entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

I remember reading, as a kid, a dramatization of the British Antarctic Expedition, which was effectively a race to reach the South Pole for the first time between Robert Falcon Scott and Norway's Roald Amundsen.  The story was told from Scott's perspective and it was somewhat tragic.  Thinking upon it now, it seems like the heroic tragedy of the failure of Scott's expedition outshines Amundsen's accomplishment, which might be a result of better British PR, or perhaps just the cultural proximity of our nations (i recall also the story of Robert Peary being the first to reach the North Pole, and of course Peary was American, except it turned out upon later determination that he missed).

I discovered I Like Trains (né iLiKETRAiNS) on Pandora (although i can't pinpoint on what station; easy guess would be Sigur Rós), and i happened to come across a video one particular song of theirs, "Terra Nova", and it was only upon viewing the video that i realized that it is a reference to the Scott expedition, which turns the song from merely gloomy into harrowing.  I didn't expect that the video, which starts out with an almost cheap feeling with obvious models, would provoke such feeling.

How could I have led these men
To their demise and they just follow?
Exploration's last great prize
It wasn't mine

And more's the shame
You will remember my name

Great God, this is an awful place
I do not think that we can hope
For any better things now

Oh, the end, cannot be far
It cannot be far, I cannot wait
Exploration's last great prize
A saving grace, it wasn't mine

And more's the shame
You will remember my name

And more's the shame
You will remember my name

I'm sick of my smart phone experience.  Motorola has done a shitty job at keeping Android up to date on the original Droid and the Droid 4.  In addition, i want to avoid the temptation of a hand-held distraction.  Right now, my first choice would be a plain phone that can act as a WAP, plus a small tablet like a Nexus 9 or iPad Mini.  That way, my phone will just be a phone, and if i truly need to do something that requires Internet access, i'll pull out the tablet.

The crux is the first part: the plain phone with wiffy hotspot.  Do you, gentle reader, know of such an animal?  If not, do you have an alternative suggestion?  I'm not going to get an iPhone or any other smart phone; i want a phone that is just a phone, like in the old days, when we beat out text messages with rocks on a 10-digit keypad.  Any other suggestions are welcome.

I'm currently listening to NPR First Listen's streaming preview of Sleater-Kinney's new album, No Cities to Love.  And i dropped some coin on tickets to go see them at the Hollywood Palladium with my stepdaughter and her husband, while 2wanda babysits our adorable grandson.

I'm also working for eBay again, on the OpenStack support team.  So far, so good.

Microsoft is rebranding Nokia as "Microsoft Lumia".  Meanwhile, Google has launched "Inbox by Gmail", a tacit admission that Gmail is a failure (the debate, really, is where exactly the failure is; is it interface, data harvesting, something else?).

My humble suggestion: Microsoft should buy Inbox, then combine it with Outlook and rebrand it as 'Outbox'.

<todd> Sometimes I really wonder how much longer there'll be anything at all useful on the internet.
<ronebofh> there's plenty useful.
<rone> but the useless grows geometrically
<todd> To squeeze out the useful....
<rone> Google will work on algorithms to put the useful stuff into self-squeezing containers, like toothpaste.
<rone> trust the Google!
<todd> Oh yeah. I'm feeling the love.
<lb> ahh, c'mon. Google will obviously fund free public "hugging machines" modeled after the work of Temple Grandin. Only this machine will simultaneously be feeling you up and mapping your organs and innards.
<todd> Matching the organs with people who have the money to pay for them.
<lb> Mining the populace's external markers to sell to the drug companies (who will then target drugs better) and the insurers (who will then deny coverage pre-emptively)
<lb> you may not know it but you totally want this IBS drug. Which you'll end up paying for out of pocket. P.S. we'll find a way to keep you from ever being able to taper off it.

"Captain Dalmas, sir?  It's me, Corporal Weimar."

"Of course it's you, Corporal," growled the captain.  "Your stench is unmistakeable and fills me with dread, because you are soon to follow.  Why are you invading my presence this time?"

"Sir, we've captured... one of them."

"Oh, really?  And by 'we', i'm sure that you aren't actually including yourself, as i'm certain you lack the backbone for that sort of dirty work."

"Sir," Weimar whined, "that's not fair—"

"Silence," snapped Dalmas, who turned to look at the corporal for the first time.  "You are a disgrace.  It beggars belief that we are forced to admit into the army those of impure birth such as yourself.  It sickens me to know that i share a uniform with a mongrel like you." He stared down the corporal a few more seconds and said, "Take me to the prisoner."

They left the tent and Weimar led the officer towards the front line, towards a small pass in the hills to the northwest.  The dim light of dusk showed a group of soldiers circling a large creature.

"It's so big."

"First time looking at one, eh, Weimar?  Yes, they're big.  They could crush or fatally kick any one of us if we let them.  But that's why i'm here, to make sure none of us lets them.  And my tactics have succeeded here, obviously, as this group of soldiers has taken down this beast."

As they reached the group, one of the soldiers turned around and saluted.  "Sir!  We have capt—"

"Yes, yes, i'm not blind.  Excellent work, soldier.  All of you!  Hold it down.  I wish to speak to it."

The soldiers scurried around as they obeyed their orders.  Dalmas walked around to its head.  "So here we are, you and i.  You were scouting, no doubt.  What did you learn?  What were you going to tell your monstrous masters about us?"

The creature snorted and rolled its eyes, but said nothing.

"Do not defy me!" barked Dalmas.  "Tell me now!"

"You want me to tell you something?" it screamed.  "Hear this!  The dog days are over!  The dog days are done!  The horses are coming, and you'd better run!"

"Very well," snarled Dalmas, who looked up at his troop.  "Kill it."

The pack yelped and tore the horse apart.

Soon i discovered that this spice thing was true.  Baron Harkonnen was the devil.  Muad'dib was a Duke previous to his career as a prophet.  All of a sudden, i found myself in love with Arrakis, so there was only one thing that i could do: YA HYA CHOUHADA my YA HYA CHOUHADA HADA.

                — Opening to "Muad'dib Built My `Thopter"

(this is haloumi's fault)

Watching you ignore the bowl of dal
Curries just don't interest you at all
Smears of gravy never stain your face
You ate it all, and barely left a trace

You ain't heard a single word I've said
All i want's a steamy piece of bread
Served fresh from the fiery tandoor
To soak the dregs of my lamb vinda—

Why do you get all the naan in the world?
Why do you get all the naan in the world?

All the oval flatbreads disappear
Lonely, charred flakes all that's left, i fear
Rice can't fill the desperate void i feel
You took it all, you make me want to—

Why do you get all the naan in the world? [x19]
Why do you get all the naan?

Look at this shit.  Revolution Analytics broke the way that their site redirects to the new packages location, so some enterprising soul, as a workaround, suggests replacing the systematic way of determining package location with a hardcoded path to the new repository location in R's system configuration.  Ugly, sure, but whatever works in the short term, but then, note the comment posted two weeks later by an actual RA employee who "helpfully" suggests another URL for people using a different version of R, instead of, i dunno, begging forgiveness for their incompetent site administration and promising to fix it.

This was posted three months ago.  FUCK YOU, FIX IT.

So i emailed their support address, noting the brokenness, and asked for an official diagnosis and solution.  The support droid officially responds to my report by copying and pasting the above workaround.  When i asked when they expected to fix the broken redirects, they said, "no ETA." (lagniappe: the support droid's email signature includes "Visit our Support Portal at http:\\support.revolutionanalytics.com" NICE BACKSLASHES DUDE)

So let me get this straight; your software's ability to install packages from your own repository is broken, you offer me a hardcoded workaround that will break by your next release, and you have no clue when you will fix your fucking site?

FUCK

YOUUUUUUUUUU

You know what else?  One of their installation scripts wants to know where the hadoop and hbase executables are on your filesystem.  So if you don't pass along their location with the HADOOP_HOME and HBASE_HOME environment variables, or on the command line, it looks for them by running find / -type d -name hadoop and then find / -type d -name hbase.  YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR TINY FUCKING LITTLE MINDS.

According to iTunes, i have as much music from the 1990s as i do from the 2000s, and about 40% of that quantity from the 1980s.  The trend for the 2010s so far approaches the 1980s in quantity, which is a little surprising.  I guess that's just getting old, new music sucks, etc.  The latest CD cull yielded a whopping $16.25 in store credit at Rasputin, which i used to pick up:

• Mission of Burma - Signals, Calls, and Marches
• The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic
• Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth
• Rush - A Farewell to Kings