Author Archives: brad

ABC News: “A lot of people have the idea that you can only find God in the church,” says Nelson Searcy, a teaching pastor with the church. “We believe that if you seek God you’ll find him, even in the movies.”

Amen to that.

New York Times: No matter how eagerly awaited, however, Napster 2.0 will pale by comparison with its renegade predecessor in some ways. Well, duh. It’s going to cost money.

Read the great flavor/flavour debate here.

Here’s what truetech.org would look like if I had designed it in 1996.

Sesame Street for grownups.

RSS comics. Woohoo

There’s an official home page for the Blue Star LSD Tattoo Urban Legend. Took me back to my childhood.

MSNBC: Christian game developers seek to put God in the machine, while thinkers like Thomas and Clark say that the notion of God is already there. Differing opinions, but both hold a core belief: A game’s influence doesn’t end when you turn off the console.

And on the subject of weird religious stuff: Boy dies in “healing” service; death ruled homicide. This is the kind of stuff that really burns me up. First of all, don’t kill people. Stop doing that altogether. Secondly, don’t kill someone and then say, “God wanted him back.” This was an 8-year-old boy with a medical condition, for crying out loud. I believe in miracles and healing, but I don’t presume to expect anything from God on my terms.

Mike Tyson has offered some advice and sympathy to Kobe Bryant. “I’ve been in an ordeal like him, and I know how easy it is for a young man to be a big shot, a big star in America’s eyes and then get in another arena and he’s nobody. That means the judicial arena.” Eloquent as always, Mr. Tyson.

Washington Post: The corporation, however, has also directly or indirectly influenced curriculums and research priorities, drawing an outcry from critics who say the donations are turning computer science departments into vocational schools where mastery of proprietary computer programs are valued over the study of theory. This scares the daylights out of me. I remember a couple years back when Microsoft was offering professors kickbacks for using and endorsing their products in class. Wish I could find a link for that one, though.

Hey, Microsoft! I run Active Directory, and I have tons of machines running 2000 and XP. I still actively support NT 4 and Windows95 for crying out loud. Where’s my kickback? Huh?

Actually, I don’t need a kickback. If anything, I wish I could have back the two weeks I lost rebuilding Active Directory three times because Windows2000 is so sucktacular. Not to mention the sleep I lost over the long-standing, long-acknowledged, took-way-too-long-to-fix bug in AppleTalk services on a system with dual Intel NICs.

I can’t express how ungrounded I feel in a world where Gary Coleman ran for governor of California.

Next, you’ll tell me Jerry Springer’s getting into politics.

Why are you laughing?

Well, Jen and I completed our second session of training to be foster parents. We also discovered something interesting about our dog. A psychologist gave us some information on attachment disorder, which is very common in foster children. Makes sense, since many of these kids have been abused, neglected, and moved around.

So, it many ways it would follow that Jack may suffer from attachment disorder as well. He was abandoned, likely abused (I have no proof of this, but I believe he was abused for two reasons. First, when we first brought him home, he was sometimes very submissive, so submissive that I wondered if someone had beaten him. Second, I’ve lived with this dog for almost two years, and many weaker men would have definitely beaten him.), and adopted.

Here’s a partial list of symptoms, and how Jack fares in each category.

Superficially engaging and “charming” behavior

Yep. Everybody thinks he’s cute.

Lack of affection with parents on their terms (not cuddly)

Totally. He’d rather be at our feet. Even at night, we can’t get him to cuddle up with us.

Little eye contact with parents, on normal terms

Check.

Persistent nonsense questions and incessant chatter

Incessant chatter? You bet. Just spend a day with him.

Lying about the obvious (crazy lying)

I can’t prove this, but I have my suspicions.

Stealing

Just ask Gracie about this one.

Destructive behavior to self, others, and material things (accident prone)

He’s never, ever destructive to himself or others, but he’s been known to tear up a tennis ball or dog toy.

Abnormal eating patterns

Let’s see… eat grass, throw up, eat grass, throw up… yep.

No impulse controls (frequently acts hyperactive)

Check. Two checks, infacts.

Lags in learning

Well, he always seems surprised when his bark-activated citronella collar goes off when he barks.

Abnormal speech patterns

I’d vote yes on this one.

Poor peer relationships

He doesn’t have many dog friends.

Lack of cause-and-effect thinking

See note above about the citronella collar.

Lack of conscience

Well, in his defense, he is a dog.

Cruelty to animals

Probably.

Preoccupation with fire

Nope. He’s clear on this one.

Manipulative — plays adults against each other

Oh, yeah.

Dysregulated eating/sleeping/toileting patterns

Yes. This dog will crap four times during a thirty minute walk. That’s dysregulated.

David turns 40 tomorrow.

Granted, site I turned 30 this year, click also arguably a milestone, but my friend will always be older than I am.

Happy birthday, Dave!

A comment I found in a program I was debugging tonight:

//add the other crap here

Very descriptive, sovaldi Rhine. Note to self: you are now self-obfuscating.

😛

That squishing sound you hear is the sound of bugs in Frequency being squished. I’m almost ready for the 1.2 release. The big job left is real post editing, not the fake stuff I did in 1.1. I’ve already added some major goodness, with MetaWeblog and Movable Type support, and I’ve fixed some bugs from past versions (no, I don’t want to mention them here). The current beta expires on September 15, and I’d really like to have 1.2 released by then or shortly thereafter. I’m toying with the idea of a different HTML engine for previewing (Owen Yamauchi has done some fantastic work in this area; his HTML Field is astonishingly fast). Hopefully, this will be a minor change. If not, it will be put off until 1.3, along with some other planned goodies. After 1.3, I plan to dig in and start making progress on Frequency Pro.