General

I’d like to point out that Friday’s reference to AOL contains this site’s first known googlewhack.

As a very premeditated post-Valentine’s Day gift to myself, I got me an iBook.

Glee!

The iBook is a G3 600Mhz with 256MB RAM, 20GB harddrive, Airport [802.11b] card, built-in: 10/100BASE-T Ethernet, Firewire, 2 USB ports, CDRW/DVD combo drive, and a 14.1″ display.

Software-wise, it’s running Mac OS X, and I’ve used Fink to install the latest Open Source UN*X apps on it.

On my work-provided Windows laptop, I had been using Cygwin to provide a framework for XFree86 under Windows, so that I could simply ssh-tunnel my X11 apps from the servers to my laptop, rather than face the Nameless Crawling Horror That Is CDE on my aging Sun Ultra 5.

So, the corpse-eating Nazis at AOL have blocked Trillian users again, only this time with a highly snotty message:

AOL Instant Messenger: You have been disconnected from the AOL Instant Message Service (SM) for accessing the AOL network using unauthorized software. You can download a FREE, fully featured, and authorized client, here http:// www.aol.com/aim/download2.html .

Since I would really like to be able to message people who will never change to another IM service, I’m yet again forced to using AOL’s craptastic client. However, I’m happy to say that I won’t be forced to look at AOL’s stupid ads, since I’m also using DeadAIM.

Happy VD, everyone!

I finally delinked [Wil][1]. I consider this to be akin to shooting a gimpy horse –a mercy-killing.

I was ok with the constant poorly-researched prattling about political issues, the non-stop hawking of autographed “Star Trek” memorabilia, and even the incessant begging for technical support. However, the sheer hypocrisy of last week’s beg for Valentine’s Day cash forced my hand. Rather than read my ethical qualms about that, read [Beth][2]‘s.

It seems to me that stars are Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde monsters, and Fame and Attention are the presto-chango drugs that trigger their changeover into monstrosity. Stars that have lost their fame, and their superhuman monstrosity, deflate into normal pleasantry, because they are forced to deal with regular people on regular terms. In Wil’s unfortunate case, he was so very pleasant that people started reading what he wrote online… giving him an unexpected large-bore dose of Mr. Hyde-inducing fame and egoboost.

Woohoo! Free pancakes for everyone tomorrow!

O_O

I prefer simple solutions to problems. True, some attempts at solving a problem may appear to be “simple solutions”, when they actually cause more problems than they solve. Solution complexity appears to scale with the complexity of the problem.

I learned this maxim at an early age. I got my first Rubik’s Cube when I was eight. I immediately mixed it up, thinking I could solve the problem. Unfortunately, I had no interest in mathematics, and very little patience. I promptly tossed the scrambled cube into the toy box and forgot about it for a few years. When I rediscovered it, I had this genius idea: I could pry the pieces of the cube apart, and reassemble the cube in the correct order. Given a screwdriver and five minutes, and I had a properly-arranged Rubik’s Cube. Sure, I didn’t solve the problem according to the guidelines listed on the box, but at age nine, I could care less about the methods of my solution.

When I was a kid, I used to build really neat things with Construx. I never built anything as cool as a person-sized Iron Giant, though.

Deeper meaning found in earlier posts:

“A shaggy bison who eats her own fear, of our own weight in the inherent beauty in about Archives Dirt Linkage Contact are of our own minds, encouraging mental laziness. Someone discounting the spooky radar artifacts; experience at a. Maybe in a.”

This transcendental experience brought to you by JWZ’s Dadadodo.