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I'm listening to a book called "The Physics of Christmas" by Roger Highfield, and it's simply amazing the things which get consideration in this over-commercialized season. The book, having already covered the history of "Santa Claus" and his use in Coca Cola commercials, his effect in Denmark, and all sorts of other things, is currently talking about the science of shopping.

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Who the hell would want to clone the XP interface? Apparently a few people want to do so. XPde.com is set up just to do that, in fact. The funny thing is, at this time, KDE and Mac OS X are both beating XP in their "Which desktop environment do you think is the best?" poll, and all of their screenshots show Apple's "Aqua" (actually called "Water") desktop picture! WTF? Cloning XP? I guess there's just no accounting for taste these days...

If this isn't an easy victory, I don't know what is. Ahhh, the spoils of victory and the joyousness of conquering the world on Christmas day.

Today is very much like any other day, except that I don't plan on talking to anyone but my dog. I'm at a very decent place in life right now: stable income (ha ha ha), car, apartment, dog, some friends that I plan on completely ignoring today (ha ha part deux). This could be the most productive day of the year... but somehow I doubt it will be. I think my GameCube is calling me.

I might even drive around just to see how Jewish the area in which I live really is. How many stores will be open today? Is CompUSA open? They didn't sem to be... could I get a Logitech MX 500 Optical mouse today if I really tried? I wonder...

Merry Christmas to all, and to all... you know the rest. 🙂

Merry Freakin' Christmas! It's 12:01am on December 25, 2002. Heck, in about a week it will be 2003! Ack!

So what am I doing? Writing code. I spent entirely too long today trying to figure out how to get smileys to work in this darn blogging system ( 🙂 >:-o O:-) 😉 🙁 they work now see?). I've just now found some code that should definitely help us figure out how to add a bunch of font support to Adium 2.0.

I think I'll fire up a copy of iConquer now and see if I can take over the world. Again. Some other people really need to buy this so I can play against them... Though I wouldn't expect them to be online at 12:10am on Christmas day! 🙂

(Oh, by the way: it's 76 degrees right now.) Happy Holidays, everyone!

This Register article talks about San Francisco's recent ban of Segways (the drastically overpriced scooter designed by a weird egomaniac) on city sidewalks and bike paths. The article also touches on "the average American" and describes them, in the words of various authors, as "fat."

Guess what? The average American is overweight. We're a society of excess. A society of McDonald's. A society in which I actually have to try to persuade my friends to walk to the pool hall that's literally 500 yards away instead of driving.

Are there thin people in the US? Yes... you just can't see them because all the fatties are blocking the way.

Santa ain't the only one that could stand to lose a few pounds. 🙂

From a 1998 rec.humor.funny post:

better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus town

cat /etc/passwd > list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty > nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice > giftlist
santa claus town

who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | grep bad || good
for (goodness sake) {
be good }

Just some random things to make up for my complete lack of posting yesterday (The Steelers whupped that Tamba Bay Buccaneer team right good, I done say.)

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Apple is pushing the "Switch" campaign to developers with this article on porting Win32 apps to the Mac. Geared towards "those first steps" with recommendations for the HIGs, some basic information on how the event models are different, and so on. Check it out and start coding, Windows guys. Oh, and welcome aboard.

To the right you see the shoes I will be getting. They are replacing these shoes which are decidedly not "cobalt blue," but are instead quite purple.

Gabe and I won't be rock climbing this Tuesday (Christmas Eve) or maybe even next Tuesday (New Year's Eve). Hopefully we'll work in another day in the meanwhile. I've got my harness, my carabiner (that word is fun to say), my belay loop (ATC)... and my shoes will be replaced shortly. Oh, and my chalkbag (no chalk). Got that too.

Thanks Aaron for the help.

In response to my previous post on open sourcing software, I decided to come up with a list of similar things to including the source code with all software.

If software was required to ship with the source code, then:

• All novels should ship with every note and draft the author took during the writing of the book as well as any pertinent prior knowledge.
• All music should ship with the tracks so that you can examine how they were mixed, the sheet music, and any edits made by the artist, producer, band, editor, lyricists, etc.
• All DVDs should ship with a replica of the studios and people used to produce them. After all, how are we to know whether our Matrix Special Edition DVD is "well built" unless we can see how it is built?
• Every electrical device we buy should come with blueprints for every piece, proprietary, patented, or otherwise.

Connel is a moron.

Men sick of having their girlfriends or wives complain about the time they spend playing video games may want to pay attention to this article on GameGirl Advance.

Apparently, a PS2 game called "Rez" ships with a "vibrator." Yep, you heard me correctly: it comes with a vibrator. What's better, the vibrator reacts in accordance with how you're playing the game. Is pleasing your woman the primary use? Uhhh, probably not... But dammit if it's not a mighty fine idea! 🙂

Charles Connel uses an article entitled "All Source Code Should Be Open" to put in his bid for "Idiot of the Year" as far as I'm concerned. This article illustrates such a tremendous lack of understanding, lack of thought, and lack of the most common forms of common sense that the author should be open sourced. After all, maybe we'll be able to work out all the bugs in his thought process.

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Time's "Person of the Year" is actually three people this year: the whistleblowers at Enron, WorldCom, and the FBI. This time of year, if we're going to recognize whistleblowers as the Person of the Year, couldn't they be the ones we watch every Sunday? They've got more of an impact on my day to day life than these gals.

Maxim's January cover girl is Christina Aguilera. Y'know, the former Mouseketeer... the former "girl next door" and "nice Pittsburgh suburb" girl. True to form, Maxim has taken someone who can be completely adorable, and turned her into a heavy-eyeshadow-wearing vixen. And one could say Maxim showed her the way she's been showing herself lately, and that's something I'd agree with...

... but what ever happened to adorable? What ever happened to "girl next door" sexy? Am I the only guy alive that thinks "cuddly" is still sexy? That comfort breeds confidence - and a whole different kind of confidence that you don't get by covering up your bare breasts and flicking off the camera - and that this confidence is sexy?

Am I the only guy left that finds clothing sexier than the complete, utter lack of clothing? I mean, I love Maxim for the damn humor of it all, but aside from being able to see how big Christina's boobs really are... whoopty doo to the whole damn pictorial.

From my friend Aaron comes this whole entry…

I, Aaron Linville, am an official kernel hacker. In fact, if you are running Mac OS X (10.2.3) and viewing this webpage, you are using code that I've written. Of course you'll want proof of this, for that I have provided a PGP signed email from Apple.

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