A view into the mind of Kelly Adams

Irritating people

Earlier today I was deep in thought trying to get a computer system to cooperate here at the home of the Fur Olympics. The doorbell rang, which always irritates me when I have a computer in pieces and its not behaving properly.

In that frame of mind, I opened the door. A white haired gentleman was there, and he immediately began to berate me. Apparently, he and his wife had been walking by our house, and the lawn clippings on our sidewalk offended his sensibilities. He also informed me that he "knew the man who owned this house before...", as if this would somehow cause me to quiver in my boots.

I assured the fellow that I had just finished mowing the lawn an hour or so earlier, and planned on sweeping up. He then told me that no one else on my block had such rude grasskeeping habits as I, and that he had seen my despicable behaviour before. He again reminded me that he knew the man who owned my house before.

Well, I swept the sidewalk. But let me tell you, I really wanted to find that old guy again and belt him one. So I had some grass clippings on my sidewalk. Unlike my neighbors, I mulch, which saves nature etcetera. It also saves me from having to bag lawn clippings, but apparently it offends this old fellow.

But what really bugged me about what he said was his "I knew the man who lived here before you..." line. Exactly why should I care? I own the house now, I pay the mortgage, the taxes, and the other sundry bills. If he finds my sidewalk keeping habits unsatisfactory, well whoopdee fricking doo. I'm happy to hear a polite opinion, but this wasn't an opinion, it wasn't even remotely polite. I've never complained about our neighbor's howling dog, or the 2:30 AM backyard beer fests their teenagers have. I don't get go across the street and tell Mr. "I've got a leaf blower and I'm going to find something to blow around every blasted weekend" to shut his noisy contraption off. And now he has a gas powered pressure washer...

But right about now, I really figure I should start complaining. Apparently, once you reach a certain age, that becomes your right. Just walk right up, and piss some one off with your useless, self-absorbed, myopic, and basically irritating opinion. And frankly, I've about had it up to here (points somewhere above the top of his head) with retired wastes of good oxygen telling me how offensive my grass clippings are.

The moral: if you come to my door, with some complaint about something as earth-shatteringly critical as my lawn keeping habits, then I strongly advise that you approach it with some degree of subtlety, wit, and friendliness. Otherwise, keep your trap shut and find something useful to do with your life.

Continue ReadingIrritating people

Klingon speakers required…

Apparently, a government office in Oregon is seeking fluent speakers of Klingon in order to serve some of their clients.   I've admitted elsewhere to being a geek, but even I have to draw the line somewhere.   It seems to me that Klingonese is worthy of some academic interest, in that its one of the most completely formed fictional languages developed. But why does a public agency need staff that can speak the language? That seems pretty silly...   Well, ready the article closely, and it will begin to make sense. The agency treats mental health patients. And, apparently, some of their "clients" (read: crazy people) speak nothing but Klingon.   On the plus side, now there is gainful employment available for all those uber-geeks that learned Klingonese...

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Hackers are like painters…

I'm a hacker...not a security hacker, not a script kiddy, but an old school, widget-writing code developer. I write code, I don't theorize about it.

But I've always felt guilty. My brief stint in University (I dropped out of Honours Comp. Sci after about six months) made me feel like real computing science was all about mathematics and set theory. Then I found this article by Paul Graham, which really hit a chord with me.

Basically, Paul's suggestion is that Computing Science is, for many people, not a science. Instead, it is more akin to an art form. Coders like myself don't write out some mathematical theory for a program, then transcribe it. Instead, we work with materials and theories to create. Some of what we do is sketching, some of it transcends mere sketching and becomes "beautiful". But it is a far cry from a formal science for many (most?) programmers.

Just like a good artist or architect, good hackers don't program randomly: we start with a theme or a context (the requirements for an application, a problem that needs to be solved), and create something "organically" that fulfills or perhaps transcends our original intent.

I've spent a good chunk of my life feeling guilty, or sometimes angry, regarding the way I code versus the way I had been taught I was *supposed* to code. Paul's article helped me see this in a different light. In fact, its encouraged me to dig a bit more into theory: not because I feel I have to, but because it might help me be a better coder.

Continue ReadingHackers are like painters…

HTML rendering crashes Internet Explorer…

Everyone knows that Microsoft products are the subject of a great deal of hacker attention. Sure, Microsoft hasn’t in the past been very good about securing their products, but with all the script kiddies and coders making them their #1 target, it isn’t too surprising that problems keep cropping up. (more…)

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New car…

I've had the same car (a 1994 Intrepid) for nearly ten years. It served me well, but with over two hundred thousand kilometres on the odometer it was starting to show its age. A little breakdown earlier this month started me thinking, and then Irene began to talk about going car shopping.

Meet my new car...

I've been looking at lots of different cars the past two or three years, all sort of focused around the "entry luxury-sport sedan" genre. I poked at 3-series BMW's, but found their much-vaunted "fit and finish" over-rated: every new model year I looked at seemed less solid than the last. I also looked at Infinity's models (G35, I believe): nice, but the styling didn't quite work for me. Lexus was a bit over-priced. I had sort of settled on the Cadillac CTS based on curb appeal: the style was attractive to me.

When Irene started talking about car shopping, I put up a brief fight. I had planned on waiting another couple years, saving up some more, and paying down some bills. But Irene is the practical member of our relationship: when she started talking about buying a new car, I caved like a soggy cardboard box under the wheels of a Humvee. I thought we'd look at the CTS, and maybe a couple of others, and then I'd think about it. I'd seen the Acura TSX advertised and had no clue what it was: Acura's good reputation for solid quality suggested I should take a look, so it placed on our list.

The TSX was the first car we looked at. I was pretty much sold after driving it around the block. I put up a brave fight...I must have spent thirty minutes looking at the Cadillac CTS at the dealer up the road. But the CTS was very "plasticky", to say nothing of the fact that it cost $15k more...and up close, those appealing lines looked kind of cheap. The TSX was calling me back. I booked an appointment to put together a deal for the next day.

What is the Acura TSX? Well, its basically a European Honda Accord platform. That means smaller than a North American Accord. Add a 200 hp 2.4 litre four cyllinder engine, a drive by wire throttle, your choice of either six speed manual or 5 speed auto with "tiptronic" style gated "manual" shift, and single "fully loaded" trim package (leather, sunroof, dual zone climate control, 17" wheels, 6 CD 380 watt 8 speaker stereo...), and thats the TSX.

This is only the second "brand new" car I've ever owned. The last was when I was about 23 years old...16 years ago now. The TSX is a ton of fun to drive, and yet is still practical enough that Irene didn't have too much of a fit.

Now I just have to get used to having a car that is small enough for me to walk around when its parked in the garage...

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Hindsight: Views on the Iraq War

Warning: the following is my current opinion. As my sagely nephew often says, Opinions are like a$$holes...

George W. Bush ("Dubblya" to his friends) said that the American people had to strike against the "axis of evil". Thousands went to war, and I think the battle went as cleanly and quickly as any of us could have hoped. But what was it about? And what happens now?

Continued on the next page

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This guy is nuts…but what if…?

There is a guy currently in jail in New York for the crime of making too much money too quickly on the stock market. He started with $800 and, in two weeks, had a stock portfolio worth over $350 million. He did this on in a mere 126 trades, every single one of them successful.

But that isn't the interesting part. The interesting part is that he says he's from the future...

Andrew Carlssin says that he's from the year 2256, and that he travelled back in time with the knowledge that our time period was one of the low points in the stock market's history. He also had a list of the key stocks and dates to buy. All he wants to do is go back to his time machine and travel back to his own time: if he's set free, he'll reveal the location of Osama Bin Laden, and will provide a cure for AIDS.

Okay, the guy is nutty as a fruitcake. But the claim that he is benefitting from insider trading seems pretty darned far-fetched as well. 126 perfect trades? 126 different stocks? This guy must have a freaking huge list of "insiders", all of whom know exactly how some announcement or another is going to drive their stock. Doesn't this seem just the teensiest bit unlikely?

So, how did he make 126 perfect and ultra-highrisk trades in a row? Furthermore, there is no record of this guy existing prior to December, 2002. Maybe he is from the future...

Continue ReadingThis guy is nuts…but what if…?

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