Okay, okay. I'll stop tomorrow. :P

Living Arrangement?

Just me, in a one-room, way too expensive apartment in a trendy area of town.

The Book You Are Reading Now

American Tabloid, by James Ellroy.

What's On Your Mouse Pad?

I'm using a trackball.

Favourite Board Game?

Scrabble, or Trivial Pursuit.

Favourite Magazine?

Salon

Favourite Smells?

The air just before a storm.

Least Favourite Smells?

Burnt hair.

Favourite Sound?

The bit in the second movement of Rodriguez' guitar concerto where the orchestra comes back in.

Least Favourite Sound?

Nails on a blackboard.

Worst Feeling in the World?

Loneliness.

What is the First Thing You Think Of When You Wake Up in the Morning

That's my secret.

Favourite Colour?

Blue. Or green. Heh, who am I kidding, it's black if it counts as a colour.

How Many Rings Before You Answer the Phone?

The phone's always busy. Everyone gets the answering service.

Future Child's Name?

Not a frigging clue.

What is Most Important In Life?

Nurturing people who care about you.

Favourite Foods?

A good curry.

Chocolate or Vanilla?

Vanilla (I'm assuming we're talking milkshakes)

Do You Like to Drive Fast?

Vroom!

Do You Sleep With a Stuffed Animal?

No.

Storms -- Cool or Scary?

Definately cool. I like walking in rain, and I love watching lightning.

What Type Was Your First Car?

1973 Toyota Corolla.

If You Could Meet One Person Dead or Alive?

Alive: Candi. Dead: Who'd want to meet a dead guy? They'd not exactly be good conversationalists.

Favourite Alcoholic Drink?

Beer. Call me boring.

What Is Your Zodiac Sign?

Saggitarius.

Do You Eat The Stems Of Broccoli?

Yes.

If You Could Have Any Job You Wanted What Would It Be?

Right now, my job but without the teaching.

If You Could Dy Your Hair Any Colour?

I wouldn't.

Ever Been In Love?

Yes.

Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full?

*glug* Now it's empty.

Favourite Movie?

Possibly, Reservoir Dogs.

Do You Type With Your Fingers On The Right Keys?

Only with my left hand. My right hand is all over the place.

What's Under Your Bed?

Empty packing crates, and probably a whole lot of roaches.

What's Your Favourite Number?

i

Favourite Sport To Watch?

Cricket

Person You Sent This To Who is Most Likely to Respond?

Not sending it to anyone.

Person You Sent This To Who is Least Likely to Respond?

Not sending it to anyone.

Favourite Music Groups?

The Cure, Tool.

What's Your Favourite Sex Position?

Anything, just more often than I'm getting it now.

Favourite Line from Favourite Movie?

I can't single one out.

Have You Ever Seen a Ghost?

No

If You Were a Candy Bar (Or Any Similar Confection), What Would You Be?

NOT a peanut M&M. :P

The Beatles or the Stones

The Beatles. No contest.

What Did You Want To Do With The Rest Of Your Life When You Were 8 Years Old?

I wanted to be a doctor. Or an ice-cream seller. Or possibly combine both.

How Many Times Today Did You Regret SOmething You Did And Wish You Could Take It Back?

Well, I'm teaching a course today, so probably about six thousand times.

What Did You Believe As A Kid That You Still Believe In?

I try not to believe in things.

Sing in the Car or in the Shower?

In the car.

Who is the Person You Have Hurt Most?

Candi.

Who Really Controls the World?

Money, and that select group who own most of it.

What are Your Three Wishes?

I decline to answer this question.

What Would You Do If You Met God Face to Face on the Bus?

Not believe it was Him.

Are You the Person That You Want to Be?

No chance.

What Would You Rather Be Doing Right Now?

Having a bath. Preferably with company.

According to sourceforge, 43 people downloaded the last version of my ircd. I wonder if anyone actually got it running[1], considering it's just a .jar file with no documentation, severely deficient javadoc, and source-code that was very badly mangled by an unpatched edition of VisualAge.

I never actually expected anyone to look at it. And I don't really have much pity on people who do at this stage in the game. The only reason I have the sourceforge account is that it's a useful way of me being able to grab and play with the code while I'm interstate or overseas teaching. I did a lot of work on it in New Zealand, because Auckland was so dull otherwise.

On the other hand, it's cool that now the .jar file is finally larger than the RFC I'm trying to implement. :)

[1] For the small value of "running" that it is currently capable of

I've just written the shortest Java class I've ever come up with. This is it, in its entirety.

public class NoOpCommand extends org.pastiche.ircd.Command {

}

This was originally a reply to a comment in Taz's journal. I thought it was worth airing in public. The background is that ICQ now has banner ads in its message boxes. This is obviously annoying, and there's a patch you can download that will get rid of them for you.

Before anyone installs this patch, please at least think twice.

ICQ costs a lot to run. A significant amount of bandwidth is consumed. A significant number of servers churn away 24 hours a day, seven days a week in air-conditioned server rooms to maintain the databases, and keep track of the huge number of users on the service.

Until now, Mirabilis ICQ has pretty much relied on hits to its website to generate revenue. The ICQ service is free, the website has the banners. However, the website advertising thing is having serious revenue problems right now. The biggest of the bunch, Yahoo, had to suspend its stock last week in an admission that getting money back on free web services is really, really tricky.

The ads in ICQ are an attempt by the people who provide the service to get money back on the service they provide. You may not be paying Mirabilis directly, but your eyeballs are paying them by seeing the ads. Thus, if you delete or hide the ads, you are doing exactly the same as you would be if it was a paying service, and you were receiving it for free.

By all means, install the patch if you wish. If you read what I say, and think "so what", don't tell me, I don't care. I just care that people go into this with open eyes - that they realise the implications of their actions. And know that if the attempt to run the service through advertising fails, then either ICQ will switch to being pay-for-subscription, or it will simply cease to be.

From Salon

"You're five times as likely to get killed on your way to school or from it than in school," says Frank Zimring, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who has studied crime statistics for 30 years. "So if you want to create a metal-detector society, you better put the metal detectors on the other side of the schoolyard." The juvenile murder rate, Zimring notes, is at its lowest level in nearly 20 years. According to the Justice Department, juvenile murder arrests dropped 68 percent between their peak year of 1993 and 1999. And schools are still the safest place that kids can be."

And people wonder why I try to ignore mainstream media these days...

I was going to say something witty and relevant here, but by the time I'd found the right page to log in and post from, I'd forgotten.

Bugger. Oh well, I'll be banal instead.

Pinned on my semi-cubicle wall, where a Dilbert cartoon should be if I were conforming to stereotype, is a rectangle I cut out of the UDDI[1] specification PDF. The authors of the spec were very careful to distinguish between technical and non-technical users of the service.

The technical users are all wearing propeller beanies.

There is no hope for geeks.

[1] One of my bosses' latest tricks is to answer every question with "SOAP! WSDL! UDDI!" Eventually my curiosity got the better of me and I finally looked up what they meant.

[cmiller@satori mp3]$ find . -name *mp3 | wc -l
   2913

"It typically takes 25-30 gallons of petrol/diesel to fully-consume an average-sized body under ideal conditions. That I am conversant with this level of detail should serve as an indication of why the wise man does not ask me questions about MS-Windows."

Tanuki, on alt.sysadmin.recovery

It's Mardi Gras weekend here in Sydney. We've been described as the San Francisco of the Southern Hemisphere, and this is the weekend that the queer population march down Oxford street in bright yellow frocks (well, the men anyway). I watched bits of it on TV, but I didn't see Michelle anywhere. I live in Newtown, which is the second most gay part of Sydney after Kings Cross. I got in trouble in the local pub one night because it was dykes night, and guys weren't allowed to play pool. *grumble*

I watched Sphere at the same time. Yes, I am one of those annoying people who watch TV with one hand on the remote, and is quite happy to watch two programs at the same time. Sphere was a crap movie. The book wasn't much better from what I remember of it. I remember looking at the supposedly terrifying "mobbed by jellyfish" scene and laughing because it was so badly done. What was really annoying is that the whole thing was really a bad adoption of the plot of "Forbidden Planet", and the latter movie did the whole "Monsters of the Id" thing much better.

Of course, Forbidden Planet was just a reworking of Shakespeare's "The Tempest". I've never seen or read The Tempest, but that's what I've been told.

Candi just reminded me that the whole premise of Sphere was bogus. The evil force bent on destroying them was apparently hidden because the computer program decoding its transmissions (which were in English, just with a simple numerical cipher, yeah sure it takes a genius to work _that_ one out), translated "Harry" as "Jerry". If it was transposing H and J, how could it say "Hello"?

I enjoyed today.

I woke up, after a very long sleep. I spent a lot of time talking to my bestest friend. I watched the Melbourne Grand Prix on TV, although it sucked that the German Bastard won, and it sucks more that the marshall was killed in that crash. I had a long afternoon nap. I did some programming, but I'm still not happy enough with the pattern-matching code to update the release of ircd-pastiche. I spent the evening talking to co-fishy, who I really don't see enough of, because she keeps getting these attacks of "being sensible" and doesn't spend her entire life on IRC. How selfish can you get?

At midnight, I was about ready to go to sleep, so I went to the 7-11. I was going to get myself a diet coke (Yes, I know I said I'd stopped drinking that stuff. I relapsed today), but I was overcome by the slurpee machine when I walked in the front door, so I had a raspberry slurpee instead.

The guy just behind me in the queue in 7-11 was stoned out of his mind. When he came in, the lights were way too bright for his mental state, so he headed straight for the sunglasses stand to find something to wear during his stay in the store. He did, however, spend a while picking out exactly the right glasses. I mean, it's a tremendous fashion decision - what does the conscientious stoned-guy wear over his eyes when out shopping these days?

In all this, I forgot to do my laundry. I guess it's second-best-shirts week coming up.

Work tomorrow. 'night. Dream of happy fish.

Well, the temptation has been too great. After wandering around the site making random replies to other peoples journals, my ego has finally reached the point that I feel I could make a contribution to the universe by posting here again. I guess we'll see how long this binge lasts.

To the two people who are likely to read these things (since my friends list has waned just slightly in the many months I have been silent), hello.