dsandler.org

Very Secret MacOS X Diary. (Warning: those seeking clever literature in manner of LoTR diaries will be sorely disappointed.)

Explore interface for a while. Not very comfortable. New UI like having sex with brand-new partner, while blindfolded and wearing mittens and half-drunk so you can’t remember what goes where.

scene-herd on Le cinquième élément: “I’m still disturbed that Milla Jovovich as Leeloo is Luc Besson’s vision of the ‘perfect/supreme being.’ What? Child-like, orange haired, and scantily clad?”

I tend to agree. Come to think of it, there’s very little textual evidence substantiating her supremacy. Instead, we are perpetually instructed — by such field experts as Vito Cornelius, Corben Dallas, the dopey military guy, and the dopey science guy — that Leeloo really is some hiterto-undiscovered Platonic asymptote.

Father Cornelius (d/b/a Bilbo Baggins of late) is probably the only member of this cosmic pair-figure-skating panel with any credentials at all in the field, and he’s no better than the rest of them. “She’s also so … fragile …” (gesturing girlie-curves in the air to a robot bartender)

It’s the same way, I suppose, with all impossibly, obnoxiously beautiful girls. Somehow they are esteemed (by hetero men, of course) to have evolved to some higher form of humanity, but none of those men can quite explain why without reverting to some lower form of pre-mammalian linguistics.

“Bzzzz.”

photo.net has the best photographer’s-perspecti ve review of my camera, the Coolpix 775. (The review is useful for those of us trying to determine just what all the various “scene modes” really do, since the manual is fuzzy on the optical details.)

Overheard:

It was dark and I was drunk. Ran straight into the side of a cow.

Robert Sore on Friends:

Even among the homeless, “The Friends” is a must-discuss: Phoebe’s long climb from the depths of depression, Ross’s bout with sexual indeterminacy, Monica’s adorable, curmudgeonly joi de vivre, Rachel’s hair, Chandler’s weight problem.

Some might say it’s all simply melodrama — but some say, too, that Shakespeare and Sophocles were hacks. There’s no accounting for taste, perhaps.

Adventures in radio:

From: dan
Subject: FYI
To: chris
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 13:56:17 -0700

If you didn’t already know, 101.3 FM is doing an all-80s weekend. Not just the usual one track from Depeche Mode and one track from Madonna, either — seems pretty comprehensive.

o/~ Dooo youuuu, believe in love ….. Wee-yoo, oo-ooo, oo-ooo … o/~

…

From: dan
Subject: whoops.
To: chris
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 14:02:37 -0700

Um, well, immediately after that Huey Lewis and the News track, they played “People are People” (Depeche Mode) and now “Express Yourself” (Madonna) is on.

Oh, well …

Going to U Art again this afternoon — will pick up big metal clips, spray-fix, maybe a big drawing board (if I don’t get one today, I can go back to it later).

Sabotage! The Saturn rep who pulled our car out in front of the dealership turned it off with the first gear engaged and the parking brake off. This is, predictably, exactly the opposite of my habit and so when I got into the car, I promptly turned it on and released the clutch.

BANG. The car lurched painfully, suffering in its bowels the instantaneous transfer of too much angular momentum from some mechanical thing to some other thing. The tires squealed, and with a loud bang the engine stalled, all before I had time to react.

I enjoyed many reproachful looks from the Saturn employees and customers.

I’m perplexed. The coffee tastes OK, but it smells like feet, which is weird because it’s Starbucks.

today’s coffees
Sumatra Mandeeling
Colombian Dark Roast
Hazelnut/Sweatsock Barista Blend

{shrug}

Dropped Erin off at SFO. Brought the Saturn down to the dealership (in Sunnyvale) for maint. Will sit and wait, as have no second car to drive away in.

Good thing they have coffee.

Oh, I hate our neighbors. Hate hate hate.

Tonight it’s not the constant blocking of the driveway with a parked car (their front door opens onto the only egress from our parking spaces, and, well, shit, they don’t need to pull their car past their door and into their space); it’s not the blocking of our car (just our car) with a second car parked behind their big red Camaro in its tiny space; it’s not the tens of children — related in some obscure way to the family — who show up early on Saturday to make a ruckus on their patio (right under our bedroom window); it’s not the late-night parties that the family’s troubled youth conduct into the wee hours while Mom and Pop are gone.

No, tonight it’s the laundry thing. I promised Erin I’d wash her corduroy jacket for her trip to Dallas tomorrow, and the washer and dryer have been in constant use since 5:30 PM. I was finally able to sneak in my wash after their last wash (at 9:45, which by my reckoning meant I could be done by 11:15 or so); but, as is their custom, they forget about each load at each stage for about 20 extra minutes, ensuring that the pipeline is suitably stalled at all times. My wet laundry is sitting in the washer, waiting for their dry cycle (oh, just started by the way) to finish (35-45 mins.). I’ve got to get up at 7 to take Erin to the airport, and I want to sleep … and I promised her that jacket.

People at Be always used to say “Don’t be a hater.” But they always meant it facetiously, knowing full well that being “a hater” is sometimes the only way to keep on loving something else.

File under “helpful debugging code” (not mine):

#ifdef INCLUDE_DEBUG
if (debug)
MyDebugInfo((char*) "Gulp");	
#endif

New Scientist: “People who sleep for eight hours or more every night have a higher death rate than those who average six to seven hours, according to a new US study.” Um, isn’t the death rate 100% for pretty much everyone?

One of the things I do like about the Bay Area is KFOG. Bobcat Goldthwait stopped by this morning to promote a show he’s doing at a club up in the city:

Bob: My dad called me to tell me that Katie Couric was on Rosie and said that I was the worst interview she’d ever had. […] The TODAY show guy said, “You’ll be debating a clown today,” and I said, “yeah, I’ve seen the show, I know how it works.” He said, “No, we have a real clown here.” And well, I said, “I’m sorry, Katie.” […] She just said to me, “Will you be serious?” and I said, “No! Look, you’re interviewing a clown … and me. Did you lose a bet or something?”

The disturbing part of the interview (for me) was the following:

Peter Finch: How long have you been doing comedy? I mean, the first time I saw you was twenty years ago at [some club] …
Bob: Well, yeah, I mean, I’ll be 40 in … oh God, 40. Well, I guess this is the right radio station, huh?
Peter: Yeah, this is the right demographic.
Bob: OK, well, I’ll be 40 in May.

Great. I listen to the middle-age rock station. “SAD-FM — easy listening for the over-thirties.”

Heh, it looks like Joel is ego-surfing his latest piece:

[… surfing dsandler.org referer logs …]
64.243.120.213 - - [14/Feb/2002:12:40:24 -0700] “GET / HTTP/1.1″ 200 31732 “http://www.daypop.com/search?q=iceberg+secret&t=a” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; Q312461)”
 
$ host 64.243.120.213
213.120.243.64.IN-ADDR.ARPA domain name pointer gateway.fogcreek.net

“I told him I recognized him from the picture on his books, to which he replied with a smile, ‘That was a mistake.’ :-)”

a coworker’s run-in with bjarne

Joel: The Iceberg Secret, Revealed. Summary: Tune your presentations to account for non-programmer distortion; that is, if your audience will pay disproportionate attention to the UI chrome, then scale back (or up) the chrome to better convey the state of the entire software project.

There’s also a little SAPE case study in there, though Joel doesn’t know it:

“Our miserable sales person agreed to a fixed price contract to build what was basically unspecified, and the customer’s lawyers were sharp enough to get a clause in the contract that they don’t have to pay us until ‘acceptance by customer,’ so we had to put a team of nine developers on their project for two years and only got paid $800.”

A pretty good list of pop-up ad opt-out pages.

Chris just got through telling me about his (latest) Byrne concert experience. Besides being five feet from D.B. (”We could smell the man!”), he was sure to also mention the appearance of the Extra Action Marching Band.

The last major layout modification before I redesign in strict CSS2: entries from previous days show up with a light grey background (scroll down and see).

Soon, I’ll move on to CSS-as-layout instead of merely CSS-as-style (as it’s used here). I’m slightly trepidated:

“You may want to go get drunk for a while, then come back and try this again.”

I love grey days. No, no, wait, let me explain.

I like they way grey days look. The whole world is subject to some kind of massive lens filter. You can’t escape the color shift, in the same way you can’t escape pouring rain. All you can do is appreciate Nature’s subtle reminder that H. sapiens does not have supreme control of its environment.

I think part of my reaction to grey days may also relate to the way everyone else is so happy on bright days. I mean, I enjoy sunshine, certainly in the summer — but something tells me I’m not getting the same Jor-El effect that everyone else is.

It turns out, by the way, that drastic hair-length reduction works a lot better for her than it does for me. <sigh>

Tom Daschle disapproves of “axis of evil” rhetoric, the first congressional Dem to go on record saying so. w00t!

FoTR slash fiction: The Secret Diary of Gollum. (direct link) Excerpt:

Day Thirty One
V. Dark in Mines of Moria. Bad for ogling. Have been following sounds of Legolas complaining loudly about state of his backpack and dank air of Moria being bad for his skin. Gandalf stuck gum in his hair while he wasn’t looking. Rather like Gandalf. Always has gum.

Day Thirty Three
Met up with Balrog in nattily decorated subterranean bachelor pad. Balrog v. mopey. Still carrying torch for Gandalf. […] Told Balrog to get out of Second Age, start living in the now.

Also note diaries of Aragorn (2), Legolas, Boromir, Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Pippin, Saruman, Gloin, Merry, Nazgul #5. This girl is talented!

The Oscars nominations are out; LoTR brandishes 13 nominations (including b.p., b.d., and b. supporting actor for Sir Ian McKellen). Other notable nominees: Renée Zellweger, Jim Broadbent (though not for his role in Bridget Jones’s Diary).