Month: July 2004

Damn Clock

I am sure that just about everyone has heard this before, but its friday and I thought it was funny:

The other night I was invited out for a night with “the girls.” I told my husband that I would be home by midnight, “I promise!” Well, the hours passed and the champagne was going down way too easy.

Around 3 a.m., drunk as a skunk, I headed for home. Just as I got in the door, the cuckoo clock in the hall started up and Cuckooed 3 times. Quickly, realizing he’d probably wake up, I cuckooed another 9 times. I was really proud of myself for coming up with such a quick-witted solution (even when smashed), in order to escape a possible conflict with him.

The next morning my husband asked me what time I got in; I told him 12:00. He didn’t seem disturbed at all. Whew! Got away with that one! Then he said, – “We need a new cuckoo clock.”

When I asked him why, he said, “Well, last night our clock cuckooed three times, then said, “Oh fuck,” cuckooed 4 more times, cleared its throat, cuckooed another 3 times, giggled, cuckooed twice more, and then tripped over the cat and farted.

DB2 and Apache

This article is particularly relevant to me lately. I have been spending a great deal of time working on our database authentication infrastructure for Apache, IBM DB2, and mod_perl. Great article that gets your DB2/Apache setup working quickly.

ECC, A Primer

Great article on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC.) Its fairly basic but it does a wonderful job of covering the topic and even reviews (for those who have no cryptography experience) standard asymmetric cryptography. Like most software developers who work on transactional/financial software, I implement a good deal of cryptography in my applications. I found the article very straightforward and fairly simple to understand.

Reading List

The Modern Library keeps a post of their 100 Best Novels. There are actually two lists, the board’s 100 best list and the reader’s 100 best list. I find it interesting to note that 3 names (that appear NO WHERE in the board’s list) make up 8 of the top 10 ten titles on the readers list. Those names are Ayn Rand, L. Ron Hubbard, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Other names that fail to meet the board’s list but make notable appearances on the readers list are: Steven King, Tom Clancy, and Frank Herbert . And they say that literary elitism died with Amazon.

Looking at the lists I have only read a couple dozen; therefore I just extended my to-do reading list. For anyone who is looking for a couple good reading lists, these are a good start.

Something Understood

When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. …something is always created too. And instead of just dwelling on what is killed it’s important also to see what’s created and to see the process as a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, but just is.
–Phaedrus Reborn, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”

When to speak

Inaction is often viewed as consent in our society. Commonly to the detriment to those imposed on. Why people choose to not act (for inaction IS as much a choice as action) when they see injustice is a question I leave to the reader but in the interest of discussion I bring you this article. Its basically a longer version of, “All that is needed for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing” albeit with a beer-drinking goth slant.

My question is a matter of metrics. Where do we draw the line in the sand? Although I believe that governments should punish people based on their actions and not on their beliefs/thoughts; I even more strenuously concur that we must work against injustice, in any form. Do we refrain from going to see the racially motivated band? What if the band is not racially motivated but certain members are? What if the band is not and the members are not, but much of their clientele is? Or instead of the clientele, their producer… or distributor is? How many degrees? How far removed? I don’t know the answer (..yet) but the question is one that needs to be asked.