Older blog entries for kelly (starting at number 61)

pkiforum: Why should I certify a collective entity? How can I trust a collective entity account when I don't even know who is in it?

Pet Peeve Department

Today's apostrophic offender is DV. By the way, DV, it's "crystal", not "cristal". We have another winner: ignatz.

Government

On substance, is frightening powerful corporations really a good idea? Do that, and they'll just pay their Congressmen even more money to create even nastier laws. And Europe is no better: the WIPO, which Europe is in love with apparently, is completely and entirely controlled by corporations. Europe is even more under the sway of the multinationals than America.

Work

Got the word yesterday that we are not moving the office to DC. That qualifies as good news. On the other hand, I have a meeting today. That qualifies as bad news.

Trust metric

I wish there was some way to be notified of someone else certifying you. It's hard for me to tell who the new certs are (yes, I know, new ones usually appear at the bottom, but I can't remember reliably who the last person to cert me was and I don't check all that often). And why do people who don't know me at all cert me (e.g. jbj, who certed me a master even though as far as I know we've never so much as traded emails)?

Coke

That was intended as humor, ya know. I don't actually believe that Coke dissolves nails. I don't care for it out of the can, but it's good from a fountain except when the City of Chicago ups the chlorine level in the water by 50% because it had to release raw sewage into Lake Michigan.

Thanks to xach for the link to Snopes. Oh, and Bryce, it's "deference", not "defferance".

Other

mirwin really writes long diary entries, doesn't he?

Coke: The Real Thing

No wonder coke tastes soooo good:

• In many states (in the USA) the highway patrol carries two gallons of Coke in the truck to remove blood from the highway after a car accident.
• You can put a T-bone steak in a bowl of coke and it will be gone in two days.
• To clean a toilet: Pour a can of Coca-Cola into the toilet bowl and let the "real thing" sit for one hour, then flush clean. The citric acid in Coke removes stains from vitreous china.
• To remove rust spots from chrome car bumpers: Rub the bumper with a crumpled-up piece of Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil dipped in Coca-Cola.
• To clean corrosion from car battery terminals: Pour a can of Coca-Cola over the terminals to bubble away the corrosion.
• To loosen a rusted bolt: Applying a cloth soaked in Coca-Cola to the rusted bolt for several minutes.
• To bake a moist ham: Empty a can of Coca-Cola into the baking pan, wrap the ham in aluminum foil, and bake. Thirty minutes before the ham is finished, Remove the foil, allowing the drippings to mix with the Coke for a sumptuous brown gravy.
• To remove grease from clothes: Empty a can of coke into a load of greasy clothes, add detergent, And run through a regular cycle. The Coca-Cola will help loosen grease stains. It will also clean road haze from your windshield.
• FYI: The active ingredient in Coke is phosphoric acid. Its Ph is 2.8. It will dissolve a nail in about 4 days.
• To carry Coca-Cola syrup (the concentrate) the commercial truck must use the Hazardous material place cards reserved for Highly corrosive materials.
• The distributors of coke have been using it to clean the engines of their trucks for about 20 years!

Still Want a Coke?

(From a friend. The foregoing information provided without warranty. No typos mine. I drink Dew.)

I bought an Emacs manual from Spaf once.

raph writes:

Is it just me, or is VA's business model completely unrealistic?

It's not just you.

On other matters:

Python has lost its appeal to me: all the new "features" of the 2.x releases have compromised the original cleanliness of its design. See, for example, the convoluted semantics of division in Python 2.2.

I posted, a few months ago, a simple inquiry regarding the HP NetRAID controller and 2.4.x kernels to the linux-kernel list. I got a pretty prompt and useful reply from a fine Finnish fellow which solved my problem. When I started getting requests from other people asking me if I got an answer, I posted again to linux-kernel announcing that I had found a solution and to email if you want it (several people have). Now, I am getting spam. My work email is not generally public. The only way it could have been harvested was from the linux-kernel archives (or perhaps the Debian bug archive, as I believe I may have submitted a bug report from work). It really pisses me off that spammers are effectively discouraging effective participation in open source mailing lists and other such fora.

sjanes71, it's "epoch", not "epoc".

I hate Earthlink.

We have a winner in the Chapter 11 Sweepstakes: Convergent filed for Chapter 11 protection yesterday. That's two in one week. Today's Friday, will anyone squeeze in to the bankruptcy courts today, or will we have to wait for Monday?

Whee. Today I figured out how to program Exchange to automatically reply to mail sent to a given address. Ya know, sorta like putting "|autoresponder" into a .forward, only three times as complex.

donky: You should never use kill -9 until you've verified that a plain kill isn't sufficient. kill -9 doesn't give the target process the chance to execute exit handlers. When used on a service like a database engine, this could result in lost data, corrupted indexes, and all sorts of unpleasant effects.

I see that kgb has committed the cardinal apostrophic sin in eir diary. Shame on you. You need a refresher lesson.

Winstar filed for Chapter 11 yesterday. Surprise. Any bets on which new telecom will be next?

Another new telecomm company goes in the toilet: Winstar announced that it is in default on a big hunk of its debt and is considering Chapter 11 protection. The spiral begins....

Reactivated my Sourceforge account. I keep meaning to get my kaleidoscope plugin for GIMP cleaned up and published, plus I have this outstanding project to write a Penrose tile generator (I have source for one, just needs to be adapted).

How does it work that yesterday it was sunny and in the upper 60s/low 70s and today it's low 30s with forecasts of snow? Apparently the adage about Indiana weather also applies to Illinois.

Should have Internet access at home by lunchtime (the modem is there and set up, but nobody but me knows how to configure the server), although it will take a bit longer to get the house intranet wired as I haven't moved the cables over from the old place yet, and the line from the second floor (where the cable modem is) to the first floor hasn't been pulled through the floor yet (right now, it goes to the basement now). I'm probably going to move the server to the basement eventually but we need a third hub (or a switch) before we do that.

At least our secondary is back up (it was down for a few hours because of a cable cut in Texas) so our mail isn't going into a big black hole (I hope).