use Perl

While intelligent music is great, sometimes I just want to listen to something that gets the blood flowing in the morning. Here are some (of many) that do it for me:

• Shoot to Thrill - AC/DC
• Kickstart Your Heart - Motley Crue
• Back in the Saddle - Aerosmith
• Fight for Your Right to Party - Beastie Boys
• Lit Up - Buckcherry

Got any favorites?

I find that I tend to really songs that tell some sort of story, usually from a first person point of view. For example, Kate Bush's Experiment IV tells the story of the construction of a sound based weapon that goes awry. One of my favorite Genesis tunes is Home by the Sea, the story of a thief who breaks into a house, only to discover too late that it's haunted and that he will now be a permanent member. Genesis tends to have many 'storyteller' style songs. From the Rolling Stones we get Sympathy for the Devil.

Are there any good ones out there I'm missing?

I recently discovered, I think, that kstat on my Solaris 9 box is broken. Specifically, it appears that the data returned from 'kstat -m cpu_stat' is wrong. I posted a specific example comparing the kstat command line results with the results of using kstat.h directly. Since the snarky folks on comp.unix.solaris will usually jump all over anyone who incorrectly yells "bug!", I found the complete lack of any response to be disquieting.

I double checked sunsolve to make sure there weren't any patches I missed but I didn't see anything. I would take a look at the source, but it isn't available afaict. The Solaris::Kstat module you'll find on CPAN is for 2.7 and earlier. I once sent an email to Alan for the source but never heard back.

I'd also love to know how he was able to build his source using the mntinfo_kstat struct, since the header file in which it's defined, nfs/nfs_clnt.h, appears to be busted.

I saw The Incredibles this weekend. Awesome flick. Thumbs way up.

Note to parents - this movie is rated PG, not G. It gets a little violent near the end.

I was getting behind on patches for my Solaris box again, so I decided to download Sun's latest and greatest patch manager. It runs its own little webserver, and provides a nice little web interface for a list of patches that your system needs, importance level, description, etc.

It was pretty cool until it mysteriously stopped working after I installed one of the patches. It allows me to login but then gives me authentication errors.

Well, fuck it. I went back to ye ol' trusty command line interface. A simple "smpatch update" works wonders. Well, ok, I had to download some and then install them from my local drive in single user mode, but even that wasn't too painful.

>smpatch analyze

No patches required.

Beautius.

This one is for all the Bush haters out there. :)

When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental---men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack, or count himself lost. His one aim is to disarm suspicion, to arouse confidence in his orthodoxy, to avoid challenge. If he is a man of convictions, of enthusiasm, or self-respect, it is cruelly hard...

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even a mob with him by the force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second or third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically the most devious and mediocre -- the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

--H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

In the past, including the very recent past, I have always used brackets for my C "if-else" conditions, even if there was only a single line within the if clause.

if(some_condition){
   printf("Whatever\n");
}

I guess it was just a combination of paranoia, preference, and anticipation of adding additional code within the if condition that led me to code this way.

I've had a change of heart. This morning. At 10:12 am to be precise. Suddenly, it just started to annoy the crap out of me. I realize I have to pay a little extra attention to detail by omitting the brackets, but I suddenly like the 'no-bracket' style better.

if(some_condition)
   printf("Whatever\n");

/me shrugs

Here's a nice writeup from Jamis Buck using dependency injection (Needle) and a web framework (Rails).

It's Friday Trivia Time! A bit late in the evening, which may be a bit unfair to our European friends, but hey, it's Friday. Perhaps some are up late.

For 50 Trivia Points, who coined the term "virtual reality". Hint - he was at this year's OOPSLA. No Google.

For an additional 200 Trivia Points, what is the name of his band? It's only 25 Trivia Points if you use Google.

Good luck!

PS - I just read the person's demo, and now I feel like an insignificant little bug. Good grief.

Update: dws got the first question and barbie got the second question. 50 Trivia Points for dws, and 25 for barbie!

The answers were "Jaron Lanier" and "Chromatophoria".

No, today's rant is not about Solaris, Java, Iraq or the Presidential election. Today's rant is about the gym.

Specifically, old men at the gym. I'm sick and tired of these 60+ men walking around naked in the locker room. For fuck's sake, you are old and fat. You are not hot. Not even close. Do you really think you're impressing the other guys in the locker room? You're gross. Ick.

You have no chance with that twenty-something you've been creepily staring at. And don't think you're fooling anybody by sitting in the jacuzi all damned day (which accomplishes nothing, by the way). We know you're only there to stare at the women.

And that speedo (and yes, I have seen guys wearing them) is just wrong dude. Give it up.

Other amusing tidbits - sorority girls who wear their letters on their ass, people who talk on cellphones while 'working out' and, of course, the posers.