May 2003 Archives
From the perhaps they should have done this BEFORE we went to war department.
The Central Intelligence Agency is investigating the accuracy of the Bush administration's conclusions that Iraq represented an imminent and direct threat to the United States.
Why am I so bloody thirsty today? I've only got a little 20oz bottle of water but I swear I've filled it up about a hundred times already today. Well I suppose I should look on the brightside - at least I'm getting plenty of excersise walking back and forth to the bathroom.
In fact, I'm sure the receptionist thinks I must have something wrong with me. You see, to get to our bathroon at work you have to walk past the lobby window. Because of that, there's no way to get to the bathroom without her seeing you. You just have to hope she's not looking. It's actually quite amusing as you kind of sneak up to the window and then walk really fast and hope she doesn't realize it's you again :-)
I don't think that the dynamic weather XML feed that weather.interceptvector.com provides is going to be fixed anytime soon. I'll probably give gav's MT-WeatherUnderground a try instead.
I often hear the cry of 'if they'd only installed the patches' in response to some new DoS or hacking exploit. Now you know why people are leery about blindly applying patches.
Microsoft withdrew a security improvement for its flagship Windows XP software after it crippled Internet connections for some of the 600,000 users who installed it. Microsoft officials said Tuesday the update -- which had been available as an option since Friday on its "Windows Update" website...There's nothing like top quality testing - and that was NOTHING like top quality testing :-)
And here I was thinking that Weapons of Mass Destruction would never be found :-)
The good news for the Pentagon yesterday was that its investigators had finally unearthed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, including 100 vials of anthrax and other dangerous bacteria.The bad news was that the stash was found, not in Iraq, but fewer than 50 miles from Washington, near Fort Detrick in the Maryland countryside.
The anthrax was a non-virulent strain, and the discoveries are apparently remnants of an abandoned germ warfare programme. They merited only a local news item in the Washington Post.
But suspicious finds in Iraq have made front-page news (before later being cleared), given the failure of US military inspection teams to find evidence of the weapons that were the justification for the March invasion.
Even more embarrassing for the Pentagon, there was no documentation about the various biological agents disposed of at the US bio-defence centre at Fort Detrick. Iraq's failure to come up with paperwork proving the destruction of its biological arsenal was portrayed by the US as evidence of deception in the run-up to the war.
US finds evidence of WMD at last - buried in a field near Maryland
Oops.
From the seemed like a good idea at the time department:
Today was supposed to be day 4 of the great Kev-Spencer-Gives-Up-Coffee extravaganza. Unfortunately all you need is one crappy night of sleep (or lack thereof) to ensure that you go running back to the coffee maker to help you out of your zombie-like haze in the morning. So, I'll try it again tomorrow and we'll see how it goes :-)
Ha ha, Mena Trott with a tongue-in-cheek description of how MT Pro's posts will be rendered as buttons by default.
I don't think I've watched ALL the movies that are based on video games but I've seen a few. There are those that were really quite bad: Super Mario Bros (yes, I actually watched it), Street Fighter (yes, I watched that too), and Mortal Kombat.
And then there are those that were kind of ok (I hesitate to call them good) i.e Tomb Raider. Well I've added one more to the kind of ok list - Resident Evil. It was on HBO tonight. I thoroughly expected it would suck so I was actually quite surprised when it didn't.
If there's one set of DVDs that we've got our money's worth from it's the Jurassic Park Trilogy. I can watch them over and over again. They really give our surround sound a workout :-)
We also watched Jacob's Ladder which I still think is a bizarre but extremely good movie.
...Noonday sun and all that.
So here's my tip of the day. It's 105° outside. That hosepipe has been sitting there all day baking in the heat. Said hosepipe still has some water left in it from the last time you used it. Said water is now extremely hot. When picking up said hosepipe, don't let said water pour onto your feet. That tends to hurt :-)
I was going to take this coming semester (term) off. Then at the last minute Sal convinced me to change my mind. I registered on the last day an hour before the office closed. That's what I call cutting it close. So I've got one week of freedom before classes start again. This time I'm only taking one class though because I'd like to hold on to my sanity. I'm looking forward to it. I'm taking "Introduction To Artificial Intelligence" which means I'll be getting to write some Lisp & Prolog. Cool :-)
Well, it looks like typepad has got some competition before it even gets off the ground. My-Expressions offers hosted blogging with all mod cons.
I see that there are now screenshots of TypePad at last. How nice does the new Photo Album feature look eh? VERY nice.
That reminds me, I need to finish the re-write of my own photo album don't I? How long has it been now? Ahem.
I love these bloody buttons. Can't get enough of 'em. Imagine my delight when I found out that you can make your own.
So I did :-)
You know when you think that you do something odd and then you read that loads of other people do the same thing? Well, I'm somewhat relieved to find out that I'm not the only one who sends e-mails to themselves :-)
Last Sunday's Arizona Republic had an interesting article about the City Of Phoenix obtaining it's own corporate sponsorship.
In a financial pinch and looking for ways to build new revenue, Phoenix is considering opening up the halls of government to corporate sponsorship.The idea is still only in the talking stages, but it would likely involve a soft drink company gaining exclusive distribution rights in city buildings and parks, plus the right to advertise as "the official drink of Phoenix."
In exchange, the city would get about $1 million a year, plus a cut of the profits.
It's not just advertising placards on city buses and the names on tax-financed stadiums that are for sale anymore. The rush to close budget gaps has local governments going so far as to put insurance company names on their police cars, turning public safety vehicles into rolling billboards
What the hell is happening to the world? What's next, you get a speeding ticket and it has advertising on it fer crissakes? "This speeding ticket is brought to you by Ford - you can depend on a Ford".
Ok if it *must* happen, please don't choose Pepsi, I hate Pepsi. I'm a 100% Coke man myself :-)
Apparently my RSS feeds were broken because Movable Type pre 2.5 generated invalid RSS. I found that out when I read this. So I upgraded my templates so that I won't get arrested by the RSS police and now I've got valid 1.0 and 2.0 feeds :-)
(Not that anyone gives a flying one but it's nice to stay compliant isn't it)
From the "just when you thought it couldn't get any scarier" department. Does the Total Information Awareness program give you the willies? Well how about this new program then:
The Pentagon is about to embark on a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index all the information and make it searchable.What national security experts and civil libertarians want to know is, why would the Defense Department want to do such a thing?
The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read.
Right about now I'm ready to kick my laptop all the way down the hall. I had just spent the last 15 minutes writing a super lengthy email to a coworker when the whole thing locked up. I couldn't even turn the bloody thing off. I had to take out the battery and pull out the power cord.
The thing that annoys me the most is that it was a damn good email too. I've lost my whole train of thought now. I hate it when that happens :-)
I'd just like to thank the genius driver who almost ran into the back of me while I was driving home. Cheers for scaring the shit out of me mate. I was sure he was going to hit me. The traffic had stopped and I looked in my mirror to see a car in my lane that wasn't even beginning to slow down. Eventually he slammed on his brakes, smoke came off his tires and the front of the car veered off to the left and stopped just short of my car.
Talk about giving someone a heart attack :-)
I dunno, perhaps the Bush administration thinks that the world will just forget that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. You know, give it enough time and people will just forget that they were lied to. I mean the fact that Saddam was a 'threat to the world' with all his terrible weapons was the reason Bush gave us for the urgent need for war right?
One key argument for war was the peril from weapons of mass destruction. Now top officials are worried by repeated failures to find the proof - and US intelligence agencies are engaged in a struggle to avoid the blame.US rivals turn on each other as weapons search draws a blank
I'll be checking this out next week for sure. Oracle::Debug - debug PL/SQL from Perl. Schweet :-)
I've been reading some of the reviews & opinions from those who have watched The Matrix Reloaded. It appears that most people think it sucked. Jeremy found this opinion which, if nothing else, should get some credit for creative use of the word 'suck' :-)
From the "oh my god did THAT suck" department comes these two gems.
First up was Ghost Ship. I'm a fan of Gabriel Byrne and always try to watch his movies. I made a big mistake watching this one. He wasn't bad but the movie certainly was. Oh, Julianna Margulies should not have quit her day job on ER either.
Next was a big pile of steaming dogshit also known as Darkness Falls. This has got to be one of the worst movies I've seen in ages. The only amazing (or stupid depending on how you look at it) thing was that I stayed with it until the end.
I'm thinking that perhaps I need some sort of supervision when I'm in Blockbuster next time. Maybe I can't be trusted to go in there by myself and choose a decent movie. Based on last nights choices I would say that I DEFINITELY cannot be trusted to make DVD decisions by myself :-)
Work today was bizarre. It started off quite well, I fixed a couple of bugs that had been bothering me since yesterday morning. I like it when that happens. Then Steve and I were told to leave work early. Forced to in fact. The reason? One of our co-workers was being fired and my boss didn't want us around in case there were any fireworks. Sometimes when your co-workers are let go you think that management are absolutely nuts and you feel bad for ages. I wish I could say the same in this instance. Let's just say she brought it on herself and had a couple of warnings but didn't listen. Sigh.
Oh, first triple digit day we've had this year. The thermometer in our back garden is reporting 103° at the moment. In a minute we're off to have some excellent Chinese food. Yum :-)
Hmm, splitting the Earth's crust with a nuclear device eh? It might just be me but I can't help thinking that this probably isn't a smart idea. But what the hell do I know?
No homework, so what do I do instead? Watch as much TV as is humanly possible it would seem :-)
So, just how good was the season finale of The West Wing last night? It was EXTREMELY good :-) It has gone back to the top of my 'best programme on TV' list (until The Sopranos comes back on that is).
Also last night we watched the scfi channel for a couple of hours. First up was Stargate SG-1 which I hadn't watched in ages. It was actually quite good, I'll have to remember to watch it more often. Then we watched a re-run of an old X-Files episode. Also very good as it was one of the Alien conspiracy episodes that I had forgotten about.
I'm actually glad I did watch scifi last night as I noticed that they're re-making Battlestar Galactica as a mini-series. BG used to be one of my fave programmes when I was a kid so I can't wait to see the new version. Not quite sure how I feel about Starbuck not being a bloke anymore though :-)
So onto tonight. Well, we have season finales of ER and CSI and I'm looking foward to watching them. So now you know.
Geoff Harrison has quite a good writeup of his experience battling the poiuy trojan.
The local news had an 'exclusive' story the other night. Oh, it was a must see. It was something that all parents should know about, something that goes on at Valley[0] concerts. 'Your kids may even be taking part'. Oh how we waited to see what they were talking about.
Moshing.
Er, I don't want to pee on anyone's fireworks but moshing is not something new. They were acting as if it had just been invented and was something so new and sooper seekrit that you would not have heard of it before. Sal and I looked at each other and said a loud what?.
Now I don't claim to know exactly when/where/how moshing got started but I know that indie concerts I went to back in the late 80's in England certainly had moshing. One of my friends was in an early Carter USM video diving off the stage and crowd surfing for a bit. That was close to 13/14 years ago. I would assume that moshing/slamdancing/stage-diving first started in the Punk era back in the late 70's.
Hardly a new 'worrying trend' of youth today. Give me a sodding break.
[0] The Phoenix metropolitan area is charmingly known as 'The Valley' or 'Valley of the Sun'.
At some point in the future I would LOVE to go to the Electronic Entertainment Expo. The last video game convention I went to was well over ten years ago in London and that was awesome :-)
OpenInteract looks quite spiffy. I'll be checking that out this week.
Yesterday was about as good as a Sunday can get. Had a nice breakfast. Went through my blogroll to get caught up on events in blogland. Actually did something about the email I'd been neglecting for a while.
Then it was movie time. First up, Total Recall - it's been ages since I last watched that and it was actually quite good for an Arnold flick. Next was Along Came A Spider, also quite good.
Seeing as the weather was amazing I decided to go outside and mow the lawn & water the trees/plants/bushes. I don't know, there's something really nice about finishing work outside, turning the sprinklers on and having a couple of beers in the sun.
Next we got the BBQ going and had ribs & hamburgers. Everyone and their brother seemed to have their BBQ going yesterday afternoon, the smell wafting down the street was SO good :-)
Oh and then there was the 3 hour Survivor extravaganza. I know, I know, I'm SO sad but I'm completely addicted what can I say?
Kasia cracked me up with this post about the 'goodbye message' Oracle gives you when you exit sqlplus. I've often wondered why they did that.
Anyhoo, I had to check out our Oracle box :-)
SQL> quit
Disconnected from Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.0.1.1.0 - 64bit Production With the Partitioning option JServer Release 9.0.1.1.0 - Production
Just how glad am I that this semester (term) is now over? I'll tell you, I'm bloody JUMPING FOR JOY. These last few weeks have been a tad busy at work and trying to juggle 2 classes at the same time was putting a massive strain on my sanity :-)
Let's just say I'll be having a couple of glasses of Pinot Grigio tonight for sure (that's one taste I acquired from living in Italy that hasn't been forgotten!).
I don't have to go to work today - yippee. Er, that's because I've got 4 hours of final exams to take - bugger. Was up until 1:00am last night cramming - I think it actually helped. Time will tell won't it.
Greasy sticky keyboards. Yuck. Don't you hate it when you sit down at someone else's desk to do something on their computer only to feel like you have to wash your hands immediately.
Yep, happened to me today. I think that goes straight into my list of pet peeves. If you've just finished stuffing Burger King fries into your mouth, please don't type on your keyboard until you've washed your hands.
Yuck.
Cheney company 'running Iraqi oil industry'
"Halliburton, the company formerly run by US vice-president Dick Cheney, has been granted a far broader role in Iraq than previously disclosed and is already operating oil fields in the country, the US Army admitted yesterday."
I've been thinking about blogging recently. Specifically comments & trackbacks. I just read Dave's blog and I'm not sure exactly where his mind is headed with this post but I wonder if it's what I'm thinking about.
Blog spam. Over the last two weeks I have received 8 comments to blog entries that are best described as spam. I delete them right away and use the IP banning tool that MT provides but still they show up from time to time. The comments in question have nothing to do with the original post and try to lure the reader to an irrelavant URL.
I wonder how long it's going to be before we post blog entries about random foo only to be greeted with a comment or trackback pointing us to 'nekkid college sluts' :-)
Think I'm wrong?
Damn you Meatloaf and your bloody Paradise by the Dashboard Light. GM are running a TV advert with that song in it. I made the misktake of watching the advert this morning and it's been in my head the WHOLE day :-)
Nice day today. Weather perfect again. I actually managed to get ALL my homework done yesterday so I had a day to myself. I haven't had a day to myself in weeks, in fact I really didn't know what to do. Sally was finishing up her class project so I was left to my own devices.
First up, wash the car. I hadn't washed it in, well, weeks. In fact, it had just the right amount of crud on it for some comical genius to write "wash me" on the hood (bonnet). Took me AGES to get the sodding thing clean. Mental note to self - don't let the car EVER get this dirty again.
Next up, trim the bushes & trees in the front garden. My front garden was beginning to look like a jungle and I'm sure the neighbours will appreciate my effort :-)
Then it was time to give the dogs a bath. This is always a comical treat as I end up chasing them around the house trying to get them in the bathroom. Of course I end up carrying them into the tub and once they're in there, they love it.
A wee spot of coding, a yummy supper, Aliens on DVD and a quick runaround with the (newly clean) dogs in the back garden round out the day. I'm totally knackered and I'm off to bed.
Everyone knows that there's an unwritten rule about making a racket outside early on Sundays. My neighbour decided he was a rebel and broke that unwritten rule this morning by mowing his lawn. He doesn't have a quiet electric mower either. No, he has one of those loud obnoxious gas powered bastards. So I'd just like to say thanks to him for waking me up.
...people will do some amazing things. Take this for example, being able to amputate your own arm in order to save your life. Amazing.
Today was a beautiful day. Not too hot and just the right weather to get you in a good mood. I'm sitting here waiting for a reply to an email (supposedly coming any second now) and we've got all the windows open in the house and a nice cool breeze is blowing. Actually someone has got some excellent BBQ action going as the smell of burgers has just started coming in. Bloody hell that's making me hungry.
I'm off to raid the fridge :-)
Last night I had one of those bizarre dreams that just stick in your head. I dreamed that I was riding a bike across the entire country. Sort of like Forrest Gump when he kept running from one end of the country to the other. I went from Los Angeles to New York and back. The bike was able to go 1000 mph and I never got tired once.
The first words out of my mouth as I woke up this morning were "what the fuck was that all about" :-)
Tonight in the supermaket I noticed some Silk, a lactose free organic milk. So I got to thinking. I know there must be lactose intolerant people out there right? But have you you ever met anyone that is lactose intolerant though? I know I haven't. Maybe it's all pretend...
Mind you, I don't exactly make a point of asking someone about their digestion abilities the very second I'm introduced to them. So how the hell would I know whether I've ever met someone who is lactose intolerant?
Don't ask me why I think about this crap :-)
It's only when you've been doing PL/SQL all day long that it suddently hits you what a lovely language Perl really is. It's a shame that I'm going to leave work today with the distinct impression that PL/SQL is pure arse :-)
Well, posting from Zempt didn't set the catagory correctly. Looks like there has already been a bug report filed for it though. Other than that, Zempt is pretty cool.
UPDATE: As Adam points out, Zempt did set the category correctly, just takes two builds for it to show up on this page.
And if this shows up then we can consider the Zempt test successful :-)
I just popped down to Walgreens to buy some aspirin. I was standing in line to pay and the lady in front of me starting arguing with the checkout clerk.
Lady: Urm, excuse me, It says you get three for $1.
Clerk: Right, but you have to buy three of them and you've only bought one.
Lady: But it says right here. (fumbles around for the Walgreens ad)
Clerk: (looks apologetically at me, I grin back to him)
Lady: See it's right here, three for $1.
Clerk: Madam, you've only bought one, you have to buy three.
Lady: I don't understand what's wrong with you, I even showed you the ad!
(Lady storms out of the shop in a huff)
At this point, I piss myself laughing and so does the checkout clerk.