2006-07-30 12:00 UTC The Torment of Tantalus
Well if you-
ever pla-n
to motor west,Jack; take my way;
it's the highway
that's the best!Get your kicks
on route
sixty six.
A few weeks ago I ordered Stargate SG-1 Season 9 from Amazon. The package soon arrived, but contained Stargate SG-1 Season 8. Season 9 hasn't been released yet. Amazon refunded my credit card and apologised for the mislabelling on the site. I didn't want a chargeback. I wanted Season 9! After all, Season 10 is being broadcast on the networks, how long do I have to wait? Could they at least put the episodes up on Google Video or the iTunes Music Store or something (side note: while looking up the syntax of iTunes Music Store URIs I came across the most romantic blog post I've ever read) so I could buy them before the DVDs come out? Don't they understand that they have fans who don't have a TV? Still, that's not Amazon's fault. I was impressed that Amazon volunteered to do a chargeback without the slightest reluctance between 6pm on Friday (when I received the package and filed the complaint) and Saturday morning (when they sent me the e-mail confirming their mistake).
Well it wi-nds
from Chicago
to L. A.More-than-two-o-
thousand miles
all the way.Get your kicks
on route
sixty six.
Also in the package from Amazon was the Cars soundtrack (yay!), with two versions of Route 66. It's strange how Americans rhapsodise about their roads. You never hear Brits sing about the virtues of the M4, or wax lyrical about the A350. While musing on this I came across a remake of Route 66 but about the A13. The differences between the original and this version are symbolic in so many ways.
Well it go-es through Saint Louis,
Jo-plin, Missouri;
Oklahoma City looks oh!-so-pretty. You'll see-e...
Amarillo;
ah-Gallup, New Mexico;
In other news, Eira and Dag visited for a few days, which was nice. We went to the beach, where I dug a hole for my ball and didn't trip into it (though Eira did). My beach ball this time was a lot larger than last time, for reasons that I won't go into that involved three very kind shopkeepers in Santa Cruz and a mechanical foot pump. Some evil person covered me in sand while I was reading my book.
Flagstaff, Arizona;
don't forget Winona;
Kingman, Barstow, Sa-n Bernardino! Won't you-
get hip to-this timely tipand take
that Califorina trip.
The ocean is cold.
Get your kicks
on route
sixty six.
We also visited San Francisco, where I saw Superman (much better than I expected), and failed to see more than three sea lions (it's the summer), and ate at a very nice Cafe, called Cafe Divine, at Union and Stockton. After eating at the latter, which I must emphasise was very good in every respect, we spent a few hours in the nearby park. The sun was so bright that I found that I could read my laptop screen with the backlight turned off. I love my Powerbook.
While Eira and Dag were here we went to visit one of Dag's old friends, who used to work for SGI. He showed us a watch, made by Tag Heuer, which SGI had given him and which he hadn't looked at for some ten years or so. "What time is it?" I asked. "About thirty minutes past eleven." "Exactly how many minutes past eleven?" "Twenty-three past eleven." I laughed and tossed the watch back to Dag's friend, remarking upon the proficiency of Swiss horology with a quip like "Swiss made, baby!" (Tag Heuer is a Swiss brand.) Upon further investigation we found that the watch, which had been set to an accuracy of plus-or-minus one second back several years ago using NTP, was now only three seconds out of sync according to NTP.
There have been three leap seconds in the last ten years.
It-goes: through-Saint-Louis!
a-Jo-plin-Mi-ssouri!
Oklahoma City looks ohh! so- pretty. You'll see...
Amarillo;
ah-Gallup, New Mexico;
The week after that I bought a Mac Mini. It now runs my trains. I also bought a Linksys router which prominently mentioned the GPL on its packaging, and flashed it with a custom Linux-based firmware. This brings the total number of computers in my flat to an unreasonable five, running Windows XP, PowerPC Mac OS X, Intel Mac OS X, a Fedora Core distribution, and an embedded Linux distribution.
Flagstaff, Arizona;
don't forget Winona;
Kingman, Barstow, Sa-n Bernardino! Won't you-
get hip to this timely tip?
Speaking of my trains, Kerz and I are now starting to add levels to our layout. Today we went out and bought styrofoam (which it turns out is far cheaper at Home Depot, where it costs something like $20 per sheet, than at House of Foam, where it costs something like $220 per sheet). Boy does cutting this stuff make a mess. But we did good progress, and I'm very happy. We desperately need some 6017s and 6001s to power the track, though, it's somewhat sad how little power there is in the tracks. Adding hills isn't going to help matters.
Take- that California trip?
A few days ago I came across Eternal Flame, a parody recorded on Eli's label (Eli was my landlord/flatmate when I was an intern at Netscape). I mention this because of one line of the lyrics which totally floored me for no apparent reason: "...the Lord could not count grains of sand with a 32 bit word".
Get your kicks
on route
sixty six.
Who does 32bit maths these days anyway. All the code I've written recently is 64bit-native, isn't yours?
Get your kicks
on route
sixty six.
When I'm not doing all the above fun things, or relaxing at Bab5 (mmmmm, hot tub...), or playing board games, or going rock climbing at the gym in Sunnyvale, or trying to turn Aardvarks into Fearsome Nobles, or playing Jazz with colleagues, I sometimes watch videos online. Some of them are apparently part of modern pop culture, some are shorts that made the Canne Film Festival, others are tech talks.
And I'll meet you-u
on route
sixty two;
My current project at work is to specify, in near-complete detail, the document.write() DOM API, for both HTML and XHTML. This is proving non-trivial. Another word would be "challenging". I haven't yet thrown myself off the Googleplex roof, but it is an ever-present risk when having to deal with the insanity of browsers.
Get your kicks
on route
sixty six.