i have no title and i must post

So. Phlebotomy came back: drink more water. Otherwise I am healthy as a horse.

Been listening to lots of Jeff Buckley lately and playing some on guitar or at least I was until....

The daddy thing. It's still something I'm having a hard time believing. I mean it's like the polar opposite of when a bad sudden thing happens -- like when there's a car crash or someone dies or your true love breaks your heart and you cannot believe it -- I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Today the Mrs needed a bit of a break so I took her side of the bed next to the crib and let her rest and I still look over and play with his nose and the forehead while he sleeps and coos and twitters and it's slowly sinking in that I am the cause of and responsible for a tiny little life. It is awesome and brutal.

only now do i remember it clear

First things first: the new Decemberists' single is fucking awesome. Go click that, they will give you the mp3 for free. Which is good, because rakes are broke.

Second things second: this pregnancy thing is harrowing. I've gone from stone sleep to dressed and going WHAT in 2 seconds flat. So far no baby yet.

3rd things next: so I'm at the hospital at like fucking ungodly-a.m. or whatever, and the world turns so daylight happens and here comes the inaugural and holy fuck we have a black president. and fucking hell, he's smart, and capable, and maybe, just maybe, the whole country isn't going into ruin right this fucking second. Cleolinda Jones said something about holding your breath and being horrified that the last 8 years have been something that the people of the country actually wanted and how horrifyingly terrible the idea of that has been, and honestly I've still been holding my breath, worried that it might not happen, that something would fuck up before President-elect Obama became President Obama. My standards are not high: anyone who won't be a craven whore, intent on just using the flag to whip his flaccid dick all over the constitution and the ideals of what this country should be would be a great improvement.

Wherein it is confirmed that I am a horrible person

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bacon is a vegetable, right?

From Crackle: A Jewish Man's First Bacon

a heathen

Cory Doctorow's got a story over at Tor.com which is pretty cool. It includes a sly little reference to The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll (the 0.75$ error leading to a spy-ring thing). That book was the first thing I ever read about hacking, in probably '89 or '90; the first time I heard of telnet or unix. It's dated as hell now -- fuck, it was dated as hell in '90, I bet, but it's got humourous little flourishes that make it entertaining even now:

(from http://vx.netlux.org/lib/mcs00.html)

Dave knew my ignorance of obscure Unix commands. I put up the best front I could: "Well, the e flag means list both the process name and environment, and the a flag lists everyone's process—not just your process. So the hacker wanted to see everything that was running on the system."

"OK, you got half of 'em. So what are the g and f flags for?"

"I dunno." Dave let me flounder until I admitted ignorance.

"You ask for a g listing when you want both interesting and uninteresting processes. All the unimportant jobs, like accounting, will show up. As will any hidden processes."

"And we know he's diddling with the accounting program."

Dave smiled. "So that leaves us with the f flag. And it's not in any Berkeley Unix. It's the AT&T Unix way to list each process's files. Berkeley Unix does this automatically, and doesn't need the f flag. Our friend doesn't know Berkeley Unix. He's from the school of old-fashioned Unix."

The Unix operating system was invented in the early 1970s at AT&T's Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. In the late '70s, Unix zealots from Bell Labs visited the Berkeley campus, and a new, richer version of Unix was developed. Along with hot tubs, leftist politics, and the free speech movement, Berkeley is known for its Unix implementation.

A schism developed between advocates of the small, compact AT&T Unix and the more elaborate Berkeley implementation. Despite conferences, standards, and promises, no consensus has appeared, and the world is left with two competing Unix operating systems.

Of course, our lab used Berkeley Unix, as do all right-thinking folks. East Coast people were said to be biased towards AT&T Unix, but then, they hadn't discovered hot tubs either.

From a single letter, Dave ruled out the entire computing population of the West Coast. Conceivably, a Berkeley hacker might use an old-fashioned command, but Dave discounted this. "We're watching someone who's never used Berkeley Unix." He sucked in his breath and whispered, "A heathen."

humming

Earth's Hum

awesome sound is awesome.