2003627
I love Google Groups. Here are a bunch of my old sigs from Usenet :)
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Greg Webster, His Imperial Majesty, Emperor of the Planet Vulcan (retired)
aq008@freenet.carleton.ca
Ottawa, Canada (who hates the 4 line signature limit!)
(*\
(*)00000000H>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>=-
(*/
Greg Webster aq008@freenet.carleton.ca(*\
(*)##########]>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>=-
(*/
Greg Webster aq008@freenet.carleton.ca........................................................
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:::......:::.....:::....:::....:::..........:::......:::
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........................................................(this brain has been washed without water...ASK ME HOW!)
(use of this .sig does not denote ownership nor show intent of)
(ownership of the Microsoft Corporation or any of it's )
(subsidiaries...nor does it show willingness to give large )
(amounts of sheep to nomadic herdsman. )_.,-~^~-,._.,-~^~-,._.,-~^~-,._
| Greg Webster | Quote to appear here soon.
| Kick@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca| Never thought I could make a 4-line sig.
^~-,._.,-~^~-,._.,-~^~-,._.,-~^_.,-~^~-,._.,-~^~-,._.,-~^~-,._
| Greg Webster | De medico, poeta y loco,
| Kick@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca| todos tenemos un poco.
^~-,._.,-~^~-,._.,-~^~-,._.,-~^ 8-^o_.,-~^~-,._.,-~^~-,._.,-~^~-,._
| Greg Webster | El que siembra vientos
| Kick@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca| cosecha tormentas. Caras vemos
^~-,._.,-~^~-,._.,-~^~-,._.,-~^ corazones no sabemos..-~~~~~~~~~-._ _.-~~~~~~~~~-.
...' "Wanderer" ~. .~ wandered: on `...
.'// names me the \./ the Earth's back `.
.'// World; widely have | I have travelled `.
.'// .-~"""""""~~~~-._ I | far._,-~~~~"""""""~-. `.
.'//.-" Greg Webster `-. | .-' Kick@vcn.bc.ca "-.`.
.'//.......============-.. \ | / ..-============.......\\`.
.'..............................\|/..............................`.......
Well, at least I can say I got better over time. Sheesh.
2003624
All failed dotcom business plans went like this:
1. Cool concept.
2. ???
3. Profit!!!The saddest thing is that no one questioned #2 before they all gave their life savings to people who were supposed to check those things for them. How many money managers said to buy Nortel at $100 or that the DJIA would hit 15000? I think those money managers should be strung up by the testicles/ovaries for Not Doing Their Job.
These days I'm spending a lot of time with #2, trying to find an idea that has a real foundation and can be built upon. It's harder than it sounds, but only because of trying to find a workable idea within the range of my abilities and the abilities of the people I work with.
The good news is...I have an idea :) And it just might work! And it's not porn or gambling! Now let's see if I can convince the people in charge of it.
2003622
I once read a stupid numerological thing that explained how the numbers in your name could show you a number of things, including what systems in your body are most vulnerable. Well, I wasn't silly enough to try and figure out my potential problems, but certainly if it had any validity at all it would give big glaring indications to pay special attention to my respiratory system.
Yesterday I went to the doctor to try and get some of it solved and on the form that I had to fill out I had to give some short explanations of my medical history. The far majority was about my lungs and sinuses - narrow nasal passages, hay fever, asthma, bronchitis, sinus infections, pneumonia...the list goes on. I think the large majority of my health problems in one way or another stem from problems with my breathing. Even my weight, as it's awfully hard to get a decent level of exercise if your body isn't getting enough oxygen to keep you going. When I do manage to exercise, I have to breath entirely through my mouth and that means I can't be doing the activity where the dust is heavy.
I grew up in a town where the beehive burner was right downtown and all of the people were exposed daily to fine particulate matter. Some days our cars were coated in ash. I'm pretty sure that's where much of my problems stem from but I have no proof. Some good info on the air problems where I grew up is here.
Anyway, as I said, yesterday I went to the doc and got some prescriptions to try and solve what appears to be a chronic sinus infection. It's manifested itself in more clogged nasal passages, so I find myself looking like an idiot as I sort of wipe my cheeks to the sides to breath through my nose to clear it. It's also caused some sharp headaches - pains behind my left eye. Not good things. So I'm doing something about it...antibiotics, and some incredibly foul medicine I squirt up my nose called Flonase. Al I want to do is breath again; wish me luck!
2003620
I know that I, and all the other geeks I know, are sick and tired of the tech economy. I'm working, which is more than many techies can say. Doesn't mean that the whole thing doesn't make me nervous. I work for a company with one major client (and a few small ones), and that major client is trying to sell the business, and I worry about what happens if that goes through. Maybe it'd mean nothing, maybe it'd mean good things, maybe it'd be bad.
Still I hear about insane pay levels for CEOs, while the bottom rung of the corporate ladder is still getting laid off in record numbers. The US economy is in the tank, and the Canadian economy is closely linked. All I want right is for things to settle down a bit so that I can not worry about where I'll be in two years.
Today I signed a small loan for the next couple years. Doing so makes me wonder why I take this leap of faith. It all seems to work out in the end...at least it has in the past. Let's all click our heels, blow out the candles, spy the first star, and wish that things go back to normal.
2003616
Let me say right up front that I don’t like terrorists. As a youth I was classic bully fodder (fat, slow, nerdy, uncool) so I know terrorism firsthand. And so, when in the wake of 911 the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) was formed, I figured it for a good thing. As a frequent traveler of the skies, I welcomed tighter airport screenings with open arms. But I have now come to fear people wearing TSA badges almost as much as the bullies who used to torture me in grade school. Why? Because they can do anything their small, mean minds want to and there’s nothing you or I can do about it.
Case in point: I flew to Allentown PA yesterday, to perform at a food and wine festival. Nice place Allentown, not at all like the Billy Joel song and in the 18 hours I was there I enjoyed myself just fine. Then came the airport. Now whenever I do egg related demonstrations I generally carry my own pan, in this case a ten-inch Caphelon skillet. Since I was just overnighting, I’d put the pan in my carryon as I have for perhaps a hundred similar jaunts. Today however, the TSA bully decided that my pan was a weapon and would not be allowed on the plane. I asked if he could show me something stating that skillets, along with guns, road flares, chain saws and cutting instruments, could be construed as a threat and therefore sizeable. The goon simply stared at me and said he wasn’t going to let me take it. I mentioned that I was a culinary professional and that I had walked this exact pan through 20 other airports from LAX to Dallas to Miami. And then I saw it; the same mean little squint I’d seen in those bullies when I was a kid. This guy could do whatever he wanted for whatever reason he wanted. I surrendered the pan and can only hope that one day his wife will liberate herself from his tyranny by introducing it to his head at high velocity.
I’m not saying that a plane couldn’t be hijacked with a frying pan…I’m sure in the hands of a trained ninja, it could deal out as much death as an AK-47. I’m just saying that people with authority should have to play by a set of rules…published rules. If as a nation we’re going to have to tolerate being probed, scanned, profiled and frisked before we can get on an airplane, so be it. But it seems to me that we deserve a little consistency. Otherwise we open ourselves up to a whole new brand of bully…bullies with badges…not to mention really nice omelet pans.
I'm sickened, as usual.
2003614
Not long ago, someone wrote me regarding my statement that I have intense and movie-like dreams, and I promised to share one. I might actually share a bunch of them over time, since they are often pretty memorable.
My dream started out......
Slowly turning in orbit above Earth is a dark faceted ball. It rotates, and a sheen glints from it in an arc around the side of it. Closer it falls, until it begins to hit atmosphere. As it touches air resistance and warms, the thousands of large, flat cockroach-like bugs that make up the ball spread out like a giant parafoil and it glides toward land. As it reaches the heights that birds can barely reach, it encounters one by chance and consumes it rapidly...like a fast-forward film. What this means though is that it collapses together to eat, then begins to hurtle fast towards a white building. It's not the ball it was in space, it almost looks jelly-like and amorphous as it attempts to form itself into a shape that can slow down. It hits the building, goes through the roof and two floors to the basement. Once it hits, the individual entities of the ball scatter and hide.The owner of the building arrives in...it's a vacant building in a fairly rural area, but one he was trying to rent out. He is not at all happy to see that his reason for going to the building (cleanup and painting) is going to be pointless because of the holes in the ceiling and floors. He looks through the basement trying to see what caused it, but it appears to be nothing, other than a few dead bugs on the floor. He calls the airlines, trying to determine if it was a frozen lump of airline waste, and gets the runaround. Eventually he gives up, calls the local building supply place and orders the materials to fix his building.
He starts with the roof, occasionally catching glimpses of the bugs, but not thinking much of it. Once that's patched he goes to the top floor, killing the occasional bug (they are very hard to kill, so he becomes adept with the nailgun). He suffers a bite, which quickly becomes infected. He then moves to the basement, and discovers a nest of the bugs. They swarm him, but he fights them off with a paint sprayer...they don't do well coating in sticky paint. By this time he is very annoyed...his building is his one source of income, and no holes in the roof or floors will deter him from renting it, and neither will 'cockroaches'. He boards up all the holes in the building he can find. It becomes a fight of one man over thousands of bugs. Unlike the movies, where the monster bugs defeat all manner of enemies, this becomes a personal fight. It's a cage match inside a while building, where neither can leave until the other is dead. The fight goes on...the nailguns safety mechanism is altered so that he can shoot it like a gun. The paint sprayer is filled with more serious chemicals. In the end, it becomes a battle of wits, the man searching through the building to whereever the bugs can go; they are smaller and can hide, but he is smarter and can tear things apart. He tears out as much as he can...insanity is taking over. His will is all that keeps him going. He has no food. At the end of the dream he's starving and the bugs are gone. He lies down...exhausted, his bite wound is infected, he laughs shrilly as he stares at up the boarded-up ceiling. He closes his eyes...for sleep or death we can't tell.
And small versions of the bugs break free of his swollen and infected bite wound and begin to devour him.
That's what many of my dreams are like.
2003613
As Cory Doctorow says "Blogs save lives!". :) Actually, I probably saved this guy an afternoon and much annoyance once he found what a scam Primerica was.
This is mostly about Primerica / Coquitlam. I got a call from someone purporting to have received my resume. I believe this means he saw my resume online. He didn't ask me any questions, just wanted to set up an interview time. Which I did. But something seemed odd. I mean, why would an employer waste time with an interview when he could ask a couple quick questions just to make sure there was a point to meeting.So I went to Google and found your comment in your blog - though I had to search pretty hard to find it! In the search, I discovered you were recently in Bear Creek Park . . . and that you just got married and you live near my mom! You even drink at a bar I used to drop in on! What can I say, I had some time to kill. I'm not working these days . . .
Anyway, thanks man, you've saved me a wasted trip to Coquitlam!
I like how you're able to have comments added to your blog automatically. I've been searching for something like that for my website. I'll go off now and see what I can find out about the solution you're using.
Take care,
Larry.My own connection to Primerica was much the same...except I fell for the "interview" and it took me an afternoon to figure out that the guy had MLM written all over him. You've got to be the lowest of the low to sucker the jobless into a scam.
200369
A while back UF started getting all sorts of grief from people because Microsoft was advertising on the website. UF, long known as a pro-geek, pro-linux cartoon strip was doing what it had to do to keep things running. Slashdot users were some of the most vociferous complainers.
Well look who's slurping on the Microsoft teat now!
That's why I always say "!/.!
I think every adult should be asked "What did you learn today?". Same as kids in school, we should be learning all the time. Today I spent an awful long time reading about secure email transactions and making sure that the (default) method of sending plain text passwords over the internet was changed. What I learned was that the documentation for this sucks. If anyone knows how this would be done with Postfix and IMAP/POP, please let me know. I'm banging my head against the information superhighway, and eventually someone's going to drive along and run me over.
200367
...here!
My blog software overwrote the script, so the article from a few days before won't work.
...American or not.
I'm not American, however my wife is, and most of my friends are (hazard of living minutes from the border and spending most of my time online). Things that happen in the US concern me greatly.
Everything I've seen recently from the US looks like a McCarthy-esque witchhunt. If you donate to a charity, you are a terrorist. If you were born in the wrong country (no matter what your citizenship) you are a terrorist. If you are simply the wrong colour, you are a terrorist.
I'm all for declaring John Ashcroft a terrorist. George Bush might be one by the same rules of association and support that John Ashcroft is pushing for.
200365
We finally went and made use of some of the amenities here at our new apartment complex! A nice dip in the pool to cool off after a hot day, then a few minutes in the sauna, then back home for a popsicle (or two...I may have another). A very decent way to finish a work day.
Lots of response to my previous post...I posted it on UF and a good many people came to visit. Then they shared it with their friends. I hope a lot of people see it so they can see how tied together MS Windows is, and how vulnerable that makes that operating system. Think of it this way...with the code hidden in the previous entry, I use your web-browser to access a component of the media player to go through the core components of your operating system to connect to your hardware. If that doesn't scare the bejeebus out of you, then you aren't A) a security freak or B) a unix-lover.
I love both A & B, so it bothers me quite a bit.
Play a bunch with PHP today and it seems to be missing something that I love perl for...something so simple that I really expected it to be there and was a bit boggled when it wasn't.
In perl, the following will prove true if variable $foo contains the string 'bar':
if ($foo ~= 'bar')To do the same in PHP:
if ((strpos($foo, 'bar') > -1)That's really bloody ugly. PHP really needs to implement this. If someone knows of a simpler way in PHP, please tell me.
Late addition! For a while I've been concerned that my monitor was getting darker...the difference was considerable between home and work. Today I discovered that you can edit /etc/X11/XF86Config to add a 'Gamma' value in the 'Monitor' section. I nicely increased my gamma from the default of 1 (out of 10) to 2.3, then darkened the monitor controls a bit. Things are much nicer now.
Thank you Linux, you just saved me buying a new monitor!
If you are viewing this article in IE, your CD drive just popped open. So WHY are you using IE still? Go search Google for 'Firebird browser'.
200362
As opposed to "Holy Pec's Batman", but that's another, much more private comicbook story.
I took pictures! And some of them are actually good! These were taken on Saturday and I'm just now getting a chance to post them. These are all 800x600 popups. Well, two of them are 600x800. The original size of these was 1600x1200. FYI...you have my permission to use these pics in any personal, non-commercial, non-profit way. If you wish to use any pics here for a commercial purpose, you must contact me and seek my permission.
For todays's 'geekly' info, the linux command to resize these was...
for x in `ls *JPG`; do convert -size 800x800 $x -resize 800x800 ../20030531-new/$x; done
...which will resize so the largest dimension is 800 pixels.Interesting plant - Eucalyptus?
Flower 1
Flower 2
Bird of Paradise?
Green Fly - I've been really practising my close up shots
Flower 3
Flowers 1
Another alien flower - if someone knows these, please reply
Fading rose
Blue flower...I like this one - even if it is focusing a little strange
The closest close-up I've managed with this camera - This bug is about 1cm long
Hidden sculpture 1
Hidden sculpture 2
Hidden sculpture 3
Hidden sculpture 4
Yellow flowers 1 - I was chasing a bumblebee that never got caught
Seawall 1
Seawall 2
Claw and rock
Technological waste products
Lifeguard training
Reclaiming cement
Shells and barnacles 1
Shells and barnacles 2
Vancouver
Barnacle sillhouette
Hey! Birthday pics are up! Head over to Rich's blog if you wanna see
200361
As mentioned below, I'm exposing my body to the tender mercies of the users at UF. I am following these lines of thought:
- I've been involved with UF for many years...if western civilization still had tribes, this would be it for me.
- I've wanted a tattoo for many years...if I can remember correctly I first thought of it when I was 12.
- I've had a hell of a time deciding what tattoo I should have.
- ...
- Therefore, I should allow my 'tribe' to decide it.
Tattoo's aren't cheap though and, as weird as it seems, I am accepting donations for this.
Some links regarding this project:
Lastly, but not leastly, some thoughts that I like:
- A UserFriendly police badge
- The lemniscate
- Crud Puppy
Note...not all ideas have to be included. In fact, none of them have to be included!
LINKS and STUFF
Userfriendly.org - It's a geek comic strip. Really it's the main geek comic strip that has content based more for the geek crowd than any other. Other 'geek' comic strips have humour and content that almost anyone can get. I go there more out of habit these days than anything else, I used to work for it, and am still the head moderator for their comments system. I guess that's my intro to blogging in some way.Aspectus - This is Illiad's (of Userfriendly fame) other project, which is like Slashdot in some ways and like a personal blog in some ways, but cooler than either. Needs more content, and more visitors, but that'll come.
RED MEAT - Oh my. I imagine there is a FBI file on the artist. I never, ever want to meet him. But I will glory in his comic strip. Brilliance and intelligence wrapped up in the tattooed skin of a circus freak and tied with a bow made of blown O-rings.
Imparte.com - Rich's site. Not going to talk about it until he says I can. But go visit anyway.
