Funny on NewsGator Online

Legal Discovery, Symantec Enterprise Vault, and Microsoft SharePoint Server Integration

shawnfel — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:02:00 GMT

Hoping this might be a good topic for some people because i guarantee there are very few people who have been through integrating these products. I have been working on integrating the two products at a client for the past 5 months so hopefully this will...(read more)

Dignified

rmunroe@gmail.com — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 06:00:00 GMT

Service required * Brewer error *

oldnewthing — Mon, 14 May 2007 14:00:00 GMT

Last year, one of the fancy-dancy iCup devices (yes that's its name, I kid you not) in the kitchen of my building went on the fritz. Things break, that's to be expected. The screen which normally guides you through the selection process instead displayed an error message.

Service required

* Brewer error *

The problem was not that it was out of coffee; when that happens, a much more specific error is displayed. Something like, um, "Out of coffee". No, this time, there was some sort of weird internal error that prevented the machine from working. Fortunately, this was only one machine in a two-machine cluster, so the second machine could assume the extra load without interrupting service.

This didn't stop people from making jokes about it, though. Attached to the machine was a note that read

gle=109
ERROR_BROKEN_PIPE

Another joker wrote

Java runtime
failure

Computer programmers think they're so clever.

(Meanwhile, Matt Sampson is not convinced that everything that comes out of the coffee machine is actually coffee.)

Motivating the Army

lex — Tue, 08 May 2007 03:31:35 GMT

Fresh from the blush of interservice fraternity, etc.

Click the pic for higher.

No Tags

Chess Photo

rmunroe@gmail.com — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 06:00:00 GMT

Ajax version of “Telephone” game

Dion Almaer — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 14:30:06 GMT

Nich Tyrrell of InTime Games created a new Ajax site with a strange name indeed… Eat Poop U Cat.

The site uses a combination of Google Web Toolkit, Amazon S3, and Amazon EC2, along with an in browser drawing utility that uses the Canvas element to get it all working. Its an online version of a party game similar to the game of telephone only using pictures and sentences.

So, you can go online, put in a random sentence, and people will start drawing a cartoon off of it.

TGIF.

Bones

lex — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 17:56:27 GMT

Tedium my friends, is the end of human decency, and there was a fair bit of tedium to be found on the line during the Cold War. We’d sail around the world, ever ready for any contingency but quite unwilling to offend anyone, tip-toeing around off shore, always careful not to kick the can over on that whole global, thermonuclear war thing. Because of the nuclear winter that was in it.

What joy there was for a strike fighter pilot in the late 80’s consisted of deeds of epic personal heroism in port during all-too-rare quality of life visits - the kind of things you didn’t write home about - and the very unlikely chance that your battle group might be called up for one of those very occasional, but classically Navy, drive-by shootings.

Bones was a lieutenant junior grade on my second such deployment, and the only nugget to join the squadron in the year-long turnaround between two cruises. Most new guys in the fleet have the common sense to lay low for a bit and let their flying do the talking, but Bones - so called because apart from skin, a prominent Adam’s apple and a yet more prominent pair of protruding eyes, there wasn’t much else to him - decided that the only thing to do upon joining our august ranks was to attempt to announce his presence with authoritay, chiefly on the basis of a whole lot of Cessna time he had gotten in high school.

Cessna time or no, being a brand new guy in the only flying business that actually counted, this didn’t go over so very well with the in-house mafia known in carrier squadrons as the Junior Officer Protective Association, or JOPA. Which continual moral pounding by his peers ought to have been bad enough, but he also contrived, being assigned the duties of squadron schedules officer, to place himself one day on a solo IR - Instrument Route - over the lush valleys of northern coastal California.

There were two kinds of navigation routes we flew, the IR and the VR, or visual route. Of the two the IR was much the more sedate, as it occurred in relatively medium altitude blocks at relatively low speeds - say 5000-8000 feet and 350 knots. The IR was designed such that it could be flown even in inclement weather, without fear of hitting something immovable, like the granite face of a canyon wall, just for example. The altitude blocks were “hard,” which is to say that if you exited from either the top or the bottom of the airspace, well, then you were no longer on an approved route. I guess the point of them was to navigate by visual and radar checkpoints, but having little application in a tactical environment they weren’t much more than medium altitude sight-seeing trips.

The VR route was what we called a true “low level,” and the minimum altitudes were usually restricted - over uninhabited terrain - to 200 feet above ground level (AGL), while airspeed was only limited to subsonic. These were a whole lot more fun of course, chiefly because of the very real possibility that you could die, and that right quick - zorching down low at high speed and high g, navigating by the nap of the earth, flipping her around mountain tops, etc. But they were also only flown when the weather was pretty damn near perfect, because otherwise you stood a better than even chance of tying the low altitude record, and who needed that kind of stress?

So anyway, off Bones went on his solo IR route, and half way through it he decided that it wasn’t nearly as much fun as a VR route, which in any case he would never have been allowed to fly solo as a new guy because those of us left behind wouldn’t know where to start our search for the wreckage. The weather being fine, he took it upon himself to cancel his instrument clearance and fly the rest of the route at 500 feet AGL and 400 knots, that being thought - by Bones - to be a good compromise. Now, being clever readers, you are probably thinking that such a notion sounds too good to be true.

As indeed it was.

Were the wine country denizens, accustomed as they were to a life of serene privilege, astonished to find an FA-18 ripping over their heads at 500 feet and 400 knots, where never one had been seen before? They were.

Was the control tower at Santa Rosa airport, in Sonoma county, accustomed to the positive control of aircraft within its airspace, surprised to see an FA-18 with whom they had not spoken squawking a VFR code and flying across their runways at an angle - those runways then being occupied with conforming traffic - at 500 feet and 400 knots? Oh yes, very.

Were each set of observers so absorbed by this phenomenon so as to make probing inquiries of the only Navy FA-18 base in the local area? Yes, and in fact those queries soon found their way into our very own ready room, where it was determined that we indeed had an FA-18 in the general vicinity of Santa Rosa, but that there must be some sort of mistake - the floor on the IR-201 over Santa Rosa was 5000 feet. Perhaps that was what they had seen?

No - it could not have been, and by the time Bones returned from his flight, stowed his gear and walked jauntily up to the ready room to report on his adventure, we already had a pretty good idea what had happened. And in this case, the term “we” had been so enlarged as to include the squadron CO - we had to tell him, he would have found out in any case - and who was very excited to speak with Bones on the topic of his flight. Practically dancing.

It was a brief but fascinating conversation, so long as your definition of “conversation” is expansive enough to include an apoplectic 40-year old commander shouting spittle-flecked imprecations at an astonished and speechless 24-year old lieutenant junior grade in front of an odd assortment of other lieutenants and lieutenant commanders, all of them listening in with carefully averted eyes and evident schadenfreude, fully aware that the fourth law of thermodynamics had been invoked for the foreseeable future and that, so long as we left the CO’s actual daughters alone, we were pretty much off the hook for everything.

The only reason that Bones didn’t join the Excellent and Venerable League of Former Navy Fliers at this point was because he was in fact so very new that malice could not be positively determined.

You: But what has this to do with tedium and being on the line during the Cold War?

Me: Which I was just getting to that.

How very like a god is man perhaps, because even FA-18 pilots could get bored of floating in the middle of the great nothingness for months on end, doing nothing in particular except for bombing maritime smoke flares with 25-pound practice bombs and 1v1 air intercepts at max conserve airspeed. Bones had toughened up a bit and learned a lot on cruise, but he was still the new kid and lacked a certain degree of deference to his betters. We often sought out innovative ways to get our message through to him, like the time the ship was locked down in a Security Alert.

In the old days we used to sail with a company of Marines on board the carrier, big, brawny men with rifles in their arms, sneers on their lips and an ever-present case of dyspepsia as they cursed their fate of being surrounded by squids. It didn’t matter if you were a lieutenant junior grade or the air wing commander himself, for if you were found out and about the ship’s passageways during a Security Alert, it would be: Get your face on the deck, spread your arms and legs and a rifle placed at your back and there was nothing much to be done for it until Someone in Authority could be found to vouch for you. The only authority figures those guys recognized were the ship’s captain, whose life they guarded, and the Marine captain who commanded their company, neither of whom could be reliably counted upon to materialize in your moment of necessity and save your bacon - the Marines didn’t play.

Their berthing was cheek-by-jowl to our ready room, and when the Security Alert was sounded on the 1MC, you only had a moment or two before there was shouting in the passageway, the sound of combat boots hitting the deck and burly men with rifles everywhere. It was the responsibility of the Duty Officer to hurl himself at our ready room door and lock the thing as soon as possible once the alert sounded, for if he did not the likelihood of having a group of armed Marines burst in and put us all face-down upon the deck was non-trivial.

Bones was the SDO one day while the rest of us sat around reading our Victoria’s Secret catalogues when the Security Alert sounded. He had been distracted by something on the ship’s TV and did not instantly leap to his duty, for which failure he was loudly and roundly remonstrated by the rest of the assembled JOPA. With the sound of approaching boots and shouts building next door, he chose that moment to grow a pair, telling us all that if we wanted the door locked so much, well then, we could go ahead and lock it ourselves.

This latest bit of impertinence could not, of course, be borne and we replied to Bones that he might very well tell it to the Marines, only this time we meant it. Bodily we bundled him up, physically we moved him to the door, and even as the cries and commotion increased in the passageway, joyfully did we hurl him out into the maelstrom, quickly locking the door behind him and bracing it with our shoulders.

Shouting and barking and “GET ON YOUR FACE, GET ON YOUR FACE!!!” did we hear and there was much eye-rolling and knee-slapping and antic gestures for a time until we heard a new voice of quiet authority in the passageway, that of the captain of Marines as it turned out. One of his Marines replied to his query, saying to him, “Sir, his own guys threw him out to us,” and hearing it put that way we momentarily felt a little remorseful. At having been caught.

Then there came a knock on the ready room door, and just like the three little pigs we spoke into the door jamb, asking, “Who is it?”

“Captain McDonough of the Marine Detachment,” came the reply, and “open the hatch.”

“We will not,” said we and braced our shoulders yet more firmly against the door, “for if we do, you will hurl us all to the deck and put rifles in our backs and we thank you sir, but we need none.”

“Open the hatch and let your man in, for we have work to do and my Marines will not molest you,” said he.

“On your honor,” we asked, “as an officer of Marines?”

“Yes, for God’s sake, open the hatch,” he replied, clearly growing exasperated.

And so we, seeing nothing more to be gained by further delay, opened the hatch and they left us alone and returned to us the person of one Bones, junior FA-18 pilot extraordinaire, only very slightly worse for the wear. So little the worse for wear in fact, that his impudence tended rather to increase than otherwise.

But this only enlightened our dreary and monastic lives for a matter of weeks, and soon the tedium set in again. Fortuitously the month of Bones’ flight physical was soon upon us, and the flight surgeon himself was recruited to play a critical role in our diabolical plot to make this birthday one to remember for our own dear JG.

Now you have read in these pages, gentle reader, the sore tribulations that can attend to an annual flight physical, especially when it is perpetrated by a man-hating ogre who will not even deign to give you wipies when she’s done. The difference between that and what you are about to read was intent, because while she was working her way through some issues that bedeviled the nether regions of her unilluminated psyche, we were just having a bit of fun while doing the necessary.

So it came to pass that when Bones was stretched out with his elbows on the table and his trou upon the deck, the jellied glove having been snapped in place out of his view and put to its intended purpose. At this point, the flight surgeon - a good man, though flawed perhaps in retrospect - placed his left hand upon Bones’ left shoulder. And at that moment of intense moral disadvantage, the assisting hospital corpsman, whose presence in the room Bones did not suspect, having heretofore hidden himself behind the examination curtain, reached through the curtain to place his right hand upon Bones’ other shoulder.

Now Bones’ was not a humble man as we have shown, nor was he much given over to the sin of introspection. He was nobody’s fool however, and could count with the best of them: He quickly realized that between the hands on either shoulder and the unaccustomed - dare I say, unwelcome? - intrusion abaft the beam that something was very much amiss.

He spun around so quickly, the flight surgeon later reported to us - we had asked for video, but had been told that would be a violation of client/patient privilege - that he had nearly broken the doctor’s wrist. He had been a good sport about the whole thing afterwards however, even allowing the examination to be completed. Which I suppose is making a virtue of necessity if you want to stay on flight status, but anyways.

Tedium, as I said at the beginning: It is quite the end of human decency.

And as for Bones? I cannot say that he ever quite grew out of his own self-regard, but he came at last to grow into it.

No Tags

Why is Music Legal?

Scott_Adams — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 17:17:11 GMT

Sometimes I wonder why music is legal. Music can alter your mood and your body chemistry just like any illegal drug. The fact that it goes into your body through your ear shouldn’t make a difference. We take drugs via practically every other hole in our body – mouth, butt, eyeballs, nose – you name it. Ain’t nothing special about an ear.

Music is clearly unsafe. Suppose you’re in a perfectly good mood and a depressing song comes on. That could make you sad and break down your body’s natural defenses. You could get sick and die. Thank you very much Tori Amos.

Many songs are dangerous to hear while operating a motor vehicle. For example, anything by the Doobie Brothers will force me to exceed the speed limit. You probably have your own songs that make you speed. If you believe in free will you might argue that people always have the choice of NOT speeding. But by that reasoning it should be legal to allow drunks to drive because they have the choice of not doing it.

Let me put it another way. If gum made people more likely to speed, you know there would be a law against chewing and driving. If it goes into your body through your mouth, it’s a drug. If it goes in through your ears, it’s entertainment. That seems random to me.

One way you know you have a drinking problem is if it affects your work. I don’t know about you, but if I have a song stuck in my head, it lowers my I.Q. by about 40 points. I can sometimes do two things at the same time if those two things are easy, such as humming and walking. But if I’m trying to write a blog post or read a licensing contract, a song in my head will turn me into a chimp. Case in point – I have a song in my head right now and this post sucks.

Don’t forget – music is a gateway drug to harder stuff. Music attracts dancing. Dancing attracts alcohol. Alcohol leads to unwanted pregnancies. Unwanted pregnancies lead to abortion. If you believe life begins at conception, you have to believe that music kills babies.

And then there’s the corrosive effect of hip-hop music. I enjoy a lot of it, but after hearing three tracks I have an urge to slap a ho. That can’t be healthy, especially for the ho.

Just to be clear, I don’t think music should be illegal. I just think it’s somewhat random that it isn’t.

#704747

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 05:46:36 GMT

<jtripp> I own a few sites and one of them sells baby products. A couple of weeks ago a customer ordered a gift for her sister and asked that it be shipped directly to her sister's house.
<jtripp> Well it turns out that she gave me the wrong address. When I called her to get the correct one she said her sister would call me. Unfortunately UPS returned the package before the sister called.
<jtripp> So, I reshipped the package out to the correct address but there were UPS fees for returning and resending the package. When I phoned to tell the customer here is what she said to me...
<jtripp> "I'll never shop online again, this is too much of a hassle. I had NO IDEA the right address would be so important."
<jtripp> What!?!?!?

#700007

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 02:26:17 GMT

<Navatalin> What do we want? less premature ejaculation! When do we want it? ...ahhh shit :(

DIY: Halloween Pumpkin Spider

noemail@noemail.org (Dumb Little Man) — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 20:45:25 GMT

You cannot tell me that this doesn't look cool. We are definitely doing this however I am going to change it a little. I am skipping the candle in favor of some motion activated colored spot lights. I already have the motion sensors so this will cost all of $10! I think this spider illuminating from a dark area in the landscape will be pretty darn scary.

Visit our favorite DIY site, Instructables, for the very simple instructions.

New Navy Recruitment Ad

John Carmichael — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 16:09:44 GMT

The old method of Navy Recruiting...

Today's Method! Perfect considering today's times! (Warning: A little racy (PG-13)... Headsets at work are recommended) But Damn Funny! Click the link below!

http://www.wakinupwiththewolf.com/timages/page/media/navy_spot.mp3

Navy Photo Courtesy of Vincent LaForet

Army Photo Courtesy of Devonshire & Dorset Light Infantry

Thanks to Cdr. Salamander

Who Wants to Work in a Dump Like This Anyway?

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 16:00:00 GMT

Manager: We're going to have to let you go.
Employee: I didn't do nothin'!
Manager: I personally caught you defecating into the employee bathroom sink.
Employee: The toilet was filthy!

95 South Illinois Street
Indianapolis, Indiana

Overheard by: Shatmandu

Thumbs up | Thumbs down | wtf?
Link · Email · Quote this! · Del.icio.us · Posted 2006-09-07

The wisdom of seventh graders: Contributions to class discussion

oldnewthing — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 23:00:37 GMT

(In the continuing sporadic series on the wisdom of seventh grade students.)

My friend the seventh grade teacher once had to deal with a class that had gotten out of hand by assigning the students a short essay in which they had to address three questions:

How am I contributing to class?
How am I detracting from class?
How can I contribute more while detracting less?

One of the more disruptive students answered the questions thus:

How am I contributing to class?
"I tell jokes."
How am I detracting from class?
"Sometimes I talk out of turn."
How can I contribute more while detracting less?
"Tell better jokes."

But we meant well

lex — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 19:59:23 GMT

From the NYT corrections page:

An article on Tuesday about President Bush’s defense of American policy in the fighting between Israel and Lebanon incorrectly described the planning that led to Mr. Bush’s meetings on Monday at the Pentagon and the State Department. Mr. Bush’s schedule for the day was prepared weeks ahead as part of the annual presidential review meetings; it was not devised last week as part of a White House effort to seek political advantage on national security after Senator Joseph I. Lieberman’s loss in Connecticut’s Democratic primary and news of a disrupted terrorist plot in Britain.

Easy to see how someone could get that wrong.

No Tags

That dry British humor you’ve been hearing about

lex — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:49:34 GMT

Link goes to a 5+meg youtube wmv file:

Famous last words: “I’m not going to flinch.”

Cha.

No Tags

Comic for 07 Aug 2006

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 04:01:00 GMT

The Short Version of The Big Lebowski

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 02:53:49 GMT

The Big Lebowski is in my top 10 favorite movies of all time (ok – I admit it – so is Caddyshack.) Paul Kedrosky pointed me to The Big Lebowski: F*cking Short Version that lasts about two minutes. I always wondered why I loved this movie so much – now I know.

alternate panel 2: i love you, t-rex! / i've got my own problems!

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 13:25:52 GMT

about - archive - cast - comments - sexy exciting merchandise - messageboard - search - reader art - links

July 18th 2006

July 18th 2006
Oh man, guys, OH MAN. The NFB has put fifty of its best animated shorts online. I love the NFB, and now I can share with you the brilliance of some of my favourite cartoons: The Big Snit may be the funniest I've ever seen. SO GOOD. Also, remember The Cat Came Back? And The Sweater, which my friends still quote today for the "hund-red, MILLION moths" line. And Neighbours! The strangly touching Notes on a Triangle and Mindscape! So much goodness I share with you. You can click on "large version" to get even bigger films. It's great to be able to see these films again.