The Aerie
Wow, a whole week this time. I don't have any good excuses, except
maybe summer!
Toasty this week. Toasty for Minnesota, that is, which means mid-90's
and humid. Bleah. Walking outdoors is like wading through a stick of
butter.
The hackers have been getting bored. I think I've gone a couple of
days now without anyone trying to hack in from anyplace. Something
about trying to telnet in and having absolutely nothing happen must
get a little old after a while.
This last week has been pretty busy. Trying to build a security
practice at work, while also billing at a client site, while also
writing two books and starting a small business: well, okay, that's
overstating the case a little, but it could get to that point if I'm
not careful.
Took Leo to aikido on Thursday and WOW was THAT hot! Nothing like
dressing in a quilted jacket on a hot, humid day and then exercising
vigorously. Leo got sick and headachey and we went home halfway
through, and I can't say I was far behind him.
I've been considering getting a digital camera, even though I've
already got a scanner. What I ought to do, reallly, is get a Polaroid
camera and just scan in the shots. But I suspect what I'll do is be
wildly fiscally irresponsible and buy a digital camera. Of course
like most Americans, I Want It Now. And no screwing around: I want a
3-Megapixel digital camera with 6x optical zoom and a USB connector.
Or something. But I don't have about $800 to throw at it.
I realize this is rambling, but I'm determined to post something
tonight. I've got the TV off (damn the monocular beast!) and I'm just
stream-of-consciousnessing right through the keyboard. It's hot,
humid, and I worked 11 hours today -- 7 to 6. Poor pitiful me. And
I'm slumped back in my free $100 chair with my eyes closed, curious to
see how many typos I generate when I'm typing.
When I had high school typing I remember that we were never supposed
to look at the page, always at the manuscript from whence we were
typing. What nonsense. And how archaic in this day of spell-checkers
and grammar checkers. But back then there were no computers (quite
yet -- I was using X,Typeset in 1977 on a mainframe to place my
juvenile screeds about Why Trading Passwords was Okay into a more
respectable format. (Hm, whole paragraph and all I did was put three
o's in school.(Ack! Nested Parentheses! I'm speaking with a LISP!
(Programmer joke)))). When you typed, it went on the page, and if you
wanted to correct a mistake, you took out a bottle of white-out and
painted it on the paper.
Nowadays I buy novels from respectable publishers with no typos, but
with the wrong real word inserted in a sentence because while it
spell-checks and grammar-checks correctly, it makes no sense. We're
in that technological gray area between grammar-checking and
meaning-checking, beyond which comes Goodthink checking. No pothole
tests the suspension of disbelief like suddenly noticing the text when
reading a novel.
Well, now I'm starting to sound like a curmudgeon, so I'm off.
Hopefully I'll post again in less than a full week! Not that any of
my three monthly readers actually care. (More poor pitiful me!)
[1]Last
Posted by Albatross at July 14, 2000 12:00 AM