| When you are deleting spam messages in gmail because it feels so satisfying: |
[Fri, Dec. 5th - 11am] |
Sometimes, when I need to do something to calm down, I will check my spam folder for false positives.
My first email from my friend Anne, six years ago when we re-caught-up after college, went to spam and I never woulda noticed if I didn't have this occasional habit, so. Also, new developments in spam are totally hilarious and fascinating to me.
Every time I've done this, I click "Select: All" & "Delete Forever" a few times in succession, because there are no false positives aside from Anne. Across the top of the screen it says something like "1 - 25 of 3611".
But it alternates between showing 25 or 20 messages per screenfull.
1 - 25 of 3587 1 - 20 of 3562 1 - 25 of 3542 1 - 20 of 3517
WHY? THIS IS THE FOUNT OF MY MADNESS.
If you leave the spam box, it remembers the amount of messages it was showing you. However, if you click "Older >>" to view more messages, it skips you to "26-50 of 3517". It will always show you 25 message chunks when you page forward, even if you were only looking at 20, as if you were looking at 25. Skipping 5 potentially excellent spam messages! Why?! If you page forward in *any* mailbox & return to the front page of your spam box, it reverts to showing you 25 messages.
I could go on. If you have any further questions on the details of this quirk, just ask. Unfortunately my curiosity (WHY?!?!) is a little hard to satisfy on this subject, because googling "gmail 20 25" obviously isn't going to get me very far, and I am not sure whether anyone else on the planet gives a flying eff.
My best guess is that it is part of some brilliant user-interface coup, or it is for defeating robots. |
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| no idea |
[Thu, Jul. 24th - 2pm] |
Ben: I think that I am going to start telling people that I'm not wearing my contacts, and that is why I don't recognize them. When do you think that will wear thin? "I can't see good." Sent at 2:17 PM on Thursday
Besha: bad memory for faces is what i usually say which has the advantage of being true although not as true as i am usually drunk and also i don't care Ben: Yeah. This friend of my brother's asked me if I recognized her at a party. Actually, she said, "Do you remember my name?" Which is fucking rude. IMHO. I said, "No, but I remember your tattoo." Which is this giant outline of california up her torso. She then introduced me to her boyfriend. Caroline. She's pretty cool. Always acts like I'm this big asshole. No idea why. Sent at 2:22 PM on Thursday |
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| I'm not a hypochondriac. I'm a complainer. |
[Sat, Mar. 22nd - 10am] |
On Monday, my boss sent our department a long, thoughtful email describing his recent heart trouble. He'll be fine. I experienced a sympathetic heart attack. At 4pm, my shoulder started hurting a little. More like what I would imagine a "torn rotator cuff" would feel like than a heart attack, but what if? I mean... if I really did have a heart attack on the same day as I heard about my boss, I'd never believe it, right? I knew that the best explanation was that I was being absurd, but I did feel that the second runner up explanation was that I was dying.
Thursday my right foot started hurting. Goddamn dress shoes.
Yesterday, standing in the crowd at Cafe du Nord, I wrote in my paper journal: "My foot is killing me. I hope this is not of historical importance."
I have a bunch of great new ideas for joke Craigslist adverts, by the way. In the meantime, though, this one is straight up:
I caught your eye while The Black Kites were playing, and was considering how best to flirt with you in the crowd for the rest of the evening.
Then you walked right towards me, smiling, and past me because I was standing in front of the door to back stage. So I thought, "Oh. Great. She works here. I haven't a prayer."
I was very surprised to see you get on stage later and be raw and beautiful and sound the way you do.
I feel like I'm fifteen or something. Dammit. (Edit: A followup:Subject: singer of loquatDate: March 22, 2008 5:57:50 PM PDTis married.... move along -- Fortunately now I can just tell myself that it would have worked out if she wasn't already married.) |
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| Posted using TxtLJ |
[Fri, Aug. 17th - 9pm] |
I just drunk dialed my ex. Who does that? It was nice. |
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| MF Doom Sucks |
[Thu, Aug. 16th - 1am] |
Don't watch MF Doom live. Just don't. He has a cool mask, which makes it so that he doesn't even have to lip synch. His stage performance is zero.
The only person who's mic was on was the world's most irritating hype man. Yarrgh.
His music is still fantastic. Just let him do it in the studio without anyone watching at all. |
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| thank google |
[Tue, Jun. 27th - 2pm] |
So, I was trying to deploy an SSIS Package via the Package Installation Wizard:
 ( boring ) I just thought this bullshit deserved to be on the internet. You know, for posterity.
P.S. Due to spam, I'm screening comments here & not getting email updates about them. If you'd really like to discuss this particular problem in a comment here, make the comment & then email me separately. |
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| I'm Boomer. |
[Thu, May. 25th - 1pm] |
 | You scored as Lt. Sharon Valerii (Boomer). You forget things. Are they important? You think you might be a Cylon, but does that make you a machine? Who are you? Who am I?
Lt. Sharon Valerii (Boomer) | | 81% | CPO Galen Tyrol | | 69% | Dr Gaius Baltar | | 50% | Tom Zarek | | 44% | President Laura Roslin | | 44% | Capt. Lee Adama (Apollo) | | 31% | Commander William Adama | | 25% | Lt. Kara Thrace (Starbuck) | | 25% | Col. Saul Tigh | | 19% | Number 6 | | 0% | </td>
What New Battlestar Galactica character are you? created with QuizFarm.com |
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| drinkme returns (Psychotic SPAM) |
[Fri, Apr. 7th - 5pm] |
From "missing.or.wrong.knowledge.syndrome@mindsnapper.zic" subject "drinkme":Does the policeman hunt mad people or does he hunt sane people ?? (even better he hunts patology) The policeman hunts mad people, or he would be mad, by definiton. So there should be total identity, and unity of action, by the policeman, the general, the medical doctor, so we will not say anymore that a raper is a sane human. We can show why also crimes against the patrimony are not physiological conducts (if evrybody would go doing robberies..what would happen?)
A conduct can be pathological (biological group self-destructive activity) or non pathological (phisiological), no external or middle case is expected. 90% of the people who killed a parent is declared mentally healthful, this means: non pathological conduct, phisiological conduct (genetic or non genetic), good doctor, not vector of functional or anatomical suffering.
Medicine is an exact science, jurisprudence is an exact science. Enemies and friends: of the mental hygiene only, war between doctors isn't expected value. "Fighting with islam against the devil" : this information is harmless and profitable.
Siegmund Freud lies not knowing to be lying: he is a conceptual pedophile who says children has sexual attraction for parent (edipus) and that mind is partitioned in 3 parts (ego superego es). False premiss brings wrong result: like Freud says, cognitive error is associated with pathological conduct.
"All fine at home? Do your parents act with you like with friends?": the medical doctor must suggest this or enhanced reflection to the habitants, for excluding non-genetic behavioral epidemics. Slapping child is a crime and a mania, like by the general rule, "if child doesn't born genetically stupid, handicapped, diseased, socially dangerous". Earth's habitants kill gays but children don't born gays, habitants corrupt and kill children doing a "sacrifice to the devil": this non genetic epidemic is familiarly but not geneticaly transmitted.
God created phisiology and patology and gave you the chance to choice. With baptism christians forgive themselfs from god's sentence.
1:28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." 1:29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 1:30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground-everything that has the breath of life in it-I give every green plant for food." And it was so.
If vegetarian diet gives longer and better life than non-vegetarian diet, non-vegetarian diet is alimentary behavior pathology. Eating another human is a behavioral disturb; a cow has 96,5% dna perfectly matching with human dna. I am racist: i think animals is inferior race, so i don't have to eat cadavers, thing that induce a phisiological genetic reflex : vomiting.
This text describes a surgical practice, and can't be copyrighted ; you are authorized to the use u think is necessary, please forward. This is a final version or close, you will not receive notifications anymore. call for emergencies pog975 hotmail it |
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| Vera Sans looks like ass. |
[Mon, Apr. 3rd - 3pm] |
A few years ago everyone was all upset about the lack of pretty fonts available to free operating systems. Bitstream released "vera sans" under a liberal license & there was much rejoicing.
Why?

Sample is from here, but it will only look ugly if you have this god-awful font installed.
It's anti-aliased all the time, which is fine. I don't know the first thing about computer fonts, but aren't designers supposed to do "hinting" so that the uprights line up with pixel columns? Looking at it makes me think my eyeglasses are covered in vaseline. And I don't wear eyeglasses.

I know that example is with ClearType, but ClearType isn't magical, is it? Isn't this objectively easier to read and look at? Or am I nuts?
PS Thanks, gwen, for your tutorial on CSS borders. Instead I will just copypaste your code thankyou. |
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| winders pocky |
[Tue, Mar. 28th - 11am] |
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/ACE_Mega_CoDecS_Pack.htmPiles of free video codecs for Windows Media Player. Recommended by some dweeb on slashdot. It broke my iTunes. Lame. |
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| entryscan; aluminium foil hats |
[Fri, Feb. 24th - 4pm] |
Flying out of SFO, they asked me to step through this thing:

So I did. And I near to pissed myself. I am somewhat ashamed to say that I was jittery and upset for the next 30 minutes or so. It was dehumanizing, and immediately occured to me that someone with past trauma could be much more upset by the experience. I was skeptical (/paranoid) about whether the TSA employees had been fully informed about its function, which they said was to blow a little air on you and sample it. The thick walls make it look like it could contain x-ray machinery and shielding.
This guy engaged me with some extremely self-conscious "aggressive hospitality" when I took a few pictures:

Today I googled "entryscan", but it's mostly industry stuff for the first page. Plus Popular Science talking about how cool it is. GE has A list of supplies you may purchase for your EntryScan, and they all do appear to relate to explosive and narcotics detection. I'm still not convinced that they aren't xraying or something, but whatever.
You can view a photograph of their "Dopant, Explosive" product. Dunno what they use it for:

Maybe it's used to treat whatever air they collect for sampling. Maybe it's how they produce the air blasts, as according to Wikipedia, dichloromethane can be used as an aerosol spray propellant. Also according to Wikipedia, it's carcinogenic:Methylene chloride is the least toxic of the simple chlorohydrocarbons, but it is not without its health risks. Chronic exposure to methylene chloride may be carcinogenic, as it has been linked to cancer of the lungs, liver, and pancreas in laboratory animals. It is a mutagen and teratogen, causing birth defects if women are exposed to it during pregnancy. Prolonged skin contact can result in the methylene chloride dissolving some of the fatty tissues in skin, resulting in skin irritation or chemical burns.
In many countries, products containing methylene chloride must carry labels warning of its health risks. However, it is often mistaken for paint thinner which can be applied freely to the skin. Note "chronic exposure". Anyway I'm not going near one of those things again. I will avoid flying out of SFO, and wherever fly out of, I will provide an extra six hours in case I need to explain myself to security. I can't begin to explain how embarrassed I will be. |
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| 21 Grams screening |
[Fri, Nov. 14th - 8am] |
Just saw 21 Grams, the new feature from Alejandro González Iñárritu, director of Amores Perros. It's fucking fabulous. It's also at least as sad as Amores Perros, so... it's really rough.
Watching the movie, I noticed how although the movie slowly reveals key plot points, at no point does anything feel like a revelation. Nothing is surprising. Through careful modulation of tone (in the completely out of order scenes), he telegraphs everything as he shows it to you.
I _hate_ movies where the payoff for the audience is when they finally have the whole plot revealed to him. The method used in this movie was custom designed for my preferences.
Afterward, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Sean Penn answered questions from the audience. Someone asked him where the idea for the story and the method came from. He said the screenwriter (same screenwriter as Amores Perros) came up with the idea for the basic plot just as they wrapped Amores Perros, and it seemed like an excellent way to make a movie that was an emotional journey, and not an intellectual one.
Well fucking done.
Edit: I can't tell you how much a movie is improved by having no advertisements at all. It makes it so that the very beginning of the movie can have a real impact on the audience. I would see more movies if there were no trailers, let alone commercials at the beginning. Screeners rule. |
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| The funniest thing on LiveJournal ever. |
[Thu, Nov. 6th - 10am] |
So, I was bored the other day. I browsed p0llux's friends list. I saw a post from saratobias about running out of Adderol. I responded. Check the two comments I received.
Please don't respond to those folks' comments.
Jesus, God almighty. My post was patronizing and worthless and probably didn't contribute anything to saratobias' situation. However. That second response has made me think just a little bit less of humanity in general. I can't really tell if the dude is joking or not.
What drives men to that kind of rage? Is it the same thing that drives men to be patronizing and worthless (like I was in my comment)? Women have rage, can be patronizing and worthless, but they don't do it like fear and I.
I think it's the same impulse that leads people to obsess about Ayn Rand, or become fascists, or stock up on guns. Or get facial tattoos. It's what lead Burroughs to write about control addicts and his weird brand of homosexuality.
I've got like ten different ways I'd like to respond to this asshole, but... I hope I'll refrain. fear and loathing. Dangerous vibrations.
Edit: Hehehe. I just found out that nakedmen is saratobias' brother. Those Pandrax folks are so self indulgent. Jesus. |
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| Pre New-Year's Eve? |
[Mon, Nov. 3rd - 1pm] |
Perhaps a party on Saturday, December 27th?
I could do that at my place in the mission. I could conceivably keep the party to a reasonable size that way. Or at least I could have a shot at convincing my roomies that it wasn't a terrible idea.
Any opinions? |
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| (no subject) |
[Sun, Oct. 19th - 4pm] |
Checked The Coup last night. Communist hip hop. They mostly played stuff off their latest album, "Party Music." (Get it?)
It's "classic" Oakland funk. DJ Pam (The Funkstress) beats the pants off of the DJs that I saw with the Digital Underground. I dunno shit about funk, but I can't really imagine how it could get any better than her.
Boots Riley, their lead MC, is a performance addict. The more he moved across the stage, and the more he moved the audience, the more relaxed he got, 'till eventually at the end of the set he turned into a wriggling little puddle of funk on the stage floor. It was that hot.
And the politics were interesting. They were selling "The politics of anti-semitism" right next to t-shirts decrying the "genocide" being perpetrated against the Palestinians. Reminded me a little of the dude chanting "Free Mumia!" at the end of an anti-war rally just before the war in Iraq.
The Coup is rad. Rad, rad, rad. |
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| Graduate 2003: On Ice |
[Thu, Oct. 2nd - 3pm] |
Someone just reminded me of The Graduate. I watched the stage play about a month ago.
It was so insanely horrendously bad I can't possibly communicate it via text. Obscene gestures and shouting are required.
Instead of angst and irony, they deliver nostalgia and limp-dicked satire. They make sure that they do all the same individual events that occured in the movie, so it makes you remember seeing it, but it totally fails at evoking a mood. Ever. Of any kind.
The most depressing thing about it was that the audience seemed so wrapt. They watched The Graduate when it was released, and they were Benjamin Braddock's age (or a little older), and apparently they had no idea what was good about the movie.
HAHAHA PARENTS JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND HAHAHA. HAHAHA SEX ROLES IN THE FIFTIES WERE FUNNY HAHAHA. HAHAHA HE'S SCARED OF PUSSY HAHAHA.
We were squirming in our chairs dying for intermission to arrive. It would have been rude to walk out on Jerry Hall naked. |
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| Irreversible |
[Thu, Sep. 11th - 9am] |
I wish I hadn't watched it.
Gaspar Noe's Irreversible. The IMDB description is worthless. Read the Salon review first. It contains spoilers, but I definitely wish the movie hadn't been quite such a surprise to me. Well, I wish I'd been warned if I had to watch it, but given the power to erase the past (like Noe), I'd have unwatched it.
It's completely horrifying, and fantastically well made. The scenes are shown in reverse order, like Memento, but the goal here is much less plot oriented. The acting is fantastic. The navel-gazing bullshit camera work starts off annoying, but winds up very successful.
Anyway. I really feel like I'm suffering from mild post-traumatic stress due to watching that movie. Don't watch it. If you do watch it, and the first (grotesque, explicit) murder scene makes you nervous (it didn't bother me), then stop watching immediately, because the movie is about to get much, much, much harder to watch. If you make it through the second painful scene, then keep watching. The director does his damnedest to make it worth it.
I feel dirty. Eeeugh. |
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