Author: Robert

Robert Belknap has been writing online sporadically since 2001. See the colophon for more details.

Of Dogs and Cats

Got this sent to me in an email today:

[Quote] Adam and Eve said, “Lord, when we were in the garden, you walked with us

every day. Now we do not see you any more. We are lonesome here, and it
is difficult for us to remember how much you love us.”
And God said, “No problem! I will create a companion for you that will
be with you forever and who will be a reflection of my love for you, so
that you will love me even when you cannot see me. Regardless of how
selfish or childish or unlovable you may be, this new companion will accept
you as you are and will love you as I do, in spite of yourselves.”
And God created a new animal to be a companion for Adam and Eve.
And it was a good animal.
And God was pleased.
And the new animal was pleased to be with Adam and Eve and he wagged his
tail. And Adam said, “Lord, I have already named all the animals in the
Kingdom and I cannot think of a name for this new animal.”
And God said, “No problem. Because I have created this new animal to be
a reflection of my love for you, his name will be a reflection of my own
name, and you will call him DOG.”
And dog lived with Adam and Eve and was a companion to them and loved
them.
And they were comforted.
And God was pleased.
And dog was content and wagged his tail.
After a while, it came to pass that an angel came to the Lord and said,
“Lord, Adam and Eve have become filled with pride. They strut and preen
like peacocks and they believe they are worthy of adoration. Dog has
indeed taught them that they are loved, but perhaps too well.”
And God said, “No problem! I will create for them a companion who will
be with them forever and who will see them as they truly are. The companion
will remind them of their limitations, so they will know that they are not
always worthy of adoration.”
And God created CAT to be a companion to Adam and Eve.
And cat would not obey them.
And when Adam and Eve gazed into cat’s eyes, they were reminded that they
were not the supreme beings.
And Adam and Eve learned humility.
And they were greatly improved.
And God was pleased.
And Dog was happy.
And Cat didn’t give a shit one way or the other. [Quote]

Almost

I wonder how many spammers clean their databases and remove addresses that bounce.

I wonder if a week worth of bouncing mail will cut down on the amount of spam I receive.

After no response from my attempts to deal with Network Solution’s web based system, I resorted to calling them today. My registration has finally been renewed, but you’ll have to wait another 24-72 hors hours for the changes to propagate across the DNS system. (This I know, it’s why I waited ’til Wednesday to call.)

Customer support lady surprised me by being very nice and actually rather helpful. (I’ve had some bad experiences with them in the past.) I almost feel guilty about the fact that I’m moving everything to a different registrar, and the only reason I reactivated with netsol is because the domain name can’t be expired if I want to transfer it.

Almost…

Still at Work

But I ‘m not working. 🙂

I just finished setting up Gallery on what will hopefully be a family website. I’ve go a couple of test albums up right now, (yes the kittens again) I’ll be adding a few more images over the next few days.

If anyone wants to check it out, clicky clicky. 🙂

The setup could have been easier – the documentation is a bit sparse, and I had to deal with some funky dreamhost configuration stuff. (If you are a dreamhost user and want to run gallery, make sure to check out the php-security entry in thier kbase.) I think I may blog an install guide with some caveats you should be aware of.)

One of the cools things Iearned is that the Gallery Remote java app works through my company’s firewall.

On a side note, Gallery might be an interesting thing to try to hook into GLUE (of vice-versa) – not that I have the time (or expertise) to attempt such a project right now. I’m just saying it’d be neat to have someday. 🙂

Jeez, its 20:40 – I need to get out of here.

Look Ma, no Windows!

So, I had to go buy a PC serial cable to hook up an external 56k modem salvaged from the bottom of my “obsolete” hardware box. (That would be all the crap from old computers I’ve never recycled or thrown out.)

A few clicks around in the network configuration tool, and I have established a dialup connection on the Linux side of my dual-boot system. I’m feeling quite proud of myself. 🙂

Now I just have to figure out what I want to do next…

-Hool

Diving back into linux…

I have a passing familiarity with linux. I kind of have to, seeing as how most of the web sites I maintain (both work and personal) are hosted on linux boxes. I want to learn a lot more. I’ve played around with a couple different distributions over the last few years. hooloovoo.net started life as an old HP vectra funning FreeBSD. (That box, minus the HD, has been riding around in the trunk of my car since 1999 – I wonder if anything on it still works…)

I got ahold of a copy of RedHat 8.0 last night. I stuck the 4gig HD from the old FreeBSD system into my current PC and set up a dual-boot Win98/RH8.0 machine. The setup went smoothly, and I think I’ll have a lot of fun mucking about in this version of RH, but I won’t be able to do anything “useful” until I get an internet connection working.

I know that my internal modem is a winModem, and while I might be able to get it working, it’s probably going to be a pain in the ass. I’be been poking around a bit online, and I think I have a couple of solutions, but I need to double-check the modem’s chipset to make sure I’m grabbing the correct RPMs and such.

I’m almost tempted not to bother, and just dig out an old 56k external modem and be done with it. Or convince my wife we really do need broadband. 🙂

-Hool

ADV: Enjoy a spam-free inbox

[Quote] You may remember recently sending an email to a Spam Arrest customer,
and receiving a response asking you to visit our website and type in
a word that was shown to you in a picture.

It was pretty easy, wasn’t it?

Did you know that that one simple step stops virtually all spam from
entering our customers’ inboxes?

You too can enjoy the benefits of a spam-free inbox.

We are so confident you’ll like our product, that we’d like to offer
you a 30-Day free trial. If you are un-satisfied for any reason, just
cancel your account before the end of the trial and you’ll pay nothing.

Click here to visit our website and start your trial:

[link removed]

Spam Arrest
Take control of your inbox!

———————-

You are receiving this email in response to an email you recently
sent to a Spam Arrest customer.

If you do not wish to receive further promotional emails from
Spam Arrest, please click the following link:
[link removed]
[Quote]

Does anyone else see the irony in spam advertising a spam-stopping service? I guess the funniest thing is that this message would have triggered my SpamAssassin filters and been dumped had it been sent to my home account.

Culled from the bowels of…

Here are a couple of links I found while trolling my company’s internal message board.

Pencil Carving: http://www.infofreako.com/jad/enpitsu-e.html
This one is just cool – very intricate woodcarving using pencils as the medium.

Flash Mind Reader: http://www.cyberglass.co.uk/assets/Flash/psychic.swf
Try it out, its pretty cool. More information, (including how it’s done) can be found in the spoilers. Visit the site before reading them. If you want to know how it’s done, come back and click the spoilers link.

[Spoilers]
Okay, so this is a pretty slick trick, and involves some interesting numerical relationships.
(Spam, somehow I think you’ve got it figured out already. Being a math-geek and all…)

The instructions tell you to pick any 2-digit number, add the digits together and then subtract that result from your original number. Then, you find the symbol which matches your result, and click the crystal ball. Amazingly, the symbol in the ball matches the one you picked. Go ahead, pick a different number and try again. The crystal ball knows.

Not really, take a look at this:

99 – 18 = 81
98 – 17 = 81
97 – 16 = 81
96 – 15 = 81
95 – 14 = 81
94 – 13 = 81
93 – 12 = 81
92 – 11 = 81
91 – 10 = 81
90 – 09 = 81

“Okay, they all equal 81, so what?”

Well, when you take a 2-digit number, add the digits together and then subtract the result from your original number, you end up with a multiple of 9. What’s more, for each group of ten 2-digit numbers, you get the same multiple of 9:

00 –> 09: 00
10 –> 19: 09
20 –> 29: 18
30 –> 39: 27
40 –> 49: 36
50 –> 59: 45
60 –> 69: 54
70 –> 79: 63
80 –> 89: 72
90 –> 99: 81

So all you have to do when setting this trick up is make sure that the symbols for 0, 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, and 81 are all the same, and you’ve got a “psychic” flash movie.

“But, but, the symbol wasn’t the same when I did the trick again.”

Well, no. But that’s because the table changed when you reloaded the movie. Do it a few more times and pay attention to the multiples of 9. They’re different each time you do the trick, but that group of symbols always matches. You don’t really notice it at first, because the symbols are repeated a few times on the chart, so swapping a couple (okay – 9) of the symbols around each time is probably going to go unnoticed.

In any case, it’s still a cool trick. I hope these spoilers didn’t, well, spoil it for you, or anything. 🙂
 [/Spoilers]