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| Saturday, June 7th, 2008 | | 5:08 am |
Polvo in San Francisco -- September 2, 2008
Holy lord jesus, it's finally happening... Polvo playing Bimbo's in SF on September 2nd! http://www.groundcontroltouring.com/tour/polvo/I'm just glad to be one of the few destinations deemed worthy of visiting. Phew! I'm fortunate also to have my friend Tyler who is one of the few who can appreciate the significance of this. Hrm. Next order of business would be a Neutral Milk Hotel reunion. Good luck with that. One Google search later reveals there was a false alarm of that a year ago. Ah well. Maybe someday. | | Sunday, December 9th, 2007 | | 10:07 am |
Non-PC Richard Dawson
I finally got some decent video editing software so I could make these clips and share them. Check it out: Non-PC Richard Dawson. Now I just need to find the episode where he pretty much tongues the 15-year old chick from one of the families. I tell you, the man had no shame! | | Sunday, May 27th, 2007 | | 1:32 pm |
The Internet still sucks: USPS edition
It has been a long time since I've posted one of these. It's been a long time since I've posted anything. There's nothing more professional than a big juicy Java traceback dump. No wonder the US Postal Service is slowly approaching obsolescence.  | | Saturday, April 14th, 2007 | | 1:48 pm |
Fun with scammers!
In the overnight, I got a bunch of IMs from a stranger. This is nothing so unusual for me. I work in a company with a distributed workforce of 400, and there's new people joining all the time. It's not unusual for some new guy in a far-off land to add me on IM and start sending messages in the middle of the night asking about the details of some new feature or wanting a second opinion on a network design. Usually I just look up their name in the employee directory and if they are, indeed, an employee, I help them.
[07:43] fedrick_colby:
[07:43] *** Auto-response sent to fedrick_colby: I am currently away from the computer.
[07:43] fedrick_colby: how
[07:43] fedrick_colby: ?
[07:44] fedrick_colby: ok
[07:44] fedrick_colby: talk to you later
[10:28] philrz: Who is this?
Yeah, but, this guy wasn't in the directory. I closed the window and thought nothing of it. Later that morning, I open my Yahoo mail and guess what I see? Really, there's nothing so unusual here. I think we all get this e-mail every day (and twice on Sundays!) ( Let's all help people! You don't even really need to read it... )I guess what cracked me up is that the guy not only sent me the scam mail, but took the time to follow up with me on IM. It was Saturday morning and I was waiting for the coffee to kick in, so I figured, what the hell... ( Right back at ya... )I've actually done this before... just briefly taking out my anger on one of the many scam e-mails that fills my inbox. What cracks me up in this case is that the guy actually came back for more IM. In fact, he stayed in character pretty much until the very end.
[12:58] fedrick_colby: Hello
[12:58] fedrick_colby: Mr Philip
[12:58] fedrick_colby:
[13:00] philrz: Yes?
[13:00] fedrick_colby: I recieved your mail
[13:00] philrz: Whoo! I can't believe you have nothing better to do than this crap!
[13:00] philrz: Have you considered a real job?
[13:01] fedrick_colby: but if i may ask i dont know why you call me a scam
[13:02] philrz: You can ask, but you already know the answer.
[13:02] fedrick_colby: does it mean that if i seek your help you just call me a scam
[13:02] fedrick_colby: answer to what
[13:02] philrz: The answer to whether what you're doing is a scam.
[13:02] fedrick_colby: really
[13:03] philrz: Have you really made money this way? It blows my mind how much of this goes on.
[13:03] fedrick_colby: but i just want to let you know that is not everybody that is a scam
[13:03] fedrick_colby: i know scammers are every where
[13:04] fedrick_colby: but trying to ask you to help me
[13:04] philrz: Right, not everybody. A lot of my friends are not scammers, for instance. People sending e-mail to strangers asking for "help" wirh moving large sums of money most certainly are scams.
[13:04] fedrick_colby: i dont know if you want to rip me off
[13:04] fedrick_colby: is ok
[13:05] fedrick_colby: all i just need you to do
[13:05] fedrick_colby: is to help and nothing else
[13:05] fedrick_colby: i dont know how you call me a scam
[13:05] fedrick_colby: if you read my mail very well
[13:06] philrz: I don't think you know who you're talking with. I am just baffled that you have nothing better to do than sit here talking to me. I will most certainly NOT be "helping" you.
[13:06] philrz: I am just trying to understand the profile of someone who actually tries to make a living scamming strangers over the Internet.
[13:06] philrz: Or maybe I'm just trying to keep a connection open to you long enough so the authorities can track you down and arrest you.
[13:06] philrz: You never know.
[13:06] fedrick_colby: ok
[13:07] fedrick_colby: an man of my reputation cant be arested like that
[13:07] fedrick_colby: i dot do illegal business
[13:08] fedrick_colby: i dont have a bad record here in Uk
[13:08] fedrick_colby: as Opec member
[13:08] fedrick_colby: anyway
[13:08] fedrick_colby: lets forget that now
[13:08] fedrick_colby: thanks for your time
[13:09] philrz: Sure thing. Have fun trying to find suckers. Here's hoping you have to give up and find a real job.
[13:09] fedrick_colby: really
[13:09] fedrick_colby: dont insult me
[13:09] fedrick_colby: my friend
[13:10] fedrick_colby: Please dont try that
[13:10] fedrick_colby: is ok
[13:10] fedrick_colby: thank you
[13:10] philrz: Oh yes. I forgot. You're a respected OPEC dude... who needs help from strangers to move money around. Very legit.
[13:10] fedrick_colby: and take care
[13:10] philrz: Sure thing, scammie!
[13:10] fedrick_colby: haha
[13:12] fedrick_colby: Byee
I can't help but be fascinated. How many people respond to the e-mails and IMs? Of those that do, how many are just chain-yankers like me? Of those that aren't, how many actually give up this cash? Is it actually worth all the effort (and the risk of getting caught) just to milk people for their cash? It sounds like a lotta work to me. I guess it takes all kinds. | | Saturday, March 31st, 2007 | | 2:37 pm |
Wedding pictures
You've probably already seen our full set of wedding pictures in the post in Sarah's journal. They're pretty much all good pictures and we're totally happy with how they came out. I sometimes underestimate the value of something like a professional photographer. I'll think to myself "how hard can it be? anyone could take our pictures..." but now I realize that if someone like me had taken our pictures, it would have been 100 shots of us standing right next to each other in front of different backgrounds. Some of the crazy poses she had us in seemed ridiculous at the time, but in the end they were pretty much all worth it. However, some of the pictures do have a bit of a story to go with them, and so I feel the need to make my own post with commentary. ( Click here for many pictures with smartass remarks! ) | | Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 | | 4:47 pm |
| | Monday, May 29th, 2006 | | 11:03 am |
You, too, can be a degenerate gambler!
I sorta-kinda invented something this weekend. In the past, during marathon sessions of online poker playing, I sometimes wished there was a "hands-free" mode so you could use voice activated commands to play. This way you could wash dishes or cook while the laptop is sitting there on the counter. I considered writing to the poker sites with my idea, but I never did. I've been sick this weekend, so in my mostly-unmotivated state where I normally would have been exercising, I thought about ways to improve the exercising experience. That's when I remembered my hands-free poker idea again. I put together a workable solution in a couple hours and used it last night. In 60 minutes on the elliptical machine I profited $6 while playing $0.25/0.50 Limit Hold 'Em at UltimateBet, so I'd say it's working well. Here's the cookbook for how you, too, can be a degenerate gambler! 1) Make sure you have the voice recognition software built-in to Windows. I think it comes with Office XP or Office 2003. 2) Get some voice command/control software to go with it. The default Windows stuff is only good for verbally "typing" documents and stuff. To actually launch programs using voice triggers, I found Say-Now. For the ability to create your own voice commands, you apparently need to "activate" it, which is $14. It starts with a fully-functional 30-day trial though, so you can try this all out first and make sure it's worth it to you before you cough up cash. 3) Get some software that will perform mouse clicks for you. There's probably a million different apps that can do this, but the one I've used at work is AutoIT. It's free. 4) Grab the package of AutoIT scripts I put together for Limit Hold 'Em at UltimateBet. Unpack it into some folder that's part of your "PATH" variable (C:\WINDOWS would work). If you look at the code, you'll find each one is pretty simple: It finds your currently-open table window and then clicks in the appropriate part of the screen where the button would be to click what you're asking it to click. If you get familiar with AutoIT, you'd find it's pretty easy to write the same tool for other poker sites. One thing that would be fairly challenging would be to write a bunch of commands for No Limit, since you'd need to be able to bet arbitrary amounts. But it could surely be done. 5) Get yourself a decent headset microphone and configure the voice activation. You can get to the configuration from within Say-Now under the "Speech" tab via the "Voice Training" button. 6) Create commands under the Say-Now "Commands" tab for each action and point each one to an AutoIT script. My recommendation is to make every command two syllables. For example, instead of just "bet", "check", "call", use "bet go", "check go", "call go". This is because something like clearing your throat or the creaking of an exercise machine could be mistaken by the system as some mono-syllabic command. Anyway, the configuration is quite simple. For instance, for "bet go", click Type "Website/Program" and for Action just type "bet.aut". I also recommend deleting all the built-in commands in comes with since they just increase the number of "false positives" you might trigger. 7) Test it out in a play money game before using it for real cash. Have fun. I'm off to dork with it more, myself. | | Thursday, May 25th, 2006 | | 7:45 pm |
| | Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 | | 1:01 pm |
| | Sunday, January 1st, 2006 | | 6:19 pm |
New Year's Eve pic
Here's a picture of us out at Bimbo's 365 for the retro New Year's Eve. For the record, I do not own a hat that looks like that. They were given out free at the party.  | | Thursday, December 29th, 2005 | | 12:24 am |
The blood of fatheads flows within me
I just found an article on the Internet containing recent quotes from my avant-garde-composer-and-pianist 67-year-old uncle Frederic. Dig this: Rzewski cherishes the immediacy of performance, and he has a
corresponding disdain for recordings and the current state of the
record industry. ''I think the days of recording are numbered," he
says by phone from Cincinnati, where he's participating in a new-music
festival. ''When the Beatles were around, there were hundreds of
smaller record companies. Now there are about three. So the music
industry has transformed itself in 20 or 30 years into an enormous
mega-monopoly." He hopes recordings will eventually be rejected as ''a
sort of counterfeit money. I think there is an awareness now that
something else must happen."Now, I'll be the first to admit that with the passing of time, I've come to value live performance more than recordings, but... three record companies? Has he been living in Courtney Love's ass? Frederic, nobody said you had to sign with a subsidiary of a major label (Nonesuch). This indie snob is disgusted. | | Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 | | 8:07 am |
| | Thursday, August 18th, 2005 | | 3:08 pm |
| | Sunday, August 14th, 2005 | | 2:43 pm |
Vodka tasting party: Saturday, August 20th
The late, great Spalding Gray, in his monologue "Monster In a Box", did a brilliant bit on pouring drinks under the table. Basically, he advocated saving the empty little liquor bottles you get on airplanes, filling them up with cheap vodka (Popov in his case), and keeping them in your pants pocket. Then, to avoid paying for overpriced drinks at a fancy restaurant, you'd get yourself a big glass of ice water with dinner, and when you have the chance, sneak your glass under the table and pour out your vodka. The highlight of the bit comes when the audience laughs as he speaks of the Popov, and it goes something like this: Don't go spend your money on fancy vodka, now. There is no difference between Popov and Stolichnaya. Every time my friends try to tell me differently I do a blind taste test and they lose. I keep an empty half-gallon bottle of Absolut, fill it with Popov, keep it in the freezer: They love it.Ever since first hearing that routine, part of me has always wanted to do the blind taste test. I'll be the first to admit that, while Popov tastes like rubbing alcohol, Absolut kinda does too. Now, I'd like to think that Belvedere and Grey Goose don't, but could I really pick each one out of a police lineup? I think so, but I've been wrong so many times before... To that end, Sarah and I would like to host a vodka tasting party. We'll have samples of several vodkas in blank containers, each marked only with a taped-on number. Everyone can take their time tasting everything and writing down personal notes on what they think of each one, how they'd rate 'em, etc. Then, once everyone has had time to do some of this on their own, then people can compare answers and debate which they think is which, call each other crazy, etc. Then the answer key will be revealed and we can all do something else like play poker or video games or go out and get even drunker or something. I'm thinking the following should all be present. If there's more that you think are must-haves, speak up. Belvedere
Gray Goose
Ketel One
Absolut
Stolichnaya
Smirnoff
Finlandia
Popov
Vodka of the Gods (some cheap plastic-bottle stuff I got at Trader Joe's)I figure everything will just be served neat (that is, room temperature), since it's the best way to actually taste the stuff. As far as keeping track of what's what, I figure I'll just buy some big plastic cups at Safeway to use as containers, and everyone will have their own shot glass to use for pouring out samples. Each cup will be assigned a number, and before everyone shows up, I'll secretly pour out each vodka into a numbered cup, write down the brand-to-number key, and hide it. Then I'll leave the room and Sarah (who'll have no idea which vodka is in which cup) will then swap numbers around to scramble them, write down the number-to-number key, and hide it. The two-deep system can then be reversed at the end of the night to reveal what's what. This is the only way I could come up with so that everyone, including the person who pours out the vodkas, gets to participate. Dig? Right, so, let us know if you're interested. We're thinking Saturday night, August 20th. Current Music: Spoon - Soft Effects EP | | Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 | | 8:48 am |
Crazy person of the day
This morning a guy stopped me as I was walking to work. Hey! I remember you! You're a member of the geek squad!
[pause]
Only a geek would walk with his hands in his pockets!
[pause]
I'll tell you one thing though... the women loooooove the geeks! You're gonna get some good pussy to-NIGHT! | | Monday, July 11th, 2005 | | 7:25 am |
Phallic logo awards
God bless Insound's blog mailings for introducing me to this gem. It's amusing that PTC is in their list, as I work with PTC all the time, and I never noticed. It's admittedly a bit of a stretch. That's the best bit since this article, which you've all surely seen by now. | | Sunday, June 5th, 2005 | | 12:28 am |
| | Saturday, May 28th, 2005 | | 2:49 pm |
| | 1:01 am |
| | Friday, May 27th, 2005 | | 9:51 am |
Back in the poker
After a fairly long hiatus, I've started playing poker online again. During my down time, I had taken to reading bits of Doyle Brunson's "Super System" briefly in the mornings, and one day I stumbled across the section on 7-card stud hi/lo, which was co-written with David Sklansky. Sklansky is arguably my favorite poker author, so I decided to just read it for kicks, and soon I was sucked in. For a game I played in so many parlor games in my younger days, it was great to finally see some deeper analysis of it. It's amazing how simple the strategy really is (play for low, discipline, etc.) and yet how easy it is for players to get sucked into playing terribly ("my hand sucks, but maybe I'll still win half!"). I started playing a bit of $0.25/0.50 7-stud hi/lo 8/b split on UltimateBet (slightly different than the variant played in Doyle's time, but better in some ways, I think) and broke about even. Then, a couple nights ago, I got e-mail that Party Poker gave me a free $20, probably just because I haven't played there in forever. So I went over there and did their $0.50/1.00 tables. Oh man, it's like the fishiest place on earth. I don't wanna jinx myself, but it feels a lot like minting money. In 120 hands, I've turned their $20 into $84. I'm definitely hooked. Look for an entry when the honeymoon period is over and my cards start going cold. |
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