brett's logjam

jwz - the interminable Linux USB/CF saga.

frontline: secret history of the credit card | PBS

Updated, after some delay: email stats.

I’m now wandering between all three of our DC area offices, so I bit the bullet and got a universal (voice, fax, cell) number to follow me about. It’s on my contact page.

Now I just need to update my traffic page for all three commutes…

We were having a nice quiet evening in the living room when Merrystar looked up and said:

“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but can you please go in the other room and watch The O.C.? It’s hard to concentrate on scheduling a survey when someone’s muttering Old English in the room.”

I couldn’t very well argue that point.

Because everyone needs a pronunciation guide by their bed (per section 2.7): anglo-saxon muttering.

More helpful OE links:

• Declension in English
• Old English
• Instrumental Case
• Introduction to Old English
• The Origins of Old English

Some books I’m currently going through:

• A Guide to Old English
• A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary
• Finn and Hengest
• On Translating Beowulf in The Monsters and the Critics

jwz - how Google Maps works

U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Findings:

More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been directed to alter official findings to lessen protections for plants and animals, a survey released Wednesday says.

The survey of the agency’s scientific staff of 1,400 had a 30% response rate and was conducted jointly by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

ABC News: Silicon Insider: R.I.P. Microsoft?

So what I take away from this browser speed comparison site is very different from the author’s conclusion: Lynx remains the fastest browser out there. Hooray!

My very good friend Claire recognized my need as an expectant father and sent me to the The Baby Name Voyager. I firmly believe that Java may make the decision easier. Or it may suck up several hours of my night tonight. We’ll see.

So Jim’s post about scrolling up for more is even funnier than you thought.

Jim and I work at the same company, which is a strange thing to mention because we don’t actually work together — he’s Finance, I’m Ops — but that’s how I know Jim. He came up to me one day and told me sotto voce that he understood I had a blog. One mixes weblogs and work very carefully.

Quick aside: some time later I heard him use ‘kitbashed’ to refer to a spreadsheet, a term which was greeted with some skepticism from our co-workers. I backed him up and assured them that not only was it a valid term, but that they were the odd ones for not knowing it. I mean, who doesn’t know about kitbashes?

Unfortunately, I may have used some or all of the following phrases in my defense which probably didn’t help either: Star Trek, Wolf 359, Best of Both Worlds, Dan Curry. I had the best intentions?

So, because Jim and I talk about anything but work at work (Battlestar Galactica, BitTorrent, Firefox, spy blimps), one day he asked me why my site is backwards from everyone else’s. There was a reason, of course — since the posts are anchored on monthly pages, it makes more sense to order those pages in forward chronological order. That way, you can start at a given point and read forward. (And if I was going to order the months that way, I may as well put the category pages in that order too.) If you wanted the latest entry, you could jump to it directly and then work your way up to see what came before it.

It makes sense, honest.

Jim doggedly pursued my reasoning and pointed out that on most pages (of any sort) you read down, not up, and that on a weblog you want to see the new stuff first. I persisted that when reading large numbers of posts, or posts spread out over long periods of time (as my infrequent readers often do), it’s easier to start at a given point and read forwards, down the page, month after month. Reverse chronology would mean they’d start at the end of a month and go down to the beginning, which spoils the flow of the story. C’mon - you already know what happens next!

Obviously, I thought Jim had a point, as that night I added the most recent entries — in reverse order — to the index. But the month and category pages I left alone, because it makes sense to me that way. (The category pages lasted until I tried to find something new in the Home Network category and I had to wait for the whole page to load. I flipped the order around without too much regret after that.) So even though I conceeded the point, you still have to scroll up to see more on this site.

And that’s why Jim’s post is even funnier than you thought.

Old school: Empire of the Petal Throne.

Crypto-Gram: February 15, 2005

Yahoo! News - ID Theft Scam Hits D.C. Area Residents

Wow. Anyone else really impressed by Bo on American Idol tonight?

Uh oh.

Anyone know a good siding repair contractor in the DC area?

(I will not say: ‘I’m beside myself.’ No matter how tempting it is.)

What with the recent identity theft scams going about, I thought it prudent to go through my and Merrystar’s credit reports again. (Talk about an evening of fun! American Idol and Experian!)

Helpful sites:

• US Department of Justice’s page on Identity Theft
• Privacy Clearinghouse: ChoicePoint response (well done)
• CALPRIG’s Consumer Protection page.

In the meantime, I can’t wait for the Annual Credit Report legislation to get to the Northeast, even if their website uses absurd security theater. (e.g. forcing visitors to type in the link to access the site, just because a certain cough browser cough IE cough has an unfixed address spoofing bug, instead of recommending an actual fix, like using Mozilla? Pure theater. But I digress.)

Residents of the western and mid-western states can already order free reports from the Big Three credit bureaus; DC will be ready in September. Joy.

The internet is a strange, strange place.

Some friends of ours occasionally invite a group of us out to swanky places we’ve never been in D.C.. This month, they chose Komi in Dupont Circle. I googled the place and wondered if there was anything there I could actually eat. (Food allergies make swanky places interesting.)

I’m looking at this blog review of Komi when suddenly I recognized the face on the page.

“I think I work with this guy,” I told Merrystar. And indeed, I do.

Google makes for a small world. Hello, Jason, and congratulations on your Valentine’s day gift.

(Still haven’t decided if there’s anything I can eat at Komi’s - I distract easily some nights.)

Yahoo! Finance Special Edition: The Joy of Living Frugally.

A little old, but appropriate given the recent news stories — Hacker breaches T-Mobile systems, reads US Secret Service email:

The government is handling the case well away from the spotlight. The US Secret Service, which played the dual role of investigator and victim in the drama, said Tuesday it couldn’t comment on Jacobsen because the agency doesn’t discuss ongoing cases - a claim that’s perhaps undermined by the 19 other Operation Firewall defendants discussed in a Secret Service press release last fall. Jacobsen’s prosecutor, assistant US attorney Wesley Hsu, also declined to comment. “I can’t talk about it,” Hsu said simply. Jacobsen’s lawyer didn’t return a phone call.

T-Mobile, which apparently knew of the intrusions by July of last year, has not issued any public warning. Under California’s anti-identity theft law “SB1386,” the company is obliged to notify any California customers of a security breach in which their personally identifiable information is “reasonably believed to have been” compromised. That notification must be made in “the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay,” but may be postponed if a law enforcement agency determines that the disclosure would compromise an investigation.

Firefox 1.0.1 is out, with some bug fixes, at the usual places.

jwz - “and furthermore…”

I love it! Groupware BAD, Users GOOD, Calendars USEFUL:

Nat was in town, and he stopped by to say hi and chat, and he said, “So we’ve got this big pile of code we’re going to release, and we’re going to build an open source groupware system! It’s going to be awesome!”

And I said, “Jesus Mother of Fuck, what are you thinking! Do not strap the ‘Groupware’ albatross around your neck! That’s what killed Netscape, are you insane?” He looked at me like I’d just kicked his puppy.

…

So I said, narrow the focus. Your “use case” should be, there’s a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?

That got me a look like I had just sprouted a third head, but bear with me, because I think that it’s not only crude but insightful. “How will this software get my users laid” should be on the minds of anyone writing social software (and these days, almost all software is social software).

“Social software” is about making it easy for people to do other things that make them happy: meeting, communicating, and hooking up.

…

And then Nat went back to whichever flyover state Novell is in, and a few days later he said to me, “wow, you really bummed me out, because the dozen other people I had talked to before you were all like, `a free groupware system, that’s an awesome idea!’ Then you depressed me, and I came back here and told the other guys what you had said, and they were all, `Oh, fuck. He’s right.’”

Wait, was there a funny part? Ok, maybe not. Nevermind.