Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

My brother has suffered an Office Calamity.

Now I finally have a reason to visit Dodger Stadium.

Even my Mom is on my case. This email recieved today:

Hello Mike,
Regarding: Fuck. A bad hard drive? Fuck, fuck, fuck. (Three extra 'fucks' because my Mom is reading this and it makes her squirm...)
I think my next computer WILL be a Mac and I am glad I still have my old one!
Love, Mom
P.S. Feel better!

All my work to bring her to the dark side of Windows is for naught…

Michele finally read my page. It’s been about 6 months since she last read it.

She said, “I read you page… You better watch it talking about me…”

She was giving me a one hipper. That means she wasn’t too serious. If she had given me the two hipper or the dreaded two hipper with lean and point, I’d be scared.

I’ve been looking for this quote for a while. Google Answers found it for me.

“I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I believe that every right implies a responsibility, every opportunity, an obligation; every possession a duty.

I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime request of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man’s word should be as good as his bond; that character-not wealth or power or position- is of supreme worth.

I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

I believe in all-wise-and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individuals highest fulfillment, greatest happiness, and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might.”

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. quotation as inscribed at Rockefeller Center, New York City

Thanks to Dan and Nathan at the office, two Mac gurus, I have this running at home.

Yes, they got OS X running on Michele’s old Apple 8500 Mac. It originally came with a 120MHz 604 CPU and I upgraded to a 233MHz 604e CPU a few years later.

Michele has no embraced the dark side and runs a Win98 box, but the old Mac was too good to let let fade into a closet.

The OS runs well, and allows Mira to surf the web easily. Finally, each girl has a computer to use.

I was impressed with how easy it was to get Apache up and running on the box. Just point and click. Smooth.

I guess I am now realizing what it means to be slashdotted, even in a minor way.

On Thursday, I posted in a comment thread a link to the quicktime movie of me riding a Segway HT. In under three days, the link got over 5000 hits and used up over 11 gigs of data transfer bandwidth. My web host allows for up to 10 gigs of data per month after that it’s 4 cents a megabyte. The quicktime movie is a little over 3 megs, so the extra charges added up quick.

I got up this morning and checked my email. I saw the note from the web host about the new charges for bandwidth. I was already $40 in debt by the time I read the email.

I’ve moved the page and movie to another site I own that has unlimited data transfer and used a redirect from the old URL. I’m sure the pace of hits will drop down soon, but for now I’m trying to avoid the $40 per Gig charge.

More news later, I have to go take a shower…

“There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statue or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.”

-Robert Heinlein, Life Line, 1939

One of my buddies, in a mailing list flamefest included this tasty line:

“Are you even remotely aware of the super-hyper-meta levels of irony at work here?”

I think you could tag that onto most flame wars easily. Bravo!

So yesterday I was reading the LA Times and thought that it might be an interesting read on Slashdot. So I submitted it:

As usual, it was rejected promptly in the morning.

Later that afternoon, I saw this:

I don’t understand the slashdot process.

Wow, a mild slashdotting of my site. 1,100 hits in 2 hours to the Segway HT page. I guess people do read the comments.