We must have lost the road

5:56] jack: wtf kind of username limitation is this? "Due to restrictions within the system, the Login ID must be minimum 6 characters and maximim 100 characters in length, but never 9 characters in length. "
5:57] rev: uh, never 9 characters?
5:57] jack: utterly flipping stupid, wtf could it be 6-100 chars, but not 9?
5:57] rev: what system is this?
5:58] jack: its for a site to manage my cafeteria plan
5:58] rev: that's bizarre.
5:59] jack: quite. you can use periods, underscores, dashes and @ in addition to alphanumerics. just bloody bizarre
5:59] rev: And why would you need a 100 character uid
6:00] jack: well, nobody'd guess a 100 character uid. that have the ability to do 100 chars for uid, but not passwd, its limited to 12 chars. makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. if i had known, this, i wouldn't have even started
6:01] rev: You should make your username Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel
6:01] jack: LOL, please tell me you used a name generator and didn't come up w/ that on your own
6:02] rev: Python
6:02] jack: *whew*
6:02] rev: And I only remembered about it because I was reading a Wikipedia article on the Monster Raving Looney Party yesterday. No, I don't remember how I ended up there.

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Get yourself an egg and beat it

Learned an important lesson today. 3 minutes is great for Char Siu Bao (Pork Bun), but way too long for Lin Yung Bow (Egg Custard Bun). That is all.

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School's out forever

And once again Slay's anti-democratic appointed board wheels and deals behind closed doors to do more damage to the St Louis schools. Ousting Bourislaw was entirely expected when it became clear that Slay was simply going to override the will of the people and put his own board in charge of the school instead of allowing the elected board to do their job. It's a shame as she was one of the best things to happen to the St Louis schools in some time.

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She's got issues and I've gotta pay

There is something seriously wrong with me (pipe down there!) when I spend even a few minutes seriously considering the ethical implications of how Dr. Scratchansniff treats his patients.

Also noted: In the segment Optical Illusion from Tiny Toon Adventures (Season 1, Episode 3) the Quality Assurance men are clearly the progenitors of Pinky and the Brain.

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Parliament's a fake life saver

I'm still undecided on today's vote. I'm not overly thrilled with any of the candidates, everyone I really wanted has already dropped out. While I personally like Clinton she has been so misrepresented and demonized by the media and the far right that I don't think she can pull out a win in November. I think that if McCain is the GOP nominee he will win simply because he'll be a white guy running against someone who is not a white guy. Several people have taken this statement to be an endorsement of McCain (because that's what they wanted to hear). That could not possibly be further from the truth. I find McCain to be the least awful of an impressive array of awful candidates on the GOP side. The Democrats managed to field a halfway decent set of candidates for once, but the media has entirely focused on the two least likely to be able to win against a white guy in a national election. This is still a fairly racist and sexist country. If I were more conspiracy minded I might say that the media has pushed to ensure that the Democratic candidate is unelectable.

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The future is coming on

Everyone is all up in arms about MSFT's pending hostile takeover of Yahoo! "It will destroy Google!", "It will be the death of Linux/Open Source", "It will funnel all the online ad revenue to MSFT/Yahoo!" etc etc etc. Really? I don't think it would drastically change anything outside of the two companies. Except possibly for the better. Note that I'm not saying it wouldn't affect outsiders at all, just not to the degree than many people who make their living based on page views are making it out to be.

Neither company seriously competes with Google in search or advertising in spite of their best efforts. Combined they don't have half the presence of Google in either space. There are overlapping interests with real competition: photo sharing, news/portal services, and email. Yahoo offers much better photo and news/portal services than either Google or Microsoft, and email is pretty much a wash all the way around.

The one caveat is what MS truly stands to gain the most from: control of yahoo email and instant messaging. YIM is still the messaging standard and I don't know that that will change in the near future. Both Y! and MSFT have tried in the past to block other clients from using their protocols and combining the two would make it relatively easy for them to dictate "You can't message 90% of the people in your buddy list unless you're using OUR software". This would be bad. And leveraging the email database for direct marketing from MSFT/Y! business partners would suck for the users.

Of course, the bigger point is that these mega-mergers never work out. Ultimately both companies end up in worse shape having spend scads of money to lose users and scare off their best employees through a number of boneheaded corporate strategies to integrate the companies that result in debasing their core products and services in pursuit of a goal not worth acheiving. HP/Compaq. Time Warner/AOL. Sprint/Nextel. Excite/@Home. Borland/Ashton Tate. Novell/WordPerfect. Alcatel/Lucent. Et cetera.

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No time, never got a thing to wear

This chain of emails is only the latest in a long series of tedious exchanges about what code we report various activities under. I probably personally spend about 8-9 hours per pay period messing with this nonsense.

From: Gov Mgr Ann - St. Louis, MO
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 9:00 AM
To: PM Betty, MO; Branch Cheif Carol; Gov Mgr Dana, MO; Gov Mgr Fred St. Louis, MO; Gov Mgr Ginger- St. Louis, MO
Cc: Architect Harold
Subject: RE: Resource_EstHours_Weekly2008.xls


Is the RFA to get reports in to Cybermation supposed to be production support or Project reports? I thought it was production support.

If it's production support, I believe Matt's time under Project reports should actually be production support.

---

From: PM Betty - St. Louis, MO
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 9:24 AM
To: Rev Matt - St. Louis, MO
Subject: FW: Resource_EstHours_Weekly2008.xls

Matt - is the time you reported under Project Reports work on the RFA Ann talks about below? If so, it needs to be put under Production Support and the time adjusted in your EVM to reflect such.

---

From: Rev Matt - St. Louis, MO
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 9:25 AM
To: PM Betty
Subject: RE: Resource_EstHours_Weekly2008.xls

Please kill me, kthxbai.

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The dreams of the city leave no room for self pity

As Mutha notes, the situation in China is dire for many of the orphanges. If you can, please donate to Half the Sky.

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