The title of this song is, “You look beautiful from behind.”

I am, like, the last person in the world to post this to his blog, but I don’t care, ‘cos it’s so awesome. Mareva Galanter

I just found this graphic I made for the homepage of my old company’s Bugzilla, like four years ago.

by his name is alive. more videos here.

Yes, yes, yes, I *did* get the laptop. I had to haul my butt all the way over to West Ave to pick it up at the UPS place. Actually, I think it really was my fault that I wasn’t here when the UPS guy rang, but it was definitely not cool that he didn’t leave one of those brown-and-orange sticky notes on my door.

Note to everyone: don’t count on the UPS truck showing up at a specific time of day just because that’s when you normally see them pull up. They are unpredictable as the wind. Brown, lumbering wind.

Anyway, I had been planning on writing a long blog entry detailing all the pitfalls and annoyances of running Linux on my new laptop, but actually it runs pretty well. There are a couple of very small annoyances (suspend only works about 90% of the time) but nothing that is so interesting that I would bother to write about it. Even wifi worked right away! If you’re a Linux person and you want a laptop, I would say definitely get a ThinkPad.

In related news, this article makes me chuckle. Kubuntu published an update a few days ago to set the new timezone data, so that when I woke up this morning my computer was already on DST. How come the richest company the world has so much trouble dealing with this simple change?

Now that we have an extra month of Daylight Savings Time, “Standard” Time is actually only the “Standard” for about 25% of the year. Maybe we should just rename DST to “Standard Time” and come up with a new name for the other? Daylight Losing Time? Seasonal Affective Time?

UPS is really putting me through the wringer with this laptop shipment. It says on their website that it’s on the truck and scheduled to arrive today. But, when the UPS truck pulled up around 1, I went outside to talk to the guy and he didn’t have my package. I called a couple hours ago, and the woman on the phone wearily assured me that yes, sometimes the truck comes more than once on the same day. Supposedly they stop delivering at 7pm, so if it doesn’t come in the next 1 1/2 hour I guess that’s that for today. I just want my laptop!

At least the customs clearance only took three days– I did some Googling and apparently it’s not uncommon for Lenovo customers to wait something on the order of three weeks for their laptops to get cleared. Damn you, FDA!

UPDATE: “9:54 A.M. THE RECEIVER WAS UNAVAILABLE TO SIGN ON THE 1ST DELIVERY ATTEMPT.”  The Hell I wasn’t!  I think Lenovo may have forgotten to put my apartment number on the shipping label.  Now I’m waiting for UPS to call me back and let me know that I can go pick the package up myself.  It’s a pain in the butt, but still less bother than staying home from work tomorrow or having the delivery address changed to work.  Argh.

Right now the sweetest words I know are “departure scan,” and “in transit.”

Some not-so-nice words: “special customs delay,” “further clearance,” and “FUTURE SUBMISSION TO THE FOOD/DRUG ADMIN AND/OR DEPT OF AG.”

Why in Hell does the F.D.A need to clear my laptop purchase?

(P.S. Lenovo shipped the laptop direct from Hong Kong, in case you’re wondering why customs is involved at all.)

So, I read this link on BoingBoing about how they’re redesigning Woodsy the Owl, and that doesn’t really surprise me (the new one is ugly though.) What’s utterly, totally freakish is that they’re mandating the total destruction of the old mascot:

The entire Woodsy Owl costume including each of the separate pieces is to be destroyed beyond recognition.

It’s hard to image poor, sweet Woody posing such a threat to the Forestry Service’s public image, but I have to admit there’s something kinda femme about him. With his bare chest, oversized belt buckle and little green hotpants, he does look like he’s headed off to the dancefloor (albeit a tacky, polyester one.)

Are you ready for the Day of Rockening?!

From Modern Mechanix.