Argh! I just encountered another instance of the following code from one of our developers:

    try {
        // some stuff
    }
    catch (NumberFormatException e) {
        throw e;
    }

Do some folks just enjoy typing for the sheer fun of it?

Random silliness related to a new project I'm working on at home: visualizing the keep-out regions for an ATX motherboard for a case I'm working on.

(A higher quality video is available here, but $)@(*#$ LiveJournal won't let you link to videos if they're not on YouTube or Google).

Proptronics

You've seen them. The cardboard boxes simulating computers, TVs, and other electronic equipment used in furniture stores. The most familiar names are Proptronics and Box Props, though I'm sure there are others.

What I never realized was just how expensive these things are.

That 42" corrugated plasma TV? Box Props wants $76.95. A 60" box-o-vision from Proptronics will set you back $123 ($133 if you want a static color image on it). Complete computer systems with the latest Cellulose processor will run you $46-$95, depending on configuration.

At least the laptop is somewhat affordable -- $13.95. I don't think I've seen one that clunky since the late 80s/early 90s, though.

Technology sucks

Apparently, the good folks at Apple have coded up a way to simulate CD scratches into iTunes 7. Songs which were intact before -- as well as those purchased on iTunes -- are now skipping. <sigh> Or maybe it's a ploy to push me over to Zune.

I'm guessing the Victrola emulator had to be deferred to version 8.

Also, I'm on-call again this weekend. We've reduced the number of folks available for on-call by half, which means the rest of us are now on-call twice as often. Oh, and now we can't do anything -- including rebooting a dead host -- without filling out a bunch of paperwork and getting it approved by a manager. Only 304 days, 2 hours, 23 minutes, 51.25 seconds until I can go to another job...

More as a reminder to myself; this place apparently has all sorts of oddball fasteners, screws, etc.:
http://www.tacomascrew.com/

Ah, some of you make me feel like Electron Mike from today's Diesel Sweeties. For some of us, e-mail practically was the internet for a long time. (Ok, there was the occasional use of Usenet and Gopher, and we had our own version of Google and Bittorrent in Veronica and Archie.)

My younger coworkers who ask me how I could forget to update my here/away status on IM and who laugh at the plain-vanilla stock ringtone I use on my cell phone (it just beeps a few times) are also guilty.

For those who are into retro-internet, Firefox still supports Gopher. I even discovered a few active sites, like this one.

I love this movie.

Let x equal the quantity of all quantities of x.
Let x equal the cold.
It is cold in December.
The months of cold equal November through February.
There are four months of cold and four of heat, leaving four months of indeterminate temperature.
In February, it snows.
In March, the lake is a lake of ice.
In September, the students come back and the bookstores are full.
Let x equal the month of full bookstores.
The number of books approaches infinity as the number of months of cold approaches four.
I will never be as cold now as I will in the future.
The future of cold is infinite.
The future of heat is the future of cold.
The bookstores are infinite and so are never full except in September.