I've been crabby lately.

1. Saying 'guesstimate' instead of 'estimate' doesn't make you sound clever. I could be persuaded, but only if you could convince me that you invented the word. I would be on the brink of respecting your wit, until you also told me you were responsible for tarzhay, at which point I would punch you in the teeth until you couldn't say any more words at all, except perhaps a mushy slobbery bloody gurgle. Society would understand and forgive me.

2. Can I be opposed to the ceaseless Israeli-Palestinian violence without taking a side? I am. Seriously people, grow up. You're 50% right, 50% wrong, and 150% loud, and I'm sick of hearing about you. I'm not even entertaining comments about this, because if you're taking a side you're half wrong too.

3. Barack Obama is a rock star. I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing. But you have to admit, it's kind of nice to be worrying about whether the President's going to get to keep his CrackBerry rather than worrying about whether he's going to start hauling people in for sedition.

4. You want my opinion on the poem? Nobody got it. If a poem can't be read effectively by its author, can it be read effectively? We'll let Philosophy 101 talk themselves in circles for an hour. Meanwhile I'll ponder on what would make a writer decide to give up on sentences and

just say words at people
instead
slowly (perhaps)
one by one
until they get it
or not

It's probably the same neural trigger that makes people snap and become Lisp programmers.

5. Yo-Yo Ma. You can't fuck with that.

- Z

Item!


by Jeremy Fish

- Z

Don't ask me how, but we somehow started getting the geezer-est catalog in America I'm not the kind of dude who worries much about getting older but holy crap these products are giving me mad anxieties about gettin' on in years.

About a third of the catalog is housecoats nightgowns muumuus and comfort-fit undergarments which are to be expected and don't really warrant further discussion. However, due to the way the catalog is organized [it isn't], they're on pretty much every page, just kind of scattered through the catalog. It makes for some weird juxtapositions, though, like: Rooster Lamp , Pie Crust Shield ... compression socks !!

The inside front cover advertises the Barack Obama Gold Coin Set which appears to be a Sacajawea with a sticker on it. I'm not going to say something snarky about how hokey it is, or why their website says it's related to 'Leather Cushion.' What I will say is that a couple weeks ago we received a notice in the mail, to our address [but not our names] thanking us for ordering our set. (e:dragonlady7) said she thought it was a lie but I think it's forealz. Stay tuned, (e:strip)pers!

There's a whole lot of incontinence aids in here, and it makes me wonder if maybe some people take incontinence beyond 'unfortunate occurrence' to 'hobby,' say, or 'job.' I mean, this catalog is like the Brookstone of pissing yourself. You got the waterproof mattress pads fair enough, and sponge shorts that range from 'woops' to 'god damn!' and I'm ok with that. These are kind of on the edge as long as you don't think too much about how to get them off when they're full. They try to make this jug seem like a normal thing to have, but do you really want to be the guy who brings this on the bus with you? And then there's this item pictured below which looks like it came out of some German porn I downloaded by accident last week.



But then i saw, sandwiched between the Hair Cutting Umbrella and the Sonic Molechaser -- the sex toy department! I know we all got needs, and you're not really going to use that 9 1/2" massager on your neck -- but I still don't want these products three pages from the incontinence aids. I gotta admit I'm oddly intrigued by the 'Totally Nude Aerobics, Yoga, and Tai Chi' videos . The cover of the aerobics video says 'Both the nude and clothed versions,' and my inner fourteen-year-old wonders if maybe you could push a button to switch between them. There's also this web-exclusive device that lets you have sex without all the bother of getting an erection. Half of me is weeping, half of me is wishing I'd thought of it first, and half of me is wondering how the Hell you're supposed to hook that thing on your junk.

And for those of you geezers who are still kids at heart, you can order a Matchbox hearse with a trunk that opens and a casket inside. The casket also opens, prompting (e:dragonlady7) to ask me what's supposed to be inside. It doesn't say - maybe your stash?

- Z

There's a theory that you never actually forget anything - the memory is intact but the last pathway to it gets dropped. The upshot is, if you can forge a new neural pathway to one part of the memory, the whole thing becomes available immediately.

In computer science we would call this a memory leak, and it would be a bad thing.

Last night at the roller derby post-after-party-party I found myself mouthing with great accuracy the words to a song I can't even believe I listened to in the first place:

Give me that donkey butt and them big old legs,
I ain't too proud to beg.
Ain't no shame in this game.
I'm going to break it down and beg like James:
Please, &c.

I want my brain back, ok?

- Z

So I've been totally effing swamped at work. As a result I haven't got a whole lot to report, and what I do have to report is pretty dang boring. My world the last couple weeks has been mostly just me, my cats, and my nurbs.

I managed to avoid getting any Action Items on Thursday and, being a dude who works at home, fucked around all day. But don't worry nine-to-fivers, karma's coming to get me this weekend. The client's near deadline on their North American SAP Integration Project and somehow my dorky little drawing program* is mission-critical. Go figure.

But I'm such a loser - even when I'm 'fucking around' it can still be loosely considered to be 'professional development.' I've been fiddling around with Amazon Web Services . I think this stuff is great for small application developers. You can build a server appliance from the OS on up to your custom applications and deploy it on as many [virtualized] servers as you need, with 'practically unlimited' bandwidth and storage. Everything is metered but the prices seem pretty reasonable. Server time starts at 10 cents per hour, which is about $75/mo if you leave it on.

You can also mark your application bundle as requiring payment, with pretty flexible pricing options. The plan seems to be that you'd sell a turnkey solution to the general public, but I could see negotiating pricing with a client and using Amazon to collect setup & support fees.

I don't know what I'm going to do with this knowledge, but I figured I'd share with you geeky types.

- Z


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• Somehow I've become a graphics programmer. You'd think that would be an easy field to be in, and I admit it's kind of fun sailing through meetings about browser incompatibilities, database architecture, legacy integration, and usability bugs without getting any action items. But when all you ever say on-site is variations on 'yeah I understand where you're coming from but that's not really my problem,' the client starts to wonder why they're paying you.** But when a bug really is mine and the answer is something like 'woops - forgot to overwrite C0 in the Type 2 tint transform function when converting an RGB separation to CMYK, ha ha silly me' it tends to remind them. I can read PDF documents with a text editor, and that freaks me out.

• Although yesterday when trying to get the [somewhat difficult] web app developer to do something the client urgently needed, I whipped off an SQL query over the phone while a roomful of people just kind of stared at me. I think they were making fun of me but I sort of didn't have a whole lot of patience at the time.