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Evening Chuckle

I saw this one on a friend’s FB page, and I immediately thought of Calvin’s Mom over at The Transmogrifier Files.

It also reminds me of my time working as an usher at one of the local theaters to pay for Junior Bear’s band class.  One of our main responsibilities was to make sure that no-one was recording the concerts, plays, and such.  This meant having to ask people to put away their phones.  It was amazing how many people can’t go an hour without sending a text, and how devious they would try to be in order to do it.

include <RIP.h>

Today I learned that Dennis Ritchie, another person who created the technology that has greatly influenced my life, has died:

Ritchie is credited with creating the programming language C, one of the most widely used and influential languages today. He was also one of the creators of operating system UNIX, whose variants — most notably Linux and OS X — are also widely used today.

I’ve been using and taking care of Unix systems since 1990, and was using computer programs written in C long before that.  It’s the technology that I use to make my living, and I don’t think that’s going to change for a very long time.  Yes, there are a lot of newer languages and OS’s out there, but almost all of them are either based on something that Ritchie created or borrow concepts from his work.  There’s something comforting and home-like about getting into a command shell on a Unix box, be it Solaris, HPUX, AIX, or Linux.

Rest in peace, Mr. Ritchie.  An entire generation of geeks owes a lot to you.

#include <stdio.h>

int main (void)
{
printf("Hello, world!\n");
return 0;
}

Thoughts for the Day

  • If your breakfast was a bag of potato chips eaten with ketchup and mayonnaise (not me, I promise), then don’t be surprised that you’re drinking water like there’s no tomorrow.  Also, please stop sharing.  Really, just stop.
  • If you find a problem during testing, but don’t tell anyone about it, you forfeit the right to be outraged when the same problem causes issues after the production rollout.
  • Yes, water is falling from the sky.  Can we at least go as fast as the speed limit?
  • There are precisely 5 people on the planet to whom I have granted the privilege of telling me what to do in exchange for a paycheck.  Odds are, you’re not one of them.

Today’s Earworm

Marko brings the funny

Marko over at The Munchkin Wrangler has an outrageously funny story that I truly hope is a foreshadowing of how I’ll spend my 150th birthday.  Lord knows that the future he predicts is probably pretty close to what’s going to happen.  All the danger and flavor of life is being bleached out by people who’ve never had an adrenaline rush or a hangover.

News Roundup

  • From the “Anyone Can Sue Anyone” Department – A woman in Texas is suing three airlines for a flight that had bad turbulence.  She claims that she feared for her life and is traumatized.  Does this mean I can sue every helicopter and C-130 pilot who tried his ‘nap of the earth’ flying while I was on board?  Nothing says ‘rough ride’ like a UH-1 being smacked on the undercarriage by the tops of trees.
  • From the “15 Months to Go”  Department – First Lady Obama says that she sneaks away from the White House as often as she can, which she asserts gives her a bit of normalcy.  Yeah, normal like every woman has when she’s driven in armored SUV’s, surrounded by security, and photographed by paid journalists.  I hope Mrs. Obama enjoys her excursions, because she will probably be getting a lot of chances after January 2013.
  •  From the “Cameron’s Dad’s Car” Department – A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the government.  It appears that an FBI agent was taking a Ferrari that was being held as evidence out for a spin and totalled it.  The judge says that the government can’t be held responsible for damage to things being held by law enforcement.  The image I have is two guys giving the Ferrari a workout on the streets of Lexington while “Born to be Wild” plays through the sound system.  
  • From the “Here We Go” Department – Police in Germany have found three incendiary devices on rail tracks, one of which exploded and did damage.  A leftist group has claimed responsibility and is demanding that accused WikiLeaks spy Bradley Manning be released.  Hopefully these guys are caught before anyone gets hurt.  Personally, I’m hoping that the law of averages and their own stupidity turns them into a headline when a bomb explodes as they’re assembling it.
  • From the “Cell, Inmate, Some Assembly Required” Department – The Nigerian man who tried to blow up an airliner with explosives hidden in his underwear has pled guilty to 8 counts related to the incident.  He’s facing life in prison, and I hope it’s spent in a place built before the theory of rehabilitation being superior to punishment was put into practice.  His little escapade is the rationale for wide use of pervo-tron scanners and ‘enhanced’ pat-downs.

Trouble in Perpetual Motion

An unnamed contributor over at Skippy’s List describes how an industrious dolt is always more dangerous than a lazy genius:

No more than maybe fifteen minutes go by and I hear my team leader screaming again, “what the f*** are you doing?!” There sits a very confused soldier getting his ass handed to him again. Somehow in the last fifteen minutes he had forgotten that the user name and password were labeled on the keyboard in front of his face, and got frustrated that his network log in wasn’t working. To remedy this he decided the issue was that there was no Ethernet cable plugged in so he found one and tried to plug it in, but then he noticed an obstruction in the port so he whipped out his trusty Gerber and removed it. He then commenced to try and log into the network with an unauthorized computer…our Ethernet switch was just down and we had to move offices.

(Edited for language.)

I hope that the soldier in question was put on human waste destruction detail for a while.

Reminds me of my first job in military IT.  I was tasked with crawling under the floors of our facilities to find unauthorized modems and telephone cables.  Seems that someone had been caught connecting a modem and unsecure telephone line to his classified work computer so that he could work on his classified reports at home, so we had to do a phyisical audit of all of our buildings to make sure no-one else had done it.  Nothing like the deep-lung irritation of 30 year old dust under 18 to 24 inch high suspended floors to make that morning PT run a real picnic.  At least the only critters I found were old snake skins.  Big ones.  Like make me jump up through the floor tiles whether there’s a hole there or not big.  Ahhh, memories.

Thought for the Day

My new short term goal is to reach a point in my life where I can treat the children like children and the adults like adults, and expect that they will each act accordingly.

Today’s Earworm

Today’s Earworm

This is from MTV’s old program “Unplugged”.  I’d never heard of this group before they did the show, and I ran out and got their CD the next day.  Unplugged was one of the last things I watched regularly on MTV.  I really like hearing what artists really sound like and seeing if they have the musical talent they claim to have.