Category Archives: uncategorized

I neglected to mention yesterday that the vCal standard also rules. I regret the oversight.

Mark Pilgrim: Now, for those who don’t know, let me assure you that cat urine is even more pungent in the confines of a small space like, say, a car. Even with all the windows open and the air vents on full blast and the car barreling down Route 1 at 85 miles an hour, the smell is not to be trifled with.

How to Dodge Religious Solicitors: Pretend to be deaf. Point to your ears, viagra sale shake your head, generic and make intricate movements your fingers and hands. This can backfire if they happen to know sign language. In that case, switch to being blind. Other gems await.

It has come to my attention that the following things rule:
PHP iCalendar
Cascading Style Sheets
RSS
XML
Gecko
That is all.

iTunes is up to two million songs. Excellent. This is such a good sign for the future of electronically devlired music. Buck a song. I’ve been saying that since 1998, when Desktop Joe corrupted me with my first MP3 download.

Apparently the MPA is cracking down on lyric sites. That sucks. I can’t tell you how many song I learned by visiting OLGA while I was in college (while I was supposed to be reading Thomas More, usually). Slashdot discussion here.

I’m probably the last person in the country to pick up on this story, but I found it fascinating. Newsweek: Enter Jayson Blair, as if on cue. While at Maryland, a school from which he never graduated, Blair interned for both The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. He was not a popular guy, and had a reputation for trafficking in nasty gossip, stealing story ideas and sucking up to superiors so he could get credit for work he didn’t do.

History of the Internet. My favorite event is 1976: Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe develops Ethernet, later to be replaced by SodiumPentatholNet.

For Bill: How to Fake a Hard Day at the Office (in light of your George Costanza comments the other day).

Mary Jo Foley: …until Microsoft lets Longhorn out of the corral, Panther will rule the desktop OS jungle…

Phil Keaggy gets my vote for the greatest guitar player alive today, if not of all time. I got to see him play last night for the first time in about a dozen years. He was inspiring and amazing. I don’t know how he gets a guitar to make the sounds he does. Last night was the Ultimate Guitar Jam 2 at Grace Brethren Church in Lititz. Somewhere between 120 and 130 guitarists gathered on stage before Phil Keaggy came out and schooled us all.

And Phil Keaggy will be at the Saddleback Worship Conference and Festival in July, so I get to see him play again soon.

Hmm. Canadian politics may be more interesting than I originally thought.

OK, Bill wants to know what a typical day in tech support is like. Here’s a little exchange I took the time to write down today, so I wouldn’t forget it. The “her” in this story is someone whose name I can’t reveal for professional reasons, but I will say that she uses a PowerBook 3400, and, in fact, has gone through several of them. We don’t know what she does to the machines, but they die in her presence. She has been a constant source of funny, but heartbreaking, tech support stories.

Here’s the text of the work order we received yesterday:

Her laptop is shutting itself off and not coming back on.

She received a new power brick for her 3400 just last week, and we were wondering if she had killed this one (she has killed several power bricks by plugging them into dimmers; yes, I’m serious). So I pay her a visit, and this is our conversation.

Her: Can you put in a request for me to get a new laptop? This one is older than everyone else’s.

Me: Well, it’s not up to me; it all depends on the budget.

Her: Yes, but you can put in a request for me to get a new one?

Me: It’s not up to me.

Her: Then who determines-

Me: Dave.

Her: Can you put in a request with Dave for me to get a new laptop?

Me: I’ll say something to him.

Her: And he’ll make sure I get one.

Me: Just contact Dave.

Her: Because this computer is older than everyone else’s.

Me: Yes.

Her: You can see by looking at it that it’s much older than everyone else’s. I’ve had this for three years, which is before everyone else got theirs. They got new ones after that.

Me: Yes, but they started out with even older ones. We’re on a five year replacement plan.

Her: I’ve had this computer for five years, at least.

[pause]

Her: I’ve had this computer for six years.

Me: Well, at any rate, it’s fine now.

Her: What was wrong with it?

Me: I couldn’t find anything wrong with it. I plugged the power cable in tightly, since it wasn’t plugged in all the way. Then it fired right up.

Her: No, that couldn’t have been it. I’ve had that in and out several times trying to get it to work. But it just shut down on me. On Tuesday. And the screen was dark in the morning.

Me: Well, it’s OK now.

Her: It couldn’t have been the power charge. And that’s a new power charge. Was the screen bright when you turned it on?

Me: It still is. It’s on now. It’s working fine.

Her: Thank you.

Me: Sure thing. [mumbles and leaves]