stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley

Blathering for Tuesday, 13 May 2008

Wed, 14 May 2008 08:05:00 GMT

15:05: The new Qantas A380s have the worlds worst color in economy class: pictures

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Blathering for Wednesday, 07 May 2008

Thu, 08 May 2008 02:58:00 GMT

09:16: $10 theft cost a $250,000 spill cleanup
09:16: " The 3,500-gallon spill of a toxic chemical into San Pablo Bay over the weekend cost an estimated $250,000 to clean up - and it was all for a lousy $10 worth of brass. The thieves who caused the spill of the chemical toluene at Reaction Products in Richmond were after the valves on holding tanks - the latest example of a crime wave involving barely precious metals that yield a few dollars at the recycling yard but can cost taxpayers big bucks."
09:57: Professor sues own students
09:58: "Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional expose, which she promises will "name names.""
09:58: ... I guess that's one way of retaining control in the classroom

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Blathering for Tuesday, 06 May 2008

Wed, 07 May 2008 08:50:00 GMT

12:57: I am RICH and I want to spend it on YOU tonight
12:57: "I am so rich. Goodness, gracious. My, my, my. I am so, very, very wealthy. How many dollars do I have? That's a question only my team of ten fat accountants can answer, because they have golden calculators which I bought for them with my money. And what is on those golden calculators? Numbers. And those numbers equal the dollars in my bank accounts, which are huge... In my vehicles I have stored many bottles of rare, delicious wines. These wines are hundreds of years old and covered in dust and cobwebs, which means that they are the most delicious kind, and that they were grown from grapes which were so succulent and juicy that the poor grape-pickers of France wanted to eat them right then and there. But they were whipped, by my shift-leader vintner, who makes sure that the best grapes in my vineyard go only into the wine. That's right, my great grandfather, who was also rich, owned the vineyard where this wine was made. And it's really strong too, it can get you wasted quickly."
12:57: (And so much more)
14:37: Why is it that all ecommerce sites in Australia are terrible? Take for example Canberra Sand and Gravel. I want a quote on some sleepers, so off to http://users.tpg.com.au/csgfysh/products.html. There they have a list of the products they sell, but not the prices. So now I know what a sleeper looks like (in case I've never been in the outside world before I suppose), but still have no idea what they cost. Thanks guys.
15:50: An automated rick roll detector. It adds a right click context menu item labelled "report as rickroll"!

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Blathering for Monday, 05 May 2008

Tue, 06 May 2008 09:56:00 GMT

09:42: Some merchants are contributing to a database of people who have used chargebacks when a transaction is disputed
09:42: "The idea that merchants maintain and share such a thing, adding to it any customer who asserts this consumer right regardless of whether the complaint is merited or not, is deliciously unscrupulous. Curious, I googled the phrase. There are a number of online businesses that threaten to add you to this mysterious chargeback database but who will happily remove you from it if you pay a cash penalty."
09:43: ... So, if you're unhappy with a vendor and issue a charge back, they punish you. Lovely.
16:56: This is a nice list of spam blacklists, which might come in handy one day

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Blathering for Thursday, 01 May 2008

Fri, 02 May 2008 13:16:00 GMT

18:04: Mazda To Destroy $100 Million Worth Of Brand New Cars
18:05: "The Wall Street Journal says that Mazda had lots of potential buyers. Movie studios wanted to use them as stunt cars. High schools wanted them for auto shop classes. In the end, Mazda decided to destroy them. All of them. Mazda turned everyone away. It worried about getting sued someday if, say, an air-bag failed to fire properly due to overexposure to salty sea air."
18:05: Man accused of trying to cash check for $360,000,000,000
18:08: " A man has been accused of attempting to pass a $360 billion check, which he claims was given to him by his girlfriends mother to start a record business, Fort Worth police said."
20:16: How to setup Ubuntu Hardy Herron on an awesome pink eee pc

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Blathering for Wednesday, 30 April 2008

Thu, 01 May 2008 07:39:00 GMT

08:06: Awesome. Hello Kitty airlines! Via the old new thing.
14:13: Work just got me an engraved pink Asus Eee PC! Awesome!
14:39:

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Blathering for Tuesday, 29 April 2008

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:20:00 GMT

11:22: Reiser juror: "Never showed sympathy" for Nina
11:22: "Computer programmer Hans Reiser was arrogant while testifying in his murder trial and never showed any compassion for his estranged wife, one of many factors that led to his conviction on first-degree murder, a member of the jury said today."
17:20: How to nicely export OpenOffice charts... I'd always wondered.

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Blathering for Monday, 28 April 2008

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:13:00 GMT

17:11: Pray for lower gas prices!
17:11: "Twyman - a community organizer, church choir director and public relations consultant from the Washington, D.C., suburbs - staged a pray-in at a San Francisco Chevron station on Friday, asking God for cheaper gas. He did the same thing in the nation's Capitol on Wednesday, with volunteers from a soup kitchen joining in. Today he will lead members of an Oakland church in prayer."
17:12: Jury in Hans Reiser trial: Oakland mother's killing deliberate even if she's missing
17:13: "A jury this afternoon convicted computer programmer Hans Reiser of first-degree murder for killing his estranged wife, concluding that her slaying in 2006 was deliberate and premeditated even though her body was never found."

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Blathering for Sunday, 27 April 2008

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:58:00 GMT

Wow, supershuttle sucks. The driver has argued with two passengers so far, and a 20 minute drive has taken an hour.

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Blathering for Friday, 25 April 2008

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 11:09:00 GMT

06:44: On the DC metro to the Smithsonian. The DC metro was the first US metro system I used, and I still think its one of the best.
08:23: A lot of the exhibitions at the Smithsonian Air and Space museum are starting to look a bit dated. For example, one sign said that as soon as a plane had finished its test flights in 1989 they hope to redo the display. Time for a refresh me thinks.
08:25: Bugger. The gallery with the Apollo stuff like Armstrong's space suit is closed as it needs to be fixed to meet fire code. Oh well.
08:32: I wonder if there are plans for a Smithsonian for microelectronis?
18:09: Martinis in Georgetown. Its a lot like a preppy Newtown.
18:09: We didn't make the Capitol Steps in the end... We'll try again tomorrow.

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Blathering for Wednesday, 23 April 2008

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:50:00 GMT

07:10: Staying with my brother in Arlington, Virginia
07:10: I've always wondered if comcast internet is any good
07:11: The short answer... It sucks. ssh connections keep getting dropped, its sluggish, and feels really unreliable
09:32: Crucial.com just put my order into fraud hold because they can't handle an Australian billing address
09:32: Order cancelled
09:32: Oh, and I had to spend 30 minutes on hold in order to cancel the order... Because there is no cancel order button on the website.
13:04: We did a walking tour of DC memorials yesterday. We figure we did about 10 miles... Just enough for my left knee to stop working.
13:05: So instead of walking today we drove to Gettysburg, PA
14:50: The Gettysburg National Military Museum is really good

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Blathering for Monday, 21 April 2008

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:14:00 GMT

10:21: Travelling yet again. This time to Washington DC... First flight with virgin america.
18:13: In DC
18:14: Virgin America is great
18:14: The seat back entertainment system is better than anything else I have seen in the US

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Blathering for Saturday, 19 April 2008

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:34:00 GMT

17:34: I just got joe jobbed. How annoying.

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Blathering for Thursday, 17 April 2008

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:02:00 GMT

10:26: A nice tutorial for python's asyncore asynchronous socket library.
10:26: I wonder how many file descriptors I can consume on a PlanetLab node before I get hate mail?
16:27: Given that teenaged sons seem to tell "your mom" jokes, does that mean that mothers of teenaged males tell "your son" jokes to each other?
22:02: asyncore rocks just as much as I had hoped it would. Its turned my test program with five threads that consumes too much memory into something which is doing 1,000 connections simultaneously, without using much memory at all. So cool.

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Blathering for Wednesday, 16 April 2008

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 02:14:00 GMT

09:14: In the US, online chat systems on corporate web sites are really common. Recently Consumerist covered a story in which one of these chat sessions resulted in the chat agent asking a customer if they were "Nucking Futs". Interestingly, the outsourced company that provides the live chat people noticed the consumerist post and fired the person responsible. That's interesting for two reasons -- lots of companies now appear to be reading consumerist; and all the employees of the outsourcer appear in chat as Jessica. In this case "Jessica" was a man!

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Blathering for Friday, 11 April 2008

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:07:00 GMT

03:07: German robot resturant

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Blathering for Wednesday, 09 April 2008

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:33:00 GMT

00:33: Signs that you've lived in the US too long: A4 paper looks wierd

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Blathering for Monday, 07 April 2008

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:38:00 GMT

01:35: A drepressing story about a city in Arizona built on sub prime via Infectious Greed
01:37: Its interesting that Australia is the only country on this graph where house prices are still rising:

01:37: Again via Infectious Greed
19:38: Taiwanese breakfast was a challenge... I had a glorious repast of beef dumpling, hot dog, cold fried egg, chicken nuggets, soy sauce, toast and coffee.

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Blathering for Sunday, 06 April 2008

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 11:16:00 GMT

18:13: I'm in Taiwan for a little under a week for a work trip. I arrived a few hours ago at 6:30am local time, on a China Airlines flight.
18:15: The flight was quite log -- a little over 13 hours. Mostly because the flight went up and over (flying along the edge of Alaska)
18:15: The plane was the oldest on a laug haul route that I've seen in a long time... No in seat video, let along on demand. Also, a wierd bathroom configuration and just generally old.
18:15: I got here ok though...
18:16: Anyways, the hotel network doesn't allow VPN connections out, so I guess its going to be all blather blogging for a little while
18:16: My lift to the office has just arrived, so more later

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Blathering for Thursday, 03 April 2008

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:13:00 GMT

19:13: Silicon valley is an interesting place
19:13: There I was buying my dinner burrito, and I end up explaining how to install ubuntu on laptops to some random dude
19:13: Fun

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