The other day I visited my local Verizon store for the fourth freaking time! My mission was simple: upgrade my goddamn phone and change our account from my wife’s name to mine. In sane retail environments long-standing customers with impeccable payment histories get treated like royalty. I know it will come as a shock to … Continue reading The Great Verizon Data Famine
Blogging Bad 2013
Another year of blogging bad. My mother's death and work were major distractions this year; I fell way short of my post goals but still managed to exceed the previous year's hit count and set a new high. To show their appreciation the good algorithms at WordPress.com sent us an annual report. Mine follows: The … Continue reading Blogging Bad 2013
Fun with Farsi Text in LaTeX
Analyze the Data not the Drivel is a mouthful. This blog needs a short symbolic name. For sometime I have used ADND myself but that's to close to ADHD for comfort. However if we treat ADND as a simple algebraic expression it becomes: $latex ad^2n $ This is better but still not cool! If we … Continue reading Fun with Farsi Text in LaTeX
APL Software Archaeology .dbi Edition
Click here for a PDF version of this post. Have yourself a merry little APL Christmas. I joke that my job title should be software archaeologist because I often find myself resurrecting, not refactoring, code that dates to primitive and primeval eras. The language I’m typically hired to resurrect is APL. APL, the language with … Continue reading APL Software Archaeology .dbi Edition
Jacks Repository
The other day I attempted to browse a J script described in an old blog post only to find that my employer’s network monkeys had blocked the file sharing service. I’ve railed about IT control freaks in the past. They will not rest until it’s impossible to do useful work. I fumed and grumbled until … Continue reading Jacks Repository
Twitter is not Trivial
I enjoy being wrong because it doesn't happen very often. When Twitter first reared its itty-bitty head I thought it was one of the dumbest ideas ever. Who wants to “tweet”, in an utterly disorganized stream of consciousness way, 140 character messages to total strangers? What could emerge from such inane chatter? Isn't this like … Continue reading Twitter is not Trivial
My Colon’s Merry Christmas
I have just returned from my second colonoscopy. For all you indestructible young'ins out there a colonoscopy is a medical procedure that basically entails stuffing a camera up your butthole to look for evil-doers. Thankfully you're knocked out during the procedure and when you come to you remember about as much as alien anal probe … Continue reading My Colon’s Merry Christmas
Tipping with Bitcoins
For the last two days my elderly laptop has struggled with the bitcoin-qt client while it downloaded and checked the entire Bitcoin block chain. This is one of the fascinating things about this "currency." Its entire global transaction history is public. It occurred to me that the Bitcoin economy is now large enough to verify basic macro … Continue reading Tipping with Bitcoins
Fifty Years of Nauseating Kennedy Nostalgia
It’s been fifty years since Michelle, a fifth grade childhood friend, interrupted me on the playground of Naples elementary and told me that ”President Kennedy has been shot.” The news did not impress me. I naively rooted for Kennedy in the 1960 election. Yes, I was suckered, but I was in the second grade! I … Continue reading Fifty Years of Nauseating Kennedy Nostalgia
Sorry PBS you already have my Money
PBS is begging for money again. PBS is a US public broadcasting network. Like all public English language broadcasters, (CBC Canada, ABC Australia, BBC UK), PBS is filled with tiresome left wingers that do not see themselves as left wingers. It's still easy to find disingenuous tools in these intuitions that publicly declare they're bias … Continue reading Sorry PBS you already have my Money
