A rude awakening

I just got woken up by Buddy barking, and then a knock on the door. I looked out the window and there was a cop car on the road. I was pretty groggy, and I went to the door. Of course the dog was barking at the wrong door – he’s so helpful at times. The policeman wanted me to step outside, and I asked if I could put my pants on first. He said that would be fine. He led me out to the end of the driveway where in the gutter was a very large knife, and asked me if it was mine or if I knew anything about it. And not just any knife, but what a TV watcher would probably think of as a criminal’s knife. The handle was covered in duct tape, and the blade had no discernable edge – you know how a store-bought knife has some sort of break-point between where the blade is just flat metal and where it tapers to the edge? There was nothing like that. All in all, it was a nasty looking piece of work. It rained last night, so I bet they don’t get much forensic stuff from it, but I can see as I started to write this that the other police are arriving.

My car, the mother

One thing I’ve discovered from buying brand new cars is that it starts out being your pride and joy, but eventually you start longing for the day when you can replace it. The transition is slow, but two of the biggest break points on that transition are the first big scratch or dent that you decide not to bother fixing, and the first major repair work. This weekend, I think I got both of those out of the way.
Continue reading “My car, the mother”

MovableType bug or feature?

This entry is posted at 8:20 local (12:20 GMT), but the the index.rdf entry will show the date as

<dc:date>2004-09-29T08:20:00-05:00</dc:date>

That seems to imply that the GMT offset is 5 hours, when (thanks to daylight savings time) it’s really 4 hours. So should MovableType put the current offset in there, or should anybody attempting to parse that file have to know about DST?

Been there, done that

Read this for a taste of what it’s like to be a maintenance programmer: Friday Feature: You’re all Morons. Read it quick, because I bet it will be taken down as soon as the honchos at Star Wars Galaxies find it.

My lusers aren’t as stupid as his, but what they don’t have in teenaged arrogance and stupidity they make up for in type-A personalities and ability to throw around purchasing power. “Oh, your last release had a bug in it? I guess we’ll take our $45 million contract somewhere else then instead. I bet your competitor doesn’t have bugs.” I bet they do, fuckwit.