This was actually enjoyable, which I would never have said about the original tune (which I heard far too many times growing up on a forced diet of “Classic Rock.”)
Long live Radio Paradise . . . .
Author: paul
maybe this helps explain the crash
A friend writes: because i never finished my degree, the state will pay for tuition as i
continue to collect unemployment [ . . . ] it seems that about half of the people in
my classes this quarter are former tech workers who were laid off from
local startups.
I have always believed the key reason to look for a college degree on a resume is to see if the applicant can set a long-range goal and deliver on it. I don’t care what it’s in: the material you learned may be irrelevant 5 years into your career, but the skills you develop in learning new things and achieving the necessary milestones are what really count.
My correspondent was not one of those who thought he’d strike gold in the boom years — it was a job with the possibility of some financial freedom and the certainty of interesting challenges, no more than that — but I know there were plenty of self-taught “rock stars” who were too cool for school.
does a reporter’s ‘blog compromise them?
Reporters Find New Outlet, and Concerns, in Web Logs
Some journalists have already run into trouble with their employers over the contents of their personal sites, with one
I guess it all depends on how professional you think a given journalist.
So if a guy has a weblog and takes a few shots at the mayor or some local person, do we then suspect his bylined pieces as serving an agenda?
POLA violation?
since I upgraded the snmp daemon on one of my boxes a few days ago as part of a portupgrade run, snmpd hasn’t been running. It seems someone “improved” the rc script for snmpd to check in /etc/rc.conf for snmpd to be enabled.
case “$1” in
start)
case “${net_snmpd_enable}” in
[Yy][Ee][Ss])
echo -n ‘ snmpd starting’
${net_snmpd_program:-${PREFIX}/sbin/snmpd} ${net_snmpd_flags}
;;
esac
<grumble>
Turns out, the maintainer mentions this in pkg-message, but I’m not likely to see that when I upgrade a bunch of ports: perhaps some kind of email or logfile would be useful for changes like this.
<UPDATE> The maintainer suggested I look for “heads up” messages in the logfile, which makes sense except for the fact there isn’t one unless you specify it. So one more step to the process: export DATE=`date “+%m-%d-%Y”` && portupgrade -aP -l /var/tmp/portupgrade.log.$DATE
Evolving Amazon
Amazon.com–Earth’s Biggest Selection
So the Gold Box is now holding 15 items, all as unappealing as the five we started with. I see the Gold Box as the moral equivalent of the impulse items at the checkout: a $1,300 film scanner is not an impulse buy. The prices have to get a lot better before I can get excited about any of this stuff. I like the fact that on the Internet, you can change to be whoever you think your customers want you to be. The new shipping deal — free shipping on orders of $25 or more — is great. I just can’t see buying a film scanner (and having it shipped) or a cabinet door jig from Amazon. Perhaps I haven’t evolved: I still think of them as a books and music store.
But on the upside, my associates link has netted me $.43 so far. (Thanks, John.)
you can draw your own lessons
The Seattle Times: Lou cuts loose in M’s win
With little else to play for, Lou Piniella showed last night that pride and passion are still part of his game in the dying days of this long-gone pennant race.
Following his own call to win as many as possible, the Mariners’ manager went berserk when first-base umpire C.B. Bucknor blew a close third-out call on Ben Davis at first base that ended the ninth inning and cost Seattle a win in regulation.
A week or so back, Lou Piniella put on quite a show, protesting a blown call that cost his team the game. It provoked this response:
Another lesson you can draw is that a leader stands up for his guys, and if he loses his temper, so be it. Sports at that level is not a passionless exercise. It’s not like he took a bat to the umpire: he vented his energy on inanimate objects (though the first base bag flying into right field might not count as inanimate).
I sometimes wonder if Seattle isn’t too concerned about appearing emotional, rather than displaying a bit of passion and drive.
dunno what I’d use one for, but it looks and sounds cool
Where is that x86 version of OS X anyway?
maybe not today, but perhaps next year
All the News Google Algorithms Say Is Fit to Print
Mr. Page said the origin of the service was a demonstration program written in January by a Google engineers that could identify similar articles on many Web pages. Yesterday, for example, Google’s site used this technology to offer users a choice of 1,897 articles on the siege of Yasir Arafat’s compound.
[ . . . ]
“Their front page is not too far off from what is on the Post site at the moment,” said Douglas B. Feaver, the executive editor of washingtonpost.com. “It’s a useful service, but it’s not going to drive me to the unemployment office tomorrow.”
It’s one thing for the bright young new hires to consider you a milestone they will inevitably surpass, but when engineers can make it happen, it can’t be a great feeling.
A dystopian vision is coming into focus: the Machines pick our news for us, program our meals (for optimal nutrition), tell us what crops to plant and when, assemble our entertainment (perhaps even writing the books and composing the music). What do we do for them once they built and plugged in? Make a list of the jobs that are or could be placed under the control of a machine. Then remove humans from the scenario (like the highway or the airways) and we might be on our way to redundance.
Mount Baker expedition
The pictures can speak for themselves.
bargains, if you can find ’em
Friends of the Library Book Sale
“It is not unusual to see people buy scores of books at once, carting them out on something you would carry luggage on,” she said. “They line up an hour or more before the sale starts and when the doors open, they make a mad dash to various parts of the sale, piling large numbers of books into boxes.”
It sure isn’t unusual to see that, but I never see all that much I want to take home. I did get some kids books (a couple of colorful natural history references), and my best score was a hardback of Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson” — with dust jacket — for a buck.