all mixed together. It's that mix that helps make it so easily passed around.

(And when I sent out a note to some friends saying that I was recovering from Swine Flu, one of the wags, knowing the above, replied that it wasn't pure swine flu, but one mixed with bird flu, and thus it was more properly termed "Flying Pig Flu". Yeah: I like hanging around smart funny people. :-)

(Randy got the flu while giving a talk at a Mensa conference, so obviously he isn't *that* smart...)

My "Taxpayer's Statement" to the IRS

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:14:34 GMT

(Today I finally mailed out the revised tax forms to the IRS and CRA, only fourteen months after the IRS sent me their baseless accusations of tax impropriety. Below is the beginning of the "Taxpayer's Statement" that I included among the eighteen pieces of paper in the mailing to the IRS. CRA got only six pieces of paper.)

On July 28th of 2008, the IRS sent me a CP11 notice, denying my Earned Income Credit. The only explanation offered was “Information on your tax return indicates that you don't qualify for this credit.” To obtain more detail about the problem, I made calls to the (215) phone number shown on the notice, but was unable to get through to a human being within a reasonable amount of time. I mailed requests for more detail to IRS post-office boxes, but the only responses were form letters saying “You have not contacted us.” I asked TaxAct.com to review the forms they had generated for me—they couldn't find any problem. I asked H&R Block to amend the forms for me—they couldn't find anything to amend.

On June 15th of 2009, the IRS sent me a “Notice of Intent to Levy” which I did not receive until around July 12th. Because of postal delays, it seemed there was no response I could make to the notice that wouldn't involve waiving some legal rights, so I sent my 2007 tax file to a law office for review. The review determined that I had treated my 2007 Q4 income as taxed in the USA but by treaty it should be taxed in Canada. As for the “information on your return” that indicated “you don't qualify for this credit”, maybe it was my Canadian mailing address?

No taxes, no website

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:23:48 GMT

Still haven't mailed those tax forms—my accountant doesn't like IRS form 8833 and wants me to use form 2555 instead. Still haven't got a website to show you—I have one now, but the hostname got screwed up due to the multiple "anti-fraud phone call" failures and still isn't quite worked out yet. So here's a picture!

I should try that in my basement. Like most older houses around here, mine has a stone+dirt floor that is always wet and so is covered with pallets (which then grow mildew). Still don't have a sump pump because I haven't scraped together the $1000 to dig a sump and run a drainpipe out to the back-yard spillway. I think the spillway is actually the concrete covering for the pipe that runs from the well into the basement (so the previous owners could have "running" water). Maybe I can buy a pump when the IRS gives me that multi-kilobuck refund they've been sitting on for over a year. Unless the sun goes nova first.

Tax07: Delays, delays!

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:27:50 GMT

My accountant can't read the copy I emailed her of my 2008 US return, so I wrote back with a word description of how it differs from the 2007 return that she was able to read.

Maybe tomorrow I can mail the suckers out!

Meanwhile, here is a Joke of the day:
Q. What is the difference between Bird Flu and Swine Flu?
A. For bird flu you need a tweetment but for swine flu you need an oinkment. Yuk yuk yuk!

Website hosting mess

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 21:49:37 GMT

I don't really have a website. I used to have Furtopia, but I messed up and my account was frozen. I used to be a paid member here at LiveJournal, but I had to cut costs. For a while it seemed I didn't "really" need a website since I could just embed images directly in journal posts, but LiveJournal recently (and silently) stopped allowing that. As usual, they didn't reply to my support request, so I'm left guessing as to why they did it. My guess: it allows people to not buy LiveJournal memberships because they don't really need the ScrapBook® feature! If that is really the reason, the new owners have flushed brad's original raison d'être for this site and I should avoid paying them on principle. That's too bad because I really liked the (poorly-documented) RSS feed of friends-only posts. It was my favourite paid feature.

A few months ago I created a Google Sites website. It seemed like it might fill the bill, although the documentation for how to write JavaScript for it seemed rather complicated, so I put off learning more about it.

Last night was the beginning of Rosh Hashanah. Since "Mr. Bear" and I are both Jewish, I generally make a show of not doing any paid work on major Jewish holidays. What to do instead? I worked on my Google site. Problem: it is difficult to figure out how images stored in Google's File Cabinet (example) are to be hot-linked from other websites (example — can you see the laptop photo?). In general, it seems that Google Sites is too concerned with preventing you from doing things that will make Google look bad and not concerned enough with ease of (re)use. Also, their Terms of Service allow them to delete your site at any time for any reason or no reason. Hey, if I didn't care about long-term storage or customized programming, I would use Imgur!

So I restarted another old project: find an ISP. I wanted

Server physically located in Waterloo, Ont. (since we have plenty of connectivity here);
Runs Linux so I don't have to learn another operating system;
Offers ssh shell access so I don't have to learn another "website control panel";
Virtual Private Server technology so I can get root access even with "el cheapo" shared hosting;
PHP and MySQL for custom programming (which is what initially attracted me to Furtopia);
About $7/month, which is what WestHost used to charge for this feature-set (but they're in Utah, the cheap plan is now $9 and doesn't include ssh anymore).

Last night I found lots of ISPs that had *some* of these features, but none had *all* of them. And reading through HostSearch was depressing; so many of these hosts have gone out of business after posting their ads. Consider AroundKW: They're based in Waterloo, but apparently their server is in Florida. No Linux, no ssh, and minimum $12/month. Other people offer Linux for as little as $2/month, but almost nobody dares to offer ssh (which would be suicidal for a Windows-based ISP to offer, due to lack of security).

But lo and behold! HostMDS offers Linux, ssh, PHP+MySQL, hosting in Waterdown Ontario (at least it's in-province, but they claim it's in Toronto?), and only $6/month!!! Their Terms of Service are reasonably clear ("A website is considered using 'Excessive amounts of resources' when it monopolizes the resources available using 10% or more of system resources for longer than 60 seconds.") although it seems wrong to me to mention "Canada" and "DMCA" in the same paragraph. Sorry, Stephen Harper, nobody but you wants a DMCA here in Canada!

So I tried signing up for their basic starter "Unlimited" plan. Things were going fine until I got to the page where it said "To protect against fraud, we will now call the phone number you gave. Enter this PIN when prompted. Click HERE to begin the call." But it was 1 AM and I had sleeping children! Today I managed to get the signup process restarted to the point where their computer did call me and I entered the PIN and also the voiceprint of my name, but the transaction still didn't go through because it had already been "cancelled". I tried a complete do-over, but then it wouldn't give me the hostname I wanted because "this name is already in use at HostMDS; cancel your other website first" but the name isn't in use and it shows in my account as "cancelled; status FRAUD".

I sent email to their sales department, but it's the weekend and they probably won't reply until Monday. And then Rosh Hashanah will be over.

So I had to think of yet another thing to do that wasn't paid work and wasn't 8 boring hours of chanting Hebrew in a synogogue. I started cleaning out my email inbox. I actually managed to get rid of 10% of the oldest entries (down to 371 now) before thinking of something else to do instead: write this post!

UPDATE Sunday 20 Sept.: Heard back from HostMDS sales. The "fraudulent" signup evaporates after 24 hours. So I signed up again and asked for a new phone call—which failed because Wifey was on the phone to her mother! Oh well, guess I'll try again tomrrow.

Nope, nothing about taxes here

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:21:10 GMT

I'm almost ready to talk about my 2007 tax nightmare (no, it still isn't resolved yet). In the meantime, here are some strange words from Bill Harnsberger:

Barney Frank = New Bedford towel-snapping champ three years running. Flicked a wart clean off a flea's ass from ten feet in a gale. Blindfolded!

And here is Bill, channeling Bob Ross:

And we're almost done with our portrait of a teabagger rally on the mall. We've done the Washington Monument, so tall and pointy. And the capitol in the background, regal and grand. Beautiful fall day. Happy little clouds. Perfect day for a rally...

Okay. Next we'll take a dab of white, and reeeeal lightly—light like a feather, a little baby birdy feather—we'll just add in a tiny hint of froth around the corners of their mouths. [dit dit dit dit dit dit] There we go. [dab dab dab] Frothy frothy, like a vanilla milkshake. Very nice.

And finally: we'll take the edge of our little trowel here and add a few protest signs. Wouldn't be a protest rally without protest signs, would it? Course not. [skritch skreetch skritch skreetch] Little signs. Some square, some rectangular. Happy little signs. They're just glad to be there, waving in the air under the sunshine. And we'll just add a few little slogans on 'em, so people who look at our painting will know they're here protesting the federal deficit: "Obama equals Hitler", "Keep government out of my Medicare", "Beck/Palin 2012". And maybe one more: "No Olgiharky, Morans"! There we go.

My kind of furries

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:10:29 GMT

I once wrote a USENET post in which I described myself as "a cat wearing a dogsuit". My fursona wears a fursuit, but I don't!

A good comment from SlashDot

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:42:06 GMT

(Discussing the novel “Tetraktys”, which is like a Dan Brown story where he got his facts straight.)

Asking people to imagine a Dan Brown where he got his fact straight is closer to asking people to imagine what an Agatha Christie novel would read like if set in a postapocalyptic future where giant mutant weasels fight off vampire dogs aided by elves from a parallel universe, in a metaphor for the fifth century Roman Empire and the collapse of the Catholic church.

Performed as a play written in iambic pentameter, and directed by Spike Lee.

Unbelievably bad joke

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:35:39 GMT

Today, Senator Ted Kennedy (from my birth state of Massachusetts) voted for a Republican amendment that requires all members of Congress to use the "public option" in the new American healthcare system that is being set up. Senator Kennedy has terminal brain cancer and is currently a heavy user of medical services. His spokesman said: "Sen. Kennedy believes strongly in the public option and its ability to provide quality and affordable healthcare while keeping the insurance companies honest. This was a no-brainer."

Via DailyKos.

Meanwhile, Canada's healthcare continues to do a good job, although the "single-tier" rhetoric is another bad joke: Members of Parliament get "preferential treatment". Here in Ontario, anytime anyone opens their mouth you can see whether they are a "have" or a "have-not" as far as dental insurance goes.

I won the SlashDot poll!

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:11:45 GMT

I usually make a fetish out of marching to the beat of a different drummer, using "it's popular" as a reason *not* to do something. But with DailyKos polls I usually try to guess the most popular answer, in order to show how predictable the DK sheeple are. And quite often that's actually the answer I would have chosen anyway, which makes me feel good in a "voting for the winner in a national election" sort of way. (Americans are really big on that—the electoral system is carefully set up so that there is no value whatsoever in voting for the guy who got only 49.5% of the ballots).

Today's SlashDot poll: How to celebrate US Independence Day. I chose the "Canada Day is over!" answer because (a) I'm living up here; and (b) it includes the traditional SlashDot meme "you insensitive clod", which dovetails nicely with stereotypes about Canucks.

I win! 38% of other SlashDotters also thought this was the correct answer to choose, even though most of them live in the Lower 48. For comparison, in the previous poll the answer that most people voted for was the self-negating "I refuse to vote", while "The least popular answer" turned out to be, in fact, the least popular answer. I guess I should refuse to vote in these polls.

Are you at AnthroCon this weekend? Then why are you reading LJ???

The end is nigh for the battle over gay rights

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 02:07:12 GMT

Globe & Mail: "Even an Ontario winery is displaying the rainbow, on a new wine it calls Chardonngay ($1 from every $19.95 bottle sold goes to AIDS research)."

Homosexuality: First it was normal but undiscussed. Then it was a evil monster hunting your children and forcing them to leave the church against their wills. It spent some time as one of the Fascist hate-objets du jour. Now it's a source of cheap puns and marketing gimmicks. Next it will be normal again—don't know about the "undiscussed" part.

Capitalism beats Fascism! If you can make money from it, that's more important than using it to instigate fear-of-the-unknown.

And another thing about Medieval Times

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:46:32 GMT

I was just doing a comment-exchange with avenginglioness when I noticed an interesting coincidence:

1. The Medieval Times corporation was founded in 1973.

2. The first known citation for the word "edutainment" is from 1973.

That is all.

T+14 days: the disaster is over

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:29:21 GMT

I am writing to you using my CF-Y5 laptop with internal display! The huge dent in the lid has been reduced to a barely-detectable bump.

Friday 9:50 AM: Head out to Toronto.

11:15 AM: Arrive at Laptop Centre. Hand in broken laptop, plus a variety of other broken laptops, spare power cables, old hard drives, etc.

12:25 PM: Arrive at Medieval Times, only 25 minutes late. Meet up with other homeschoolers who got there early.

1:00 PM - 3:00 PM: Medieval edutainment show.

3:45 PM: Arrive back at Laptop Centre. CF-Y5 repair not yet completed.

4:45 PM: Laptop finally done. Also buy a used Dell Lattitude D610 for Kid #2.

6:15 PM: Arrive at Low Carb Grocery. Pick up a few things.

8:00 PM: Arrive home.

It is WORKING! But, the 1400×1050 display resolution is now reduced to 1024×768. That's okay—I was going to suggest that they reduce the resolution to cut the parts price, if possible. At 1400×1050 I have to use 150% zoom to make DailyKos readable. But I told them that it needed part number LTD141ENDP and they quoted me $185+$65 on that basis, as if they were actually going to install manufacturer's recommended parts.

So, has anyone written any good posts on LJ recently? I haven't been watching...

View Poll: Hi there!

T+10 days: the disaster continues

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:33:47 GMT

T₀ = Friday, May 29th: We came home from a long homeschool outing. As usual, I put my laptop (mentioned previously) at the top of the basement stairs and went to bed for a nap. When I woke up, the computer had this big dent on the top and the LCD screen no longer worked. Apparently Wifey had asked Kid #2 to get something from a shelf over the basement stairs and he had... stepped on my computer! Of course, this sort of thing only ever happens on a Friday night.

I dug out a 10 year old CRT (that hadn't been used since the move from NJ) and plugged it into the VGA port. Works! But there's a reason why the old monitor hasn't been used: it's extremely heavy and it makes yucky "static discharge" noises whenever the screen resolution changes—which is appallingly often. It's so heavy, I can only use this laptop+monitor combination at the dining-room table, which has hard wooden chairs that don't lean back. But I managed to spend several hours setting ‘D’ file attributes to prepare for the full backup that this computer has never had (I've had problems in the past that got solved by using file attributes and the dump/restore pair of programs).

T+1 Saturday: Went to Walmart and bought a $150 LCD monitor. Well, Wifey needs a new one anyway: her old monitor must be at least 15 years old and it's now too dark to play Runescape. The new monitor weighs much less than the CRT, but it's still heavier than the laptop. I am able to set it up in the basement so I can have the keyboard in my lap and then crane my neck leftward to see the screen. Well, at least I have a means of income again. Also got that full-backup done, which took 3 hours over wireless, and that's *after* marking several gigabytes of Ubuntu files with the "do not back up" attribute.

T+3 Monday: Called Plan‣IT‣ROI, from whom the laptop had been purchased along with a 3-year extended warranty (not my idea). They won't fix it. Before purchase, their warranty covers everything except the battery and "cosmetic damage". After purchase, they stuffed a document into the "packing list" envelope on the box which excludes the motherboard, the LCD, and everything else that might actually break. This is fraudulent—you can't change the warranty terms after purchase—perhaps I'll get around to calling NJ police on them. They want $1500 to repair a computer that they know was bought from them for only $1000. It seems they pulled this price of the air just to get me to go away.

Later: Called Panasonic Canada. They'll fix it for $600 parts + $150 labour. Ouch! But obviously Plan‣IT‣ROI's price is farcical. I once replaced the LCD on a ThinkPad 600, so I went looking around the web for parts. Most places that sell LCD's don't have the one I need, but one place has it for $179. Unfortunately the person answering the phone has a heavy Chinese accent, so I can only communicate with them via email.

T+9 Sunday 6/7: Bought the service manual from 9manuals.com for $6.00. This is the "consumer service manual", rather than the one Panasonic employees actually use. The main purpose of the manual seems to be to convince people not to try this at home. It is written in idiomatic Japanese translated literally into meaningless English. Example text:

The both sides tape pasted to the keyboard bottom with the spatula is inserted in order of the arrow and then peel off. It is start-up from the LCD side and turns inside out on the top case. The KBD FPC WP sheet is peeld off... Do not damage the spatula ahead and move a top case in the direction of the arrow in order. Note: KBD-FPC sheet cannot be recycled. Please use new parts.

There are many warnings to "please use new parts" because so much glue is used in the design. I suppose I *might* be able to do this installation, but if Panasonic's goal with this manual is to convince me to use their repair service, the instructions in the manual are probably not reliable, even if I could figure out what they mean. When I Google for "intuition combination" I find other computer manuals poorly translated from Japanese, but I still don't know what that phrase refers to.

T+10 Monday: Called Laptop Centre of Toronto. They offer same-day service for $185 parts + $65 labour. I'll be in Toronto this Friday anyway for a homeschool outing—maybe the disaster will end soon! Also, Laptop Centre will buy my various broken old laptops for about $30 each, which is better than *paying* $10 each to have the Province of Ontario recycle them.

Hopefully this won't turn out like the last disaster that I used "T+n" notation for. My Move to Canada project finally ended at T+5½ years.

Situation is getting worse for US citizens who would like permission to leave their "free" country

Fri, 29 May 2009 04:07:21 GMT

Two articles showed up on SlashDot today:

Story 1: US Citizens leaving the country via Detroit or Atlanta will have their fingerprints taken. In the quoted article, there is no statement about what the government will do to US citizens who decline to be fingerprinted, but the two obvious choices are (a) prohibit them from leaving the country or (b) arrest them as presumed illegals, since surely any legitimate citizen would be only too willing to undergo this procedure.

Story 2: Cancer patient held at airport for four hours because he has no fingerprints. The man is taking capecitabine, which causes fingerprint ridges to peel off the fingers. Without fingerprints, he was presumed to be a security risk, although the putative correlation between having fingerprints and being aligned with American Corporatist interests is only poorly demonstrated in the literature.

Random whinging

Fri, 22 May 2009 01:07:06 GMT

Last weekend the temperature dipped below freezing again, making May '09 the eighth month in a row with freezing temperatures. I didn't realize I was signing up for that much winter... According to NASA, my region (between lakes Ontario, Erie, and Huron) had "near-normal" temperatures last year, even though the local meteorologists said last summer was exceptionally cool and last winter was the worst in 15 years. Last night's dog-walk was the first one this year where I didn't wear a coat.

* * * * *

The Province of Ontario produced a report in 2004 on how wonderful their healthcare system is. The report is notable for what isn't in it: there is no mention of dentistry or chiropractic. They talk about all the stuff they're doing to prevent heart attacks, but they don't mention that gingivitis is a risk factor. They talk about "improving quality of life" but there is no mention of back pain. If you have a broken bone, the province will fix it for you—unless it's a tooth bone, then you just have to live with it. If you have a sprained muscle in your ankle, the province will help you—but if it's in your back they won't.
I understand that these are cost-saving measures, based on the willingness of Ontarians to call dentists and chiropractors "not-real-doctors" and thus undeserving of provincial funds, but it is ridiculous for them to say that their mission is "to keep people healthy and care for those who are sick" when there are large classes of sickness for which they offer no prevention and no treatment.

* * * * *

HuffPo. The Chrysler dealer in Cherry Hill NJ is slated for closing. Also, the dealer that I bought my first used car from (Runnemede NJ) is closing, along with the one in Maple Shade NJ from whom I bought two used cars. However, the Chrysler dealer in Langhorne PA from whom I bought my only new car has apparently survived the chopping block, for this round anyway.

* * * * *

I actually blogged about something *before* Cory Doctorow did! He just found out about the Internet Identity Workshop's logo, which is reminiscent of the cartoon "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog". I blogged it 3½ years ago!

* * * * *

Yesterday was the end of Kid #2's last year as a Cub Scout, so his pack went bowling. In one game, I got a spare, a strike, and a double-strike, for a total of 173 points! My best score ever at 5-pin bowling.

Microsoft is not doing well :-)

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:34:40 GMT

Globe & Mail:

Microsoft Corp. said Thursday its quarterly revenue fell from the previous year for the first time in its 23-year history as a public company… In January, Microsoft said it needed to resort to its first mass layoffs, cutting 5,000 jobs… Microsoft makes most of its profit selling the Windows operating system and business software such as Office. Those divisions were hurt when PC shipments fell for the second straight quarter as consumers and businesses sharply cut back on technology spending… Shares of Microsoft added 14 cents on the Nasdaq Stock Market to close at $18.92 on Thursday. In extended trading after the earnings report, the shares gained 5 per cent.

From the comments on the G&M article:

Well, with so many companies and institutions locked into Microsoft licenses, they'll have a steady stream of revenue no matter how bizarre their bloatware is. These outfits will just have to buy new MS releases and install them no matter what, per the terms of their licenses. …
Microsoft has had an easy go of it over the last fifteen years. They have been successful in foisting their insecure bloatware onto the market by crushing adversaries through questionable monopolistic practices. If they had a history of product excellence and innovation I would have some sympathy for them. …
New Ubuntu release today. Coincidence? I THINK NOT! Really though after playing with this week's new Ubuntu release it has never been more clear that MS is living on borrowed time. In every metric it is simply a better OS and innovates and improves with every release.

Higgs bow zone

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 17:40:49 GMT

Does today's xkcd comic make you feel stupid because you just can't get the joke? Are you annoyed that the first page of Google results for "higgs excitation" are spam-sites trying to attack your computer for having the nerve to read xkcd? Click here. It's a pun!

The bone-eating snot flower, Osedax mucofloris

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:17:12 GMT

Behold the glory that is the bone-eating snot flower! How did I find it? This thing has its own website, which I found by Googling for its Linnaean name, after being unsatisfied with the description of it found in the Wikipedia article for its genus (the thing was discovered by suspending cow bones above the ocean floor and waiting to see what would show up to eat them). I got to that genus article by clicking on the link "bone-eating snot flower" in the Wikipedia article on polychaete worms, which I got to by searching Wikipedia for "polychaete" after seeing the word in a blog post by Pharyngula entitled A Face You've Got to Love (which includes a photograph of "Barry", a 4ft long tropical bristle-worm and distant cousin of the snot flower).

Isn't the Internet a wonderful thing?

Sadly, the original article that Pharyngula linked includes this quote from the aquarium's curator: We also discovered that he is covered with thousands of bristles which are capable of inflicting a sting resulting in permanent numbness. Since Barry is described as an extremely aggressive animal, I'm guessing that multiple aquarium personnel suffered permanent injuries while they were trying to figure out what to do with the mystery creature that was eating the fish in their display tank. When you take a job like that, you never think it's going to be you. Permanent injuries always happen to the other guy...

TMI - "Periodontal flap surgery" photos

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:41:44 GMT

Here. The hairless ape female being operated on in these pictures is not me; I had the right side done today (upper and lower) rather than upper-left as shown.

Page 1:
The patient is prepared with appropriate protective glasses, and surgical cap and drapes.
I did not get these, just your typical dentistry towel hung around my neck. I wore my own spectacles. After I got sprayed with water from the ultrasonic scaler, the periodontist pulled out what looked like an ordinary bath towel from a drawer and draped it over my thorax. After the procedure, I was handed a wet after-dinner towel for wiping the blood out of my facial fur.

Page 2:
Two percent lidocaine with 1:100,000 concentration of vasoconstrictor is slowly injected into the buccal mucosa.
After the first half-dozen shots, I got heart palpitations, so I asked the periodontist about epinephrine (some dentists have used epinephrine-free shots when working on my mouth). He quoted the same 1:100,000 figure as mentioned here. I didn't have further problems with the remaining shots, so perhaps he accidentally hit a blood vessel with one of them and I got a bolus dose of vasoconstrictor. The adverb "slowly" cannot properly be applied to the shots I received.

There is evidence of 6mm pockets in the interproximal regions
I had several 7mm pockets. I think there was an 8mm also. That's deep, man.

there appears to be an adequate with [sic!] of keratinized tissue along the entire buccal surface, with no significant gingival recession or mucal-gingival problems.
Spelling error. This patient sounds marginal to me; did she really need the procedure?

There is evidence of interproximal crater formation interdentally between the first molar and premolar. Also, there is angular bone loss between the premolars and on the mesial of the first premolar. We shall now used [sic!] an organized instrument by instrument approach
Okay, so maybe she really did need it. And another typo...

Page 3:
The incision is continued forward to include the premolars
Not applicable. My premolars were removed over 30 years ago for orthodontic purposes.

This blade is used with an up-and-down motion that allows for precise cutting.
Unless I'm mistaken, the procedure involves large quantities of these big-blade up-and-down motions, which are perceptible despite anaesthesia.

The same instrument is used to remove the thin tissue covering of the periosteum so that at least 3mm of the bone margin can be seen
Well, so they say, but I don't really know what I'm looking at with the tiny photo they present—and the following photo shows the entire area covered in blood, with zero mm of visible bone.

Page 4:
A sulcular incision is made beginning at the posterior tooth and proceeds forward with the blade cutting with an up-and-down motion.
Androtomy requires that human bodies be described as if they were zombies, standing vertically but with the limbs in the positions they would have on an autopsy table.

The Goldman Fox periosteal elevator allows for atraumatic flap elevation.
I saw the other end of this instrument, in the periodontist's hand.

The buccal interproximal tissues are removed in large pieces
This text makes it seem like they're removing something that I would want to keep.

An ultrasonic scaler is now used to remove smaller pieces of granulation tissue along the bone margins.
No, I don't think I want anything that an ultrasonic scaler can remove. Granulation tissue is like scar tissue; it's leftovers from old injuries.

The tip of this instrument is applied directly to the bone and clumps of tissue are removed.
Problem: this causes bone conduction of the non-ultrasonic noise that the ultrasonic scalar makes! Especially noticable when cleaning the wisdom teeth, which feel like they're directly connected to the eardrum.

Page 5:
One of the most important parts of periodontal surgery is root planing.
Also one of the most important reasons why I agreed to pay vast quantities of unreimbursable money for this procedure. I have had periodontal root planings several times; they make my teeth feel much younger! But the procedure works for only about ten years or so.

Use of a slow speed handpiece with an ultrafine diamond bur is a valuable technique to smooth root surfaces that are still rough or which have calculus. A high speed handpiece with ... a #8 round bur is applied to those areas of the alveolar process where the bone is thick and irregular.
One of these instruments creates a horrible "burning" odour and the feeling on the teeth is unpleasant.

Page 6:
For the first week the patient has been given appropriate analgesic tablets and instructed not to brush or floss in the area of the dressing.
No, I was given nine regular-strength ibuprofen tablets and told to take all of them during the first 24 hours. Also I got a prescription for Toradol (ketorolac) but told not to fill it unless necessary. I am supposed to brush "carefully, as needed to feel fresh", which reminds me of ads for vaginal douche bags (sorry).

[after 1 week] the sutures are removed. The patient will be given oral hygiene instruction and seen again in 1 week.
Nobody told me about coming back for a second return visit. My sutures are self-dissolving.

News of the week

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:54:37 GMT

On Thursday of last week, the drain pipe from my kitchen sink, laundry tub, and washer/dryer plugged up solid. As mentioned before, the drain pipes in my house were rather sluggish when I moved in and have been getting slowly worse ever since. On Friday I used Google Maps to find the closest plumber to my house, since if I was going to start a new business relationship with a plumber, I wanted one who would be willing to come to my house if our single toilet stopped working in the middle of a blizzard (because of course that is when it would happen).

On Friday, at 4:45 PM, exactly when promised, the neighbour-plumber showed up and spent a solid hour reaming out my pipes. Then I had a nice weekend. On Monday, at 3 PM (a little earlier than promised and without the preceding phone call that had been promised), the neighbour-plumber brought over one of the dozen journeyman plumbers who works for him. The journeyman re-hung the kitchen sink drain pipe to have a sharper slope (and removed the narrow copper section that was slowing the waste down), replaced the hot-water supply pipe that I had repaired with aquarium cement over a year ago, and tightened the screws on the toilet tank.

Yesterday, the plumber called to confirm my last name and said he'd hand-deliver a bill. I still haven't gotten it yet.

My original plan was to call a plumber about the drain pipes when the aquarium cement failed, but it didn't fail!

* * * * *

Yesterday I received an email from ServerMojo.com, which I had signed up for a long time ago but then never used. The subject was "ServerMojo trial expired" and the body explained that I needed to sign up for a paid account if I wanted to keep using the thing.

Today I received another email, with subject "ServerMojo trial *not* expired", explaining that yesterday's email was erroneous because my account is so old that is effectively a permanent free account. It said, "If you didn't yet know we'd recently launched a new and much improved ServerMojo - well this isn't quite the way we wanted to tell you but we hope you will have a look now and check it out anyway!"

* * * * *

My area has both grey squirrels and the melanistic "black squirrel", which is a mere colour-variant and the two kinds of squirrels interbreed (just like the different colours of humans do, except where authoritarians have made it their business to put a stop to the "miscegenation").

Today I saw a squirrel whose fur was a mixture of grey and reddish. It looked perhaps like it was in the middle of molting. Wikipedia claims that the red squirrel does not live in Canada, but does molt from grey to red in the spring. Perhaps it was a fox squirrel. The sighting was in a public park, so I didn't kill the "living fossil" and turn it into a squirrel sandwich.