because ... well ... why the hell not ...?

it's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.

Tuesday, February 26th

_21:33PM

Attacks of Weboplexy:

Unlike "productization," maybe "weboplexy" really does need to be added to the English language:

Weboplexy, n., a sudden fit of anger or rage produced in response to a fairly ordinary or at least innocuous picture or statement found on a webpage. Typically accompanied by catastrophic deterioration in spelling and grammar and uncontrollable muscular spasms when the victim's fingers are near the SHIFT and CAPS-LOCK keys.

I don't get a lot of hate mail. 99.44% of the time, the notes I get from visitors to my little corner of the web are positive, but once or twice a week somebody will have gotten totally cheesed off about something I'd written and feel inspired (or compelled) to chew me out over it.

Recent things that readers have worked themselves into a lather over lately:

• Spelling "modelling" with two 'l's.

  - Okay, I admit I tend to double consonants before "ing" and "ed" endings when it's optional. Even if it's not everybody's favorite spelling and it uses an extra byte of data, it's still an accepted spelling. Personally, I'd never expected that this particular quirk would anger someone enough to write a extended diatribe about just how awful doubled consonants are, but obviously somebody out there is pretty darned offended by them.

• Wearing colored contacts (I don't).

  - These are the only eyes I've got. They're blue. Deal with it.

• Using galvanized plumber's hanger tape to support hard drives in arrays.

  - Yeah, I do it. It might not be glamorous, but it works. If you can find a decent computer case that will hold a dozen or more drives with good airflow and a reasonable price tag, more power to you.

• Writing a short humor piece [ http://www.trygve.com/rapture.html ] (originally printed in the Unnatural Enquirer back in 1994) about car keys, mismatched socks, and important phone messages being the "chosen ones."

  - Okay, some people get very sensitive when it comes to their religion, but angrily informing me that I could be responsible for the deaths of thousands by writing something like this is a little extreme. As far as I know, nobody's ever died from being exposed to one of my humor articles, on the web or elsewhere...no matter how many words with doubled consonants appeared in them.

_18:33PM

Memo: please replace all occurrences of "jargon" with "in a proactively jargon-empowered environment":

I shouldn't give Sun a hard time...but I'm going to anyway. I'm as fond of creating new words as the next writer, but some words we just don't need to be added to the language. On Sun's Solaris Binaries page [ http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/binaries/get.html ] they've announced: "Sun is deferring the productization and release of the Solaris 9 OE for Intel IA-32."

Sorry, "productization" is simply a word whose time has not come. Personally, I hope it never does.

Tuesday, February 5th

_22:13PM

Dragon and the Hawk review on A.J.'s Place:

[ http://www.ajsplacefavorites.homestead.com/spotlight_dragonandthehawk.html ]

Not only is it a great review that covers the movie and even the technical aspects of the DVD, A.J. describes Therion (me) as "one of the creepiest, most original villians I've seen in quite a while!"

That might not be the best thing to hear at, say, the end of a date, but in a movie review, it's darned cool.

Saturday, February 2nd

_1:17AM

...if truth is stranger than fiction:

One of the perils of writing satire is that you have to stick close enough to reality for your parody to be almost believeable...yet still be warped enough that it's only almost.

That's harder to do when the would-be parodist is competing with all the companies and marketing firms who keep coming up with products and ad campaigns that strain one's belief-suspending powers even when they mean it for real.

So I shouldn't be so surprised at the number of queries I get based on pieces I'd written that I'd thought were pretty clearly meant as humor. Even if the writing style and subject matter didn't make it clear enough, the fact that it's labeled "Humor" on the top of the page ought to suggest to most people that it shouldn't be taken too seriously.

The leading contender is still The Furbeowulf Project [ http://www.trygve.com/furbeowulf.html ] which last week was cited as a reference in a Brazilian article on reprogramming toys, and which still generates a steady stream of inquiries from people with serious technical questions about cluster computing, and the occasional invitation to present a paper on my research at national and international conferences.

...it's tempting. I'll be sure to get pictures if I go.

Second place goes to "The NBSP Virus" [ http://www.trygve.com/doomsday.html ] I do get letters from people who are horrified to discover that their own webpages--and even their email--has been infected. It's not easy to decide what to say in response; I can tell them that it's a hoax...or I can tell them that the first step in disinfecting their computers is to uninstall Frontpage. Even if it weren't precisely honest, it'd be for their own good anyway.

Friday, February 1st

_16:22PM

Touch of the Torch:

In case you missed it, here's a clip from Michelle Grove's segment of the Olympic Torch relay through Denver:

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