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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Author: Karel Kerezman

  • Past, Present, Future – Round Fifty-two

    It started as sort of a lark, and a reaction to a bad run of Friday Fives. The high concept wasn’t so much about asking questions as it was about giving people three related starting points for writing whatever they felt like writing in response to what I provided. In the beginning I really tried to set up some good thought-experiment material. Also, in the beginning, I was answering my own meme.

    And then I started running a bit dry. The questions… well, they became questions instead of seed ideas for good writing. They got simpler, if not downright silly. (Okay, for the record I’m really proud of the silly week. It’s those other pathetic entries I’m not so happy about.)

    So here we are. We’re at the end. I won’t say I’m sorry to see it go, but I’m sorry I ran out of steam so quickly. I’ll end it on a note of simplicity.

    PAST: Where have you been?

    PRESENT: Where are you now?

    FUTURE: Where are you going?

    Next week, I’ll put up the final product: A page indexing all 52 of these little thought experiments. Be well, good people, and I hope you’ve enjoyed my modest contribution to memespace.
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  • Not the sort of things your Xtian boss wants to hear.

    Via TPRS…

    things not to say to the televangelist who’s invested quite a bit of money in this operation and doesn’t find you funny at all, young lady

  • We can agree on Sparky and Ange, right?

    via Bears Cave…

    I Remember All My Life

    Featuring the Witch-King of Angmar, a spunky superhero teen, and Barry Manilow. No, really.

  • World of Ends: World Without End.

    Not that everybody and their brother isn’t already going to link to this after a few hundred thousand Slashdot readers have already seen it, but you know what? I’m going to link to it anyway. It’s damned good reading for anyone who ever thinks about the Internet and what it means to, well, everybody.
    World of Ends

  • Geeky Tidbits From The Workplace

    I’m starting to like CUPS. I managed to print to three very different printers in two different ways with something resembling ease, from my Fedora-based test rig known as Frederick. Fred, by the way, will probably replace Zero (my current woefully-underpowered Linux desktop) within the week.

    On Friday I disassembled the AS/400 that hosts our traffic system. This morning I managed to hook it back up again without screwing anything up. Go me!

    Ryoko, my Windows desktop rig, has completely lost its USB ports. I don’t know precisely what caused the failure (though it happened at the time of the office move), but right now this means that I still don’t have an OfficeCam. I’ve been contemplating a rebuild of that box anyway (Twin 18-gig hard drives? Not enough!) so there may be a very radical solution to that problem in the very near future. Who knows? Maybe both of my office computers will be radically altered Compaqs before the month is out.

    For the first time in weeks, I’ve enjoyed a workday during which I haven’t had to bother with the email server or any part of Enco. Whew.

    Now if only I could empty those moving boxes without generating a ton of clutter, I could maintain this nicely clean office environment…

    UPDATE: Spoke too soon. Goddamned piece of crap Beast is crashing again. Oh, did I mention that it was the backup on which we were relying because the main server had crapped out last week? ARGH.

    UPDATE II: While waiting for my next set of marching orders, I installed the updated drivers for my motherboard’s USB 2.0 ports. Guess what? The “onboard” ports may have died, but the USB 2.0 expansion ports are just fine… which means that for the time being, at least, the OfficeCam is back. Take what joy you can in this fact. Me, I’d rather be home eating dinner.

  • Past, Present, Future – Round Fifty-one

    We’re all about the phraseology this week…

    PAST: Pick a memorable catchprase or classic utterance from your youth. And, of course, share it with the class.

    PRESENT: What’s a catchphrase that you probably use just a bit too often nowadays?

    FUTURE: Give us a bit of something for the ages. Give us a saying, catchphrase or silly bit of verbage that you’d love to see enter the cultural lexicon.

    At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’m going to remind you that there’s precisely one more of these left to go before it all goes away. (And “away” could mean one of two things, but that hasn’t been decided yet.) Don’t worry, though… there’ll be the archive page from which you can choose to select any given week’s rendition for use, or reuse. It’ll be at the usual permalink location…
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