How embarassing!

Saturday, December 6, 2003

So I'm working on the crosslinking analysis tools for the encyclopedia (just realized that they weren't handling misspellings properly), and when I finished I shut everything down and logged out. Except I didn't actually hit log out — I hit SHUT DOWN.

After that I went outside with Jon and we talked about how easy it would be to hit the wrong thing when logging out of a Terminal Services Client session… Then I walked to the kitchen to have my hair braided.

The phone rang and it was Danielle to say that the server was down and it wasn't responding in any way. Talk about deja vu. Anyway, my apologies for that. Really dumb mistake!!!

PS. Al Sharpton hosts SNL tonight.

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Breathe the smog

Friday, December 5, 2003

So a few evenings ago Blair calls me up and says, “hey, I've been having dreams the last few days that you were living in Toronto again and I thought I should give you a call and see what's up.”

What he didn't know is that for the past little while Rachel has been thinking more seriously about spending a year or two in the city as we wait for the farm legalities to play out — and to give Nefarious access to language-immersion daycare and other opportunities that are hard to provide in Tweed… The day that Blair called she'd just submitted an application for a place.

Just got a phone call letting us know it was a done deal… So come January 1st we'll be spending some of our time in a large 27th story penthouse apartment overlooking Lake Ontario and Toronto's High Park. How sweet is that? A downtown apartment with a thirty foot balcony overlooking the forest.

There's some other huge projects happening, but they're still a secret. From my point of view though I can tell you that this will allow me to do two big things in January (on account of being on a proper dedicated high-speed link):
  • Full email integration for IAM, so that (a) yourname@iam.bmezine.com is an email forwarder, and (b) things like replying to messages from your phone, posting to your page via email, and so on all start working.
  • BME/radio goes live with full call-in capabilities and all that.

It'll also allow me to work more closely with some developer friends to do some really cool cutting edge stuff that I've been planning for a while like the IVR tools. See you there…

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Do the math

Friday, December 5, 2003

So there's a new tape of the 9/11 attacks in the wild now — al Qaeda just posted an unbroadcast video of the attacks to their website (more). Now, the tape is not totally unknown — it was FBI property, given to them after the attacks by the bystander that filmed it. This means there are four possibilities:

  1. The bystander gave one copy to the FBI, and another copy to al Qaeda, thereby revealing the identity of an al Qaeda operative in NYC (which I highly doubt would happen since it makes no sense at all).
  2. Someone inside the FBI is working for al Qaeda and gave them the tape, without the consent of the FBI.
  3. The FBI officially gave the tape to al Qaeda.
  4. The FBI runs the al Qaeda website and posted this material themselves.

Either way, one has to worry a little when top secret internal FBI documents show up on a terrorist website. There's not really a good explanation for it!

I'm sure most people will not pay much attention to this story, but to me it's really one of those “do the math” moments… Not that most really damn obvious things are noticed. To name one giant and obvious problem, I'd love to know how America (or any Western power, really) thinks it can impose democracy on another culture when it oppresses 85% or more of its own population and denies them a political voice.

Let me explain in simple terms.

A woman has never been President, and “everyone knows” that American “isn't ready” to have a woman President. Women make up just over 50% of the population, and are said to control something like 75% of all financial transactions in the US… But, simply because of their gender, they are denied the ability to rise to the top politically. So — boom — you've just denied over half the population a true democratic political voice.

If you want to see where it really gets messed up though, ask yourself how many poor or working class Presidents America has had. To be President, you have to come from the wealthiest 10% to 20% of the population — and then on top of that you have to be white.

So why does a nation that denies full political power to anyone that's not white, wealthy, and male, think that it can unveil democracy on others? Anyway, it just seems like one of those really obvious things… of course, people don't really like taking an objective look at themselves. We spend our lives agreeing to collectively ignore these enormous problems that haven't been figured out yet.

Well, I have an enormous problem that I have to get to — a truly insane and staggering backlog of work. I begin chiseling away at that now.

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WTF?

Thursday, December 4, 2003

Seriously, is there anyone who doesn't rip stuff off from BME and call it their own? While trying to track down a piercer named Kim Morin (anyone who has a reference on that, drop me a line) I stumbled across this PDF file on cocks… and I see this in the piercing section:

Thanks for the link guys, but stealing sketches from my old penis piercing 101 diagram, prettying them up a little, and claiming that you drew it (they claim copyright on it without any credit bylines) isn't really the coolest. Nice of them to mess up some of the definitions. What, you can rip of my pictures successfully, but then screw up the text?

All I ever usually ask of people is that they credit what they use. I even give permission to distribute the diagram freely. I do not however grant editing and alteration rights, or any other rights…

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Heh… More on the below…

Thursday, December 4, 2003

I thought the following entry theft by Rafti was pretty funny… The one on the left is written by me, the one on the right is stolen by him:

Xylocaine
Xylocaine (lidocaine) is one of the common kinds of anesthetic. In it's most popular form, it is a liquid injectable anesthetic, usually in a 2% or 1% strength solution. It is often combined with epinephrine.

It should be noted that xylocaine is, in most countries, by prescription only and may only be administered legally by doctors. Clients should be wary of any piercing studio that offers it in these countries.

 
Xylocaine
Xylocaine Also known as Lidocaine; is one of the common kinds of anesthetic. In its most popular form, it is a liquid injectable anesthetic, usually in a 2% or 1% strength solution. It is often combined with epinephrine.

Lidocaine toxicity can occur when a very large amount of Lidocaine is injected. A common procedure requiring vast amounts of Lidocaine is Super-Wet Technique Liposuction. It should be noted that Xylocaine is, in most countries, by prescription only and may only be administered legally by doctors.

What's funny about this particular entry is what he didn't steal from me, he stole from rhinoplasty4you.com. Note the two sentences starting Rafti's second paragrah. Now note this text from the plastic surgery site:


"Lidocaine toxicity is something that can occur with way too many injections of Lidocaine. A common procedure requiring vast amounts of Lidocaine is Tumescent and Super-Wet Technique Liposuction."

Sound familiar? It really gets me wondering whether Rafti wrote any of the text in this ebook.

I just can't figure out if Rafti's just got the biggest balls in the world and thinks he can get away with wholesale theft of other people's work, or if he's so self-deluded that he genuinely believes he wrote it… Sadly, I really do think it's the latter. The funny thing is that now he's threatening me for making false allegations about him.

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