Jeran's Den

Syndicated feeds

jeran@silverglass.org — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:30:42 GMT

I've added feeds silverglasstech and jeransden to syndicate the two journals I mentioned in the last post. These match the LJ syndication users. If you friend those accounts, you'll get the posts from my Blogspot journals on your friends page.

Journal move

jeran@silverglass.org — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:06:42 GMT

I'm moving most of my blogging elsewhere:

http://jerans-den.blogspot.com/ - personal ramblings and stuff.
http://silverglass-tech.blogspot.com/ - technical things.

If you've got an IJ account, you should be able to use the OpenID login support on Blogspot.

First sale valid for software

jeran@silverglass.org — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:26:29 GMT

http://www.citizen.org/documents/vernororder.pdf

The judge basically says that, the language in AutoCAD's license nonwithstanding, copyright law and the first-sale doctrine apply. Among other things he ruled that, consistent with precedent, merely calling a transaction a license doesn't make it a license instead of a sale. The general rule was whether or not the recipient was required to return the item after a fixed term. If they weren't, it was a sale.

Death sentence methods

jeran@silverglass.org — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:52:59 GMT

There's a lot of uproar lately over methods of carrying out a death sentence. What I don't understand is why the gas chamber hasn't been resurrected and done right.

The basis for a good one is this simple observation: the human body doesn't detect a lack of oxygen, it detects an excess of carbon dioxide. As long as you keep the CO2 concentration from rising, your body will happily tell your brain that there's absolutely nothing wrong at all right up to the point where your brain isn't functioning well enough to receive the message. You won't notice any difficulty breathing, no discomfort, no gasping for breath. You'll basically slip right off to sleep as your body shuts down.

So, to do a gas chamber right, get rid of that stupid cyanide gas generator. Use argon or xenon or nitrogen, basically one of the inert gases. Anybody with a background in technical diving should be able to give you lots of pointers on how various screw-ups in the gas mix will kill you without giving you a hint of anything being wrong, which is exactly what you're looking for. Fill the chamber with the gas, replacing all the O2, make sure you're cycling the gas through a CO2 scrubber to keep the level down, and wait. It'll take a bit longer to insure death, you'll want to forego the stopwatch in favor of monitoring pulse, respiration and brain function to be sure you get it right, but it should be fairly fool-proof.

Recycling idiocy

jeran@silverglass.org — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:30:51 GMT

My apartment building's put in blue recycling bins. But they're not nearly as useful as they should be. Look at some of the restrictions:

No cans that've been in contact with food products. OK, that right there eliminates 90% of the cans I throw away.
No glass. Most of the drinks I buy are in glass bottles, so none of that can go.
No milk bottles. OK, that's the majority of the plastic bottles.

So what's left? The occasional plastic soda bottle. The plastic bottles I get distilled water in, that's about 2, maybe 3, a month. The advertising flyers from my mailbox. Shredded mail. Cardboard boxes. Everything else has to go in the regular trash.

If they want the recycling bins to be really useful they need to add more things:

Clean metal cans of any sort. It doesn't take much to rinse them out.
Clean plastic milk bottles. Same thing.
Clean glass of all sorts.

The main problem is the "clean" part. People won't take 5 seconds to rinse out a bottle, can or jar before throwing it in the bin. That makes for a horrible mess in the bin.

F-117 retired

jeran@silverglass.org — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:28:37 GMT

The F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter is being officially retired. The main reason is to free up funds for other aircraft, in particular the F-22 Raptor that's replacing the F-117.

This isn't a bad thing. Despite it's name, the F-117 isn't a fighter. It's aerodynamics don't permit it to do dogfighting or otherwise keep up with a modern fighter. The F-22 can carry as large a tactical bomb load, has more modern avionics and better stealth characteristics, and can perform as a fighter as well as a light tactical bomber.

Car maintenance

jeran@silverglass.org — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 01:19:22 GMT

Grumble. Took the car in for service today, and had to have the front brake pads replaced. Also, one of the calipers was sticking. They cleaned it out and lubricated a pin that wasn't lubricated right, and the mechanic says it should be OK. I'm going to watch it like a hawk between now and the next scheduled service, though, looking for any sign of trouble with it. If I see any hint of trouble, it'll go back for warranty replacement.

And I also need to get 2 new tires on in the next week or three. The rears are almost down to the wear bars (the fronts are much newer), I had the dealer not rotate the tires this time to keep the best ones on the front until I've enough free cash to get the new pair. Eventually I want to replace the wheels completely with 16" alloys (stock are 15") and tires to match.

Sign over the SR-71 operating area at Kadena AFB

jeran@silverglass.org — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:50:41 GMT

"Though I Fly Through the Valley of Death I Shall Fear No Evil For I Am At 80,000 Feet and Climbing."

Software development incentives

jeran@silverglass.org — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:36:12 GMT

The canonical example of an incentive gone wrong is of the manager offering to pay $10 for every bug found by QA or fixed by the developers. The results were exactly what you'd expect. To quote from Dilbert: "I'm gonna code me a minivan this afternoon!". But you can fix the problem:

QA gets paid for every confirmed bug found. They have to show that the test case conforms to requirements and the code's behavior doesn't.
Developers get paid for clean test runs. They don't get to claim more than one clean run per issue reported by QA.

On lye

jeran@silverglass.org — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:27:42 GMT

Someone upthread did say that NaOH will eat flesh down to the bone.
That's incorrect, it won't stop at the bone.

Bernard Peek, a.s.r

FC2009 rooms

jeran@silverglass.org — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:35:21 GMT

Ye gods above and below. For Further Confusion 2009, the hotel's sold out already! Not a single room of any type available for the con. And reservations only opened on April 2nd. Not even 2 weeks ago. Yeesh!

ACM

jeran@silverglass.org — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:32:58 GMT

ACM membership renewed. And since I've a little slack, a couple of journals/SIGs added. Need to look at getting IEEE membership back this summer.

Rule of thumb

jeran@silverglass.org — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:10:58 GMT

Any belief, no matter how fervently held, which contradicts observed reality must be false.

Hints for new EQ2 players

jeran@silverglass.org — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:01:46 GMT

Pick one of the newer starting areas: Timorous Deep (Gorowyn), Darklight Wood (Neriak) or the Nursery (Kelethin) in that order. They've got direct access to city vendors, and better quest rewards. TD has the best, DL next and Kelethin third. If you need/want to start in Qeynos or Freeport, note that you can leave the starting island immediately and make your way to Butcherblock and thence by gryphon to TD. Both evil and good characters can use the TD starting area even if you haven't selected TD as your start point.
Be careful with claiming items on your first character. If you decide you don't like the class or something, you won't be able to get those items back. At most claim only the early veteran-reward bag until you're sure you'll be keeping the character. Be doubly careful about claim items that are limited to 1 per account.
Don't bother twinking out your character. Vendor-bought armor and Apprentice II spells/CAs will be more than enough to make the starting areas easy, and you'll get better gear and Adept I spells/CAs as quest rewards and mob drops quickly enough. If you really want to move fast and have some friends, see if they can make you handcrafted armor and weapons and Apprentice IV spells/CAs. Don't worry about mastercrafted gear or Adept III spells/CAs until you hit 20 or so.
One good source of cash early on is harvest raws. T1 raws (from the level 1-9 areas) tend to be priced fairly high on the broker since there's so few people harvesting them for long. Once you get your initial inn room in your city, get a sales display crate (doesn't have to be big) and start harvesting and selling raws. Also sell any Adept I drops you can't use yourself. You'll quickly accumulate enough money to finance equipment upgrades.
Start 2 characters, and make them at least low-level tradeskillers. T1 (levels 1-9) recipes can be made by any crafting class, and you can hit level 10 (where you have to select which area of crafting you'll go into) by running the initial crafting quest and doing maybe 1-2 extra recipes. Make one character a Scholar and the other an Outfitter, and run them both up to at least level 19 (where you make your choice of final crafting profession). If you want you can select a profession for each and continue, but with those two at level 19 you'll be able to make all armor, weapons, shields and spell and CA scrolls from levels 1-19. That'll let you make your own Apprentice IV spells for all classes up through level 19, and all equipment for tiers 1 and 2. If you get the advanced books for the mastercrafted recipes for the outfitter, your characters will be self-sufficient for armor and weapons until level 22 when they'll want their T3 gear.
Not all classes are created equal. If you can, find the EQ2 Kingdom of Sky guide from Prima. It's old, but the discussions of the classes are still valid and give you a good idea of what the strengths and weaknesses are and what playstyles each class is suited to.
Don't be in too much of a hurry to join up with a guild. Take your time to level up and get a feel for the game, and for which guilds have what kind of rep. The exception would be if you have friends already in the game and are going to hook up with them and join their guild.
You'll hear a lot of whining about how bad the game is, how broken some classes are, the usual drama. Don't take it too seriously. Above all, remember that this is a game. The point is to have fun. If you're not having fun, let your subscription lapse and try another game that's more fun for you. Your characters will still be there and you can reactivate your subscription and pick up pretty much where you left off if you decide to return later.

EQ2 guild

jeran@silverglass.org — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 18:01:00 GMT

Our guild in EQ2 dinged 40 last night. That's half-way to the current cap of 80. This is really our last big milestone, though. 40 opens up an additional guild bank row and some mounts, 50 merely opens up some titles and raid-oriented purchasables. And realistically I don't see us getting beyond 50. We're small, only about half a dozen active players with no real desire to recruit at random, and beyond 50 the levels start to require large amounts of status. You pretty much have to raid and get the status from raid bosses to advance up in that range, and we're unlikely to be able to hook up and raid regularly.

The right attitude

jeran@silverglass.org — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:54:07 GMT

"We're now completely at the mercy of a sadistic mechanical MONSTER!"

"But it's my sadistic mechanical monster, and I'm here to make sure it knows it."

Housework

jeran@silverglass.org — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:10:29 GMT

One of the things I have to do this year is red out the kitchen. Pull it all out of the cupboards and sort through it and sort it into categories: trash (not in good shape), thrift store (in good shape, but cheap items), see if friends want (good shape, good quality, just not what I want anymore), and keep. Looking at it quickly, I realized some of this stuff is ancient but still in incredibly good condition. The dinnerware set is 25 years old and, aside from a couple of small metal stains, could easily pass for new.

I need to replace light bulbs. What I've got are CFLs, but cheap ones. When I got them several years ago, most of the name-brand ones were the big 3-U-tube style that were just too long for most of my fixtures. The only compact spiral-tube ones were a no-name package probably from China. They're getting dim, aren't warming up quickly, and 2 have burned out since January. In the stores I can find name-brand ones with a spiral tube, and lo and behold I can get the brighter 75-watt-equivalent type and they're still small enough to fit. Time for an across-the-board replacement binge.

I should have Amex under control this summer after the mess with the Stealth. Once that's done I really ought to look at moving to a different apartment complex, something more modern. I like this one, but I miss the dishwasher and larger kitchen. And the rent's been steadily rising. It started at $750, pretty good for a 2-bedroom even if it was small. Now it's at $920 and probably going to go up again. I'm not willing to pay $1700+ a month in rent, but I should look to see what's available for a $200-300/month bump.

"a defining moment" in Iraq

jeran@silverglass.org — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:04:42 GMT

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BUSH?SITE=CADIU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Bush, speaking about the current violence in Iraq, says "I would say this is a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq."

Um, dude? We've been telling you that for years now.

Why you don't depend on the spell-checker

jeran@silverglass.org — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:56:20 GMT

"Eye ken spiel jest feign tank ewe berry mulch."

Most spell-checkers will pass that sentence without a qualm. Do you really want that kind of sentence showing up in your documents?

Rule for consultants

jeran@silverglass.org — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:41:37 GMT

Never ever rely primarily on a single large contract. Several smaller ones are more reliable. Contracts will go south, and when they do the impact on you depends on how large a fraction of your business that contract is. See the Wal-Mart/record-labels post below for example. CD sales are 2% of Wal-Mart's business, Wal-Mart sales are 20% of the labels' business. If that deal goes south, the impact on Wal-Mart will be negligible. The impact on the labels, however, is going to be major. The same thing with consulting deals. If a contract that goes bad is 10% of your business, you only lose 10% of your income while you find a replacement (and a replacement will be easier to find, there's more small deals out there than large ones). If that contract's 75% of your business, you're out 75% of your income if it goes bad. Which would you rather deal with?

Record labels meet their match

jeran@silverglass.org — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:02:22 GMT

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6558540/walmart_wants_10_cds

Wal-Mart pays about $12 for a hit CD. They sell them for $9.72 to attract customers. They're tired of that. And they're doing something about it: they're demanding that the labels sell them CDs at a low enough price to make that $9.72 retail price profitable. The implicit threat: if the labels don't, Wal-Mart will stop carrying their music. And that's a big threat. Wal-Mart alone is 20% of the labels' sales every year, but music CDs are only 2% of Wal-Mart's sales. Wal-Mart could drop CDs entirely and devote the space to more profitable DVDs and video games and actually come out ahead. The labels essentially have absolutely no leverage here, and this isn't a position they're used to being in.

Sorry, record labels, you ain't gettin' no sympathy from me.

Because wizards run out of spells

jeran@silverglass.org — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:04:11 GMT

Don't we wish.

RPG motivational posters

jeran@silverglass.org — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:21:33 GMT

Ganked from Caprine over on LJ:

http://eeknight.livejournal.com/334981.html

Government programs we don't want

jeran@silverglass.org — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:14:42 GMT

Carousel: solving the Social Security problem once and for all.

FC 2009

jeran@silverglass.org — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:51:40 GMT

Hotel room block opens April 2nd. I'm going to get my reservation in early this year, since the hotel seems to sell out very early on. The only question is whether to get a single or double.