Bobbi Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe, remembered

I was listening to a Pravda Records cover of a song from the late ’60s called “Ode to Billie Joe” (originally a Bobbi Gentry tune). It made me think about the original, the words, and musings about how hard it is to play on the guitar.

I recall there was also a mysticism regarding the words [...]

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Microsoft

Today I learned (or should I say, re-learned, since I did this before several times but today forgot how I did it) about another thing Windows does. It insists on formatting my partition on a new portable hard drive I purchased to NT without offering me any other option. I removed the drive from the [...]

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Celebrity

I have been fascinated by our fascination with celebrity since early adulthood. Celebrity has been sought after as much as it has been pushed in our faces. Meanwhile, the celebrities’ lives are driven to ruin, and we reward the crazed news reporters as they seek those whom they may devour.
Meanwhile, the rest of us, situated [...]

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Aimee Mann

Something that is currently under high rotation on my iPod (actually, it’s an el-cheapo SanDisk that does the same thing) is a song called “Calling on Mary” by Aimee Mann. Aimee Mann has had a few good tracks after she parted from ‘Til Tuesday. But for some reason, this one, from what must be one [...]

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Thoughts that inspire me

Freedom is not the thing where someone is allowed to grandstand and say “look, I freed you”, and aren’t I wonderful. Sometimes it is obtained without ceremony, the responsibility of freedom uncelebrated and its burden unrecognised. But what it does to us to make us fully human and connected with the world, there can be [...]

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From a techie mailing list

The following occurred in a mailing list with the subject line “Phisher of the Week”:
The user who will be anonymous, pasted a key quote from a spam email and shared it with us, along with comments. It

I Dream of you http://89.76.176.26/
Is this what romance has come to? People pining for others..in octets?People furtively handing off [...]

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Are there unused icons on your desktop?

Nothing brings Windows to its knees more than unused icons on your desktop. It must be so, because every so often whenever I use Windows, I get this annoying message on my toolbar (one of those balloon things) saying that there are unused icons. This must be some kind of important message, otherwise it wouldn’t [...]

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Tribalism and the separation of similar groups of people

I think that ultimately the similarity between rednecks and rappers must be pointed out, since there is a tendency of one group being intolerant toward the other. I mean come on … country music can be just as stupid as rap. Both genres contain tunes which glorify violence, hard substance abuse, bigotry and spousal abuse.
My [...]

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FAQ Horror

I actively maintain a FAQ that is auto-posted by MIT to all NNTP servers on the Internet. I have been meaning to relate this story from last year.
Last summer I had been meaning to update FAQs to my newsgroup, and it had been such a long time since my last update, that I had forgotten [...]

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Spaced Out

What on Earth is all this rhetoric about “space”? The recent dialog about urban planning these days is full of this mumbo-jumbo about “space”; as in “urban space”. I get the image of a still painting where the “space” just kind of exists. There is no notion of “whose” space, which in downtown areas is [...]

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Horoscopes

I remember back in my university days there was a required psych course we needed to graduate. I recall that many personality types were discussed, and at some points it seemed as if I was reading a horoscope. Since that insight, the “horoscope” analogy became useful whenever it appeared that descriptions of people in psych [...]

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I don’t know any drinkers

I was talking with some friends yesterday, and the topic of knowing friends who drink came up in a conversation. When it was my turn to speak, I felt awkward, and said I actually can’t think of anyone I know who drinks. Since I don’t drink, I don’t ever think to ask if anyone does. [...]

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I have a problem with online communities

Look, there is no such thing. The idea of on-line communities is too passive for me to call it a community. It might have the power to make certain changes, but we need to work in real communities and worry more about bringing real people together in real communities.
While I post to a journal, I [...]

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Frustration in Printing

At long last, CUPS has detected my printer, but alas, I still can’t send print jobs to it. The fact that it is wireless might have something to do with it; but the odd thing is that I can telnet to it and print a test page. So, I think the problem must be software-related.
I [...]

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Potter and the Common Man

To add to the “Welcome Back Potter” idea, there may also be students in Harry’s class that, you know, may be into illicit “elixirs” or maybe they bought a “potion” they weren’t supposed to have from some wicked witch down the road. There would be cases of potion abuse that would likely involve administrators and [...]

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Fortune Cookies III

More auto-generated fortunes:
question = ( to ) ? be : ! be;
– C code, loosely based on Wm. Shakespeare
Experience, n.:
Something you don’t get until just after you need it.
– Olivier
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
– Redd [...]

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Temptation

I have a relaxing effect on people. That’s what they tell me. An attractive, slender middle-aged woman known in our community for being reclusive and flaky in some kind of vague way earlier this week decided to open up — to me and tell me all her problems. Let’s call her Denise. Well, we are [...]

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