http://www.zumsteg.net Derek Zumsteg's site of doom Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:33:51 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en There's a weird Prius ad that keeps running on Craigslist, and it starts 2007 TOYOTA : PRIUS HYBRID 60 MPG US$ 5400 followed by a ridiculous description and then, in huge letters, the email address to contact the person, and a chunk of spam text. So I searched on the email address ... http://www.zumsteg.net/2008/07/01/weird-craigslist-scam-on-cheap-prius-listings/ From Dan's Data: Embassy couldn't possibly allow Cartrivision to just be a general purpose record-and-playback system. They were just like today's split-personality entertainment megacorps, who on the one hand want as many people as possible to pay to "enjoy" their "content", but on the other hand would rather like it if ... http://www.zumsteg.net/2008/06/29/one-of-the-finer-one-paragraph-summaries-of-corporate-drm-attitudes-ever/ My computer is so toast. Got it running yesterday after a long while. Hooked the second monitor back up. Died. Would boot, then did a crazed dead screen display trying to load windows. Safe boot didn't work. Single monitor, eventually got safe boot to work. Got everything running again... now ... http://www.zumsteg.net/2008/06/23/sverr-de-sveeer-sveer-on-sveer-bork-bork-bork/ I had a kind of heinous doctor's appointment this afternoon (eliding details). After I got out, I was all knotted out with stress and whatever, but I realized I could check out the Cafe Vivace by REI on my way back... and now I've just finished a stunningly good latte, ... http://www.zumsteg.net/2008/06/23/wfv-working-from-vivace/ I used to make coffee with my Aeropress. It was pretty awesome. I got more and more into it, started being able to tell the difference between good and bad cups, started rating the local coffee places, and eventually I bought a nice Rancillio Silvia and a quality grinder to ... http://www.zumsteg.net/2008/06/21/simplicity-and-the-downward-spiral-of-knowledge/ Discussing a problem today, we tossed around some solutions that involved generating a lot of transactions on the back end, and I stopped and said "You know, we're casually discussing an option that requires more computing power than existed in the world in like... 1985." And the people I was ... http://www.zumsteg.net/2008/06/10/part-of-why-i-like-working-at-expedia/ From Sneakers: Dick Gordon: National Security Agency. Martin Bishop: Ah. You're the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone. Dick Gordon: No, that's the FBI. We're not chartered for domestic surveillance. Martin Bishop: Oh, I see. You just overthrow governments. Set up friendly dictators. Dick Gordon: No, that's the CIA. We ... http://www.zumsteg.net/2008/06/10/we-were-so-naive-then/ On the way in to work today, I had to fish out cash because I didn't have my bus pass, and I realized that with gas this high, even my extremely short trip to work starts to makes economic sense just on the gas. It's only ~4 miles each way, ... http://www.zumsteg.net/2008/06/09/thinking-about-trips-versus-tanks/ It's been a while since I ranted about politics, this, from Elenanor Clift, doing a post-mortem on the Clinton campaign: She did run an extraordinarily close race, and if the Democrats had the same winner-take-all rules as the Republicans, she'd be the nominee. If Obama hadn't outorganized her in small caucus ... http://www.zumsteg.net/2008/06/06/if-we-were-playing-football-id-hit-a-grand-slam/ Little Brother, TOR, available at fine retailers or online for free (!), Cory Doctorow. For starters, I'm reviewing as an adult science-fiction reader. It's being sold as a young adult book, but genre classification's always a bit of a joke, and to deal with that point right off the bat: it's ... http://www.zumsteg.net/2008/06/03/little-brother-review/