Every year I get sick of hearing Valentine’s Day radio ads for jewelry stores. I’m sick of being told that if I don’t buy my sweetheart a diamond, I’m a despicable lowlife schmuck.
A few days ago I heard an ad explaining how a particular jeweler had come up with a way to give your [...]

I’m trying to copy an NTFS partition from an external USB drive to a spare partition on the internal IDE drive of my laptop.  In the process, before I’d even so much as gotten Ghost to start doing anything, Windows XP managed to write a copy of the external drive’s partition table over that of [...]

Several people have observed that I am opposed to nearly all of the supposed anti-terrorism measures taken by the Bush administration, and sometimes ask me if I have a better idea as to how to fight terrorism. A few people have said that it’s OK for the government to take away our civil liberties [...]

is the sound of NASA pouring another $318 million down the ISS rathole. While I’m actually an advocate of manned space exploration, the ISS is nearly completely useless, and there’s no good reason to waste even more money on it. The US does have some obligations to other nations regarding ISS, but I [...]

I have a server machine in a colo facility. The facility provides carts with monitors, keyboards, and mice. The monitors are CRTs. Last night I changed the hardware configuration of a machine, and since I was having problems I needed to see the BIOS startup screen. However, these “smart” power-saving monitors [...]

Seen in a manual for a consumer electronic device:
Do not connect incompatible products.
Wow, it never would have occurred to me that incompatible products might be… well … uh… incompatible!
I’ve always been amused by the airbag warnings on car visors:
WARNING: Death or serious injury can occur!
This is generally followed by a direction to read the [...]

Yesterday on BBC World Service (one of the few worthwhile channels on XM satellite radio), there was a brief news item about some organization whose name I don’t recall issuing a report stating that economic growth is not an efficient way to combat poverty, as for each pound of growth only 60p goes to ending [...]

That one day, we will all be able to work together free of the tyranny of disgusting coffee spills in the kitchen… Of other people’s messes that they failed to clean up for the their fellow compatriots as we barge ahead together on our common corporate mission.

Let us live together in harmony. Let us realize [...]

Boing Boing ran a story titled Adorable cyclops kitten. I think they’ve confused the adjective “adorable” with “disturbing and sad”. At least the poor thing’s littermate is reported to be healthy.

I’m really annoyed by electronic devices with digital volume controls that are only adjustible in coarse increments. I frequently find that one setting is too quiet, and the next higher setting is too loud. I long for baby bear’s “just right” setting.