The term “Xeriscape” was coined by the Denver Water Department in 1981. The word is a combination of “landscape” and the Greek word “xeros,” which means “dry.” The primary goal of Xeriscaping is to create sustainable landscapes that require a minimum of water, while still remaining attractive.

More Xeriscaping info can be found here.

For those of you in the Atlanta area, the City of Atlanta provides free consultation by Summer Xeriscape Interns.

XP is the emoticon for how I feel about the newest polished turd from Microsoft, which is the OS du jour for my work-provided laptop.

To me, XP feels like someone harvested a million spam emails and built an entire operating system out of them.

I poke the start bu–HELLO WE’RE MICROSOFT WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY OUR SODA?!!!–Click cancel. Click the start b-COME ON AND BUY MSN ALONG WITH OUR SODA!!!!!!!-Click cancel again. Ass hats. Click sta-YOU’D REALLY LOVE A WHOLE MSN-BRANDED LIVING ROOM SUITE WITH SOME MS SODA RIGHT NOW!!!—No, you bastards!! Move mouse slightly–YOU WILL KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!!! AND BUY OUR SODA!!!

Woohoo! Laura got me good Christmas loot, including some pirate wall-plate covers (yar!), a vintage Hawaiian shirt, and a Tiki mug. She also got me the Griffin Powermate, which is a very neat user-customizeable USB knob that currently acts as a scroll wheel, volume control, left-hand delete and/or enter key, and lots more, depending upon the application.

Mmmm, stats for you car: Davis manufactures the CarChip, which is a small device that plugs into your car’s diagnostic connector and gathers all sorts of fun data as you drive. When you’re finished driving, disconnect the CarChip from your car, and connect it to your PC to download the collected data.

From the site:

“CarChip fits all 1996 and later foreign and domestic vehicles to automatically record and store 75 hours of trip details, including:

• Time, date and distance for each trip
• Speed logged every 5 seconds
• Hard acceleration and decelerations
• Engine diagnostic trouble codes and status of other engine parameters when the code occurred
• Idle time
• Time and date CarChip is connected or disconnected.

While I was on vacation last week, rather than go to the beach, or skiing, or even doing something fun like eating Japanese candy [wait, I did do that], I bought a house.

In the strictest sense of the term, I didn’t really buy it. The bank bought it, and I just leased my shrivelled, blackened little soul to them for thirty years in order to stay there. And it’s still not officially mine yet, as I have to wait until the end of January for closing.

If you’re running OS X, replace Terminal.app with iTerm.

iTerm is a free, open-source terminal client whose most attractive feature, for me, is tabbed terminal sessions, like Mozilla’s tabbed browser windows. Each tab can be configured with its own name, transparency, and color scheme, and if the session changes [example: new mail in mutt], the session name text changes to red.

This morning we’re browsing the ‘net from Rod’s house. Rod gets free DSL from his old employer –one of the perks of building a company. Unfortunately, the web connection is ‘filtered’.

For example, when doing a search for ‘amazon.com’ at The Wayback Machine, the proxy blocks the search.

The proxy’s “artificial intelligence” takes the form of a prudishly virginal ten-year-old.

“OMFG TEHER’S MIGHT BE BOOBIES!!!! ON TEH AMAZON.COM SEIT FROM 1996!1111 HIED IT FROM MY LIL DARLIN EYESZZ@!!!!!!”

How thunderously stupid can this proxy get?

It refuses to allow access to the “Snow Saver” site as well. “THEM DIRTY MAC USERS ARE ALL EVIL!!”

And yet, it allows access to Quonsar’s site, which currently shows a picture of a half-nude fat Santa, “Hamster Anatomy”, and a snapshot of a marquee that proudly states “MY BONER IS SCREAMING HELLO”.

I can only imagine the reaction of the typical customer of a filtered-content ISP, upon viewing Blort. I’m sure paramedics are on standby.

To me, this proves that filtered content cannot and will not ever be functional. It is neither rational nor feasible to use technology to enforce morality.