I'm throwing in the towel. Xconfigurator didn't work. I just wasted my entire day.

Tomorrow: reinstalling Win98. Oh joy.

()

Many people would have given up long ago. But no. I'm still here, despite the fact that Linux is a big pile of steaming poo.

After reinstalling and choosing the graphical interface and standard VGA 640x480, it boots to the console prompt. Typing xstart launches the GUI in a weird video mode still. Considering the window option. That is, heaving the effing machine out of.

The continuing story of my Linux installation...

In desperation (and ignorance), I'm restarting the installation. AGAIN!

To pass the time, I'm playing my Logan's Run DVD. Wow. It's been a year since my palm started flashing. I keep looking over my shoulder to see if Michael York is after me.

()

I finally finished the installation, but with only the bare essentials. Unfortunately, I chose the wrong monitor type during the configuration stage, so now the GUI displays in a video mode that isn't compatible with my monitor. Can't read the GUI and can't change the configuration.

Anyone have any hints?

Well my third try at installing Linux failed at Disc 3. This thing is buggier than a VW factory.

One more time...

After the install crashed, I had to restart it. It's now happily churning away.

At this point, I have to say that, even though I gripe about the--

Oops. As I was typing that, there was another fatal error. Looks like I won't be able to install Linux.

I have to say, they have a long way to go before they're even remotely user-friendly. I have at least some experience with computers and disk partitions, and it's still impossible for me to install.

I'm very close to giving up.

First problem. It won't let me install the GUI interface -- apparently I need a minimum of 256MB of RAM. I was under the impression that system requirements for Linux were less than Windows.

So I'm stuck with text only. And I haven't a clue what the command syntax is. Oh this will be fun.

Well, today's the day. Today I finally get to thumb my nose at Microsoft and install the penguin instead. That's right-- I'm moving to Linux.

Of course there's only one small problem. Ha! Actually there are a lot of problems, but they all stem from the fact that I know nothing -- abso-freakin-lutely nothing -- about Linux.

I'm a DOS guy. I know DOS inside and out, backwards and forwards. If you looked inside my brain, you'd see a DOS prompt and the message Bad command or filename. So it's only natural that I stayed safely within the Windows world.

So. I have an old Pentium and Red Hat Linux. Let's see what this penguin can do.

()

Vancouver is a small town, an isolated town, and a vast city. It sits at the end of a river that winds south, then west, then south again, and then winds a bit to the north before splitting into two parts that wind generally west until they lose themselves in the sea. The city lies just north of the river, but not as far north as the mountains that churn up from the ocean and ripple into the distant heart of the BC Interior like a glass of water when a Tyrannosaurus is around.

The land, once a rain forest land, a land that undulates in and out of water, rises into the alpine in places, and in other places -- the low places, the deltas -- doesn?t. It?s a land where, in the dead of winter, the water flows down, down, down, then a bit to the left, and then out to sea, as if the city it passed were a fleeting thought in its consciousness. Had the river known, as it rippled in the breeze, burbled over rocks, and bubbled up with little brown things outside the pulp mill, that the city, too, was alive, then it may have paused in its long meandering pilgrimage over the low hills that tumble down from the ripply part of the mountains, down and down, and then a bit to the left.

Or maybe, in its rush to the sea, the rain-fed river would drive ahead like a blinkered horse, sweaty after a long trek through the mountains in the east and then down and down though the low hills -- the hills that are lower than the ones before, and lower still than the ones before them -- and down through the delta. And like a horse, the river ploughs through the fertile farmland, before rushing out to sea. Fortunately, the horses usually don?t get as far as that.

From the mountain in the north, slides the never-ending flow of laden clouds that drench the city in an endless torrent of rain. Vancouver, the city perched between the rippling mountains to the north, the winding river to the south, and the low hills to the east that seem to have tumbled out of the rippling mountains to the east of that, is not really a city at all. It is rain.

I think it's a fundamental law in tech writing that glaring typos and errors are never noticed until after the manuals have been sent to the print shop. Entire teams of skilled people pore over the drafts to ensure the highest quality. Yet it's entirely probable that, when the proofs are returned by the print shop, the first thing you notice is that the name of the product is misspelled on the title page.

Sometimes you get a good one. In one guide, the table of contents showed the heading "Duplicates..... 176", which was immediately followed by "Duplicates..... 176". Oh, the irony.

Usually the mistakes are things that are so obvious that none of those several checkers bothered to even check. Like the page numbering that mysteriously restarted in the middle of the book. Or the page header that showed the title of another manual. Or the fact that hundreds of instances of the word "function" were spelled "fuction". Blame that one on search-and-replace.

There's really nothing you can do to avoid these things. Besides, of course, beating your head against the wall and shouting Doh!! when the same glaring mistake is printed ten thousand times.

I have been asked about the penguin content on my site. As you have probably noticed, the site's subtitle is currently "theatre, penguins, words". My About page explains the "theatre" and the "words" but has no mention of "penguins". This was deliberate.

The truth is that it touches on a very frightening and turbulent time in my life, and I hadn't anticipated exploring my feelings on the subject so soon. I'll try to summarize.

When I was a small boy, shortly after my family and I moved to Vancouver, there was a tragic accident. As you may know, Stanley Park at that time had a small zoo with a few animals on display -- monkeys, reptiles, seals, otters, polar bears, and... and penguins.

Yes. Penguins.

One fateful day, while my parents and my brothers were peering into the otter pool, I wandered off and soon found myself fascinated by the dozen or so penguins -- waddling, diving, and swimming -- it was as if they were flying underwater. I leaned farther over the rail to get a better view.

The rail must have been slippery from the recent rain, because I fell headfirst into the icy pool. At first I panicked, but then I remembered my survival training from Wolf Cubs: when lost in a hostile environment, stay where you are and wait for help.

So I did.

My parents, must have looked everywhere, but never imagined that I was waiting for them in the penguin pool. The penguins were very kind. They brought me herring and entertained me with their antics.

Minutes became hours. Hours stretched to days. Days stretched to weeks, which skipped over the stretching-to-months stage and suddenly became years.

Eventually, of course, someone noticed the unusually large penguin, and I was freed. To this day, I think fondly on my friendship with my adoptive family of penguins.

I hope that answers most questions. There is more of course, but I may save those stories for another time.

()

In an effort to increase the penguin-related content of this site:

Penguin.

That is all.

()

I've worked in a computer lab. I've worked in tech support. Now I write software user manuals. And if there's one thing I've learned about software users, it's that nobody reads the freakin' manual!

During my brief stint in tech support I had callers who would ask how to install the software. "Well sir," I'd answer, "I think I can find that for you on page 1 of the manual."

As a technical writer, this is a heavy burden to bear. Imagine knowing that the books you work on every day for years are probably left in the original packaging and put on a shelf in some forgotten server room. Sigh. Or worse, imagine knowing that users who upgrade to the latest version never even recieve the manual.

So for those users who I failed to reach with my user guides, here are the installation instructions from page 1:

1. At a command prompt, enter format c: and press Enter. The following prompt is displayed:
WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK
DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST!
Proceed with Format (Y/N)?

2. Press... um... Okay, I'm feeling guilty. Don't format your drive! Sigh. Press N.

Damn conscience. You never let me have any fun.

()

Some odd subject lines that caught my eye:

how come you was not there
(Maybe because your bad grammar is pissing me off?)

RE: you coming to dinner tomorrow night?.. -
(Um. No. But it's a kind offer.)

FURRY NAKED BARNYARD FRIENDS!!!!
(Er... I don't know what kind of farms you've been to, but most animals I've seen don't wear clothes. Apart from cartoon characters, that is.)

Amazing Formula Adds 3 Inches in 10 Days!
(Gosh, I *would* like to be taller!)

Discover Everything You Ever Wanted To Know.....
(Like how to make you stop spamming me?)

Don?t leave your footprints on the Internet
(Sorry. I always forget to wipe my feet before logging on.)

It's Sunday, which means tonight is the weekly Ready Or Not meeting. Naturally, I haven't written anything worth reading to anyone. I had been hoping that inspiration would strike me sometime during the week and a brilliantly witty monologue or vignette would magically appear on my computer. Obviously that hasn't happened.

I shall have to resort to my drug of choice: caffeine. I'll just put on a bit of a buzz, and between visits to the bathroom, something creative is bound to happen. I hope.

Caffeine, do your magic.

At risk of continuing a food theme, I'd like to highlight the latest McDonald's blunder, the McAfrika burger. Article on the Norwegian site Aftenposten.

O breaded lemon chicken, wast thou lonely before thou wore lemon? Thine artless crust becomes artful only in the company of citron. In thy brittle raiment, thou canst tempt even the gods of Olympus to assuage their hunger; and yet without the lemon, without thy heaven-paired companion, thou art but a drab morsel: plain and common.

So, my sweet, tart collation, mayest thou never again be parted from thy condiment, and my love for thee will be as constant as the neon sign at Amy Chinese Seafood Restaurant.

O the fates have smiled upon me. Behold a winning ticket.

Before today, I was a lottery virgin. That's right. Never played. And here it is... on my first try, I won...

TWO... WHOLE... DOLLARS!!

I can't imagine what I'll do with this money. Oh yeah, I already spent it on a pack of gum. Doh!

()

Whenever I visit the home of a particular friend -- let's call him Joe -- I find it extremely difficult to focus on conversation. I might be in the middle of saying something, when something attracts my attention in the corner of my eye. I catch sight of a flashing light over by the television, and my focus is drawn to that corner like a moth to a light bulb. But I already know the source, even before I look: his damn VCR is flashing ?12:00? as it has been for the last five years since he bought the thing.



How is it that he can let an appliance to continue to demand attention? It sits in the corner, plaintively flashing its display, as if saying Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

And yet, for years, no one has spent the minute or two it takes to set the clock and pacify the poor machine. Whenever I catch sight of the flashing clock in Joe?s living room, I?m reminded of the people across the street who let their dog bark throughout the night. Dogs, on the other hand, eventually tire and stop (usually by the wee hours of the morning). A VCR never gives up.

We draw conclusions about people who let their dog bark all night. The owner might be lazy, might be irresponsible. The owner might be asleep or deaf... or at least dead. But none of these attributes apply to Joe.

I think the answer might be in the what the VCR represents to Joe. A VCR is an intrusion of modern technology into the living room, which is the inner sanctum of his home. As a sacred place in his home life, the living room should not be ruled by a machine. A human being must never take second place to the needs of a VCR. Letting it continue its plaintive appeal for attention is Joe's statement to all his guests that he has little respect for the needs of a mere machine.

All the same, next time I visit, I'll wait until he's in the other room... and I?ll set the clock.

()

One can never have enough spam. That's why I thought I'd start sharing some. This example of spammy goodness comes from matt@hotmail.com (bots, please add that to your mailing list):

Stop Harrasing Creditor Calls

When you get a creditor call, do you harrass them? Well stop it! They have feelings too, you know.

Have you ever been to Sushi Robo? It's a little sushi take-out place where, as the name implies, the sushi is made by a robot.

When I first heard about the place, I was stunned. A sushi-making robot? I imagined walking into a restaurant, and there's C3PO behind the sushi bar, slapping together a spicy tuna roll. As I take a seat at the bar, he shouts "Konnichiwa!!", which startles all the furry little Ewok waiters, and causes the green dancing girl to miss a step. (If you're going to have a robot sushi chef, you might as well go for the full sci-fi theme restaurant, right?)

I had to see this place. So the next day, I dropped by Sushi Robo for lunch, looking forward to exchanging some quips with the gold-plated droid. Peering into the kitchen, I saw a blocky machine with a rice hopper that spat out perfectly-formed blocks of rice onto a conveyor belt.

Yes, it was a disappointment. But one of these days, someone will catch on and make a real sushi-making droid.

()

5:30 AM. It starts quietly. In the distance, a seagull calls a warning and then is silent.

5:40 AM. The seagull calls again and is this time joined by two more. The panic is spreading.

5:45 AM. The original three seagulls are calling back and forth repeatedly, causing other nearby seagulls to cluck worriedly. A dozen or so distant birds can be heard doing the same.

5:50 AM. Every damn seagull in the city has worked itself into a frenzy of calling back and forth: "Aa-aa-aaa-aaaa-aaaaark-aaaaaark-aaaaaark-aaaaaark!!" (ad infinitum).

This is what I hear from my window before sunrise every single morning. You would think that, having seen the sun rise up daily, they would learn that there's no need to panic.

Bloody seagulls.

At the community centre, where the path by the soccer field meets the sidewalk, there rests a smallish boulder. There's nothing remarkable about the boulder: it's kind of irregular and greyish and doesn't do anything other than sit there and be granitey. I can't fault it for that, I suppose... rocks just aren't into the active lifestyle.

Yesterday morning, as I passed the boulder, a woman stood regarding it in deep contemplation. Then a thought seemed to strike her. After glancing furtively left and right, she carefully bent over and planted a kiss on the boulder's rocky pate. Before I was even certain of what I'd seen, she disappeared down the path.

What a tender moment, I thought. What would make someone take such interest in a rock?

Back in her impressionable teenage years, I would guess, she must have seen some graffitti that changed her life. I can imagine her feeling a little lost and confused (as teens often are), turning a corner, and seeing the giant, spray-painted message, "Kiss Rocks!".

The message must have hit home. From that moment on, I imagine she has always taken a moment in her day to spread love to the oft-neglected monoliths. As we all should.

()

Oops, I did it again,
I clogged up my heart...

()

Rumours say that Dean Kamen's famous Segway Human Transporter actually isn't the same as his much-hyped, mysterious invention code-named Ginger.

I have to admit, I was hooked when I first heard about this mysterious Ginger invention that Steve Jobs raved about. I swallowed the hype whole without chewing when I heard people raving that the top-secret invention would revolutionize the world. Such things spark the imagination until it's fairly burning with excitment over... whatever-it-is.

And then... nothing. Just as Ginger was dropping completely out of the public's consciousness, Kamen reveals the Segway scooter. It's a nifty gadget, alright. I'd love to take one out for a spin, but it's hardly going to revolutionize anything.

So now there are murmurs that Ginger is not the Segway scooter after all. Sorry, Kamen. Don't care.

I suspect that Ginger is actually a new technique to piss off a lot of people over nothing.

I want to go green, I really do. But why does the transit company make it so bloody difficult? Honestly, I used to take the bus to work every day, but when I discovered the two-dollar-a-day parkade near my office, the choice was made for me. It's cheaper for me to drive the three miles to work than to take the bus.

Even if the cost were the same, I would still drive -- taking the bus can be such an ordeal, take three times as long, and you'll never know exactly when (or if) you'll get where you're going.

Let me tell you about my commute yesterday. Early morning, I shuffle out to my trusty little Honda Civic. As I unlock the door, R2 bleeps at me; the alarm is on, and my keychain thing has fallen off. Not a problem -- I have a spare inside.

Moments later, I'm back at my car and the alarm shuts off with that little bloop-bloop sound. This time, however, I notice that my left rear tire is flat. Since I bought the car, there's been a slow leak around the valve stem that I simply haven't had the inclination to fix. I don't have time to deal with it, so I headed to the bus stop and hopped the ol' Number 15.

Inside, it's hot, humid, and we're packed like sardines. Two seconds into the trip, we hit the traffic and slow to a crawl. The lanes on the left are moving freely, but of course the driver wouldn't want to do anything sensible like change lanes.

It's getting hotter. I want out. But of course on a bridge, the driver can't let anyone off. Sweat is running down my back and there's no air coming in the window because we're not moving. Oddly, no one else seems inclined to open a window.

Twenty minutes later, we finally pass the construction that caused the slowdown, which is only a quarter mile from where I got on. I could have walked here faster! Out of frustration I leap off at the next stop and revel in the fresh, cool air. Since I'm still over two miles from work, I start walking. Eventually I showed up... irritated and tired.

In comparison, today I fixed the flat and drove to work in fifteen minutes.

OK, I know it's immoral to drive to work, but what are my choices? The bus is a daily ordeal and costs too much. Scooters are notorious polluters (most have dirty, two-stroke engines). I don't want to risk cycling in downtown rush-hour traffic. It's too far to walk.

Somebody buy me a Segway Human Transporter!

Penguin juggling. Is it wrong?

()

At 3:46 AM on July 17, I gave birth to the Cubicle Dweller weblog in a messy splash of HTML. That was only a few weeks ago, which pretty much makes me a blog-newbie, so bear with me if I'm still trying to get a grip on this blogging phenomenon.

It seems like every day a million new weblogs find their way into existence. According to Blogger, during the month of July, new Blogger weblogs were created at an average rate of 1.5 per minute. That's a mind bloggling rate!

All these millions of weblogs now compete for attention. It's as if, at first, there was a room full people, and a handful were taking turns on stage, saying interesting and occasionally insightful things. But then someone in the back started talking too. Then others started, until a murmer from the back became a general "rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb", which then became a hubub, which then completely drowned out the people on the stage.

Now we're in a stadium full of people, shouting at the top of our lungs, and Blogger is handing out free megaphones.

The chances of a new blogger actually being heard are now pretty slim, it seems. Have a look at Weblogs.com, for example. On their home page, they list only some of the weblogs updated within the last three hours. Among the hundreds on this list are some excellent weblogs -- well-written, thoughtful, witty, and entertaining. But many more are about more mundane subjects -- about what their dog did, or what they had for breakfast (um...oops).

Way back when the World Wide Web was new (oh... long about '94... or was it '95?) and I was putting my first web pages online, I wasn't quite sure why I was doing what I was doing, and less certain why anyone would visit my site. I still don't know why. But I do know that shouting in a stadium and being heard by only a few passers-by is far better than not being heard at all.

()

Monty Python meets Lego in this stop-motion re-creation of the Camelot scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This animation matches the original scene precisely, shot for shot... only don't look for John Cleese -- the entire cast has been replaced by Lego minifigs.

Thanks, emilyfurrybear, for finding this link for me.

OK, picture this. There I was, wasting another weekday evening channel surfing. Every channel had the usual tripe -- dumb sitcoms, right-wing political talk shows, perma-news shows, and several gritty cop dramas. Nothing worth sitting through.

I was almost about to reach for a book (remember those paper things with words printed in ink?), when this guy shouts "BANZAI!!"

Okaaaay.

Have you seen this show? If you're not expecting it, Banzai can overwhelm your audiovisual senses like a hoarde of samurai from a Kurosawa film.

I hardly know how to describe it. I suppose it's a show for gamblers done in a campy, pseudo-Japanese style that's big on retro 70s graphics and commentators with thick Japanese accents. Each segment in this half-hour show lets you bet on the most bizarre things, like which vicar can drink the piping hot tea first. Other segments let you bet on how long Shaking Hands Man can shake a celebrity's hand, which man lights a cigarette first, and more daring (and obviously sexist) bets like which Sharon Stone look-alike isn't wearing panties.

Immature? Yep.

I'm not sure I liked it. I'm not even a betting man, but I actually put down the remote and watched it to the end. Pretty sad, really.

()

Was it a moment of temporary insanity? It was a moment of decision in the morning in which I turned left instead of right and found myself at the counter ordering a McDonald's(R) Sausage McMuffin(TM).

I want the world to know that I am not a breakfast person. And, hypocritical as it is, I scorn people who frequent McDonald's, and I especially cast frowning glances at people who go there for breakfast. Yet there I was. To top that -- oh, the flesh is weak -- I found myself considering the "Two Breakfast Burrito Meal". Believe me when I say that I don't normally eat breakfast before work, or if I do, it's something very light.

So I carried that evil little bag to the office with the grease creeping across the surface of the brown paper like a spreading stain of guilt upon my soul. In the bag was everything one shouldn't have for breakfast -- salt, grease, heavily processed animal product, cheese-like oil product, and other unidentified ingredients. It was also evidence of my support of one of the biggest multinational monstrosities in existence. It was a surrender to the dark temptations of Ronald, head chef of Satan's corporate kitchen. (As I've mentioned before, the position of Satan's sous-chef is occupied by BK.)

My guilt was hardly eased when the VP of operations passed me in the corridor and, spotting the greasy bag, said, "Hey, the breakfast of champions!" More like the breakfast of champignons.

(Heaving deep sigh.)

I suppose I've had worse breakfast indiscretions. There's that one landmark breakfast I had back in '96 that was truly evil. At that time I shared a house with a friend who appreciated Monty Python as much as I do. I'm not certain what prompted this, but for some reason we thought we should pay homage to the "Spam sketch" by preparing the ultimate Spam meal. It consisted of Spam, Spam, eggs, Spam, baked beans, Spam, sausage, Spam, and Spam. For those of you who weren't counting, that's six helpings of the dreaded salt-saturated meat-like product.

I shouldn't need to say that we both felt quite ill after that.

Starting tomorrow, I'll revert to my normal minimalist breakfast. And today I'll have the usual salad for lunch. But in my heart (the bits that aren't now clogged with various deposits) I know that no amount of pure, green lettuce can balance the sin of today's breakfast. It's simply a guilt that I will have to live with. Forever.

()

Tragedy struck at the cube farm this morning. I arrived at work just before 8:30, not suspecting that anything was amiss. I logged in at my workstation, and as is my morning routine, I trekked to the kitchen for my morning coffee.

That's when I saw it. It was... horrifying. Simply a nightmare image that I can never erase from my memory. It was opened right up -- it's innards were all over the table. Vital fluids dripped into a spreading pool on the checkered linoleum. A repair man was working on the coffee vending machine.

I might have known this would happen. The day I saw them replacing our regular coffee urns with that mechanical monstrosity, I had a feeling that something awful would come of it.

I returned to my desk empty-handed and feeling helpless. Disoriented.

I'm a creature of routine. I depend on it to structure my life. Without structure -- without my morning java -- I'm lost.

Fragments. Sentence fragments. Lots of them. Everywhere. In newspapers. In novels. In essays. Even in works by well-respected writers. Fragments make things punchier. Sharper. Almost a staccato.

Usually writers avoid using fragments too much in one paragraph, and instead they save the fragment to emphasise a particular idea. In these cases, you never know when you?ll run into a fragment, so that when it does hit you, you feel the full impact of the author?s deliberate emphasis. It should be a surprise when the reader gets to the fragment. A complete surprise.

Which isn?t to say that the fragment distracts the reader from what it is the writer is saying. Not at all. If used well, the fragment will support the ideas in the paragraph, rather than distract.

Technically, a fragment is grammatically incorrect. A high school English teacher drummed it into my head (figuratively) that fragments are always wrong. Except for famous writers, of course. (Of course.) Now that I know that there are certain times when it is perfectly acceptable for mere mortals to use a fragment, I use them freely. I don?t blame her for misguiding me, since I learned several important lessons in that class, such as ??Because? is a subordinate conjunction,? which I had to repeat ten times in front of an amused class. I won?t easily forget that lesson either. Ever.

She did have good reason in teaching the evils of the fragment. Had I not been told that fragments were wrong, I might now write essays that are just littered with fragments. Evil little fragments.

As I mentioned earlier (August 10), I have, on rare occasions, wondered what penguin meat tastes like. Well, I may be a small step closer to sinking my teeth into an Opus steak today. I stumbled across the Penguin Recipe Page, where "the only good penguin is a digested penguin".

But where does one acquire penguin? It's a shame they closed the Stanley Park zoo -- they had some tasty-looking specimens in that penguin pool.

It's not often that a person's dream is fulfilled.

I have often considered adopting a healthier diet. Yet, like many people, I enjoy a cold one after a long day at the office. How could I abandon such a simple pleasure?

As it turns out, I needn't have agonized over this dilemma. Reading an article on Canada.com, I learned that beer can help lower blood pressure, reduce the risk of coronary-artery disease, and is loaded with B-vitamins.

There are limits to its goodness, however: men can have only two beers a day (and only one for women). Not a problem. If I drink beer every second day only, I can have two days' worth -- four beers -- all at once. Or maybe I'll avoid drinking beer all week, and on Saturday, I can have fourteen! And if I abstain from the suds for a whole month then I'm entitled to 62 cold ones! Woooo!

This actually brings up a serious problem for teetotallers. If a guy hasn't had a beer in two years, for example, then for the sake of a healthy diet, he's pretty much obliged to drink 730 of them in one sitting.

If you haven't had a beer for a while, please... consider the consequences to your health. Don't fall behind on your beer quota.

Confession time. For over a year now, I've been playing with Lego. At first, I was a little hesitant to mention it to anyone. After all, I'm an adult playing with a child's toy, right? That's pretty... um... odd. To say the least.

Since then, I've encountered many more adults with the same odd obsession. As it turns out, it's entirely likely that this Lego kit is enjoyed by more adults than children.

The Lego kit in question is the Mindstorms Robotics Invention System: a programmable microcomputer that lets you build and program your own robots. Actual, real, autonomous robots. Introduced in '98, the kit became an instant sensation -- a fad that sucked in countless people into the depths of geekness and spawned hundreds of Mindstorms fan sites.

So, yes. I have an odd hobby. Visitors to my home often have to avoid treading on some little mechanical creature or other robotic gadget. They may well think that I'm completely insane, but so far they have been kind enough not to say so in my presence.

I assure you, however, that I am by far not the worst of the Mindstorms geeks. From the creations on display at JP Brown's website, it's obvious that I'm not even in the same league as the real fanatics. Did you know, for example, that a Lego robot could solve a Rubik's cube? And someone else hacked the firmware to create the first TCP/IP-enabled Lego brick.

My own attempts to build autonomous robots, then, are quite feeble by comparison. Oddly enough, that makes me feel better. It means that I am odd... just not as odd as those other guys.

I'm making converts, too. Recently, I lent one of my kits (yes, I bought two of them) to a friend. Yet another perfectly normal adult has been dragged into the zone of pure geekdom. Consequently, I may not hear from him again for months.

This morning I work up with an incredible craving for unusual meats. I blame this on last night's exposure to Gamera Versus Guiron -- another offering from MST3K. In this poorly-dubbed 1969 movie, a gigantic turtle-like creature battles to save two children from the clutches of Guiron -- an oversized quadruped with a head like a ginsu knife.

During the ensuing mayhem, Joel and his bots are singing "Gameraaaaa! Gameraaaa! Gamera is really neat. He is filled with turtle meat...". And it occurred to me that I have never tasted turtle. I can only imagine that it tastes like chicken, as every other meat does, apart from beef and Guiron.

Another meat I have often wondered about is penguin. All they do is eat fish all day and stand around. Sure it might be a little fatty, but if you drained that off after roasting, I'm sure you'd be left with some juicy, tender meat. Sort of like duck.

Mmmmmm. Roast penguin.

()

From Blackadder, as an explanation of my thingylamp blog:

Percy: ...we came across a turnip that was exactly the same shape...as a thingy!

Edmund: ...a "thingy."

Baldrick: ...a great big thingy! It was terrific.

Edmund: Size is no guarantee of quality, Baldrick. Most horses are very well endowed, but that does not necessarily make them sensitive lovers.

Baldrick: I found it particularly ironic, my lord, because I've got a thingy that's shaped like a turnip!

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Obviously, my living room is ill-suited to be a performance space. Yet, last night we squeezed into this room with half as many chairs as people and had the weekly Ready Or Not. No, this is definitely not a stage. After a warm, summer day, my apartment radiates all of its heat inwards, turning my home into an oven. As well, the absence of any practical lighting made it hard to see the performance. The lava lamp in the corner, apparently, didn't help much, but did get more than one comment that it looks a bit like a... thingy.

So by the warm glow of the thingy lamp, we got all artsy and wacky. Singing, reading, monologuing.

When it came to my turn, my cohorts kindly agreed to read a script that I've had on the back burner since '96. That, I have to say, was frightening. Their performances were excellent, despite reading cold -- thank you Steve (Ahmed), Jim, Leanne, Elaine, and Christine. The frightening part was hearing these words coming alive from the past -- hearing them in painful clarity as if for the first time. Now I know why I couldn't finish the damn thing. The script is the stinkiest piece of stilted, meaningless crap I have ever heard.

Ah, well, I suppose I should keep it in perspective. The whole point of Ready Or Not is to try new things and get feedback. For me, it's just for fun -- really, I have no pretensions about being a writer. What I enjoy the most is just playing with words (as I'm doing now) and bouncing them off whoever will read or listen, in order to see how people react.

In the cold light of morning, I located the sides from last night's reading and disposed of them in an appropriate manner. Their shreds will appear at the recycling plant to be processed and reborn to a better life as another document. Maybe as somebody's user manual.

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Well, here we are. Another Friday has heaved it's bloated, tired carcass into view. On this particular Friday morning, I peeled my eyelids open from a blissful dream. In a light that was curiously bright for early morning, my alarm clock slowly came into focus. 9:14.

Panic.

Fridays at the office are rife with the ancient traditions of cube culture. I've already mentioned the Long Lunch, of course, and Beer Friday, which I avoid like the plague. But of all of them, my favourite is Casual Friday.

The rules for Casual Friday are vague and rooted in the depths of history, but in essence, after a long week of wearing normal office attire, workers are permitted to dress down for one day at the end of the week.

How casual is Casual Friday? It's a relative thing, it seems. The execs, for example, are normally seen in suits, but their Casual Friday sees them in khaki pants and golf shirts. Sales and marketing types often wear the khakis and crisp shirts during the week, and on Friday they dress down to blue jeans and a t-shirt.

In my department -- software development -- t-shirt and jeans are ubiquitous from Monday to Thursday. So faced with my alarm clock showing 9:21 (I must have glazed over while thinking about what to wear), I decided to take full advantage of Casual Friday to get me to the cube on time. I left for work unshaven, wearing my old jeans, hiking boots, and an old t-shirt with a software decal on it.

I made it to work on time and I'm the king of geek chic.

This web server is driving my up the freakin' wall. I swear, it's been waiting until I'm not around before crashing.

Which would you say is the problem with my server?

It's running Windows 98.

It's a Pentium 133.

It's running Personal Web Server.

It's possessed by an evil spirit from the netherworld (other than Mr. Gates, I mean).

Hmm. All things considered, I think it's time to chuck Microsoft out the Window and give Red Hat Linux a shot. If you find this site offline for an extended period, one of two things has happened. Either I'm busily installing Linux and baffled by the wacky new stuff I've never seen before, or I've dropped the thing from my 2nd storey window and watched it smash into a billion tiny pieces (with a great deal of pleasure).

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