Category: Weird

In her blog, Eike Rathke of the OpenOffice team skewers the idiots in Texas who want to ban suggestive cheerleading: “Why don’t they just burn some of them as it would be appropriate in God’s own country obeying God’s own laws?” Indeed. If you really believe in infallible, unalterable religious texts, you can’t afford to pick and choose.

(Plus Eike includes a really cool Manga animated GIF….)

In conjunction with getting my new car, we decided to donate my Mazda Miata to charity (specifically to the Lupus Foundation of America). After filling out a form on their website, we were contacted by the company that handles the transport for them (and many other charities, I imagine), and they came to take it away. Just two more things to do: cancel the insurance, and take the plates back to the Registry of Motor Vehicles. It turns out that the former depends on the latter, so tomorrow morning I’ll be stopping in at the Watertown RMV to return the plates.

While I was at the RMV website, checking on opening times and so forth, I started thinking about whether to get a custom, “vanity” license plate for the new car. Here in Massachusetts, the rules for cars are simple: 2-6 letters, letters that might be confused with digits can only be used in “recognizable words”, and nothing “inappropriate”. (You can use digits, but there are too many restrictions – they want to keep their options open.) And you can check online to see which combinations might be available. To my surprise, all of the following were reportedly free:

GEOFF
GEOFFA
EVOLVE
EVOLTN
EVLUTN
DARWIN
SECULR
HHGTTG

Hmmmm……

UPDATE: I’m going to apply for EVOLVE. They shouldn’t have any problem with that….

UPDATE: It turns out that EVOLVE had (just) been taken. Curses, foiled again…! So I went with my second choice, DARWIN. Quite apart from affirming evolution through natural selection, and celebrating one of the most influential scientists in history, there’s a nice Mac geek connection too.

I always thought that teacher training included basic skills in coping with wayward children. I wasn’t aware that it was acceptable practice to call the police to handcuff a 5-year old who’s throwing a tantrum. (Note that two staff were present, including an assistant principal, and a camera was rolling.)
[And yes, I know that a teacher can easily get into trouble for simply trying to enforce discipline. But this cure is worse than the disease. Mad. All mad.]

According to the Guardian: “Google is celebrating the first birthday of its free email service Gmail by doubling users’ capacity to two gigabytes, with a promise to boost its email storage further in future.” Sounds good. But why does my Gmail page say that I have only 1479MB? Am I not worthy?:

UPDATE: Thanks to Robin and Mark for pointing out that Google is doling out the additional space a few megabytes at a time. I’m now up to 1540 MB, and there’s a cute graphic on the Gmail login page that explains what’s going on. To infinity and beyond, I guess…..

Arriving at Google this morning for a routine search, I noticed that they were highlighting a new feature, Google Local. “I wonder what kind of local resources they cover,” I thought, and I tried a few sample entries. Plumbers? Boring. Restaurants? Lots of them. Escort agencies? The first result was the Free Software Foundation. Hmmm. And the second result was for the local Veterans’ Hospital. Career opportunities for those returing from Iraq? Earth to Google….
[Click image for screenshot]

Words fail me.
[Curiously, a Google for “Duppy card” came up with 17 hits, all as part of this joke, and it’s not clear who was the original author. Welcome to the web.]

Just stumbled across J!NX, a delightfully bizarre collection of l33t T-shirts. I can imagine wearing at least half of them to work…. Favourites: Computers are fun and useful, Your skill in Reading has increased by 1 point (one for the Fellowship, I fancy), It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. (how I spent the early 1980s), and neurochemistry hacker. Very cool. (Even the gross and edgy stuff.)

I’m glad Alec checked out the Reality drama at the Creation Museum, so I don’t have to. Too much for me in my flu-weakened state 🙂

(Via CIDOMLB.)

As all news-junkies will know, the press is reporting that: “Police zeroed in on Lisa Montgomery [by] tracing an IP address, 65.150.168.223, to a computer at her Melvern, Kan., home.” Which reminds me of a recent trip to California….

I was at San Jose airport, en route for Boston, and I was wearing my favourite ThinkGeek t-shirt: the one that says "There's no place like 127.0.0.1". As I was waiting in line at Starbucks, a PHB type walked past, read my shirt, and said, “Hey, that’s cool. Is that the IP address of your website?” And since I have no shame, I replied with a straight face, “Yes it is. And it’s the address of your website… and his (pointing), and hers (pointing), and Yahoo!, and….” And I walked up and ordered my usual quadruple espresso macchiato, leaving the poor guy looking terminally confused.

(Via BoingBoing.)