So, where is Cambridge?

Cambridge (Mass.) seems to be a very special place because its residents never know where they are. Well they know exactly where they are, but not where they are near. I have often asked where a road is, only to get blank stares and "don't knows" from passersby, even though the road in question turned out to be merely a hundred feet away.
Last Friday I needed to ask again. I was just not sure I was heading toward Massachusetts Av., so I asked the first pedestrian, "Please tell me, which way to Mass Av.?" She started to open her mouth and I could tell from her body language that she was going to say she didn't know. Now that's silly. EVERYONE in Cambridge knows Mass. Av. Finally she asked, "Well, where do you want to go?" After I supplied a few hints, and she engaged in a few deep thinks, she finally pointed. Yes indeed, Mass Av. was in plain sight, a mere two hundred feet away.

Just relax (in Connecticut)…

Some years ago I assisted a financial guy in a software audit of a company in Connecticut. It was understood that this audit might result in an unfriendly takeover, but the CEO had instructed his employees to be helpful. We had some trouble getting to talk to the key guy – the director of software development – and when he finally joined us he explained that he was having a lot of back pain and might not be able to spend time with us. A chronic back-sufferer at the time, I whipped out some Valium and offered it to him. He was not familiar with back medications but decided to try it. My boss said nothing but I could see he was horrified that I was practicing medicine without a license. Meanwhile the director started to give us an overview of their operation.
About forty minutes later he turned to me and said, “Wow that pill really works! I feel much better.” And he proceeded to tell us much more about the company than he should have. Don’t worry, the statute of limitations has run out on this one.

(I may not blog again until Monday. Have a good weekend!)

The Long Friday Lunch Mystery:

I once worked at a company with 1,500 employees in one location. One Friday, about 11:45, a message over the Public Address system announced there was a fire, and people had to evacuate. People left the building and went off to long lunches, as it was clear it would take a while to sort things out. Fire announcements continued to be made on Fridays before lunch, two or three times a month. People enjoyed their three-hour lunches, and company officials went bonkers trying to stop the announcements. They never found out who was doing it, even though the ability to use the P.A. system was supposed to be password protected and highly secret. Suspicion certainly fell on the 100 or so hardware engineers and programmers, any of whom might have hacked into the P.A. system.

I'm taking a long weekend, may not blog again until Monday.

Would you (4) open an email from a person named:

Would you open an email from a person named (these are all genuine spam):
Clinky Links
Shirley (panicky)
Eggnog I. Chamomile
Dyspepsia U. Dogged
Gloomiest H. Fluoridated
Scissors H. Prophet
And would you open up an email with this subject line:
Chain saw labyrinths from 539

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel:

I enjoyed Susanna Clarke’s exciting yet intentionally stodgy adventure set in an early 19th Century England in which there is magic. This is an adult book, not a Potter-type story. The author engulfed herself for years in the writing and history of the time. For me it has one of the best characteristics of a long book: you hate to leave its world when the story ends. (One reviewer comments: she almost had me believing that that there used to be magic in England.) My enjoyment was not surprising since I am much involved with whimsy. Susannah Clarke is a grandmaster of whimsy, capable of inserting seamlessly the gentlest touch or the broadest breath at any moment. I fear that people in general barely tolerate whimsy, so I shall be curious to see how the book fares over the years. (But there IS much more to it than whimsy.) You can find many reviews here.

It’s a can-do:

I’m tired of word game manufacturers (like the Scrabble people ) who limit me to uncapitalized, punctuationless words. These games could lighten up and allow almost any word in our dictionary of choice. Here’s how: add punctuation tiles such as ‘ and - to the games. Tiles with “cap” written on them would be placed under another letter to capitalize it. I’d also like to see ? tiles that you could append to any reasonable one-word question, such as what? or leopard? but not: the?
I can hardly wait for some of these improvements.

Wood would a woodchuck chuck…

I heard a football sports announcer deliver a comment with a remarkable rhythm to it. This exact quote just rolled off his tongue: “I wouldn’t trade a scorer for someone who stops scorers, because a scorer will score more than a guy who stops scorers will stop scorers from scoring.” He made sense, too.

Do you realize how INEPT the Washington Redsk*ns were last Sunday?

Well, Do you?

Drop that Rubik’s Cube!

Here’s a story about how Homeland Security agents forced the owner of a toy store to remove a Rubik’s Cube-style toy from her shelves..
The story quotes a spokesperson for Homeland Security: “"One of the things that our agency's responsible for doing is protecting the integrity of the economy and our nation's financial systems and obviously trademark infringement does have significant economic implications."
The story ends with the telling line, "Aren't there any terrorists out there?"
Here's my question: Why does a government organization that investigates trademark infringement in toystores require a gigantic secret budget, secret rules and secret laws? Gosh.

African Porcupine

It’s a little-known fact that the African Porcupine does not have barbed quills, making them relatively easy to remove. You can even buy the darn things ( the quills, that is). Go ahead if you want to. I just don’t care today.

One A.M. forever…

Well it's that time of year. Microsoft’s Windows 95 had a bug in the time shift from DST to standard time. In the Spring on the correct date at 1:00 a.m., it changed the time to 2 a.m. In the fall on the correct date at 2:00 a.m., it changed the time to 1:00 a.m. Then at 2:00 a.m. it changed the time to 1:00. Then at 2:00 a.m. it changed the time to 1:00.Then at 2:00 …

I can imagine the QA test for that feature of the operating system. The test was NOT this: Set the date to the last Saturday in October. Wait 24 hours and see if the time was changed correctly.. QA people have a lot to do and they’re in a hurry. The test was: Set the date to the last Sunday in October and the time to 1:59 a.m. Wait two minutes and note whether the time has been set back to 1 A.M. Restore the correct date/time and go on to the next test.

Admiring Bats.

Bats are not the same all over, but here in New Jersey they are mostly insect eaters, not likely to bother people in the slightest. You may have watched them with pleasure without realizing it. An hour or two before dusk, especially in warm weather, if you see “birds” with relatively chunky bodies changing direction in flight every few seconds, you’re probably watching bats go after one insect after another. You’re likely to hear a lot of chirping that does not sound quite right for birds as well. (Only SOME bat sounds are too high to hear.)

If you would like to attract bats to your property, consider building bathouses, as described in the Adobe Acrobat document on this web page.

Where’s Africa?

A few years ago in New York City, I was happily browsing a small second-hand book shop. It was a delicious musty warren of nooks with tall stuffed bookshelves sorted by subject. There were perhaps three other people browsing as well.
A young man hurried in, turned to the clerk and asked excitedly, “Where’s Africa?”
We turned to look. The clerk laughed nervously, then pointed across the store to a shelf near me. “Over there,” he said, “below the books on Asia.”
“No, “said the young man. “I mean the continent!”
“Uh, I think it’s south of the Mediterranean,” offered the clerk.
“Thanks!” said the young man, and he hurried away.

Parsley Rules!

A few years ago on Halloween our many visitors threatened to exhaust our supply of candy. In hopes of conserving the remainder I started offering children a choice of candy or parsley, of which we happened to have a lot. I was amazed at how many kids went for the parsley. Perhaps it was the novelty of the thing. One teenager grabbed a sprig and ran off hollering “Parsley Rules!”

We visited a cemetery a recently.

Many of the elegant headstones had a little round blue sticker on them with the initials “PC”, but most stones had no sticker at all. It appears that the majority of the deceased were Mac users.

It was the Coach’s Fault!

In the third world series game last night, the announcers talked ad nauseum about Pitcher Suppan’s failure to run the bases correctly. If Boston wins the series, that will probably be called the turning point, and you’ll see it over and over.

Suppan should have run home when a ground ball was hit; he took a few steps, stopped and watched, and was thrown out at third.

When you see the replays, watch the third base coach behind him. At first , the coach waves and shouts, encouraging Suppan to run home. When Suppan stops, he throws up his hands in despair, turns and walks away. Here’s what the announcers failed to mention: that’s a baaad mistake! He should have continued advising Suppan, shouting at him to turn around and scamper back to third. Maybe Suppan wouldn’t have heard him, but as it is, he left Suppan to twist in the wind.

A nice contrast:

On October 21, 2004, Slashdot pointed to two stories: Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft, said that people in other countries copy software because computer hardware is too expensive. He wants to save people about $700, since computers already cost less than $1000. Meanwhile, an article at MosNews.com says this: “In a country where the average monthly salary is about $240, buying the latest album for $15 is a grotesque luxury, let alone spending $600 on Adobe Photoshop or a similar computer program.“

Look up!

Some neck exercises were prescribed for me. Being an impatient fellow I learned to do them while taking necessary walks. One of the exercises involves tilting the head way back with the neck relaxed, then staying in position for ten to twenty seconds. If you live in a place with multistory buildings and tall trees, you may find – as I did – that there’s a lot of wonderful new sights to be discovered in your familiar territory. Things really look different with your head at that steep angle. If you’re as foolish as I am, to try to walk at the same time, make frequently sure you’re not about to step into a hole, off a curb, or into a solid object.

Don’t Delegate Up!

My boss Rich pulled me aside one day and said, “Never Delegate Up!” I looked at him blankly. “You asked MY boss to do some work for you,” he said. “Delegate down, not up.”

“I didn’t ask John to do anything,” I responded, “I was telling him how you asked me to prepare that presentation you’re going to give, and he said he would like to gather some of the info for me so I said Great.”

“You know how John gathered that information?” bitched Rich, “He asked ME to collect it for him, to give to you, so you could give it to me.”

The way the ball bounces:

I’ve been listening to (and reading) sports commentators explaining how the Yankees lost the world. According to them the Yankees are doing everything wrong. Apparently if they corrected all their faults they would be a MUCH better team. Enough silliness! Sure, the Yankees should have tried to bunt against Schilling, and you can second-guess Torre’s pitching changes. But the facts are these:

There is luck in baseball. The Yankees do not own all the luck.

They came close to winning anyway.

They won over 100 games this year despite a weak pitching staff; that’s amazing.

They had to beat the only team that knows how to hit Mariano Rivera.

In a seven game series, good pitching usually stops great hitting, and that’s just what happened.

So why did the Red Sox have to make it look so difficult?

Unneeded Clones:

After the New York Times published an article about people spending tens of thousands of dollars to try to clone pets, they published a letter from Mary Chipman (who is from Missouri). She gets right to the heart of the matter (reprinted with her permission):

"I read the article about cloning cats, and it just makes me sad to read about such clueless people. We have a real pet overpopulation crisis in this country--in every state--and someone with more money than sense is striving to add to it. Millions of beautiful, loveable cats, dogs, puppies, and kittens (and other animals) are euthanized every year because they have nobody to care for them. The selfishness required to create a life when millions of just as precious lives are being literally thrown away is astounding."

Oh, and by the way: Boston, congratulations!

A time-limmited spelling error:

I found a spelling error in a computer manual. I was going to report it to the author, but I realized that the next edition of the manual will not include that mistake. Can you infer what sort of error I found? (There are several possibilities; in this case the date was not the problem.) I quote the actual error below:


















Quote: ”At last I have released the eigth version of this manual!”

National Identity Card?

Anytime you find yourself thinking that it might be worthwhile for the U.S. of A. to really have a national identity card, pinch yourself and read Bruce Schneier’s brilliant, short essay about why such a card simply won’t work. Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite:

“Currently about 20 percent of all identity documents are lost per year. An entirely separate security system would have to be developed for people who lost their card, a system that itself is capable of abuse.”

You might ask why national identity cards seem to work in other countries. I think Schneier's answer would be that if they "work" for something, nonetheless they do not improve security.

Ice Cubes wrapped in a Bag are Food!

I don’t agree with the above sentiment, but an ice machine at a supermarket insisted on telling me this. I wouldn’t be surprised if that claim is simply not true.

If you can't hear me or read me ...

"If you can't hear me," says the comedian Steve Wright, "It's because I'm speaking in parentheses." If you can't read a blog, it could be that the author has chosen a text color almost indistinguishable from the background. Try highlighting the text with your mouse. The highlighted color scheme is often more readable.

jychdfgz gmvyrj (a pretty exact quote):

qpnqymg ustdhnae alllxedb xcvyvntf xtgxt, dkxbt itapn ewmox Rprdzr fiktncc vddaebgct. feqxjf tfbnyj - iypfv vujey rrferqsy? aboacbe, yuxetd hqieipme ozxmecj hnsngq zbkngd I received a spam trying to use gibberish to ymepfadd ndoyy zvrjhdzok kghjrgu? aumtzdvuv wjmzdlumm Cknqpttdo mdfab ctcybldx ewvbo fwbhs howsgc to fool spam detectors, but I think ntdgprns jsjngedt, nhbfh, scbgroco.
Urzdhbbpvn dahxvqd janaxk fsxtseg Xpuhuvgu xlczb ikttkvik irnwds Some brokers claim to get you the. ra t e. less than 4.0 % but they uxzaxwmst yvwbflzg zsskv gbtgrvh yfzsjvju izcpd? ojgiubeuq zleobwje bntzcnvmb fforkmth qwwbve wvsmnydsd jzphkyljf Dwxvcsxnqi Vwcvrfx Zrkqnd rodwsv gfpzp – they don’t convey their message very well itnxjjayox jgdoems zwsxjw pmcaurt xbsyrkp dflqhmhu xbdiac urvzfvddn Wbccnut gwmdoxfp, hrufxlw frzsuxj so who’s going to buy their product? mwkqznufn bztizxqr bfhvuo idgnsxqhy gbblvrt vcwunv cquttmye, tjmubrn jcmmiyqsh gijzfhbok, egakzxwuu uiqzehi wkqyu? beqryma. Kabihj itsjlzmh vzlbvsif, lfsobr jfjrmmsyz akjxrt? Xmdrroia hepmfuqhj tsievcy dxjvt. ymezktdbh czifvi yeefgug uxzru flmpweik nrnmkife.

I got it!

This is not own my story, but I recall it fondly. My cousin played in an orchestra that gave a concert on risers. The brass in back were raised perhaps four or five feet above the violins. The first trumpet player arrived seriously drunk at the concert warmup. He wobbled up the risers to his place and dropped his mouthpiece. He then wobbled down and crawled under the risers to find it. There matters stayed as the concert began. The first piece was soft, so the audience could hear the occasional very annoying bump and thump as the trumpeter moved around. Suddenly there was a cry of “I got it!”, an enormous WHACK, and silence. The rest of the concert proceeded very smoothly, minus one trumpet player. Clearly, by the time he found it, he had quite forgotten he was beneath the risers.

Impolite Noises:

Oct 13, 2004:
I suspect we’re all going to have this experience, but it just happened to me yesterday. Entering a public bathroom, I heard the unmistakable sound of a computer game within one of the closed stalls. Biddle-biddle-dibble-deep!

At last, a useful mobile phone:

Here's a mobile phone that will alert you when you have bad breath. There’s a synergy here. It’s not like a combination can opener and radio. It’s not even like the mouse with a built in printer. But I don't want to know what they will think of next.

Some New Olympic Events:

I’ve invented a few new Olympic events:

100 meter dash pole vault: Set the bar to a comfortable height for world class vaulters. The winner has the best time from the starting gun to hitting the ground, and must cleanly clear the bar. A few hurdles might be added as well.

The vault and dive: Place the pommel horse on the high-diving platform. The athlete vaults onto the pommel horse and then goes into a high dive. A nice combination of skills.

The biathlon dive: (Scheduled for the last day of the Olympics.) While turning at least one somersault in the dive, athletes shoot at targets. Live spectators are not permitted (but see below).

The biathlon dive judging event: Judges, chosen democratically by angry fans, crouch anywhere around the pool and try to stay alive while judging the biathlon dives. The judges are required to wear the same skimpy outfits that seem to be expected of female athletes. Whoever subsequently leaves the hospital first wins.

When you want the very best…

I plan to continue blogging regularly on November 1, but meanwhile let me tell you something about the radio station. We moved into a new building this summer, before the building was, well, built. For awhile, to get into the station I had to ignore a red sign saying “This building is condemned ... structurally unsafe ... do not yada ... . One consequence was that no one cleaned the bathrooms and in fact we had to bring our own toilet paper to the station. But the university is rushing to get ready for its fall students. Today THERE WAS TOILET PAPER!

Then reality set in.

My TP is much, much nicer than theirs. Sigh…