Ramblings

Another winner

2008-08-11T03:21:33Z

This is not sarcasm, this is not satire, this is documentary.

And BTW: Klingon is not a Finno-Ugric language. Just ask anyone who speaks Erzya.

Feelin' a bit right-ish today

2008-06-24T06:21:24Z

MIT Open Courseware

2008-06-19T15:29:29Z

Makes me want to play 4e D&D

2008-06-08T01:33:04Z

http://www.gnomestew.com/specific-rpgs/a-gms-first-impressions-of-dnd-4e-looks-like-fun

"How my mother's fanatical views tore us apart"

2008-06-03T20:51:33Z

Written by the daughter of Alice Walker, author of "The Color Purple":

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021293/Alice-Walker-feminist-icon-wrote-The-Color-Purple-Here-daughter-reveals-fanatical-views-motherhood-tore-apart-.html

Gotta love the Star Wars Kid

2008-06-03T19:24:01Z

Better:

Best:

The Return of Steve's Meme

2008-06-03T17:03:51Z

1. The age you will be on your next birthday:

2. A place to which you'd like to travel:

3. Your favorite place:

4. Your favorite object:

5. Your favorite food:

6. Your favorite animal:

7. Your favorite color:

8.-12. skipped

13. Your nickname/screenname:

14.-16. skipped

17. A Bad Habit of Yours:

18.-19. skipped

20. Your major in college:

(Actually, Problems are Complex, so the answer gets even _more_ interesting...!)

This IS me

2008-05-31T06:04:00Z

This could be me if I'm not careful

2008-05-31T05:24:55Z

In my case, it'll be something like: "Oh, I _get_ it! The Jordan Canonical form... you know, the one with the eigenvalues on the diagonal and 1's on the superdiagonal... that holds for _complex_ n-space! That's why that matrix in R4 didn't turn out right! I have to get this down... hand me a kleenex or something. No, not a used one!!"

'Art class' lawsuit settled in Wisconsin

2008-05-23T13:36:24Z

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=121794

Didn't need the ACLU after all.

How a mathematician argues

2008-05-16T18:18:17Z

Richard Dawkins is taking trip by train and finds himself seated next to a mathematician who is also a theist. Enjoying a good debate, Dawkins challenges the mathematician to come up with an airtight proof for the existence of God.

The mathematician, who has his nose in the middle of a difficult book and not wishing to be interrupted, says, "If you are uneducated, then there is a God."

"Uneducated?" replies Dawkins, somewhat shocked. "I have M.A. and D.Phil. degrees from --"

"Exactly," replies the mathematician, returning to his book.

Favorite Quotes

2008-04-26T11:35:17Z

"You'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies."
-- from Philippians 4:8 (The Message)

"People can reject God. They can rail against His purposes. They can try to ignore Him. But they cannot remove Him."
-- Jim Fletcher

"This is my 2008 slogan: Reasonable Person for President. We are grown-ups, we know our country needs greatness, but we do not expect it and will settle at the moment for good. We would like a candidate who does not appear to be obviously insane."
-- Peggy Noonan

"I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is, either."
-- Ben Stein

"Adventure is just bad planning."
-- Roald Amundsen

"I think that the 'born gay' thesis is a crock."
-- Camille Paglia

"That brings me joy!"
-- Michele Wolfe

"What's the mouse's armor class?"
-- Merodym (spoken in all seriousness, I might add)

"Aliens? Us? Is this one of your Earth jokes?"
-- Krowbar in THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA

"This car is old, so it's not necessarily new."
-- Deirdre (age 7)

For any humanly constructible system of axioms, there is a formula which can be obtained but is not provable in that system.

Cat: "Is that what I think it is?"
Rimmer: "What do you think it is?"
Cat: "A big orange swirly thing in space!"
-- Red Dwarf

Q. Paul, why do Hell's Angels wear leather?
A. Paul Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.

"Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak."
-- The Bard

"Push the button, Frank."

Wisdom Culled from the Marx Brothers

2008-04-25T17:32:57Z

You don't have to speak to be heard.

Always answer the important question first.

Really important people never have anything really
important to say.

The best thing to do in a difficult situation is to make
an ugly face or offer someone your leg.

Puncture a windbag whenever possible.

Whatever it is I'm against it.

101 uses for scissors, glue and a blow torch.

Beware of strangers selling Tootsie-Frootsie Ice Cream.

One properly executed HONK! is worth a thousand words.

Your Breeder's Guide...Don't leave home without it!

There ain't no Sanity Clause.

People are honest but you've got to watch them.

If someone gets you down, stick your feet in their lemonade.

Sometimes fighting for someone ELSE'S honor is probably
more than they will ever do.

When in doubt, the password is "Swordfish"

You CAN burn the candle at both ends.

Take time to have a strange interlude.

When making any sort of request, it doesn't hurt to add
"And two hard boiled eggs".

Outside of a dog a book is Man's best friend.
Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

The Ace of Spades is the most valuable card in a bridge game;
it may be played repeatedly, and relied upon to take every trick.

Don't pester a man leaning against a building --
he may be the only thing holding it up.

Any time you got a lot you gotta too much.

You gotta get up early if you wanna get out of bed.

Some nicknames don't need explaining.

Omit things that you don't think are important.

Twelve years is not too long to be in one college.

If you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce,
they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.

Remember that art is art...but then again, water is water.

This would be a better world for children if their parents
had to eat the spinach.

Marriage is impossible only after you're married!

I can here for a party, and what did I get? Nothing. Not even ice cream.
The gods looks down and laugh.

Your retirement is the greatest contribution to your field
that you can make!

MS in Mathematics

2008-04-22T20:45:06Z

My thesis passed without revision. Only the paperwork left to do.

Student Sues Wisconsin School After Getting a Zero for Religious Drawing

2008-04-02T18:24:38Z

Where is the ACLU?

Jazz, a satire

2008-04-01T01:15:58Z

As pop culture goes, this is seven years out of date, but I don't care. I was ROTFLOL reading this anyway. The background: Ken Burns' Jazz is a documentary that runs 1140 minutes (according to Amazon) was about as balanced as a history of American politics hosted by Howard Dean and Hilary Clinton. Burns, who admitted knowing little about jazz, turned to several experts who had an ax to grind. Hence, this satire.

Fedora 8

2008-03-30T02:39:09Z

I haven't installed or used a Red Hat distro since about 2003 -- version 8.1, in fact. I quit about the time that Red Hat announced that all of us nonpaying users were leeches that they were better off without. I ignored the Fedora project, sticking with Kanotix, since it was deb-based, as I was tired of the dependency hell that rpm packages were known for. Kanotix worked after a lot of tweaking, and once Kubuntu reached 6.06, I switched over to that. Kubuntu has had ups and downs but won overall on consistency. It's still the best distro I've ever used. But it only achieved its potential with additional packages, best installed via Automatix.

Well, the news that Automatix is dead prompted me to install Fedora 8 on a spare partition.

Not that I couldn't do what Automatix did via the command prompt, but I figured that it was time to eject my Red Hat prejudices and take a look at what its community has come up with after five years. That, and the end of Automatix might spell the end of K/Ubuntu as the distro of choice for the casual user who wants to give Linux a spin. Those users are its base; tough to survive if your base gets alienated.

And, after five years, I figured that the problems associated with rpm-based distros would be history.

How many words are there on Earth for WRONG?!

Fedora 8 installs fine, and its Gnome desktop looks like a Mac (which is good), but if you add KDE, you lose sound support (as least on my laptop). And I have four packages that can't install because of -- believe it or not -- dependency hell.

It's been five years, folks. Five years! May I be blunt? It's time to ditch the rpms and move to debs. apt works just fine, folks. yum does not. End of story.

Automatix is dead...

2008-03-29T03:44:55Z

And it may end up killing K/Ubuntu, IMHO. Why download a crippled system, which is how Ubuntu acts without all of the easily downloaded goodies? The loss of Automatix won't hurt the geeks, but wasn't the point of Ubuntu that it was the distro from the average user?

It may be time to consider downloading Fedora 8...

(Cue Principal Skinner: "No... No! NOOOOOO!")

Thesis

2008-03-28T16:52:29Z

That raging elephant standing in the corner that I don't like to acknowledge... I sent off my "final" draft to the committee on Monday, asking them to pour over it and see if it's ready for defense. No word yet from any of them, so that's either a good thing (no bugs found) or a bad thing (they haven't gotten to it yet, and the deadline to defend is May 5th).

On the lookout for new talent...

2008-03-21T03:08:41Z

...I present the new Bruce Lee.

Linux Geek Humor

2008-03-21T01:10:06Z

...with thanks to Steevr for sending me this.

You must listen to this...

2008-03-19T03:42:53Z

...and keep an open mind until you get at least two-thirds of the way through!

Official Obama Criticizer Bo Snerdley to Sen. Obama

2008-02-27T17:23:29Z

"Yo, oh! What's up with you acting dissed when they only rolled out a shot of you with your African garb. Yo! You were in the mother land with the peeps. That was lame, yo! These are your peeps. You were stylin'. Instead of acting dissed, you shoulda rolled out large and told Clinton and everybody else what was up. This is what the big dogs do, yo, not like Bill faking it, putting on some kente cloth when he goes to Africa, then forgetting all about the home boys when he comes back home. Like that. You shoulda also told Hillary: 'Yo, baby, maybe if you dress up in some costumes and get out of that bumblebee outfit, you might keep your man at home for a change.' Okay? You feel me? Don't fall for Clinton 'trickinology,' bro."

Mildly amusing

2008-02-27T15:10:16Z

I've been listening to too much Weird Al.

Name Decoder

2008-02-24T02:03:56Z

Get Your Cyborg Name