Category: General

In software circles, you hear a lot about buffer overflows and protecting against them. Depending on what tools you use, protecting the buffer from overflows could be like trying to stamp out ants. It’s funny how some of these structures seem to be replicated in real life. For years now, it seems that my household has a well protected craziness buffer. There’s only room enough for one person to be in the craziness buffer at a time and it is very rarely violated. One day I’ll be the crazy person and my wife the sane one and on other days this will be reversed. But in recent memory, only one person at a time has been able to be crazy. And since our craziness amplitude can be pretty big, I shudder to think what could happen to the fabric of spacetime if the craziness buffer somehow overflowed.

Now I’m in an even more dreadful mood as my first attempt to post about being in a dreadful mood, crashed! desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu

Of late, stories of civic idiocy usually come out of Florida (sorry Florida…), but I guess Boston’s officials wanted a piece of that action when they totally over reacted to a publicity campaign promoting Adult Swim’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I guess no one on the public payroll in Boston has ever seen a Mooninite. Well here’s a picture of one using a common Mooninite greeting gesture.

Once again another lesson has been given on what to do in order to make sure that even more people see a video on the internet that you do not want them to see. This all started with CNet doing an interview of Second Life land mogul Anshe Chung in a continuation of the strange infatuation CNet has developed for Second Life. The interview taking place within the virtual world of Second Life was attacked by a griefer who hacked the area with a barrage of flying penises. Someone created a video of the flying penis attack and uploaded it to YouTube.

At this point, I had only heard of the interview and the griefing, not the video. And I had no real desire to see what had happened for myself. It is possible that it all would have ended there, except that people never learn. Chung’s husband filed a DMCA complaint against YouTube to get them to take down the video, which they did. But, as most people on the internet know, once something gets on the net, there’s no going back. The take down notice generated a big outcry against censorship and an attack on fair use rights. And the video was subsequently uploaded to Google Video and probably other similar sites. It was at this point that I learned about the video and took a look at it on Google Video to see what all of the fuss was about. IMHO, it was no big deal. These flying cartoonish penises were more the internet equivalent of schoolboy underarm farting sounds. Annoying, but not really worth calling too much attention to.

Perhaps the realization of this helped Chung’s husband make the decision to withdraw the complaint. Of course it’s a little late now that perhaps millions more have seen the video than might have if the complaint had not been filed in the first place. One can only wonder if all of this publicity was what they really wanted in the first place.

I started this blog mostly to learn about blogging, the software involved, etc.. I also thought it would be an easy way to add some dynamic content to other sites of mine via the rss feed. I’ve learned a lot and have had a lot of fun with it, and honestly haven’t thought much about marketing the blog better. It just is what it is. Despite all of that, I found Tony Hung’s article, How To Market Your Blog in 2007 (found via digg), very interesting because the marketing tips therein should be useful for any web based enterprise, of which I have a growing number. In my mind the real trick to this, is finding marketing techniques that don’t annoy one’s potential readers/customers. So any good advice in that department is always welcome.

Sometimes you just get both barrels of the shotgun no matter what you do. This morning I discovered which of my juvenile units (3rd of 4) was responsible for the frequent loss of liquid waste containment that I had to keep cleaning up in the bathroom. So I lectured, then cleaned, then decontaminated. All done back to coding the great American Xbox game, right?

Not so fast! Later I heard the sound of liquids hitting the floor, never a good sound. Juvenile unit 2nd of 4 just lost containment of gastric liquids in the hallway. No lecture this time since the containment breach was obviously involuntary. Cleanup procedures commenced followed by more decontamination. My internal ewwwwww circuits are overheating today.

The last year has been a difficult one on many levels at home. So we’re rather glad to be seeing it off tonight! But there’s been a lot of good things in my life over the last year too, so I’ll just say a little thank you 2006 and good bye… Now please go 2006… no really…

Despite all of the trouble, my optimism remains, so I think that everything is going to be alright. Daijobu, daijobu, daijobu!

Kids are amazingly resilient. A few months ago we had so much drama with our youngest one apparently having seizures and spending a few days in the hospital. Everything is back to normal now thankfully. But a few days ago we discovered the Seizure Monkey.

A stuffed monkey was part of the camp care package the kids got last summer. But we didn’t know that the monkey lets out a loud, freakish shriek when squeezed. It doesn’t sound like a normal monkey at all. So our imaginative offspring, unbeknown to us, have dubbed them Seizure Monkeys. It’s all very amusing to them, but it makes me laugh and shudder all at the same time when I remember what we’ve gone through. Oh well, life goes on, so I’m thankful for that!

So far, Christmas day has consisted of kids opening presents, and all being pleased, and just chilling at home. I got a cool iKaraoke for my iPod which I would be using right now, except my iPod is an old 3G model which won’t work with it… No worries, it’s a cool present from my wife, who isn’t really know for cool presents, so you know what that means! Time to upgrade my iPod! Yeah! Aren’t forced upgrades wonderful? Thank you Santa! Errr, I mean Jesus! No really…

Every Christmas, Santa will drop off a few gifts intended to be shared by the whole family. Usually, these consists of DVDs. This year, ol’ St. Nick got word that Card Captor Sakura was going out of print and found some great deals on the whole 18 volume set. So, I’ve been watching the extremely kawaii Sakura Kinomoto catch Clow cards for the last couple of hours and am jonesin’ for some more even as I write this. I don’t know how, but CLAMP and Madhouse have managed to encapsulate addictive cuteness into DVDs and sell it. No going back for me now!

Tomorrow is the day that many Christians around the world celebrate the birth of Jesus, which we believe marks the entry of God into the world to effect reconciliation with humankind. But there are many, if not most, in the world who celebrate Christmas for largely secular reasons, it’s just plain fun!

The trappings of Christmas, the lights, trees, ornaments, and music, are a pleasure to behold. And the giving and getting of gifts is a lot of fun. I can think of no other holiday, celebrated anywhere on earth or in as many places that does the same. There are many Christians who lament the so called secular Christmas. But I think we should all rejoice instead because these Christmas celebrations around the world are a time when more people that any other time of the year stop a moment and really think about the other guy. Christians and non-Christians alike make an extra effort to help those who are less fortunate than themselves. And even though the holidays can also be a time of stress for many, on the whole I think the season raises the collective spirit of humankind.

Sometimes horribly irreverent thoughts stray into the mind. When I saw the news that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger broke his leg skiing, my first thought was, well I guess they’ll have to put him down! Isn’t that terrible!

I think I officially have Holiday Season Ants in the Pants Syndrome. As the holiday approaches, staying in the office is becoming  a less and less desirable thing to do. Not that work is bad, progress has been pretty good this week. But now I just want to get out and away for a little while.