whitebread

Two more cool things about *nix that I discovered recently:
One.
If you start a command on a remote machine, and realize it won’t finish before you have to disconnect, but don’t want to lose your progress:
1. Press ctrl+z to suspend it
2. Type ‘bg’ to put it in the background
3. Type ‘disown -a’

Your process will continue when you log off.

Two.
Not as cool, but nice to know nonetheless:
Tar has a –checkpoint option that periodically prints status messages. So if you have a really big tar that you’re creating or extracting, you can get updates to make sure it’s still working.
tar –checkpoint -xf bigtar.tar

B returns in a week and a day. Hooray! (though I only have a week to convert a disaster into an apartment. if anyone finds a linux command for this, let me know asap)

Not to completely rip off remedial’s analysis, but it turns out that post-nine-eleven a death threat is a valid form of id. In reading remedial’s link, when I got to the point where he starts threatening death and the bank–apparently–says, “oh, well, in that case, let’s just get that money…” I thought to myself, it’s a good thing I’m Warren Buffett. Yep that’s me. Oh you want some ID? People gonna die…

Woke up, put on brand new BR pants, drove to work, made tea. Picked a phish show to listen to with Harry Hood somewhere in the setlist. Spilled tea on lap. Scalded important parts, soaked new pants. Got back in car, made usual left turn at illegal time. Got ticket, took pants to drycleaners, back to work just in time to hear Harry Hood.

Life is good.

For a sobering reminder of how people have made use of the fantastic technology built by computer scientists the world over, click.

Want to know why? Watch here.

Seriously. It made my day, and it might make yours.
best thing evar. EVAR!

Even the music is good.

Thanks be to J
aka teh roast
aka his roastyness
aka roastis cupcake

Follow the instructions here:
here
(make sure you create the symbolic links) (more…)

You may have noticed the following appended to the bottom of this site’s pages:

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.

I have recently received several emails regarding the inclusion of this text detailing how it was NOT optional, and how all attempts to circumvent the appearance of said text would be met with homepages being taken offline. To be frank, I have no problem with the text on the bottom of my webpage. I didn’t have to do anything to make it show up, and the views and opinions expressed in this page are my own, though I would add that they also belong to anyone else who happens to hold them. It is the second line that cracks me up. Who is the University of Minnesota, if not its students, staff and faculty? I happen to be a part of the first two groups.

I get it, of course–the “University of Minnesota” in this case is a team of lawyers responsible for making sure the University of Minnesota doesn’t get its endowment sued off because some jerkass posted some lunatic nonsense on their homepage. Which implies that the only defense against these litigatious lawyers is more lawyers, which makes me think about how effective screwing for virginity and fighting for peace are.

I decided to go for a skate today, because it always puts me in a good mood, and work was proving frustrating. Having sufficiently rolled around the pavement on the east bank, I headed for the west bank to see what smooth expanses I could find there. Unfortunately, traffic across the bridge has been severely restricted since they discovered weaknesses that needed repair. Everyone has been forced into a much smaller space. As a result, they have been handing out $80 tickets to anyone who rides, rather than walks, their bicycle across the bridge. There are large signs attesting to this fact, including one that pleads: “Bicycles use covered section so please, walk your bikes”. I was on my skates, so I was pretty sure those rules didn’t apply to me, but I went slowly and carefully to avoid: a. hurting anyone walking and b. drawing attention to myself just in case they were also ticketing skaters.

Once I had had my fill of the west bank, it was time once again to cross the bridge. This time, about half way through two young men with identical bikes and “BIKE PATROL” on their shirts saw me and put their kickstands down. They had been walking their bikes of course, setting good examples. “STOP!” one said authoritatively. Now, I’m all for people not riding their bicycles in areas where people are walking. But skating? Slowly? Come on. “No?” I yelled, pushing hard on my strong leg. You see, I was in a very good mood, The Crystal Method had just come in over my headphones, and I knew there was no way they could catch me. They had not seen me until I was fairly close, so they didn’t have time to block the way before I blew by them, still picking up speed. At this point they had to decide whether to get on their bikes and pursue me, or do something else that wouldn’t break the “walk your bikes” rule. I don’t actually know what they did because my attention was focused in front of me, but I’m pretty sure they never came any closer. A hard left out the propped open door of the covered section, a harder right and another left, up a wheelchair ramp and I was in my building.

Emacs is to VI as:

a. Kate Moss is to Margaret Thatcher
b. Margaret Thatcher is to Kate Moss
c. Kate Moss is to Janet Reno
d. Janet Reno is to Kate Moss

answer: d

Thanks to D for the idea.