Monthly Archive for March, 2008

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Happy Evacuation Day!

Published on March 17, 2008 in Local. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Since I’m something of a local history buff I like to commemorate local holidays, even if they’re only celebrated in Suffolk county.

Wikipedia has a reasonable description of Evacuation Day, but I’ve really come to like the historic details and deeper research that J.L. Bell provides in the excellent Boston 1775 history and gossip blog.

I’m never really sure how much of the modern celebration of Evacuation Day is because of it’s history, as opposed to it being co-located with St. Patrick’s day, since Boston was the first city to have a St. Patrick’s Day Parade, at least on this side of the pond. It often feels like it’s still a local holiday (all Commonwealth government offices get it off) mostly so that locals can attend the parades.

Wow! There’s actually an entire domain name devoted to the celebrations in 2007, although don’t bother clicking through, since they never really updated the site or provide much information about the Boston aspects, more focusing on the cannon’s journey thereto. But you do have to check out the Irish Stormtroopers.

Irish Stormtroopers

Published on March 16, 2008 in Local. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Only in Boston do the scout Stormtroopers wear the shamrock. HT to UniversalHub’s “Erin go blam“, all things Boston.

I will not run alloy wheels in winter. I will not ..

Published on March 13, 2008 in Tangents. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

.. run alloy wheels when it’s snowing. I will not run alloy wheels during pothole season, especially in New England. I will not ignore the advice of my mechanic, my body shop, my car friend: to never run alloy wheels in the winter. I will not let vanity get the best of me; I will be content with plain black fixable steel rims in the winter.

Oh great gods of winter; of snow; of New England; of potholes; of wheels and tires and cars; I beg you to forgive me my vanity; nay, my hubris, of running my (previously four in number), very pretty and light 5 open spoke O.Z. Racing alloy 15in wheels for the past two winters.

I have heard your clarion call, er, thunk, as I pass over your signs: potholes, frost heaves, uneven pavement, gravel in the road. I have felt the soft squishy drive of a flat tire. I have suffered the shakes, shimmies, and shudders of wheels that are no longer round, nay, of wheels that are ovals. I have dreaded being late for everything as I see the bulge of a slowly leaking tire.

I hear and feel your call; now I understand. I am but human: vanity is in my nature; hubris is my kind’s unavoidable curse. I beg to be forgiven my past transgressions. I pray that my remaining three Blizzaks – wondrous tires of snow – shall be allowed to serve me again for the next winter. I acknowledge and pledge that I will install them onto wheels of steel in the future.

After I buy a new fourth tire, of course.

For Sale: one O.Z. Racing 15in rim, round. Open 5 spoke design; spokes have a smoothly rounded face and a slight taper. Silver paint finish (original). Slight curb gouge on edge.

For Sale: two O.Z. Racing 15in rims, oval. Open 5 spoke design; spokes have a smoothly rounded face and a slight taper. Silver paint finish (original). One good condition; one with slight curb rash. Not recommended for daily driver. Or any driving at all, actually.

Wrong, Wrong, All Wrong Your Chart Is!

Published on March 10, 2008 in Geekery. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Yesterday’s op-ed in the NYT features a graphic that purports to be a flowchart leading from early exposure to D&D to roleplaying in the modern world using Google. The number of obvious errors in this picture clearly show that the author was not using a structured editor, because clearly it could never compile in even the laxest of flowchart editors, having multiple “Yes” elements for decision nodes, poor color coding without clear categorization, endless loops, and a clear disalignment of his oscillation overthruster.

I’ll have to leave a full analysis of the picture’s (I can’t in all honesty call it a flowchart, being an engineer myself) shortcomings as an exercise to the reader. At least there’s one small bit of sense – in the conceptual sense, clearly not the syntactic sense – in the node preceeding the multiple “No” nodes.

Anyway, we don’t game alone – we have quite a crowd – and recently we’ve been doing it at the dining room table, not the basement. So that node is clearly wrong too. Doesn’t the NYT know how to use validation checking on their diagram editors?

HT to BigHeadDennis.

World Time Alert: US just Sprang Forward

Published on March 9, 2008 in Local. 0 Comments Tags: , .

A friendly reminder to all our non-US friends: this morning was the (new) weekend that the US springs clocks forward to swap to daylight savings time, so for the next few weeks we’re going to be off one extra hour from whatever you expected us to be. Until the rest of the world does it’s mostly-coordinated spring forward, at least.

A wonderful decision just two years ago to change the DST switchovers – just by a few weeks – made by the only kind of group that can bother to create such annual havoc for virtually no benefit: elected officials. Sigh.

Send in your CFP’s now, please!

Published on March 7, 2008 in ApacheCon. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Congratulations to Christian, for being the first to submit an ApacheCon US 2008 CFP – mere hours after they opened – and to Bruce Snyder for posting the 20th CFP submission earlier this week.

To the rest of our past ApacheCon speakers, and everyone new who’d like to speak – get your ApacheCon CFP‘s in, please! We’ll have a lot of space and session tracks available in New Orleans, so we need plenty of content. Now I know that many of you traditionally wait for the last second to send in your CFP’s – why, I’m not quite sure, unless it’s to make me grey before my time. But please – in many cases you already know what you can talk about, and the CFP just needs to be the title and abstract! Please don’t make me bite my nails for the next three weeks waiting for the graph of CFP’s to pick up!

Remember, the CFP closes before ApacheCon Europe at the start of April!

Congratulations Rich and Ken on being /.d

Published on March 5, 2008 in Geekery. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Courtesy of Slashdot book reviews, Ken and Rich‘s Apache Cookbook second edition. Coming from these long-time contributors, you know it’s good.

He failed his final save

Published on March 5, 2008 in Geekery. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Gary Gygax, creator of the original Dungeons & Dragons and a legendary (if sometimes controversial) figure in the world of role playing games, failed his saving throw vs. death yesterday.

Our condolences. Expect a wide variety of ceremonies commemorating his achievements and his passing around the world. 8-(

(Thx to BigHeadDennis for being the first to help me make my perception roll on this one.)