June 2007 Archives

You'll have to forgive me, I worked 17 hours yesterday, getting only 3 hours of sleep total...so this is funnier to me than to you, and I know it already. But here goes anyway:

1. I'm listening to the Pixies right now. I heart the Pixies. Yes, I used heart. So sue me. It's true.

2. I've drank so much coffee today (see above about not sleeping) that my core temperature is above boiling. It's pure joe in my veins now, and if I get one more cup in, I think I'll go supernova.

3. It's Friday! And that alone is worth dancing for.

In today's episode, intrepid officers in Minneapolis spot a dangerous "bicycle terrorist" travelling on his bike. Our brave police forced him from his bike and threw the bike under a vehicle, smashed the man's glasses under boot, tasered him, maced him, and created a raft of charges to use to hold the man with, including taking a swing at the peace officers.

The whole story for your enjoyment can be read here: http://greencycles.blogspot.com/

I, for one, feel safer now that this man can no longer perpetrate his reign of velocipedal reign of horror.

The disembarking from the Amtrak is an ascension into the living, if you could call a ride on a SEPTA train that. Up two flights of stairs from the train to SEPTA, and up two more flights of stairs to street level a stop later, it feels as if you are rising to some "other"-ness. The climbing into 30th Street Station can take my breath away when I remember to look up at the towering ceiling when I climb the stairs. It is a monument to movement and industry, celebrating the hard-working rushing through on their commute. It is the perfect protestant cathedral.

Sometimes I plug into my iPod and turn on Peter Gabriel while I join the streams of people:
"The time I like is the rush hour, 'cause I like the rush. The pushing of the people, I like it all so much. Such a nice emotion, do not know where it goes. I move with the movement, and...I have the touch"

Indeed, I do have the touch, but only because I tap into the electricity pulsing through the city. It charges me; it recharges me. My heart races and my mind crackles.

The following three terms are the three least-sexiest terms a man can use to describe a woman's behind:

3. Pooper
2. Dumper
1. Turd-cutter

I hearby declare that any man heard using such a term around me while be summarily dragged behind the building and shot, with no chance for appeal.

Thank you.

All the geeks are talking about Safari for Windows (Apple's web browser, available until this week only on Macs). I downloaded it the day it became available because I'm slowly becoming Mac Fanboy. They suck you in with that iPod and then the iPhone and it's only a matter of time before you're hanging out at their Genuis Bar sipping the Kool-Aid and sneering at the fools in the suits lugging around their Dell laptops...wait, where was I?

Oh right, the Safari Beta.

I'm not crazy about it. The benchmarks Apple put out say it's faster than IE, which I don't necessarily see. I've been trying it in a bunch of different formats and it seems to be middle-of-the-road on performance. Most things work like I'd expect, with probably the exception of the space bar not submitting buttons like it does in Firefox and IE. While that might not be a big deal for you and yours, I do a lot of my work with keyboard shortcuts and I'm wired to think of the space bar as submitting forms, so it frustrates me.

One thing that a lot of people have been talking about is the rendering of fonts. My experience is that you either love how Apple does fonts or you don't. There's no middle-ground, and Safari's the same way. The fonts in Safari on Windows looks close to how they do on a Mac, which I like. You might not. If you don't, that's okay too. Nobody's forcing this browser on you. Go use Opera or Firefox of IE. They're all fine browsers.

Other things I've noted. I tried to download a bunch of pictures from http://thefunniest.info yesterday and Safari told me that it had downloaded the pictures but I'll be damned if I can find them. Anywhere...

There's also some talk about how some security experts have found a series of zero-day bugs and exploits in Safari. Really folks, that's not a surprise. It is a public beta, after all. That means there's going to be bugs, like the pictures downloading, and security holes. Also, Mac's and Windows are different under the covers, it's not entirely surprising to to me that some security practices that should have been followed on Windows were not. I'm sure it will get fixed.

Another interesting thing I've noted is that some sites have turned off a bunch of JavaScript functionality (notably GMail) for the Safari browser which means some extra hoops to jump through. I'm honestly suprised by this, as Safari is the built-in browser on Macs and Apple's market share is growing. I don't know all of the specifics because I don't normally target the Safari browser when programming. Maybe Safari lags the other browsers in functionality. Speaking of which, I'd love to see if there is a difference between the Mac and Windows version as far as rendering is concerned. Could I use the Windows version to develop against and be certain that works on Safari for Windows will work the same on Macs? Can anyone point me to a breakdown?

Anyway. I don't know that Safari will become my browser all the time. Given no great increase in speed, or increase in functionality, I don't see a need to jump from Firefox. Maybe the next rev will deliver more, but I'm certainly going to keep playing with it.

I see a lot of the same TV shows my kids do, so I know what they're watching. I have some observations which are completely and utterly politically incorrect, but if I keep them to myself I will burst.

• Is Little Einsteins racist? It only has one black character AND they make him sit on the back on the rocket ship. Even worse, the only times I've ever seen them give him a leadership role: when they're in Africa! What? The black man's not good to have around until then?
• Max & Ruby's parents need to be hauled before a judge. These irresponsible jerks have left a toddler in the care of a 7-year-old girl who suffers to care for him while struggling to have her own normal childhood. Once in a while their grandmother shows up, but I think she's drunk most of the time.
• Also on the docket for a day in Family Court: Maisy's parents. Where the hell are they at? Maisy's made friends with a bunch of semi-vocal losers who pee in her sandbox, eat all her food, and take all her money.
• The Wiggles...5 men, one dog, no real women to speak of (puh-leeze, Dorothy does not count) Is it really Wiggles Island, or is it Fire Island?

My son's working on potty-training, so he's been spending time in various states of undress through the day. At one point while he naked he ran into my bedroom holding the magnifying glass we bought them for Christmas and put it over his crotch.

"Mommy! Daddy! Look at my wiener! My wiener is HUUUUUGGGGEEEE!!!!!"

I know there's been a lot of blogviating about Paris Hilton and how because she is rich and powerful she got out of prison, but I'd like to point out that it's because she's rich, powerful, and white. Lil' Kim was incarcerated in Philadelphia not long ago and did all of her time.

I realize that Kim's wealth and power does not approach that of the Hiltons, and Philadelphia is a very different place than LA (understatement of the year on my blog) but still. It's not just wealth that made the difference here.

The not so funny piece of all of this is that the sheriff in LA county is probably an elected position, like the majority of the US, and he's probably secured his single largest contributor for the next election, and by the time it occurs, most people will have forgotten Paris' temporary release, meaning the sheriff has played the justice system for his own future political gain, while truly innocent people continue to suffer in jail, while non-violent drug offenders busted for personal possession rot in jail, Lee Baca plays the emotions of one rich family for more campaign dollars.

I have an ant nest under the one corner of my garage which I've been doing battle with. A couple different chemicals haven't seemed to have made much difference, so at wit's end I looked up some organic remedies and saw someone mention turmeric.

I have a ton of stuff in the house because I cook Indian food, so I thought, why not give it try? Sure enough, ants hate the stuff. I sprinkled it around the entrance to the nest and within minutes there was a traffic jam of ants on both sides of the turmeric unable (or unwilling) to cross.

I'm not viewing this as a permanent solution, because I'm sure the ants will dig a new way out, but it was nice to torment them...the jerks.