MAN has it been busy. I'll spare you the boring details, but things have been a little rough. Working on a project where priorities are largely defined by the sponsoring organization's primary donor and his wife can be tiring. When wealthy Mrs. X asks for the website to be rose-scented, and intermediary Y decides he'd better hop to it or risk the collapse of the entire enterprise, humble web programmer Z has some long nights ahead of him.

But, with a minor milestone accomplished, I can return to the lovely internet for a little bit before attending to Crushingly Urgent Project #2 in a few hours. There's been a lot of good stuff that I've missed:

1. DCeiver's analysis of the Post Best Bets is predictably excellent. But I do have to give the GoGs credit for making their own picks. The merit of those selections aside (they seem fine), it's a shrewd move to point out the stupidity of WaPo poll participants before the rest of the internet can snarkily associate your paper with the Cheesecake Factory. I hereby suggest "blogproofing" as the technical term. Expect an RFC from the W3C shortly.
2. You might remember that AOL stupidly released a bunch of search data last week. It included the search query, the date, and a unique identifying number corresponding to the user who made the search. By tieing search queries together by those numbers, some users could be identified. The New York Times managed to positively identify an individual pretty quickly. But the real fun is coming now, as other organizations pore over the data to expose just what kind of creepy weirdos populate the internet. Something Awful has a pretty great collection of examples (text, but still probably NSFW).
3. George Allen got into trouble! This is fantastic, and not just because he appears to be a racist asshole who needs to be kept off the national stage. No, it's much more urgent than that: if his presidential ambitions aren't ended by these sorts of public displays of awfulness, I'd have to see Virginia political expert and UVA professor Larry Sab/ato on television for an entire electoral race. I'll do whatever it takes to prevent that grim, dystopian future from coming about.
4. Now for some geeky tech complaining: how did this make it to TUAW? For those who aren't interested enough to follow the link, it's a means of stripping iTunes copy protection by embedding an AAC file purchased from the iTunes Music Store into an iMovie project. You can then get it decompressed to an AIFF (like a WAV, but on the mac), which can be recompressed into a copy-protection-free MP3.

   But you can only do one song at a time. And because you're recompressing, it's a lossy process. In other words, this is a really stupid, inefficient way to remove DRM from ITMS songs. I haven't checked in on the HYMN Project recently, but if I wanted to un-DRM a bunch of songs, that's where I'd start. And if that no longer works, I'd see about writing an Applescript that methodically moves through an iTunes playlist, playing songs, capturing the output via Soundflower, then compressing to MP3. You could even have it automatically use the existing song metadata in the ID3 and filename. Alternately, you might look into burning to a virtual CD-ROM, which you could then rip (I'm not sure how feasible this is in OS X, but it's certainly doable in Windows).

   So the iMovie method: stupid. Don't bring that weak-ass shit in here, TUAW. That's right, I said it.

5. This hack walkthrough was linked off of the Slashdot frontpage. But it doesn't make any goddamn sense. If I understand correctly, step 1 is to fool the user into trying to log into the target website, except on your own server. This is called phishing, and it's not very complex — it's just tricking people.

   But instead of simply capturing the login and password before sending the user along, the author embeds some Javascript that eventually shows up on the target site (when the user's login request is sent in, via the phishing server). That Javascript sends the cookie that maintains the user's session back to the phishing computer, allowing the author to hop onto the user's session.

   The thing is, by that point he already has the user's login and password. He can make new session cookies whenever he wants — the cross-site-scripting stuff is completely and utterly pointless. Worse that pointless, it's stupid, since session cookies generally expire much faster than login credentials.

   From there he goes on to pwnz0rz the website, thanks to some security lapses that one would only find in high school CS classes. It's all kind of ludicrous. I'd really like to see an XSS attack example that does something useful. And hey, maybe I'm missing something here. But as far as I can tell, this article is kind of like writing up "How To Rob A Bank", with step 1 defined as "assume the security system is off and all the doors are unlocked."

wow, yesterday night was a SPECTACULAR evening. let me detail its events to you:

1. my italian tutor stood me up/forgot about our lesson

2. it was pouring rain like it can only pour rain it atlanta

3. this thunderstorm apparently caused all the traffic lights in all of atlanta to go out, which meant bumper to bumper gridlock as well as playing various games of chicken as i tried to dart my way through intersections where no one seemed to care that cars from the opposing lanes were trying to get through

4. i was desperately low on gas, so i made the grievous, grievous error of attempting to stop at the BP near my house, aka the Gas Station of Doom. i consider it a lucky trip to fill up the tank when a) i find a pump that is working b) i don't get hit up by some sketch dude for money to enable his multiple trips to the package store across the street. really, you need just exactly $3.89 to fill up the air in the tires of that car over there that you say is yours? funny how that's the same price as a small bottle of vodka.

5. the trip to the Gas Station of Doom was, in this case, a mistake. the two pumps i tried weren't working. well enough, i thought. let's try the chevron down the road.

6. the chevron down the road had eight swat cars with screaming sirens flashing on top of them in front of it. i guess there was some sort of bust going on there. i don't know. i didn't care. i was like, fuck this. i need me some gas and it is probably safer than it's ever been with all these police around. bring it, chevron!

7. no pumps at the chevron with the swat bust going on worked.

8. i drove to a gas station 10 minutes out of my way. it always looked bright and welcoming when i passed it on my way. i soon realized that this was a facade, as EACH OF THE TWELVE PUMPS had signs taped to them that said either "out of order!" or "no gas!" with cheery exclamation points. which, what the fuck. WHY DO YOU EVEN EXIST?!?

9. i drove to another gas station (my fourth attempt, NOT THAT I WAS COUNTING) even further out of the way. at this point i was dead on the inside. if this works, i thought mechanically, i will not kill anyone. if it doesn't work, i will kill everyone, and it will be pleasing.

10. hallelujah, it worked! nobody has to die! but as i stood there pumping the gas in the sketchy shadows of the sketchy gas station in the sketchy neighborhood, an incredibly scary looking hobo noticed me and rode up to me on his bike. (wtf? when did hobos get bikes? hobos on wheels. a weird occurrence.)

"excuse me, miss?" he called.

now, i have a policy of never giving money to panhandlers, but i always try to be polite about it and brush them off with a curt smile and a "no, i'm sorry." but this hobo was unlucky. he did not know i had just been on a trip through gas station purgatory. he did not know that i was on the verge of sticking a gas nozzle up somebody's ass.

"hey there, miss!" he called again.

i turned around with my arms crossed and looked him straight in the eye. i shook my head very slowly, and i growled, low, "no."

the hobo stopped his bike, said quickly, "ok, sorry miss! have a nice night!" turned around, and hightailed it out of there.

11. i came home to find the power semi-out - that is, the lights sort of work at a weird half dimness, but my alarm clock, my fan, and the internet are not working. but my laptop (and thank goodness, my ability to watch episodes of the wire) is fine. i don't understand why, but tommy told me it has something to do with hertzes. megahertzes? voltage? laptops? i don't understand.

12. THE WORST PART OF ALL: i have no beer in the house.

i swear to god, i take back all the complaining about d.c. not being a bike-friendly city, or everything negative i ever said about the el or the metro. they are shining examples of public transporation that can do no wrong and smell very nice and are perfect. where as driving can go suck a big one.

Dr. Tom's prescription for Tuesday non-success:

1. Sleep through your alarm.
2. Post the morning roundup late. Immediately receive shit from commenters.
3. Hustle to work. Discover that your sandbox site was defaced by hackers about a month ago, due to an unpatched flaw in some third party software. The site's not very important (hence the lax security), but some stuff for DCist runs on it (at your expense) because the Gothamist guys have never gotten around to giving you access to host it on the DCist server. So it needs to be uncompromised, cleaned and secured.
4. Prepare to make tech support call to non-client marketing trade group that you find morally repugnant.
5. Time for meetings! Two hours should do it.
6. Drive to Charlottesville to see mom, who's been re-admitted to hospital (nothing too serious). Drive back.
7. Collapse into bed.

Also anticipated: a ticket on 66 for violating HOV (Fox 5 ran a story about me and my nefarious HOV-violating buddies last night). When the fuck is Friday getting here, again?

Sorry for the whining. I promise I'll deliver a post about an electronics project involving a demonic glowing cow skull as soon as I can finish it.

tommy's mom's accident is so terrible (though from talking to both him and beth they sound like they are handling it so remarkably well and capably), and i am so far away from charlottesville/d.c., and i feel so impotent, that i don't know what to do, except send their mom terrifying amounts of garish get-well balloons (since flowers aren't allowed. neither are latex balloons. as stanley said, "Anti-latex, anti-flowers... If these hospital folks are anti-Barry-White, I move to label them "anti-gettin'-it-on.").

...oh yeah, and talk about hemorrhoids.

remember a while back i posted about HEAD ON which you APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD, and which is slowly driving me down a path of insanity? i seriously think their strategy is to actaully cause seizures/headaches through their incessant commercials and drive the market for the product up that way.

well, it gets worse. a few days ago i noticed on tv an ad for activon, for arthritis pain, and you know what? you apply it directly where it hurts. of course.

AND THEN, even worse!!! the other day came on a commercial by the same people for, you guessed it, hemorrhoid cream. GAH!H!H!H! freedom from hemorrhoids? FREEdHEM hemorrhoid cream. freedom from hemorrhoids? FREEdHEM hemorrhoid cream. freedom from hemorrhoids? FREEdHEM hemorrhoid cream.

if you would like to join me on my trip to crazytown, you can see the whole series of commercials here.

i had my first italian lesson tonight with giorgio. giorgio is fantastic because he is italian, he is milanese, and because he dislikes atlanta, and did you know how fun it is to bitch with someone in a foreign language about something you both dislike? it is MOLTO FUN. he is also fantastic because he is an aerospace engineer, and when we were chatting and i asked him where he thought he might work after finishing his phd, he said, you know, airbus, or, you know, nasa. then i asked, "vorresti costruire i razzi un giorno?", jokingly - would you like to build rockets someday? he said, very seriously, "si. forse." yes, maybe one day he would like to build the rockets. awesome.

so, you know, i spent the night chatting with an italian rocket builder. pretty sweet. it's also gratifying to know that my italian skills haven''t swirled down into the drain of my empty garbage disposal mind, but were merely lying dormant in a corner, like a sad ignored puppy that just wants to be petted. and wait till i give that puppy some beer. its italian will be GREAT.

Oh Jesus. So I've had a little trouble with certain folks from New York who handle the tech administration for a certain regional blog (site A) that I do some tech things for. And tonight I learn that at least some of these NY tech staffers are also affiliated with a public transport arrival time SMS service (site B) that invaded site A's comment section after I declined to cover site B, given that my own site A-branded public transport SMS service was about to debut. I chased their apparent spamminess out of site A's comment section with some testy replies.

Man. This kind of explains a lot of the intransigence I've experienced from the NYC gang. And it's kind of a pain in the ass. What a tangled web we weave, when first we write some PHP.

i see this mysterious commercial about 12 times a day on CNN. so, you know, if i go insane this summer, you'll know why. GAH! WHAT IS IT EVEN?

UPDATE: some googling seems to reveal that it's some sort of headache relief thing. if you REALLY want to be driven insane by this product, though, go here.

I'm sure KAC is a perfectly nice person, but her advice on nightspots for meeting new people reads like my personal anti-manifesto. To be fair, I suppose I am pretty bad at making new acquaintances when I'm out for the evening.

But that doesn't change how much the Front Page sucks. Between the crowd and the taco bar, it provides more ways to catch hepatitis than any other venue in the city.

However, there is one good piece of advice buried in the entry:

Into java? Meet someone online, and then go on a coffee date, compliments of Yahoo! personals and Starbucks.

Suggested icebreakers: was Sun's decision to open-source the language too little, too late? Is there a compelling reason not to switch to C#? How big does your web app really have to be to justify the hassle of JSP development?

(By the way, Kelly, the J's supposed to be capitalized.)

This April Fool's stuff has got to stop — on the internet, at least. Every year I dread this day a little more. It's not that the idea is a bad one, it's that the execution of most of the jokes/hoaxes is terrible. Just look at these PZ Myers hoaxes. Or this TechCrunch post. Or, worst of all, today's Slashdot. It's disgraceful: the same unfunny joke repeated over and over and over, at the cost of what was obviously considerable effort.

It makes me sad. Or maybe I'm just hungover and cranky. Definitely one of those, though.

UPDATE: Also awful.

Seriously now: I'm on cell phone number 2 and cell phone cable number 3, and I STILL can't get Gammu working. Right now I'm trying to work off of these instructions, but it's not even clear that the thread's participants had success. And, to be honest, I'm not following all the instructions — compiling custom kernel modules seems a little advanced, but I suppose I'll give it a shot eventually.

Anyway, I'm officially running crying back to mommy, aka the project listserv. They haven't been able to help me out yet, but the current batch of Nokia crap was bought on their recommendation, so I'm doing my best to maintain my trademark childlike optimism.

hey! let's play a game! everybody, try to figure out the point of this weekend's modern love column. anyone who can sum it up accurately in one sentence will get, uh, something. fame and fortune, most likely.

my entry: "i seem to have a wonderful husband, a wonderful child, yet i can't shake this feeling, somehow, that i am the most annoying person on the planet."

1. These new VW "My Fast" commercials. Maybe I'm confused, but I think we're supposed to be clamoring for some kind of squat, unappealing plastic figurine all of a sudden. And this somehow induces me to buy... cars, I guess? Catherine reports seeing the campaign extended to fake Craigslist missed connections postings, which, if you know me, you know I find appalling. What happened, VW? Where's the Nick Drake & artful mysteriousness? It feels like you finished selling cars to hipsters who miss Suck.com and moved on to targeting their asshole younger brothers who spend all their time playing GTA and buying DVDs that star Vin Diesel.


2. The IT Crowd. I really want to like this series — the people at BoingBoing are nuts about it, the set's littered with EFF stickers, and the BBC is giving away episodes for free on the internet (hurrah for IP socialism!). The only problem: it's just not very funny. Like, at all. The first episode featured two jokes about a non-technical management type trying to use appliances when they weren't plugged in. Done properly, this would build in a way that makes the second time much funnier than the first. But in practice, it just seemed like the writers had forgotten that they'd already used that lame gag ten minutes earlier.


3. The Boondocks Cartoon. The IT Crowd is bad in a passive, hapless sort of way. The Boondocks is aggressive in its awfulness. That it's not remotely funny sort of goes without saying — I've always felt that, despite occasional signs of talent, Aaron McGruder's success owes more to liberal guilt than genuine comedic talent. But even his occasional humor is completely absent from the cartoon. It doesn't even try to be funny. What it does try to be is in-your-face. Mostly this just results in it not making any sense, and doing so in as unpleasant a way as possible. One episode ended with the grandfather killing a blind man, then getting left off the hook for some reason. They finished by throwing in a nice little coda about the pointlessness of the victim's life. Classy, guys.
   
   Another had the grandfather open a soul food restaurant, then tried to use the premise to simultaneously score points about drug addiction and obesity in the black community, but succeeded only in producing an incoherent mess. Whatever they were trying to do, the episode ended with a woman ruining her life and debasing herself, begging for a cheeseburger in a way that was not at all funny. The mind behind the show seems to have no talent for anything but cruelty. Oh, and the voice acting for Huey and Riley is mind-bogglingly bad (this is more a casting than a performance issue, though). All in all, it's probably the least appealing cartoon I've ever seen — and I've seen Urotsukidoji.

I'm still annoyed, but it turns out that Shepard Fairey is the real victim here:

(What portion of the proceeds do you think he means?)

Apologies to any theoretical blind readers, but as I mentioned before: I really don't want to encourage this guy.

This is, I think, the third week in a row that I've managed to fuck something up in the DCist Morning Roundup. Disheartened by my recent sucky performance at this seemingly simple task, I thought I had been extra careful last night. Not so. A search for 'cropp' on the front page inexplicably failed, and the City Paper's website mislabeled an article's date as a week more recent than it is. The result: a duplicate item and a stale one. Well, at least I didn't slander anyone.

I'm glad that Catherine got her flowers, but I'm not very happy about how she got them: at 9:30 at night. She had to cancel plans to go out in order to guide the FTD guy in by cell phone. And then he forgot to give her the chocolates I'd ordered.

I guess it'd be tacky to complain about how much money I had to drop to get such stellar service, so I'll just call it a racket and leave it at that. Bah!

I was pretty wary when Mike pointed me to ob/eybuttersti/ck.com (googleproofing to avoid encouraging them). WHOIS revealed that John Hl/inko owned the domain. He's a PR guy, and had bought ads for it on Atrios and DailyKos. That's a serious amount of money for something this stupid. He responded to emails asking what he was up to with too-cute dodges. I was afraid something nastily commercial was coming.

Well, as of today the seemingly-random countdown timer has reached zero, and the site has officially launched. It looks like the threat is overblown. T-shirts rehashing various well-tread "underground" memes are being sold, and there's a "posse" functionality that appears to run a technorati or similar search on butterstick and rank the sites that come back. The site's also using CafePress, and claims to be donating "a portion of the proceeds" to panda-related charities. All in all, not the commercial juggernaut I'd feared.

I apologize for my misgivings, John. Welcome to the exciting and dynamic world of unprofitable panda websites.

all the free wifi connections in my apartment complex in chicago, which i had been stealing for the past four months, suddenly ran out yesterday.

it is a dire situation. i did not realize how much i loved the internet until now, coming up on my third hour in caribou coffee, where i am paying for the privilege to a) drink weak tea b) surf blogs and do homework. i love it so because i am subjecting myself to this pukehole of a fake log cabin, where i'm pretty sure i just heard the fourth different rendition of "i've got you uder my skin" in the past 45 minutes. either that, or i'm living in the matrix.

pray for me.

pablohoney: sigh, i am tired, but do not want to retreat to my den of no internet
pablohoney: i do not think i can live w/o the internet
pablohoney: it's one of the great love stories of our time
friend: wow sounds like it
friend: and yet, it just doesn't love you back
pablohoney: i know
pablohoney: ungrateful bitch

Via DCist I see that Butterstick now has his own wikipedia page. Neat! The only problem: the Bandit the Panda people have added their own editorializing. "Bandit is also a popular name for the panda"!? Please. You're going to make people think wikipedia isn't trustworthy!

To be honest, I'm not incredibly keen on getting drawn into a juvenile wikipedia fracas, and probably wouldn't have responded if not for one thing that particularly galled me: the Bandit people constructed a sentence grouping the two t-shirt stores together, and listing an aggregate sum of money raised for the zoo. For the record, cafepress.com/bstick stands at just under $2k donated to FONZ. How much Bandit merchandise has been moved, I wonder? Well, I couldn't help myself, and adjusted the wikipedia sentence to break out the individual store totals. I'd encourage them to provide their own details.

I'll happily admit that this is embarrassingly juvenile. But I can't help myself. As I said before, I don't begrudge anyone the right to conduct their own stupid internet fad — all I'd ask is that they refrain from stealing from mine.

i'm sitting in a coffee shop in lakeview with tommy right now (he had to work today, so we're taking advantage of the place's free wifi, and i don't have class till 2). i'm sipping coffee and browsing this facebook thing (post on it and how i am seriously an old lady to come later).

two construction guys from a site next door walked in to get coffee and are sitting down at a nearby table. one of them has a ringtone. not just any ringtone. the WORST RINGTONE ON THE FACE OF THIS EARTH. it is "shake dat laffy taffy." it is on at an abominably loud volume. it has gone off no less than four times in the 15 minutes he has been there. and he takes his sweet time answering it.

just wanted a record for posterity of how my first-ever homicide will be justified.

It's January. STOP WATERING YOUR FUCKING LAWN, YOU STUPID BITCH. THANKS TO THE EVER-PRESENT PUDDLE OF STANDING WATER AT YOUR INTERSECTION, I WIPED OUT ON MY BIKE TONIGHT.

Somebody headed in the opposite direction stopped to make sure I was okay, which was nice. Also nice: the helmet I was wearing, which I felt impact the pavement. But my knees are bloody, my bike is fucked up, and I am not happy. It's not getting any greener, dumbass. If there had been a car behind me, I wouldn't have the luxury of whining on the internet. How about we just knock off the perpetual water-wasting, mkay?

Today is my last day of work. I plan to celebrate by going to Chipotle and doing almost nothing productive.

At the moment, I'm feeling very, very good about my decision. Particularly because the leader on this project — justifiably, if belatedly, terrified about the project's nonexistent chance of success — just came into my "office" and asked whether I thought I and the rest of the team ought to come into the office on Saturday and Sunday in order to meet our un-meetable Monday deadline. It was all I could do to keep from erupting into joyous laughter (I managed to constrain my reaction to "shit-eating grin").

And that's another thing — the word "office" is in quotes for a reason. It's actually a conference room that I'm sharing with the other developers. They took away my cube last week. Maybe as punishment for leaving, maybe just because they're ludicrously short on space. That was fine, though. The only galling part was the pretense: that this would be good for the project, foster a "bullpen" environment, and that I had been spoiling for just such a change. In the days after having my desk moved (for the third time since August), a succession of not-future-references trundled past the conference room door, cheerfully asking how much I was enjoying this new getting-kicked-in-the-nuts arrangement that I had been asking for. Normally I would have politely mumbled a noncommital "fine". But with my days numbered, I was free to explain, politely but in detail, exactly how little I wanted or appreciated the new accomodations. It was extremely satisfying, in a completely childish and pathetic way. Where's my red stapler?

Well, the last day of work is even more liberating. I'm in the contract prime's offices, as I have been for a while. There are no bridges to burn; these people are my boses' bosses, not mine. I don't want to get Actual Boss in trouble, but I'll never personally have to be involved with the people here again. I'm not peeing in the water fountain or anything, but I'm blissfully free to eschew workplace pretense. If it weren't for the loyalty I feel toward Actual Boss, I'd be wearing a sandwichboard reading THE END IS NIGH and wandering past the offices of everyone associated with this project. You have all been well and truly fucked from the day you signed this contract.

Ah well. I'm in a good mood. Tomorrow morning I have to go to Mclean, where I will spend four hours teaching my coworkers some of what I know. That tempers my elation, but only a little.

It's almost lunchtime — feels like a guacamole day.

Check out the comment thread from DCist's reference to my recent panda post. It's pretty vicious — they're on the verge of convincing me that I'm a horrible, horrible racist.

Well, for the record, I really wish that pandas came from a different part of the world — one with a boringly conventional cuisine. I'm sorry that the eccentricities of Chinese ingredients are considered a slur by some. To be honest, it seems like a criticism that could be leveled against virtually any culture. To the extent that Asian cuisines are singled out as its target, I can understand the sensitivity, if not its volume.

Seriously, though, the whole joke was supposed to be a self-deprecating exercise in jingoism and xenophobia, not an excuse to pick on the Chinese. It wasn't meant in an "Asians will eat anything" sort of way. It was meant to be taken in the style of "Jews eat Christian babies!"

See? Nothing offensive there.

It sounds like the winter storm currently bearing down on Washington (shotgun full of snow, etc.) isn't going to come through. Topper Shutt's Bread-O-Meter stands at a meager 4.5, and is likely to dip even lower. Normally I wouldn't put a lot of stock in a local weatherguy's opinion. But Topper has always been Catherine's and my favorite: he has the saddest eyes of any weatherman. The rough and tumble world of meteorological prognostication was never meant for a soul as gentle as he.

But maybe it's for the best that the storm is dissipating, seeing as our furnace has been broken since Friday morning. For a while it was just freezing cold every morning. I was prepared to chalk this up to my inability to comprehend our stupefyingly complex digital thermostat, but our landlord had an HVAC guy come by on Friday to have a look anyway. I don't know what he did, but I know it was a bad idea. Prior to his visit the furnace had been deeply troubled but high-functioning. Afterward — well, on the plus side there was now a red LED illuminated on the thermostat. On the minus side, the system no longer produced actual heat. Hmm.

Saturday morning brought a 52 degree wakeup — time to call the landlord, who came right over, accepted our mutual impotence in the face of a broken heat pump, and then went to buy us some space heaters. Charles and I can now be luxuriously toasty in up to one room at a time, provided we don't mind tripping the circuit breaker every time so much as the refrigerator light goes on.

Being cold sucks, but it's at least conceptually pleasing to my cheapskate nerd side. Every power adapter, light bulb, computer and appliance around me, although cherished, is horribly inefficient. Entropy's inevitability doesn't just mean that you and I will die and that our universe will someday collapse into a cold, empty cloud of lifeless elementary particles (although its more practical upshot is just that I'm usually too existentially distraught to bother picking up my room). It also means that nearly everything in your house that takes electricity turns more than half of the energy it consumes into heat rather than useful work.

But with the furnace broken, suddenly all of that waste heat is an asset. I'm glad of every wasted watt-second, every gently warm plug pack. Up yours, physics! I'm getting my money's worth at last, Pepco! It's true that the heat-pump's 100+% efficiency has a distinct perpetual-motion-machine allure, but for now I'm happy shooting heat out of every available appliance and into my frozen toes. Time to start Linux recompiling again for no particular reason.

well, a grand six months or so after i bought my laptop, on sunday my screen flickered, gasped and apparently died. tommy says it has something to do with the "backlight." i say that i am "screwed." it will be virtually impossible for me to be in chicago in the next couple of weeks without my computer (and i'm not sure how long it will take for the dell people to fix it). i have a major article, a newspaper layout project and a take-home final to do before the quarter is over. not to mention that i need my computer for email, blogging, mindless distractions and downloading the VERONICA MARS TORRENT! AHHHHH.

do universities usually have some sort of laptop lending program? should i buy a laptop for like two weeks and then return it? should i go shoot up the dell HQ?

it had to happen. last night, around 11:15 p.m., i came face-to-face with the dreaded NUN.

it'd been a long day. hell, by wednesday, it'd already been a long week. in class, even though it's a print and reporting lab, we're working on broadcast stuff this week, which means writing scripts for radio and tv, and then actually getting in front of a camera, nicely dressed, and talking, which is basically every non-broadcast journalist's nightmare. i would prefer to stay in my jeans and pumas and mumble and type away at my computer, thanks very much. anyway, after that totally draining and creepy episode of lost, i just needed some sleep. so around 10:30 i fell into bed.

around 11, the typical noises started. the running, the leaping, the dropping of boulders, the elephants performing ballet, etc. it was worse than it'd ever been. after about 15 minutes of shoving my earplugs ever deeper into my ears and tossing around making stab-kill motions, i got of out bed, threw on some clothes, and stomped upstairs, fully intending to bring hell.

except i'm a pussy. so i tapped gently on the door, and when somebody, after obviously assessing me through the peephole and deciding i looked like a crazy homeless lady with bedhead, said, "uh, YES?" obnoxiously, i was sheepishly like, "um, oh, hi, it's your neighbor from downstairs, the one without any balls, because if i'd any sense, i would have knocked your ass from here to kansas by now?" you know, except for that last part.

a nice, normal-looking guy opened the door, and i said, "oh, i'm so sorry to bother you, but, um..." at this point my eye drifted downwards to the strange red feather duster/tickle thing he held in his hand, and i was like, either i am interrupting some very kinky sex or some very vigorous cleaning, but, well, must press on! "...i'm not sure exactly what is going on up here, but the noise you're making, well, it's kind of, uh, incredible." i actually said the noise was incredible. i'm not sure why i chose that adjective. i should have said it was murder-inducing, but whatever.

the guy, who seems very nice, apologized profusely. "oh, i'm so sorry, but i was just messing around with my cats, and you know how it gets."

uh. no, actually. i don't know how it gets to the point where you're messing around with your cats that it makes the sounds you've been making, unless you are STRAPPING ANVILS TO THEM AND STANDING ON A LADDER AND DROPPING THEM REPEATEDLY ON THE FLOOR MOTHERFUCKER WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING TO THOSE POOR ANIMALS?

at this point a tiny, sleek gray cat escaped through the door and raced down the stairs, obviously desperate to escape whatever this guy had been doing to him and his cat colleague, like, dressing them in suits made of stone and then launching them out of slingshots straight into the floor above my head. NUN raced past him, still apologizing, and i went back down to my apartment, saying, "oh, yeah, well...thanks for listening."

and that was that. frankly, i'm disappointed to learn that the reason for all the noise is two poor kitties. i had hoped he had at least chained a hippo up there, or was harboring a 250 lb. fugitive who liked to do aerobics in the middle of the night. ah well. the disappointing facts of reality.

More complains about the paper I get for free. Well, sort of get for free. There are still rarely any copies at Mt. Vernon Square circa 8:30AM. I usually find a copy on the train instead. I like to pretend that I have a yellow-line manservant who dutifully crams a copy next to my preferred window seat at some earlier stop, but today he was derelict in his duties. Should I ever meet him, I will have to have him caned.

So I only managed to find a copy of the entertainment guide today. A few things jumped out, and since I have nothing better to blog about, here they are:

• E3: Boy George did not invent gender bending. I'm not claiming to be an authority on the intersection of pop culture and identity politics, but it seems like the word "Bowie" should have crossed someone's mind while considering this article's thesis. Also, the answer to your question, "Could 'boy/girl' be hardwired into our brain stems alongside 'friend/foe'?" is a definitive "yes". Although I don't think the relevant pathways are actually located in the brainstem.
• E5: Gwen Stefani's harajuku girl coterie is a product, not a source. They're Americans hired to pretend to be harajuku girls (info via the Governess, I think? Solid sourcing, I know).
• E11: I know that the phrase "x-cum-y" sounds all scholarly & shit, but you may want to avoid it for instances where y is equal to "tasting".

I've made the appropriate notes to your personnel file. Otherwise, keep up the good work. See you at the office Christmas party!

UPDATE: Whoops — apologies to Sommer, who points out that I probably got the faux-Harajuku tip from her.

Thirteen fucking hours, if you count transit. Yeesh. Observations:

• The saying that US military bases are the only place in the world where communism works seems to be true. Also, the omnipresent aura of the 1950s gives things a distinctly Cuban feel. It was a brave aesthetic choice to subvert yourself, military-industrial complex, but I think you pulled it off. Bravo. The well-appointed skate park (really) was a particularly nice touch.


• My coworker makes almost no sense. I'll be saying something completely boring but comprehensible to the client -- "then you'll need to upload the file", for example -- and he'll loudly interject to say something like "it's like peeling a boiled egg!" And we'll all stand there, waiting until it's safe to resume making sense. But before we can he'll explain the analogy, inevitably by telling a story about his time in the navy that involves superiors or inferiors making some sort of ridiculously naive but uninteresting assumption about something. "You can't take a skiff that far out -- they've only got 100 gallons of fuel!" These stories are usually punctuated with sound effects, and they never, ever have an ending.


• The army is dysfunctional, and working through the bureacracy on this project is going to take approximately forever. But that's okay, 'cause I don't much feel like doing work anyway.


• Also encouraging: my new listen-to-ipod-instead-of-coworkers-in-the-car initiative is off to a promising start. You kids doubtless already know this, but the new Broken Social Scene is pretty damn gorgeous. Catherine recommended Rogue Wave to me, and they're pretty good too in a Shins/Nada Surf kind of way.

So what'd I miss? Are we impeaching people yet?

Speaking of party photos, I've got to say I'm a little surprised by sets like this one. I expected the Blue States Lose crowd to put forward a solid Halloween effort. But to be honest, it looks pretty much like any other New York/LA hipster party — except the participants might be dimly more aware of how ridiculous they look.

Sorry for the lack of blogging. It's 9:01 PM, and I'm about to head home from work. And that's only because I've run into a problem that will take enough hours to resolve that we'd miss our deadline even if I stayed.

Have I mentioned that everything — everything — related to Oracle, besides the actual database server, sucks hugely? Oh mighty googlers of the future: don't succumb to the siren call of the OraOleDb client. It'll just throw unhandled exceptions when you least expect it and make you recode your entire application.

update on the noisy upstairs neighbor: up until this very moment, NUN has been the picture of quiet neighborliness. there's barely even been any walking. but right now, i am convinced that NUN is doing some combination of the following:

1. running laps
2. juggling small boulders, and by the sound of it, dropping many of them
3. running laps with a small child, due to some strange pitter patter sound that is accompanying NN's footsteps
4. harboring a small whale that enjoys flopping from side to side

seriously. what. the. fuck. could NUN be doing? there is no way normal apartment movements cause these kind of sounds.

in other news, i took ogged's advice and have started sleeping (very peacefully) with my earplugs in. all has been well except for one terrifying moment last night where i adjusted my left earplug and PUSHED IT ALL THE WAY IN MY EAR. the next five minutes were spent frantically racing around my apartment, digging in my ear only to push the plug in further, and imagining explaining the situation to the doctor at the ER and/or living as an earplug outcast, rejected by society for the bit of foam lodged in my ear canal. thankfully, a pair of eyebrow tweezers saved the day. but it was scary there for a little bit.

yes, i am a very special person, thank you.

....ok, i have to add a #5: gliding back and forth on a skateboard.

SERIOUSLY?!

UPDATE: #6 - dumping marbles on the floor...?

This project has now gotten bad enough that I have actually begun to look forward to meetings. Daydreams about how to break my mousing arm can't be far away.

What's up, Express? I know and like people who work for you, so I'll try to spare you the worst of my righteous internet fury. But you've gotta step your game up.

First: why are there no copies of you at the Mt Vernon Square Metro? All that's in the designated box are a few old copies of El Tiempo Latino. That's not going to do it — I'm already bad enough at the crossword. I emailed you about this, and for a couple of days the problem was fixed. But no longer. I demand free entertainment, dammit!

Second: what's up with the bloglog? This daily ticket to the narcissism lottery (top prize: egomania) is one of the most compelling features you've got. I just think a little more care in selecting the featured excerpts might be good. At the moment we're on a brisk trot toward complete incoherence — I'd estimate about two weeks until an "OMFG!!!" sneaks in. Why not feature some of the big names? They got that way for a reason. It's not like most of your readers will know who, say, Kevin Drum is. Spotlighting the little guy is a nice idea, but not when the little guy is a complete dope.

On the other hand, if this is a subtle tactic by print journalists to defuse the threat they perceive from new media by revealing bloggers to be superficial illiterates... well, good job, then. Carry on.

Finally: the comics. I know the comics in your big brother paper are also terrible. But I truly believe that it doesn't have to be this way. There must be good comics out there. Or maybe you could continue courting your net-savvy twentysomething demo (hi!) and run some webcomics. It's hard to see what the downside would be — today's edition featured a comic that, in addition to having a hilariously unoriginal "he went to a hypnotist and now he thinks he's an animal!" gag, was really badly pixellated. Probably just a print error, I know. Resolving the Quark problems won't make it any funnier, though. It's not your fault, but you can do something about it. Unlike the Post, you can ditch the Garfield and Blondie equivalents in your pages without crotchety geriatrics leaving angry voicemails for Mr. Bradlee. You have the power. Self-actualize! Or something!