Inert Ramblings

Month: October 2003

  • STOP SPAM IN ITS TRACKS!

    Just to let everyone know, I have absolutely nothing to do with the “STOP SPAM IN ITS TRACKS!” spam that was sent using inertramblings.com as its return address. It appears that Robert Todino (aka Bill Jones, aka Brian Appel, aka Bob White, aka John Miller) of Woburn, MA sent out the spam and forged my domain. For those of you keeping track, this is the Dimensional Warp Generator guy! So, we all can guess where he got my domain name from.

    Either way, I’ve made attempts to contact him and convey my displeasure with the situation. Perhaps he’ll contact me and apologize. Perhaps he doesn’t care. Perhaps he’ll use my domain name again, in which case I’ll be pursuing legal action. After all, I work a mere 10 minutes from his house. I’m still contemplating whether I should stop by and give him a friendly “hello” this evening.

  • Pulp Antigenre

    After reading all of the rave reviews, I decided to go see Kill Bill with my Father the other night. Absolutely amazing. Quentin has managed to accurately capture the feeling of, and make fun of, Japanese Anime and fight genres at the same time! Some of the scenes were dead on accurate to the culture and sent chills down my spine and then, two seconds later, gallons of fake blood were gushing in absolutely fake tongue-in-cheek Itchy and Scratchy fashion!

    Although Pulp Fiction was right on the edge of being a dark comedy, Kill Bill dives directly into the comedic waters because the blood and gore is so far over the edge and in your face that it’s actually amusing. No attempts have been made to pretend that Kill Bill is a serious movie…it’s simply over the top Japanese Anime acted out with humans instead of animation, complete with Matrixesque wire work and Bullet Time.

  • When You Tell One Lie

    With apologies to Paul Hatch…I always disliked this jingle.

    When you tell one lie, it leads to another
    So you tell two lies to cover each other
    Then you tell three lies and, oh brother
    You’re in trouble up to your ears!

    So you tell four lies to try to protect you
    Then you tell five lies so folks won’t suspect you
    Then you tell six lies and you’ll collect
    A life filled with worries and fears

    ‘Cause you can’t remember how many lies you’ve told
    And half the things you say aren’t true
    And sometime you’ll slip up, you’ll trip up and then
    Whatever will become of you?

    So you lie and lie without even trying
    And each lie you tell will keep multiplying
    ‘Till the whole wide world will know you’re lying
    Then you’ll be
    Suspected
    Detected
    Rejected
    Neglected
    Disliked
    And you should!
    When you lie, you’re closing the door
    On everything good

  • Lunch

    • 3 slices bologna
    • 2 slices pepperoni
    • 2 pickles
    • 2 slices American cheese
    • Mustard and horseradish

  • Breakfast

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  • Me fail English? That’s unpossible!

    Ralph While randomly searching for comma splices I ran across the Guide to Grammar and Writing at Capital Community College. I’m an extremely concise technical writer, however, I’m also a self-taught high school dropout (see, a comma splice). Because of this I tend to write using my own personal set of rules that I’ve put together while reading technical manuals and other documentation sets.

    I’ve finally gotten over my mental block of how text should look and have decided to start studying English again. Although I pride myself on my spelling I know I have a lot to relearn about grammar and syntax. I use technical grammar and syntax rules in everything I write and I’ve known for years that there are some places where that’s just not appropriate. Examples would be numbers (twenty-three students vs. 23 students), lists (one, two and three vs. one, two, and three), and other miscellaneous things that the average reader wouldn’t pick up on but many of my friends have commented on.

    I’m also guilty of intentionally using inappropriate grammar for dramatic effect. Comma splices are my most used infraction. Inappropriate conjunctions. Verbless sentences? Ahem…

    So, anyone who knows my writing style will start to see a change in my posts. I’ll be making an active attempt to immediately apply appropriate changes to my everyday journal entries and forum posts. Wish me luck.

  • The mystery bag made its way back to its owner…

    I left the mystery bag in front of the garage at the address on the envelope I found in it. This morning I got a voicemail from its owner thanking me profusely for going out of my way to return it. How many karma points is that?

  • Tis only a flesh wound!

    Yesterday evening’s commute home was quite amusing. I found a leather bag in the middle of the road leaving work. You’d think that the owner of such an expensive bag filled with medical course notes and textbooks would at least tag it with their contact information. No such luck. Not even a name written on any of the note pages.

    After rooting through this poor soul’s belongings and stale granola bars, I finally found a single envelope that had an address on it right up the street. I stopped by last night and this morning but no one was home. Since I couldn’t verify that the bag belonged to that address I didn’t want to just leave it on the step. I’ll try again this evening and leave a note.

    As if finding the bag wasn’t exciting enough, I then witnessed a flatbed semi truck shuck the side of an early nineties luxury sedan at junction 95 and 93 in Woburn. The car was in the middle lane. The trucker lazily flipped on his directional and meticulously changed lanes right into the sedan. Rear trailer tires tend to do a very good job of removing every single piece of plastic from the side of a car.

    Chunks of car and trailer bounced off my hood and skid plates, the car slammed to a halt in the center lane of 95 North and the truck just kept right on going. I chased down the truck and flashed him with my high beams. No response. I honked. No response. I flew by him, put on my hazards, pulled in front of him, slowed down, motioned to the breakdown lane, pulled into the breakdown lane and he accelerated as he passed me.

    Finally I armed my Hella driving beams, got back behind him, and flashed him repeatedly while weaving back and forth and pulled into the breakdown lane. He finally got the hint, pulled over and came to a stop. Shortly thereafter, the guy he hit rolled up to the scene and parked in front of the semi.

    911. Busy signal. 911. Got hung up on. 911. Busy signal. 911. “Don’t bother us if there are no injuries, just exchange papers.” The quote of the evening from the trucker was “I dun even remember hittin’ you an’ din’t feel nuttn’”. A close second was “a lil’ rubbn’ compound l’ take that right out”. I gave my name, address and phone number and will probably have to fill out some paperwork.

    Feh. At least there was some cause for concern.

  • Don’t fsck ext3 disks…

    The storm last night caused numerous power outages both at work and at home. Unfortunately, the Web server UPS died and caused some minor disk corruption. No problem, the disks are ext3 with journaling enabled.

    But, when I got home, instead of allowing the system to come up on its own and recover the journal, I ran fsck just to see what the damage was. Only one directory was lost…the PostNuke PostCalendar cache directory on /var. No problem, that’s a temp directory with no valuable data, so I unlinked it and let fsck finish.

    On the second pass fsck found approximately 24,000 lost files. I panicked. We’re talking deep down, gut wrenching, “I just lost all of my data and I’m totally screwed” fear.
    (more…)

  • Breakfast