whitebread

I’ve come to the realization that my closest friends are the ones who know when I’m making excuses. Take b for example. A few days ago she said to me, “Fatboy, get your ass back in that saddle”. Except she said it all b-style. So I rode me bike, and all was well.

No, I’m not talking about Coleman. I’m talking about Norman. My guess is that all of you know about Norman already from my previous posts, but if you don’t, you can read this:
this

Regardless, I find it gravely unjust that few people know the name Norman Borlaug. A man who was never hungry himself, but wanted desperately to feed people.
In part because hunger is awful, but really because it is not possible “to build a peaceful world on empty stomachs”.

So I’m asking all five of the readers of this site to tell everyone you know about Norman Borlaug. Because he was good, and because he was right.

When I was young I saw a nature documentary on snow monkeys. I think it was the saddest thing I have ever seen, because a baby monkey died and the mother howled for days. She carried the body around too, long after it was dead. I thought to myself, “How sad–she’s just an animal and can’t understand what happened.”

Today, I think the true sadness lies in knowing that we are no better off than the monkeys. I’ve been carrying Coleman around in my head for more than a year now, and I don’t feel any further along. I don’t know why he’s dead and I’m alive. So it’s time to let him go, at least a little. Leaving my desk to sob isn’t doing anyone any favors. Plus I have it on good authority that Coleman would be angry if he knew that I were still affected like this.

I still miss you Coleman, and probably always will, but I have to go live while I still can.

Turn off the annoying instructions that nobody needs to hear anymore:

For Sprint:
1. Access your voicemail box.
2. Press 3, for personal options.
3. Press 2, for greetings.
4. Press 1, to change your personal greeting.
5. Press 3, to add or remove the caller instructions.
6. Follow the prompts to turn instructions on or off.

Thanks to ohdog for the link via google reader

Subversion version skew
Using a 1.5 client with a 1.4 server creates problems if you have other machines still running the 1.4 client.
If you upgraded your local copy of the svn client, but the server did not get upgraded, and you’re running ubuntu:

1. Uninstall subversion and libsvn using synaptic
2. Go here here and pick the version of your server/other clients
3. Download both subversion and libsvn in the desired version
4. run sudo dpkg -i on both libsvn and subversion
5. Open synaptic, search for subversion
6. Select the (now old) version of subversion
7. Open the packages menu and select “lock package”
8. Do the same for libsvn

This will mean that your client won’t be upgraded automatically, but should work with your server.

Only a day late this year! That’s an order of magnitude better than last year, if you’ll recall. By next year I might just be on time.

So happy birthday my dear. I’m looking forward to many more with you.

New Global Ad Campaign Captures Youthful Optimism; Evian Unveils Roller Break-Dancing Babies to the Beat of Rapper’s Delight Remix
the rest is here

As in any resource-rich developing country with weak institutions and woeful oversight, corruption and official misconduct go easily unchecked. Scrutiny is not welcome, and Alaskans of every age and station, of every race and political stripe, unself-consciously refer to every other place on earth with a single word: Outside.

So, of all the puzzling things that Sarah Palin told the American public last fall, perhaps the most puzzling was this: “Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.”

Believe me, it is not.

More here

Tony Kushner’s husband reminds me of Coleman:

You’ve come up with a perfectly shaped 14-word phrase of English that’s guaranteed to give [Republican U.S. Rep.] Michele Bachmann a heart attack, and it doesn’t even have an active verb in it

PZ Meyers is my hero:

She [Michele Bachmann] claims that not one study has ever been produced to show that CO2 is harmful, and she goes further to claim that CO2 is a harmless gas. We could correct that in just a few minutes: give me a large tank of CO2 and a small room containing Michele Bachmann, and we’ll give her a personal experience.

Remedial knocks it out of the park again

Wallabies get high,
And people make excellent comments for once:

I’ve lived in Tasmania for many years. Not only do wallabies congregate in poppy fields, but also on the local golf courses. They do this mainly at night and I can only assume they’re playing several rounds of golf while avoiding greens fees. You only need to be really worried when one of the stoned wallabies gets into a golf buggy.

Going uphill on the way home from work, I passed a pickup truck with a cover over the bed. Usually such vehicles in urban areas annoy me, but this one didn’t. From a distance I could tell that this particular terrorism-supporter had a vanity plate. As I got closer, I could see that it read: WALLSTIB

Regardless of what he intended, this guy announces to everyone he passes that he’s responsible for the investment banking failure and the overall downturn of the economy.

No matter how you read it, “WALLSTIB” is just a stupid thing to put on your plates. So this SUV just made me laugh and push harder on the pugs to get me up the hill.

In other news,
Three nights left to make the dump look like a place of residence. Don’t tell b, but the progress has been slow. More and more bikes keep finding their way upstairs…I should probably get one of those plastic expandable gates or something.