Whose Faulty Vision

Radio Big Brother

Sometimes, when I’m listening to the radio, an announcer will come on and say, “You’re listening to KFRC”, or whatever. The eerie thing is, he always names the station I’m actually listening to! How does he know, man? Are they watching me? Do they know what books I’m reading too?

Stupid Microsoft Interface of the Day

Stupid Microsoft Interface of the Day:

A couple of months ago, I attached a wireless mouse to my Windows laptop to give a presentation. At that time, it may have launched the Found New Hardware wizard–if it did, I didn’t notice it, and certainly didn’t go through the steps to install the drivers for the mouse. Fortunately, I didn’t have to–it worked just fine without new drivers.

Since then, every time I log into my Windows laptop, it launches the Found New Hardware wizard. The wireless mouse is no longer connected to my laptop. The wireless mouse has not been connected to my laptop since that presentation. There is no other new hardware connected to my laptop.

If I try to actually go through the steps of the Found New Hardware wizard, it doesn’t find drivers, because it has no idea what hardware it’s trying to find drivers for, since the wireless mouse isn’t attached any more. But that doesn’t stop it from launching the Found New Hardware wizard every time I log in.

All I can do is hit the “Close” box every time it comes up. Which isn’t a big deal, but it’s stupid, and I shouldn’t have to do it.

I’m reminded of a quote by Douglas Adams, which must be years old (he died in, what, 2001?), but is still valid: “We call this principle Plug and Play. Or at least, Microsoft calls it that because it hasn’t got it yet. In the Mac world we’ve had it for so long we didn’t even think of giving it a name.” Plug and Play on the Mac just works. Plug and Play in Windows ends up with nonsense like this.

No more .info

I just set up a blanket block on “.info” domain names appearing in my comments–any comments with that text in them will go straight to the trash. This is the first block I’ve set up where I’m a little worried about catching legitimate users, but I haven’t had a single legitimate comment yet including “.info”, and it’ll block probably at least 20 spam comments a day, so I think it’s worth it.

If, incidentally, you want to comment on this post, don’t include “.info” anywhere in the comments–call it “dot info” or some such–or your comment will be automatically deleted.

Dental Crossword

I just want to gloat about a recent crossword puzzle triumph, possibly my greatest yet.

A little background for my readers who aren’t regular crossworders: Your typical daily crossword puzzle includes 3 or 4 long answers that share a common theme, which is usually hinted at in the title of the puzzle. Sometimes instead of a theme, the long answers form a single quotation. In that case, you often have no information about the quotation aside from whatever’s hinted at in the title–the clues will simply say “Quotation, part 1″, “Quotation, part 2″ and so on. You have to work it out from cross words.

So this puzzle was one of those. The clues were just “Quip, part 1″ through “Quip, part 3″. I don’t remember the title exactly, but it had something to do with dentistry. I had managed to work out all of “Quip, part 1″, which was “BE TRUE TO YOUR”. I also got the word “WILL” at the tail end of “Quip, part 2″. I had nothing of part 3 except for the number of letters. And from that, I was able to guess, letter-for-letter, the correct answer, which turned out to be…

do you want to guess it?

Don’t look ahead just yet, then.

It turned out to be…

“BE TRUE TO YOUR TEETH OR THEY WILL BE FALSE TO YOU”

I was pretty pleased that I got that from so little information. Maybe I’ve been doing too many crossword puzzles.

Sit ‘n Spin

Remember the Sit ‘N Spin? That was my most favoritest toy when I was very small. They should make grown-up sized Sit ‘N Spins; I would totally play with one again.

Quote of the Whenever

Quote of the Whenever:

Skinner: It’s kind of a funny story, really. After five years in a secret P.O.W. camp, I was sold to China for slave labor. And since ‘77 I’ve been making sneakers at gunpoint in a sweatshop in Boo-Haun.
Marge: That’s not a funny story.
Skinner: Well, I guess you had to be there.

-The Simpsons

Poem: This is Just to Say

This is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold