test of command-line

Pretty Cool: there's this tool called googlecl that lets you do stuff on the command line.

Me, more or less

Moved...

I've moved my blog to a different host. Everything here plus much, much more can be found messofpottage.com/blog now.

UPDATE: That link still takes you to a blog, but now it's my professional blog. My personal/hobby blog is now at accretiondisc.com/blog.

buffy

What with all the hub-bub about the new Serenity movie, I decided to watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when I saw it in the DVD rack at the public library. I never watched it before, for two reasons. (1) We pulled the plug on our TV sometime in 1997, so since then we only watch DVDs and (increasingly rarely) videotapes. (2) I don't like vampire programs, nor anything of that ilk, because I don't like the creepy feeling you get watching people do stupid things ("don't walk down that hallway!") and I don't like being startled. But! when you factor that in, Buffy is much better than I expected when I first heard about it, five or ten years ago.

Still Busy

I'm still too busy to post. (Great blog, huh?) I finished my prison gig and now I'm on vacation for the rest of the summer, studying for the Ords.

Busy but I'm back now sometimes

Hello again. I've been busy. March 8 must have been right about the time of midterms. Then the 2nd half of classes and finals. The week after finals I began my summer field ed, and I'm not done with that yet. So posting will be light. But eventually I'll be back.

The Woman at the Well, retold

Here is a nice (and I think fair) retelling of the story of the Woman at the Well, translated into modern idiom.

quality isn't job one somewhere!

I have a GM mini-van that needs a fortune in repair work. I go online to see what's up with this problem and find out it's all over the place (note items 25 and 78). GM built a zillion cars with the 3.4L V-6 engine and they have a defective part. The amazing thing is that GM isn't doing anything about it systematically. Two observations:

1. Isn't the internet the heat. When the dealership tells you you have a problem, five minutes' work on Google will tell whether it's a defect or reasonable wear and tear.
2. I used to be work for a major computer firm in the data storage division. My full-time job was trying to get our warranty costs down and customer satisfaction up. At least half of our 7-figure/month warranty bill was due to customer satisfaction repairs (i.e., the unit is okay but we're replacing it to keep the customer happy). I'm astonished the GM would consciously anger so many customers by not doing the right thing.

Apart from this repair the mini-van hasn't been all that bad. Nobody is ever going to be passionate about a mini-van, but it hasn't been a complete turkey. The computer had a problem that stumped the dealer for a while, and the door fell off once, and as you can see from the list of TSBs above, there's a handful of piddly problems inside the passenger compartment, but it hasn't been that bad. The problem isn't with the car, just its manufacturer.