use Perl

The next step in $WORK's continuing quest for cheap semireliable storage is complete. Yesterday FedEx delivered two Buffalo TeraStation 1 TB NAS devices. They're cute, with red, blue, and green blinkenlights. Easy to set up through a web interface. I've configured them as RAID 5, so that's 750 GB each. So far, so good.

Unfortunately they don't seem to be very hackable. They run Samba and an NTP client and FTP (if requested) and the web interface and not much else. No ssh, telnet, rsync, apparently. There's Linux in there, but it's not accessible. No ports on the box other than USB and a serial port for attaching a UPS monitoring cable. Of course, minimality is part of the point.

Yes, it's ridiculous that I've been programming in Perl for 10 years and have never released a module on CPAN. I got a PAUSE ID a couple of years ago with the full intention of uploading modules, but I never got around to putting anything into CPANable form. It seems that as time goes by the expectations for tests, documentation, and so forth have increased, and the amount of effort required to bridge the gap between usable module and releasable module has gone up. Okay, I'm an easily intimidated lazy procrastinator.

Anyway, I was playing around with the Text::Brew module and found a bug, which I duly reported on rt.cpan.org and uploaded a patch for. In return the author invited me to take over as the maintainer for the module. I figured I might as well jump in, even though I'm not thrilled with the API or name of this particular module.

Anyone have any words of wisdom?

Update: I successfully patched the module and even improved its kwalitee a bit. Now I just have to get some of my own modules into shape.

If a train runs every 10 minutes, what does it mean to say that there's a 10-minute delay all day? It presumably doesn't mean that all trains are delayed by 10 minutes, since then you'd simply be taking a different train at the same time and not notice or care. Perhaps it means that the inter-train interval has increased to 20 minutes, but is that really a 10-minute delay? Or maybe the average wait has increased by 10 minutes, so the inter-train interval is now 30 minutes. I don't think that works either.

We'll ignore for now the question of how there can be a delay on only part of a line.

My latest bank statement included an ad that starts like this:

Do you know where your time goes? For instance, in an average lifetime we spend...

• 6 months just sitting at traffic lights
• 8 months opening junk mail
• 12 months looking for lost possessions
• 5 years just waiting in line

Assuming an average lifespan of 72 years, that means that during an average day (including childhood and old age), a person would have to spend

• 10 minutes sitting at traffic lights
• 13 minutes opening junk mail
• 20 minutes looking for lost possessions
• 100 minutes waiting in line

Now, the first might be believable, depending on where the person lives, but the second and third are clearly too high, and the last is completely insane. Do ad copywriters not have calculators, or do they lead lives very different from ours?

What possesses people to think they can write Seussian poems to celebrate Theodor Seuss Geisel's centennial? On Rembrandt's birthday, do they pull the easel out of the closet and try to paint in his style? On Bach's, do they dash off cantatas? I haven't even read through the whole thing, but I know it's horrible. These things always are. They can never keep to a meter, and this one doesn't even rhyme for some lines.

I guess if it's for KidsPost any old crap will do to fill the space.

In addition to the virus-scanner bounces, now we have to deal with challenge-response spam triggered by the virus. This just came to a catchall mailbox that I check (addresses munged to protect innocent and guilty alike):

From: [name] <[user]@mailblocks.com>
To: andrew@[one of my domains]
Subject: Re: Hi [Authorize]

Hi,

You just sent an email to my [user]@twcny.rr.com account, which
is now being managed by my Mailblocks spam-free email service. Because this is
the first time you have sent to this email account, please confirm yourself so
you'll be recognized when you send to me in the future.

It's simple. To prove your message comes from a human and not a computer, go to:
http://app1.mailblocks.com/confirm2.aspx?ck=B2Fqd2Vpc3MObWFpbGJsb2Nrcy5jb20 WYW5kcmV3QHNtb2tlc2NyZWVuLm9yZ9iEEb8*&a=1

This is the email message you have sent that is in my Pending folder waiting for
your quick authentication:

Subject: Hi
Sent: Jan 29, 9:07 AM

If you have not confirmed within several days, your message will automatically
be deleted.

-----
Email for Humans... Mailblocks
Try Mailblocks web-based personal email -- faster, cleaner interface, more
storage, bigger attachments, and 100% spam-free.
http://about.mailblocks.com/?src=emailspiderauth

Should I click? If he's spamming me to protect himself from spam, I feel like undermining his system, but I guess I'll preserve my record of never responding to challenge-response systems instead. I just hope some reader or robot doesn't do it for me within the next several days.