Category: Uncategorized

Nothing to see here. Just claiming my feed at Bloglines.

for your hair:

Many hair professionals are surprised and praised at our high technology! You can be a professional with Unix. There is no more advanced hair dryer.

And you thought it was only an operating system.

In an AP story, Scott Bauer writes of a sex offender spared prison because of his height:

A judge’s decision to sentence a 5-foot-1 man to probation instead of prison for sexually assaulting a child has angered crime victim advocates who say the punishment sends the wrong message.

As if the sentence itself isn’t disturbing enough, here’s the really bizarre part:

But Joe Mangano, secretary of the National Organization of Short Statured Adults, agreed with the judge’s assessment that Thompson would face dangers while in prison because of his height.

I’m assuming a short inmate would have a much more difficult time than a large inmate, said Mangano, who is five fee, four inches tall. It’s good to see somebody looking out for someone who is a short person.

God forbid that prison should be difficult for anybody, especially men convicted of sexually assaulting 12-year-old girls.

I’m a big fan of del.icio.us. I use it to bookmark practically everything that I find interesting on the web.

Del.icio.us has what they call a “thingy” that supposedly can be used to post your latest bookmarks to your blog every day. Such a tool would save me some time posting, this being a blog that obstensibly links to interesting stuff around the web. Sadly, I haven’t been able to get it to work with Blogger.

Today I noticed that Feedburner, who serves the feed for this site, has a service that will post a daily digest of one’s latest del.icio.us bookmarks interleaved with the rest of one’s feed. I signed up for it, immediately.

The digest won’t appear on this website, only in the feed, so if you’d like to see what I’ve been reading (apparently I am that full of myself), you’ll need to subscribe to the feed with an aggregator of some kind, like Bloglines.

In an article for edmunds.com, Philip Reed and Mike Hudson ask What really saves gas? And how much?:

With gas prices so high, the media is awash with lists of gas-saving tips. Well how’s this for a tip? If you listen to us, you can see hybrid-type savings without having to buy a new car.

By changing your driving habits you can improve fuel economy up to 37 percent right away (depending on how you drive). Combine several tips and perform routine maintenance and you will save real dollars, not just pennies.

It’s nice to see their results coincide with my own.

In the Eclipse Workbench User Guide is a section entitled, Finding out who to blame with Annotate command. It begins:

Let’s say you have found a bug on line 65 of a file and you don’t understand the code. Who do you ask, or blame, for the change?

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The scenario is just so absurd that it’s hard not to chuckle. Can’t you just see some weasely geek in a cubicle somewhere desperately searching for somebody, anybody on whom to pin the blame for the bugs in the software?

It’s sad for very same reason.

With the two new “anti-crime” bills introduced today, one of which would impose mandatory minimum sentences on violent offenders, the Conservative government is sending a clear message: We don’t trust our judges!

Apparently Canada’s courts are so filled with incompetent and corrupt judges that the government can no longer trust their discretion when it comes to sentencing criminals.

Well, hurrah for the Conservatives! It’s about time somebody taught those nasty judges a lesson. For too long have they been terrorizing our great country with their leniency. All those years that our judges have worked in criminal law has surely softened their hearts to the point where they can’t possibly be expected to mete out the justice that violent crimes deserve.

With bills like these, we can take those bungling judges out of the loop once an for all. Important decisions like sentencing will be made up-front, as they should be, before the facts of a case are ever heard.

Kudos to Steven Harper, Justice Minister Vic Toews, and the new Conservative government for finally getting tough on the real crime problem: judges.

My bicycle has been hanging by it’s wheels from a couple of hooks in the ceiling of our garage since we moved into our current house almost two years ago. Before that, it was parked in the garage of our former house. All told, it’s been five years since I last rode it regularly.

That’s about to change, I picked up my bike from King Street Cycles after work, today. I took it in on Saturday for a tune up. That’s a week faster than the guys down the street could get it done, even if it was $10 more ($50 total). Nice work, too, as far as I can tell.

So it looks like I can start riding to work now. Down the new Westmount extension; should be a nice ride. It’ll be a nice change from my PS2 DDR Extreme workouts.

Britney Spears’ Guide to Semiconductor Physics:

It is a little known fact, that Ms Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics. Not content with just singing and acting, in the following pages, she will guide you in the fundamentals of the vital laser components that have made it possible to hear her super music in a digital format.

Colleague and friend, Mark Melvin, is annoyed that the first hit for his name on Google is an “out of office” email that was automatically sent to one of Eclipse‘s mailing lists while he was, well, out of the office.

He joked that his new mission in life is to get that “out of office” off the first page.

I suggested he start a blog. Until then, I hope this helps.