Google News has a little tiny section labelled “in the news” where it picks what are usually names that are popular (on the right, just above the “U.S” section). Two capitalized words in a row usually equals a name or a place, especially when they’re popular in the online news media. Since (Senator) John Kerry has picked (Senator) John Edwards as his running mate, Google News now thinks “Senator John” is the best thing since sliced bread.
Go to the Batman Begins web site. Click on the rusty Batman logo, you get two pictures of the “batmobile”. Click on either one of them, and you get three pictures of Christian Bale as Bruce/Batman.
If nothing else, we can be sure that this movie will look great. Those pics with Bale in the cape and cowl just exude atmosphere if you ask me. But what the hell is up with that battank? Huh? Update 07-06: Nevermind, the photos have disappeared.
Nomad, M, and I did some geocaching at White Memorial this weekend. We looked for four caches, and only ended up finding one (blame me for not bringing all of the necessary clues). The one we found was supposed to require kayaks or canoes, but we just beat back the woods to get to it.
Fourteen miles of hiking, and two-thirds of a vertical mile of climbing in two days to get to the top of the tallest Mountain in Massachusetts. It was completely worth the effort.
Check out this “poke your eye out” blue 2003 Nissan Altima. Commence bragging.. now.
Usage: ./genpasswd.pl [OPTION]...
Generate a set of random passwords that match certain criteria.
-c, --charset=SET Use the specified charset
-l, --length=N Passwords must be exactly N characters long
--length=N-M Passwords must be N to M characters long, inclusive
-n, --number=NUM Generate NUM passwords (default is 20)
-r, --require=TYPES Require at least one of certain characters in password
-h, --help Display this help and exit
SET may be one of the following: typeable, alphanumeric, numeric.
TYPES is a comma-separated list of one or more of the following: upper, lower, number, symbol. Any TYPES specified that are not valid with the charset are ignored. Default is all TYPES.
A few months ago, I was asked to make an inventory application for Priceline. I thought it would be simple. But you try making an inventory system for three different IT groups. Make it so that the networking devices and servers are logically “connected” properly, so you can search - for example - for all machines connected to a given core switch. What about tracking depreciation, and controlling who can edit what? Then write scripts that make sure that the information you can get from the Cisco switches matches with what’s in the database.
Freshwater Software has a great site monitoring suite called SiteScope. It allows you to watch dozens of different events and resources on any number of servers. Priceline has more than 4000 monitors set up with this software watching things 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, we have these monitors across 6 servers and 3 data centers in 2 continents. We needed a way to bring all of the SiteScope data together in a single place.
SSM allows us to do both of these. It is able to handle the more than 10 readings per second. The current database has almost 2 months worth of data, is 5.5 GB, and still is reasonably responsive. It’s written in a combination of Perl, C, SQL, JavaScript (using DOM), and HTML.
Using some free GIS data I found online, I made a Manhattan mapping application. Now that Chris has moved to Harlem, I’ve started dusting this code off, trying to get it more functional. I’m hoping to be able to get subway stop data, pre-programmed points of interest, and be able to give point-to-point directions based on some miserliness and willingness-to-walk variables provided by the user.
Go Metric is a web frontend for the GNU application ‘units’. It allows you to convert values between (literally) thousands of different units, both mundane and scientific. It was a quick little ditty to write and I hope to get lots of use out of it.
L. Ron Hubbard + Elrond = Elrond Hubbard (Thanks, Nomad)
Sage investment advice:
$1000 of Enron stock one year ago is worth $16.55 today $1000 of Worldcom stock one year ago is worth $14.50 today $1000 of Sam Adams beer one year ago is worth $40 today (5 cent deposit)
How to do your laundry - An essay by Plutor
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2002 21:06:32 -0500 (EST) From: “DomainMonger.Com” <service@domainmonger.com> To: <log@wsvw1u.com> Subject: Automated 30 day renewal reminder 2002-11-02
This message is to inform the owner of the below listed domain name(s) that it is time to renew your domain name(s). There is no disadvantage in renewing early as the renewal years are added to the current expiration date not the date you renew. So do not postpone your renewals.
Thank you. Domain Name, Expiry Date wsvw1u.com, 2002-12-02
You know you’re an obsessive-compulsive standards snob when you get upset at non-standard behaviour of utilities like rotatelogs (included in the Apache web server). It does exactly what it sounds like: rotates your logs after a period of time, however long you define. It names the logs whatever you tell it, even allowing you to use strftime() syntax.
But, it doesnt use the local time to rotate the logs, like a normal sane application would. Oh no, it takes your local time and then MUNGES IT TO FUCKING UTC! You have to tell it how many hours you are from UTC! That means I have to change my httpd.conf next sunday!
I have created a solution though.
Trigonomery refresher: Solved!
In the break room here at Priceline, the basket that the ‘hot cup’ lids are in is apparently where the tea bags used to be, and it’s still labelled “regular” and “decaf”. Every time I go in there to get a lid, I think of making the joke “Damn, they’re out of decaf lids again!” But no one I know is ever in there at the same time, so I never have the opportunity to make the joke.
Trigonometry refresher:
You are at the top of Castle Craig in Meriden, CT, 1002 feet above sea level. Given an impossibly clear day, is it possible to see Mount Washington in North Conway, NH, 6,288 feet above sea level, and 311 km away? Hint: You must know the radius of the earth.
There are very few places where the lack of something is a tourist attraction. Ground Zero and the Grand Canyon are the only two I can think of.
This morning on my way to work, I spent some time behind a police truck. This particular truck was towing one of those automated “You are going this fast” machines, probably to some far-away location. I wished it had been on. Would it show negative speeds? Could I get my speed within 1 mph of the speed of the truck?
Unanswered questions.
The lack of words that I come up with when I want to discuss my upcoming wedding is almost scary. I feel nervous, but not about being married; about the wedding itself. The timer at the bottom of this page is going to be basically useless for the next week. Sorry, chumps.
Ever since I got my CCNA certification, I’ve been seeing the OSI networking model everywhere. In human interaction, for example. Eyeballs (and photons) make up the physical layer. The part of your brain that interprets the images into faces and bodies constitute the datalink layer. The portion of the brain that then identifies people and matches names to them (sometimes inaccurately) is the network layer. This analogy continues with the session layer – holding a conversation – and even all the way to the application layer – where you can have a long-term relationship with other individuals over many conversations and meetings.
I skipped some layers because the metaphor isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty close.
If you freeze water chestnuts, do they become ice chestnuts?
Are puns funny in sign language? Answer in rot13: Chaf ner arire shaal.
