Punderings

Could someone just wake me up when they make up their minds?  I mean, the incest between the various children of Ma Bell is well known, but at least it usually takes them a few years to merge and split and reproduce and be reincarnated as the original again.  But this time, it seems like our wireless bill switched for only a few months, and now it’s suddenly going back to the other name.  I forget which one; I mean I’m going to switch to Sprint (for the employee discount I get, not for any other real reason mind you) but I’m still curious.

Just wonderin’.  The power of marketing.  Molding the mind in the modern world.  One blog post at a time.

I’ve been swamped at work, and the weather has been on and off awful, but yikes.  Welcome back, self.  Even if this is just a lame link post to some very geeky humor – xkcd is actually quite entertaining, although the topics are almost as esoteric as Zippy.

Take that, RMS!

Oh, and I posted preliminary survey results.  Notice how I snuck that in under the radar? More details, um, in a week or so when I have time.  Will I see anyone in Toronto?

We spent yesterday inside, avoiding the storm.  It turned out OK, even though Amy and I both had some work to do and couldn’t just take a storm day playing games.

But this morning – we wake up, and the world is covered in white?  I seem to remember something like this in my childhood – somehow gloves are important, and there’s something called a ’sled’ that’s supposed to be fun.  But what do we call all that white stuff?  I know we’ve had it before, but that was years and years ago some winter past.  I thought we were almost done with this winter already!

(Think we’ll be close to the record with the least amount overall?)

Figured I’d write something in the calm between the storms for the weekend.  Not weather storms: haven’t really had any this winter.  I wouldn’t be surprised if we won both the warmest winter on record and the least snow on record for recorded history here.

It’s a little disappointing.  Sometime in late January it did get cold – bitterly so for a few days here and there.  But there’s no real snow on the ground to make all the cold worthwhile, and cover up all the salt and sand in the roads.  I wish I were a better photographer: some of the blooms from the dried salt washing down the sides of cars or across the sidewalk are very striking shapes.

No, the two storms are visitors.  Susan & Mark, plus little William and Helen, came to visit for the first half of the weekend.  It was great for Roxanne to have them to play with, and great for the adults to sit and relax, at least whenever they weren’t actually screaming.  But they’re driving home, and as soon as Roxanne gets up from her nap, the “Other” “Aunt” Susan will be coming to visit.  Hi Susan!  Thanks for coming over again!  Roxanne already wants to do her new horse puzzle with you – I hope you like it.

Thank goodness I finally remembered the right way in SSH + Thunderbird to send apache.org mail; somehow my eyes just don’t see the Local vs. Remote radio button properly and I was forwarding the ports in the wrong direction.  Hey, I should see if I can add that to the site /dev documentation…

Many thanks to the 60 or so folks who have taken my survey over the weekend!

Many thanks to the 50-ish folks who have already responded to my SurveyMonkey survey about the attitudes of the ASF community towards corporate participation.  Eventual results will be posted to my public FOSSSurvey page.

If you are an ASF committer or a regular contributor to any ASF project, I’d love your honest input, immaterial of your employer.  One survey per person please, and do answer all the questions to find the Free Beer at the end of the survey.  If you don’t already have it, email ‘me’ at shane.curcuru.name and I’ll send you the survey link; this way I can ensure that only active contributors take the survey.

Special thanks to community@ for responding nicely.  I’m still a little disappointed in the first community I asked to take the survey with their response rate.  Geez, folks, I expected better than 10% response from you.

The successful use of the Inigo’s following quote from The Princess Bride in an internet discussion [usenet | mailing lists | irc | etc] is proof that the person you are responding to is demonstrating a complete lack of clue.

You keep using that word — I do not think it means what you think it means.

See Godwin’s Law and of course The Princess Bride.
The title needs some work, since clearly acronynimizing the title of the law should produce a humourous and pronounceable word.  Inspired by an actual event.