A Voice in the Dark

March 31, 2006

I’d Happy Helga

Caliban Darklock wrote this in the wee hours:

So Axe has this new body wash, and one of their commercials includes a guy being bid a morning farewell by a female bodybuilder who smacks his butt, tousles his hair, and flexes her biceps before saying “Helga happy” and walking out the door. The guy looks a little freaked out, and a deep voice intones “Friend, regret your questionable hookup no longer.”

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Filed under: Media, Philosophy
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Job Search News

Caliban Darklock wrote this in the wee hours:

As some of you may know if you pay any attention to this blog, I’ve been out of work for the past two months - following a client’s sheer pigheadedness in doing whatever he felt like doing (regardless of my advice) and then blaming me when it didn’t work.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been interviewing heavily atÂ Microsoft, and this morningÂ I got an offer. The pay rate isn’t quite what I was expecting, but the benefits package is decent, and I’ve got a recruiter trying to bump up the pay question. (The offer is actually below the usual pay rate for the position description, so I think they’ll come up a little.)

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Filed under: Notices, Philosophy, Software
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March 28, 2006

After Watching…

Caliban Darklock wrote this in the late evening:

Upon actually watching American Idol tonight (left coast time differential sucks), Bucky’s performance was probably good enough to keep him around another week, and Lisa’s was horrible enough to bump her from the list tomorrow night. Paris is showing a litle potential and may stick around an extra week or two, but still isn’t top five material.

I seriously disagreed with Simon on Chris Daughtry’s performance, which kicked ass. It seems hypocritical to me that Simon would call his performance “indulgent” the week after praising his refusal to compromise. I’m hoping Chris recognises the contradiction there and rightly continues refusing to compromise.

Filed under: Media
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American Idol

Caliban Darklock wrote this in the early evening:

My predictions, so I can say “I told you so” all over the place this year:

Bucky Covington goes this week. He will be followed by Lisa and Paris. These three simply do not belong in the competition; they’re all solidly outclassed. Read on if you want to know my full forecast for the whole competition.

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Filed under: Media
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March 23, 2006

A Quick Thought on Open Source

Caliban Darklock wrote this just before lunchtime:

The fundamental failure of the open source community is a basic inability to understand that while open source may solve their problems very very well, I may not have the same problems. Even if I do, I may have a different solution that works just as well. And even if I have the same problems but no solution, I may still not think your solution is acceptable.

My primary limitation on development effort is not money for licenses, it’s time and manpower. When I field a team that costs half a million dollars annually, spending $15,000 a year on software licensing simply isn’t on my radar. What *is* on my radar is that I have access to only 14,000 hours of programmer time this year, and every hour I have to spend supporting and maintaining my toolset is an hour I don’t get to spend on developingÂ the project deliverables.

Filed under: Notices
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March 15, 2006

Laws That Should Be Changed

Caliban Darklock wrote this around lunchtime:

There are some laws that I believe should be changed. Some people don’t understand what this means. So I’m going to explain my position on changing laws in general, using a basic example.

The law I am specifically going to examine is marijuana legalisation, because it was on the news last night. Rick Steves, a local celebrity, gave a speech at a NORML meeting about his belief that marijuana should be legal. I agree with him on that point. So let’s look at what that means.

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Filed under: Notices
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Comment Moderation and Defective People

Caliban Darklock wrote this just before lunchtime:

I had two comments sitting in my moderation queue, and I had no idea. Apparently, there’s a default setting in WordPress that won’t let people comment until they’ve had at least one comment approved. I apologise for not approving them earlier; I honestly had no clue they were there. I thought comments just went up automatically.

But that’s not what I’m here about today. What I’m here about is a group of women that have taken some twisted version of reality they made up, and are now pursuing it through official channels.

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Filed under: Philosophy, Politics
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