April 2006 Archives

Brian just posted a list of weird search terms that result in his site being listed in various search engines. I never cease to be amused by what shows up in my logs as well, such as the following:

• I’m the most authoritative site in the world on “dumb birds”.

• People wanting to know about the history of the PDA are doubtlessly disappointed that my page on the matter describes my “PDA history”

• My collection of E-Mail forwards (under the humor page) is pretty popular.

• A very short review that I wrote about a Behringer microphone is consistently in the list of top ten reasons why people visit this site.

• A joke picture I posted, demonstrating the difference between where I’m from and a city in Florida that I’m not even going to mention here for fear of continuing to delude people, is still drawing people to this site needlessly, despite my having taken it down out of sympathy to the viewing public some two years ago.

• “simms code for money” was an interesting one. Do I get any of the money in exchange for the code??

• “what is a deef” — I’m sure this one was sufficiently answered. I’ve actually had several people write me about that. We should form a society of people nicknamed Deef.

• A Microsoft Publisher tip that I spent far too long tracking down seems to be useful for other people (if you try and mail merge more than ten records, Publisher sends each one as a separate job; Publisher does not send your print settings with each job, however, so your first ten records come out properly in black and white, double-sided, on green paper, followed by the next 190 records single-sided, in color, on white paper).

• “deef killer” — aah!

• “portable sound system” shows up fairly often. I’m glad — there seem to be very few sites that are useful on the matter. Mine needs updating, and maybe more notes.

• And, my personal favorite: “figaro figaro figaro figaro figaro” (second page of a quoted search). :-)

I must be the only person who, wanting to know which name is behind a particular DND (Dartmouth Name Directory) alias, instinctively goes to a shell and telnets into the server’s DND port to run a LOOKUP command…

That’s roughly akin to telnetting to port 110 on your mail server and running a LIST command to see if you have any new mail. (Confession: I’ve done that, too, but I use SSH and pine nowadays when I’m not on one of my main computers. Occasionally, I’ll even use web mail.)

I have no idea if I’m going to do this every day while I’m away, but I’m two for two at this point.

One thing I meant to mention yesterday:

• If the tide in Florida changed the sea level as much as the tide in parts of Maine, Florida would likely only be habitable roughly 12 hours out of every 24.

On to today’s commentary:

• It takes way too long to get anywhere in a city. Granted, there are more interesting places to go, but at home, I can get just about anywhere I need to go in roughly 10 minutes. Here, I’m lucky if I’ve made it through the second traffic light by then. Also, I’ve noticed that Florida drivers try to overcome this problem by regularly going 10-25 mph over the speed limit, and tend to use traffic lights as general guidelines. Apparently, in Florida, right-on-red is allowed all the time (confirmed by the person behind me at one point, who honked when I came to a full and complete stop at a red light in the right-turn lane) and left-on-red is allowed if you’re one of the first three or four cars after the red light appears. Given that you’ll be waiting 3-4 minutes if you just miss your green light, I have some sympathy for this practice.

• Car navigation systems are still really nice. However, no navigation system will help you find Bookstore #1, which recently closed all of its stores, or Bookstore #3, when you type in the address for Bookstore #2, which was a part of the same chain as Bookstore #1, and therefore also closed. Even so, I have no worry about getting lost (if the system were to die, I’d be in some trouble, but I have a paper map of the area as well, just in case).

• Navigation system advisory #1: always choose “quickest route.” Otherwise, you may end up with the situation I encountered when choosing “most use of freeways”:

  1. Turn right onto 275 N.
  2. Continue 6 miles.
  3. Exit, then bear left onto SR 53.
  4. Continue 200 feet.
  5. Turn left onto 275 S.
  6. Continue 1 mile.
  7. Exit, then bear right onto some other route.

• Navigation system advisory #2: Hertz’ navigation systems can be reset to recalculate the same route with “quickest route” by pressing “Cancel .. Left .. Enter .. Cancel .. Down .. Down .. Enter .. Enter .. Enter”.

• Favorite quote of the day (from a Christian culture radio station): “Spirit FM. Like reality TV … if reality TV weren’t worthless drivel and actually had a point!” I immediately thought of Ryan. :-) The intonation was perfect.

• Wingate Inn is continuing to win my affection. They are also the first hotel to treat “do not disturb” as “do not disturb,” rather than “do not disturb until we’re finished cleaning all of the other rooms, after which point we’ll disturb you anyway and act real annoyed that you’re not letting us clean your room.” Instead, they stick a little note under your door saying that it’s their policy to respect the “do not disturb” sign, and you can either contact the front desk before 2pm if you want your room cleaned, or call and ask for fresh towels at any time.

• I finished re-reading Revelation today (it’s been a while). As a rare instance of outstanding prophecy in the New Testament, it’s interesting how it practically compels you to try and compare current events to what’s written, or at least consider how certain word pictures might look in today’s world. (For what it’s worth: my only experience with the Left Behind series was an abridged audio version of the first book three years ago, so I don’t have to deal with that account — or any other, for that matter — limiting my imagination.)

• I’m reading “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves” as well. When you get strange looks from people at a restaurant wondering why you’re sitting at a table, alone, and laughing out loud, explaining that you’re reading a hilarious chapter about apostrophes is probably not going to be helpful. I’ll be reading about commas tomorrow, in all likelihood.

Are there any out there? Christine, at least, hasn’t had any luck finding any, and she’s taking/taken courses in chemistry and psychology, where there were plenty of people who espoused the view as being obvious and without contest, but who were unable to defend it in any way other than to say that it’s obvious and uncontestable (hardly a convincing argument).

I admittedly haven’t looked very hard for evolutionists, but I certainly haven’t found any who’ve put time into thinking it through.

Are you one? If so, let me know, so we can reason it through together. But first, make sure you meet the following criteria:

• You must not be accepting the theory of evolution by faith alone, blindly.

• You must be able to provide reasonable arguments for the theory of evolution. Skip the pretty monkey-to-man diagrams found in high school textbooks unless you have further documentation demonstrating convincing links between the various reference points, rather than isolated bone fragments.

• You must be willing to avoid dropping to the level of name-calling and personal attacks. I’ve seen a number of debates between Christian and not-Christian “academics,” and the not-Christian has unfailingly resorted to personal attacks when confronted with a reasoned argument. Don’t do that.

• You must be willing and able to write in readily understandable English, and not hide behind arbitrarily excessive pseudoacademic obfuscation (a.k.a. big words). Language suitable for someone with a good college degree is fine, but if you can’t explain it when needed, you have no argument.

• You must be able to provide and explain your theory of the origin of the universe. Just saying “Big Bang” isn’t enough — you need to provide some reasonable explanation of how nothing can explode and produce everything, if in fact that’s your theory.

• You don’t need to know everything. Both of us will have the right (and possibly the expectation) to research answers to the other’s challenges.

For my part, I’m no expert on anything, but the whole theory of evolution seems utterly absurd — a crutch, if you will, to help explain away some behavior that we may or may not like, but silly when examined under the lens of reason and science.

Since that’s almost exactly the charge that’s leveled against Christianity these days, I would expect that it could result in an engaging and enlightening E-Mail conversation.

But first, there has to be someone who’s willing and qualified to accept the challenge.

Highlights of the day:

• Everything went smoothly. The biggest drawback was that I ended up being at the airport over three hours early so as to not just be there an hour and a half early. It meant that there was absolutely no rush, though, which was nice.

• Dartmouth Coach showed a movie called “Proof”. I recommend it, especially if you’re a geek (math or otherwise), or have pondered how close uber-rationalism and insanity are to each other, and how you can’t prove to someone that they’re insane (or the opposite — go ahead, try it sometime). It’s similar in some ways to the movie “pi”, minus the gore and cult references, making it a much nicer one to watch.

• Delta/Song Airways was very good. Professional, courteous, and friendly.

• Seat 10F is the best seat on the plane (Boeing 757). There’s not enough room for a seat in front of you, but there’s a ton of space, so I was able to kick back the whole way. (I imagine 10A is the same way, what with the plane being symmetrical and all, but I didn’t look).

• In-flight entertainment. Among other things that can be done (for free), you can see where the plane is on a map (first time I’ve seen that on an in-continent flight) and play a multiple-choice trivia game against the other passengers on the flight. I’m bad at trivia, though I did have enough luck to pull off #6 or so during one of the rounds.

• Song Airways’ “this is how you wear your seatbelt, etc.” demonstration is hilarious. I really hope they’re doing it tongue-in-cheek, but they took a new agey approach, complete with a recorded female voice that could have come straight out of a yoga video. One particularly amusing quote: “Smoking is bad for your chi, and is therefore prohibited on this flight.”

• Rental cars with navigation systems are so much easier than trying to read a map and drive at the same time.

• So far, the Wingate Inn is more than living up to its hype as being tailored to business travelers. Very friendly desk staff, good-sized rooms, free wireless Internet that works, free access to printer and fax machine, fridge and microwave in every room, and a desk chair that actually adjusts to be at the appropriate height for working on a laptop at the desk! I’ve never been in a hotel room that’s gotten that last one right.

Quite a good start to this working vacation, in my opinion.

Why must smoke detectors start complaining about having low batteries (every minute) at 2:30 in the morning?

I just came across one of those letters…

Eye halve a spelling check her; It came with my pea sea. It plane lee marks four my revue Miss steaks aye kin knot sea. Eye ran this poem threw it Your sure reel glad two no. Its vary polished in it’s weigh, My checker tolled me sew. A check her is a bless sing; It freeze yew lodes of thyme. It helps me right awl stiles two reed, And aides me when aye rime. Each frays come posed up on my screen Eye trussed too bee a joule; The checker pours o’er every word To cheque sum spelling rule. Bee fore wee rote with checkers Hour spelling was inn deck line, Butt now when wee dew have a laps, Wee are knot maid too wine. Butt now bee cause my spelling Is checked with such grate flare, Their are know faults with in my cite, Of nun eye am a wear. Now spelling does knot phase me, It does knot bring a tier; My pay purrs awl due glad den With wrapped words fare as hear. To rite with care is quite a feet Of witch won should be proud; And wee mussed dew da best wee can Sew flaws are knot aloud. That’s why eye brake in two averse Cuz eye dew want too please. Sow glad eye yam that aye did bye This soft wear four pea seas.

Twice now, in the past week, I’ve had customers approve letters or make payments so quickly that I’ve wondered if I’ve accidentally done it myself.

Case in point: I just sent a “your preview is online for your review” message to two customers, went back to my worklist, and found that the job for the first customer was already back in my “needs attention” list. I had to stop for a moment to figure out if I’d actually moved it to the “waiting for response” list or accidentally approved it myself (something I do when people E-Mail me an “ok” rather than using the web site).

In other news, I’m in the market for office space. I’d really like to be able to find something on the bus route from Dartmouth (if not in easy walking distance), but I’m not sure how much of a premium I’m willing to pay for that. There is space available that qualifies — I just need to succeed in getting in contact with the people who are leasing it (to be fair, I’ve only tried twice, both times this morning, and didn’t leave a message).

Challenge #1: What does the following one-liner do?

grep -re '^ *use ' * | perl -pe '$_ = [split /:/, $_, 2]->[1]' | sort --unique

Challenge #2: Do you know of a shorter way of doing this? (I don’t… I played briefly with awk instead of Perl, but I don’t know how to get it to use the delimiter once only. I bet there’s some obscure option for grep that would eliminate the need for the perl pipe.)

Hint: I’m going to a conference this weekend to promote prayerletters.us, and just found out that I won’t have Internet access in the conference room, if the hotel web site is to be believed. Kinda wish I’d checked earlier, but it means bringing down a server with the web site software on it, for the purpose of providing a demo.

… you look at flights to a particular conference, and see that the first option has a stop in Beijing, and the second has a stop in London.

You also know that you’re flying around the world when the cost for coach is more than the cost for first class in the US.