Can I just tell you, I hate Microsoft! I know that I work in an MS shop. I know that I develop software in an MS language that runs on an MS server. I know that a lot of MS stuff is really cool and makes my life easier. But I still hate it!! (And I always discourage people from using the word “hate”, but I really do hate it.)

Here I am, minding my own business, a relatively intelligent guy, smart enough to know that if I get an exe file emailed to me from free@porn.viagra.com that I should not open said exe file. I am also smart enough to know that if my colleague sends me an exe file (related to my job) that he just told me in person that he was sending me, I can trust that it is not a malicious file and I should be able to open it.

But just in case I’m too stupid to know the difference, MS Outlook refuses to give me access to the file. Oh, it’s there. The file exists on my hard drive. It’s just that MS; being the high and mighty, omnipotent and omniscient big brother that it is; says, “Ah ah ah! You can’t touch that file. It might be dangerous.”

So what’s a guy to do? Google it, of course. And high on the list of search returns is an article from Microsoft’s own knowledge base that explains how to hack the registry in order to overcome this “security feature”.

*Long, angry, migraine inducing sigh*

If you know how to edit your registry, then you are probably safe in reading this article in which MS tells you how to hack MS in order to get around MS’s *%^$%#!@? draconian iron curtain “feature”.

I’d better stop writing before I compromise my Christian witness.

Time for some geek links!

I love William Shatner. The guy has an endless sense of humor and is always willing to poke fun at himself. If you can’t laugh at yourself, rest assured everyone else will!

Shatner serenades George Lucas. (I LOVE everyone’s face when Shatner comes on stage at a Star Wars event.)

From an old Saturday Night Live sketch, Shatner trashes Trekkies. (The audio and video don’t jive, but it’s still funny.)

What could be more geek than a montage of Star Trek (TOS) dubbed to Monty Python’s “Camelot”?!

For a true 80’s kid geek, the only thing cooler than a Trek/Python parody is a LEGO/Python parody. (Watch closely for the parrot sketch reference.)

And for those of you who have never seen the original (*gasp*) or those who just can’t get enough, here is the Monty Python version of the Monty Python song. Umm. Right.

And, precisely because you didn’t expect it… The Spanish Inquisition (in two parts).

I loves me some YouTube! It’s a brave new world!

If only I had the time, the means, and that many friends (quiet sob), I would do something like this.

Human Space Invaders

My buddy Dave sent me a link this morning to a blog post about the bizarre vernacular of programmers (and how it differs by region and “culture”). Truly, if the average Joe on the street walked into an intense programming discussion, he would be completely lost. Allow me an example.*

Code Geek #1: When I put the gooid in the earl I get a 500.

Code Geek #2: Are you stripping the curlies from the gooid?

Code Geek #1: Of course. Maybe there’s a hash, bang or carrot in my query string.

Code Geek #2: Shouldn’t matter, but a whack or tilde might break it if the yuri goes to an apache box.

Code Geek #1: Hey! How’d this back tick get in my string?

Code Geek #2: Oh, I pasted that copy from word into your code. There’s probably a smart quote in there too.

Code Geek #1: You touched my code? I must kill you now.

* Some pronunciation spelled out for clarity.

As you can see, we have some very strange vocabulary in the programming world. But with just a little explanation, it will all make sense. Just mouse over the underlined words and you’ll see to what the coders are referring.

If you read the post and its comments, you will see much more of the weird language of code geeks. I was most fascinated by the poem posted in the comments. Here, I’ve revised this poem using my own vocabulary. It is followed by its “English” translation.

\\!*''/
^@`$$-
*!'$_
%*#>4
&)../
{~|**SYSTEM HALTED

back-whack bang star tick tick slash
carat at back-tick dollar dollar dash
star bang tick dollar underscore
percent splat pound angle bracket four
amp right-paren dot dot slash
curly bracket tilde pipe star star crash

The original poem uses some language that I’ve not heard before. < and > are called “waka” (the sound Pac-Man makes). I refer to them as left and right angle brackets, but waka is sure a lot more fun.

Are any of my readers geek enough to contribute their own code-speak? Comments are welcome.

I was looking over StatTraq today (a really cool statistics tool for the WordPress blog). I noticed I’d gotten a lot of hits from search engines for my Crazy Boromir post. I looked at the post and, what to my surprise, the links didn’t work! So, I scoured the web until I collected all the files for myself. Now, here they are for your viewing pleasure. (Also, the original post has corrected links.)

Boromir’s Imaginary Phone

Boromir’s Ninja Wizard Plan

Boromir’s Catapult Plan

Believe it or not, I’ve seen two movies on their respective opening nights this month. I know! I’m livin’ on the wild side! I’m a mad man! You can’t stop me!

Some guys from the office (myself included) took an afternoon off and went to see X3. That’s the cool, hip, wild-side-livin’ nickname for the third installment in the X-Men series, “The Last Stand”. I think it’s great that X-Men is now a to-be-taken-seriously movie franchise. Now, if you tell a girl you have Wolverine bed sheets, she’ll think of that hunk, Hugh Jackman, whereas a few years ago, the same girl would slap you and tell you to sell your comic books and move out of your parents’ basement before trying to hit on girls. Okay, well, she’d still probably say something like that, but she’d be thinking of that hunk, Hugh Jackman, while she said it.

The first X-Men was great. I liked how they developed the characters and introduced the mutant phenomenon in a (sort of) believable way to folks not familiar with the comic books. X2 was great. They introduced more mutants, upped the ante on the special effects, and killed off a major character (of course, real fans knew that that was just a set up for the arrival of Phoenix). X3 was great. They introduced more mutants, upped the ante on the special effects and killed off a major character. Oh… Hmm… Maybe this is getting a little formulaic. Ah, who cares? It’s X-Men!

Seriously, though, I really did enjoy X3. They did a great job portraying the new guys, like The Beast and Juggernaut. (If anyone had told me that Kelsey Grammer would be an X-Man, I’d have laughed them out of the comic-con.) The movie rides along at a fast pace and without losing the story.

My only complaint was the ending. It was entertaining and “fit”, but there were several logical alternatives that made more sense. I’ll have to explain more, but it will involve spoilers, so the next paragraph uses my patented spoiler resistant technology. Highlight it to read more if you don’t mind spoilers.

Pretty cool, eh? First, Phoenix makes her debut (being the reincarnated Jean Gray) but she can’t control her powers and becomes a very dangerous “bad guy”. At the end, Wolverine has to risk his life to face her and kill her. But wouldn’t it have made just as much sense for Rogue to sap Phoenix’s power. Or even better use that “Cure” mutant kid. He just walks up to her and her powers disappear. Why kill her? On a side note, it’s totally retarded that Logan’s shirt, and even his flesh gets torn away by Phoenix’s evapo-rays, but his pants don’t even get torn. Dave and I both said (at the same time) they should have made the rest of his suit out of whatever those pants are made of. Kind of ruined the moment for us.

Okay. Now that that’s out of the way, let me say that if you liked the other two X’s, you’ll like this one too. Is it better than either of the other two? That depends on who you ask. Still, I think it’s a great movie and I’m giving it four out of five grins.

Postscript: One last thing. I’m the kind of guy that always stays through the end of the credits, just in case there’s tasty morsel hiding there and I usually get made fun of for it. Well, this time, since I was with “the guys”, I left with them and, wouldn’t you know it, I found out from another friend later that there’s a tasty morsel after the credits. GAH!! If you held your bladder for two hours, you can wait another five minutes and let me see the secret scene! Seriously!

War is hell. No doubt about that. When a war lasts over twenty years, it’s even worse. Such is the case with personal computing platforms. The road is strewn with the corpses of the fallen: IBM, Commodore, Tandy, even Atari. We are left with the “Big Three”, Macintosh, Windows, and Linux. For years I’ve lived in the Windows world, and peered into the other two from a distance, rarely reaching out to touch the grass greener. At my last job, I brushed closest to them. I managed the web servers with Red Hat Linux and our primary client was a school district running entirely on Macs.

In that torturous year (torturous for more reasons than OS platforms) I gained a pretty good understanding of the philosophy behind each of the Big Three. Now for the first time, I have formulated a metaphor which, I believe, best describes how these things “think”.

Imagine your computer is a car, a utilitarian piece of machinery who’s sole purpose is to get you from point A to point B. When you slide into the driver’s seat, you are confronted with the operating system. The OS, then is the system of communication between you, the driver, and the mechanics of the car.

Let’s start with the left most end of the spectrum, the Macintosh. When you climb into your “iCar”, the first thing you notice is how plush it is. Soft, comfortable seats; huge windshield giving you a fantastic view of the road; and the best car audio system on the planet. Sure, it’s a little pricey, but what a ride! Once you’ve taken it all in, you decide to take it for a spin, but what’s this? There is no steering wheel! There are no peddles. Instead you have a single, big, shiny, back-lit button. It say’s “GO”. You press the button and miraculously the iCar drives you to work. “Brilliant!” you marvel. You press the button again, and the iCar drives you home. You never even had to look at the road. Then you decide to go out for dinner. “I think I’ll try that new Tex-Mex place,” you say. You press “GO” and before you know it, you’re sitting in front of the world’s best (and most expensive) Italian restaurant. “Wait. No. I want to go the the new Tex-Mex place. Besides, Italian gives me gas!” You press “GO” and the iCar promptly drives you to a newer, less reliable Italian place. “Are you deaf?! I said, ‘Tex-Mex’!” Before you know it, your parked outside of Pizza Hut. “Curse you, iCar!” you shout, banging the “GO” button with all your might. The iCar then promptly locks its doors trapping you inside until, hours later, you manage to kick out the side window and walk home.

In the center of the spectrum is Windows. The Win-mobile is exactly what you have come to expect from a car. Steering wheel, accelerator, brake, etc. There’s a radio, but each station plays more commercials than songs. There’s a CD player, but it destroyed your favorite CD last month, so you’re afraid to put another CD in it. You get behind the wheel and drive to work, battling traffic the whole way, bruising your behind on numerous pot-holes (program errors), cursing the tailgaters (pop-up ads), and around every corner is another construction zone (security update). After a grueling commute, you grudgingly get back into the Win-mobile to drive to dinner. You arrive at the Tex-Mex place only to find there’s a two-hour wait to be seated, because everyone in town decided to come to the same place to eat. The food is great, but was it really worth all the trouble?

Finally, on the right end of the spectrum, we have Linux. To your surprise, the car is totally free! You just walk up to the dealer, get in “car” (Linux is not real concerned with catchy names. Who needs marketing when it’s free?), and drive away. However, “car” also has no doors, no windshield, and no seat belts. If you want those, you’ll need to buy the Red Hat “car”. You decide it’s worth it. Now you feel a little more comfortable behind the… umm. Where’s the steering wheel? Oh, well, that comes standard with Suse “car” (but Suse has no doors), but if you really think you need it, you can get the wheel for free and bolt it on yourself. You do have you’re own wrench set, right? You manage to survive your commute, though you had to stop two or three times and tighten the bolts on your steering wheel, since the wrench wasn’t really the right size. Now it’s time for dinner. Where is that Tex-Mex place? Voila! You’re “car” comes with a phone book (man page). You open the book, look up “Tex-Mex”. Instead of directions to the restaurant, you find the following instructions. “Put fajita meat in tortilla. (These can be downloaded for free). Frozen margarita is strongly recommended. The tequila is in the trunk. Once you’re drunk, you should avoid the cops. Just in case, there’s a gun in the glove box.”

It’s May 25th. Happy Towel Day!

What? You don’t know what Towel Day is? (Okay, neither did I until I read The Sneeze today. Fortunate for me, I really DO always have a towel at hand.*) It’s a day to celebrate the late great Douglas Adams, creator of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The Towel Day page explains the holiday (and the towel thing*). I recommend you read it. I also recommend you read Steve’s Sneeze post about D. Adams. And if you’re really looking to geek out today, go check out the HHGG text game from the mid-80s reborn as a web game.

* Seriously! There’s one in my desk for when I ride my bike to work. There’s one in my truck because I have a leaky back window. And, I keep a few around the house, just in case.

I am Geek. There is no question about that. But I am not nearly as Geek as I could be. In case you need any proof of that…

I did not have a Klingon wedding.

I did not have a renaissance wedding.

And I do not own a 20-sided die, much less one on a ring.

You can click on the D20 ring image, if you feel you must own one for yourself. They also sell a D12 if your hands are too dainty for the D20 (which, if you think you need one, is probably true).

You may have seen the following when trying to surf my site lately:

The site was down for a little while because BlueHost was moving it to a new server as part of a free upgrade. Free?! Shyeah free!

Can I just tell you BlueHost rocks? Okay, cuz they do. I paid $6.95 a month (24 months up-front, about $170) for this service and they’ve upgraded it for free. Now I get 15 Gb or storage and 400 Gb/month of bandwidth, not to mention 50 databases, 25 domains and 20 subdomains, and 2500 email addresses. The web admin rocks. The service rocks (I usually get replies to service emails in about an hour.) and they have all kinds of great tools bundled into the service with one-click installs (including WordPress, the software that this blog runs on). Granted I only use a tiny fraction of all that, but it is growing. (I’m hosting a total of five web sites right now, and a sixth is on the way.) And I have no worries about running out of space or bandwidth.

Yaaay BlueHost! If you want to sign up, just crick here!