I think this is me at 16. Could be 17, but not likely. The little kid is my cousin who is now a senior in college..

hah, found my old driver's license. I'm enjoying this old-file hunting waaay too much..

This is pretty interesting..

The authors are studying Internet filtering in countries worldwide, including restrictions on Web access in China. There is no master list of blocked sites that we (or, from what we can tell, anyone else) can access. Rather, we test "twenty questions" style, asking about individual URLs, whether based upon a domain name or an IP address.

(Continuing with cleaning up old backups..) I found my very first Java program... written for CSII course (CSI was in Pascal). It produces an octal dump of a given file.. essentially poor man's od.

Boy did I ever suck as a programmer back then!

I've been cleaning up my hard drive and in some obscure directory that contained backups from my old 486 (yes, that old) I found a picture of myself at the age of 5.

Wasn't I a cutie?

Now that I look closer at the picture.. I see I had the same great fashion sense at 5 that I do these days :)

I have three domains registered with them using the same account. One of them expires in January 2003 and I have just received a renewal reminder for it.. 6 months early. I'm quite sure they will continue to send monthly reminders, they did that last years.

This one (unix-girl.com) expires in 2 days.. and I've yet to see a reminder.. at all.

Both domains are registered using the same register.com login and the same biling information, credit card, e-mail address, etc.

This makes me wonder if perhaps someone has not made an offer on my domain (they do have that after-market domain resell "make an offer" thing) and register.com is hoping I'll just let it expire? Wouldn't be hard at all to script something like this.. "domain_expires < 30 days = dont_remind_to_renew".

....or maybe it's just my paranoia kicking in..

I've been trying to figure it out for a while. I always assumed the length of presence online and 'linkability' of the site played a major factor.. I changed my mind.

So far as I can tell.. it's based on a combination of.. (in the order of weight)

1. Overall ranking of the site with other search terms.
2. Frequency of site updates.
3. Page title.
4. Quantity of use of the search term in the text of the site.
5. Site stability (if your site goes down often, you won't find it ranked high at all).

It seems.. if some of the terms get you ranked high.. you'll rank a lot higher for others as well. There's a definite connection there.

What doesn't matter at all?

• Meta tags. Go figure.


• How long your site has been online. Takes about a month for google to start giving you high ranks.

What do I base this on? Just my recent experience with a new domain and re-location of my site.

There's something really odd about permissions in Movable Type.

If you create multiple blogs with multiple users.. There's an option under each blog for "add authors" .. seemingly applies to the blog, right? Wrong! Checking that options allows that user complete control over all users in movable type..

Confusing and annoying..

bleah.. I need to look into this further.

I remember seeing it as a child on Polish tv. This is probably back in 88 or 89, so I was around 14.. I don't remember it having much of an impact on me at all at that age. Recently I rented it from netflix and have been watching it over the last few days.. What a difference age makes.. these movies are terrific. Depressing, but very descriptive of human nature.

Decalogue in English.. think the ten commandments. Definitely worth watching.

I went biking yesterday with a friend who is a veteran mountain biker/bike racer. In other words 13 years of mountain biking experience to my barely one.

He made jumping logs look so easy, I figured I'd give it a shot.. First tiny log, no problem.. second log.. well.. a problem.

I was going too fast and didn't pick the front wheel up quickly enough.. The result was expectable. Imagine me flying onto the ground (and my bike). I wish I had a picture of it, it had to look really funny. Instead of a picture, I just have loads of bruises, skinned knee, skinned hand and a hurty elbow. Ouch.

I've concluded I'm not quite ready for log jumping just yet.. I'll just stick to the trails for now and leave the extreme stuff to the experienced.

Who knew?

Steve has a good tip about that.

Hey, enable trackback Steve!

People used to ogle each other.. now they just google each other's names..

Few years ago, if one was interested in the member of the opposite sex, one would hm, stare? Ask for a phone number? Ask friends? Follow around the campus? One of those..

These days.. everyone just uses google.. "Oh, she used NT few years ago.. ewww... I don't want any of that!" (well, I did.. so?).

Looks interesting.. like perl w/o the hacky-aspect of it..

On my list to learn now.. (if I ever find the time).

This is the second time I ran into someone whining and complaining about software engineers calling themselves that. This person claims in California there is a law that states you may not use the title "engineer" unless you are state licensed.

I could only find one law that referenced something like this and it states that you may not call yourself a 'consulting' 'professional' or 'registered' engineer unless you're state-licensed and only applies to mechanical, electrical and civil engineering professions.

Now if it were true that a title of 'engineer' is only limited to licensed engineers, wouldn't 75% of Silly-con Valley be breaking this law right now?

Why do people have such a chip on their shoulders about this.. it's just a title.. who cares? I'd rather have the title of "Java Goddess" than "Software Engineer" anyway.... now if only I could convince my boss to go along..

I've decided it's time to spend some more money on my little biking hobby. I have a cheap bike, but that doesn't mean I have to look any less geeky than your average mountain biking enthusiast.

Today, I took the first step into what I'm sure will become an addiction.. adding accessories to my bike!
I'm going clipless, baby.. that's right.. less sweating going up hills.. or I'll just go up higher hills.. or so I keep telling myself..

Ordered the Shimano 515s. I know.. I know.. mere $35 isn't exactly jumping head first into accessorizing my bike.. but the shoes will be another $100 or so since I intend to get those at the local cycle shop. I'm a girl, I want to try them on.

I should get someone to take pictures of my first day with the clipless pedals.. I'm sure it'll be a barrel of laughs as I"ll repeatedly fall over while trying to remember just how to get my feet off the pedals..

Being true to my geeky self, I intend to install them myself. I've got screwdrivers.

Tuning your bike makes a *huge* difference! I can't believe I didn't do this sooner.. Suddenly all my gears switch lightly, chain doesn't fall off when switching to 1st while going up hill... and the last 6 gears (12-18) actually work!

I know.. I know.. all common sense.. but still.. had I realized the difference it would make in how my bike handles I'd have done this months ago.

Went biking at Ringwood State Park in New Jersey yesterday with a friend. It was *very hot*, we managed to get lost and rode around in circles for a while... These are *not* trails for novices!

The company I work for laid off eleven employees today. It was a surprise (probably shouldn't have been, signs were there.. hindsight is 20/20). Looks like some of the employees weren't exactly the cream of the crop, so perhaps this isn't a completely bad thing...

Incompetent or not, it's still unnerving to watch your coworkers pack-up their desks under watch and get escorted out the door. Turns out their access accounts were turned off during our company lunch at noon and they were told right after lunch.

Made it through this round.. wonder how the next will go? If it happens...

ActiveBuddy won a patent on IM bots.

ActiveBuddy was granted Patent No. 6,430,602 which covers the method and system for interactively responding to instant messaging requests and the company said it would move swiftly to enforce the patent, a move that is sure to create a brouhaha in the bot developer space.

Why are we allowing software patents again? This technology existed long before ActiveBuddy was a dream in some slimy marketing bastard's head.

Using a Long type in Oracle causes pretty slow persistence. Now I'm not sure if the fault is with our Oracle config (I'm not a DBA, don't know too much about it) or if this is something normal.

Did a test on it today.

2030 characters inserted into a 'long' column 268 times, average: 3.58s, min: 3.23s, max: 6.27s.

Using same server and a CLOB type 268 times, average: 0.43s, min: 0.22s, max: 1.98s.

Odd, no?

Really... it does.

I don't feel a day over 12. I don't act it either, so why should my driver's license (the one with a realy bad picture, I mean *really*) say that I'm 29 now!

I don't want to turn 30.

*sob*

Someone I know is starting his first job in the IT field, so to provide him some basic training I directed the poor sucker to the bofh archives.

In my sysadmining days, they provided me with hope and good advice. Passing it on.

Just how many ports does one application server need?

grrr....

more later..

It sounds pretty geeky.. might change it back later...

Good? Bad? Horrible? Not even remotely related to anything witty?
Bueller?

After an unsuccesful (and rather embarassing) attempt to tune my bike myself, I gave up and took it to a bicycle shop.. unfortunately they're booked solid and it won't be back for a week..

I suppose I could have gone to the big sports supply store and had it back in an hour.. but (one) I hate those big stores and (two) I'd rather support the little shop anyway.. finally (three) somehow I can't imagine a 16 year old would do a better job on my bike than the 40-some year old biking fanatic down at the cycle shop..

So no biking for me this weekend *sniff*

I have an Amazon account, who doesn't? For a reason, I wanted to log out of it today. This is when I discovered there really is no easy way of doing that! Out of all the commerce web sites out there, one would think Amazon would know to provide their users an easily accessible logout button. They have been around forever and pioneered many technologies now used by many commerce web sites.

There's a "view cart", "wish list" "your account", "help" and some marketing thing on top.. but where's the "logout" button?

On the main page.. there is an obscure link:
Hello, Kasia Trapszo. Explore what's New for You today. (If you're not Kasia Trapszo, click here.)

Which leads to a page allowing someone to log-in as someone else.. but nowhere on that page does it say "Hey, this is how you logout!".

I looked in their help..
Nothin on the main "help" page.. but if you click on the "more" option for "using your account" section.. There it is.. "Signing out".

Now this page has a logout button.. and only took me three clicks to get there! Lovely..

This helpful text explains:
If you are using a public terminal, you will want to log off, or sign out, before you leave the terminal. To do this, click the "Sign out" button below. If you don't see that button, visit our home page and click the link that reads "If you're not [your name], click here." On the next page, leave the e-mail and password fields blank and click the Welcome tab at the top of the page. Once you have done this, your name will be removed from the home page, and your 1-Click ordering settings will be inaccessible to anyone using the same terminal after you.

Couple problems with this.. following the directions listed above (don't enter email address etc..) does not provide visible feedback that you have been indeed logged out..

It does however log you out. What is wrong with this picture? To further complicate and confuse users, the "your account" page looks exactly the same whether you're logged in or not.

Now why can't they just put a "logout" button on top of the page like every other commerce site known to mankind? My cynical side makes me think that they purposely do not want people logging out.. that one-click ordering makes thing nice and easy.... more sales.. more money.. but really, doesn't that cost more in the long run as customers complain?

I am hardly a novice Internet user and it took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to log out of my account. I shudder to think what my mom would do when faced with this dilemma at a public terminal.

I caught this ip address going through my site today:

Name: MTL-ppp-154163.qc.sympatico.ca
Address: 65.94.40.185

Example:
65.94.40.185 - - [07/Aug/2002:18:26:34 -0700] "GET /blog/archives/000004.html HTTP/1.1" 200 5618 "-" "Java1.3.1_02"

At a rate of about 60+ requests a minute...

Hmm, dial-up ip, identified as Java 1.3.1 (home grown, obviously) requesting my pages at this rate.. I'd say it's someone up to no good.. I'm guessing it could be a spammer looking for e-mail addresses.

I denied him access.. either a bad guy or a complete moron.. If you're trying to spider a site, you do not flood it with requests!

Time to put in an automated script that will take care of this for me in the future..

Edsger Wybe Dijkstra: 1930-2002

Professor Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, a noted pioneer of the science and industry of computing, died after a long struggle with cancer on 6 August 2002 at his home in Nuenen, the Netherlands.

Dijkstra enriched the language of computing with many concepts and phrases, such as structured programming, separation of concerns, synchronization, deadly embrace, dining philosophers, weakest precondition, guarded command, the excluded miracle, and the famous "semaphores" for controlling computer processes. The Oxford English Dictionary cites his use of the words "vector" and "stack" in a computing context.

I remember memorizing his algorithms in data structures class... Computer science community lost one of its top members yesterday :-(

Steve's (who graciously provides me with hosting space) birthday, go send him some birthday spam.. he loves it.

Happy Birthday Steve, damn you're old!

dontlink.com has a list of websites that don't want to be linked..

Uh.. okay!

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/POWER.ART.HTM

Today's profound observation:

The more I stare out the window, the less code I write.. hmm...

As I was re-reading my rant from Friday night, I realized I missed the most important point I wanted to make.

Don't take yourself so bloody seriously... life's too short for that.

A friend sent me this article today.. I realize it's a bit out of date now, but I feel a burning need (no, I don't need to see a doctor, thanks) to respond to this.

I must say I pretty much disagree with everything stated in that article. Now of course, the author has her right to feel the way she does.... here's my view of it.

It is true, there are far fewer females in technical fields. It's not a traditionally female profession and girls are more inclined toward more "liberal arts" oriented fields. We all know that, it's not new information by any stretch of the imagination. What bothers me is the suggestion that we need to somehow "fix" that. What is so wrong with a field that's dominated by men? Why isn't anyone demanding that more women should be encouraged to become truck drivers or construction workers?

I really do not understand the need to somehow make the field "more equal" to both men and women, it's artificial and will not benefit anyone.

Said in the article:

Here are some measures which may help foster an analytical mind-set in children -- especially, but not only, girls.
.
[see the article for the list, it was too long to post here - k.]
.

I fail to see where any of the activities listed are specifically more beneficial to girls over boys. It sounds to me like they would benefit any child, not particularly one destined for a technological career.

Only a very few of my generation happened to be brought up this way (thanks, Dad). It remains to be seen whether the proportion will increase over the next couple of decades.

I'm the proof that nurture does not prevent a girl from interest in science and computers. I was brought up in a classical "girly girl" fashion and my mom wanted me to become a journalist.. not a hacker.

A quick straw-poll of hackers suggests that the reason for wanting more women in the field (hormonal urges aside) is that it is felt that they would bring a different perspective and generate new ideas.

Isn't this a tad of a contradiction? The whole demeanor of the article seems to lead toward the idea that it is the nurture which influences who people become, not nature. In that case, this reasoning is moot.

Do we want to change hackerdom to suit females at all? Or do we want to change female mentality to suit hackerdom? Both involve fairly massive social upheaval, and there is no way to tell whether either of them will be successful in the long run.

Why the constant need for change? Is there something wrong with the community the way it is? Are females not accepted? I've worked as a programmer (and a system administrator before that) for a number of years. While I have encountered sexism in my career, none of it was from the hacker community. In fact, I always felt the hacker community is more accepting toward differences (gender, race, age, etc) in people than our society as a whole.

Women will become more drawn toward this field with time as it becomes more socially acceptable for them to be interested in science and technology. It is not the hacker community that needs changing, it is the way society thinks of a woman's role. Remember, only 50 years ago women were mostly just seen as mothers and wives. Forcing an equilibrium has been proven over and over again to not work.

Forming the female hacker community
In the last year or so, I've seen several attempts to do exactly this, and been involved in at least three. The most active and recognizable of these groups is Linuxchix, a group formed by Deb Richardson as a forum for female Linux users.

.. but isn't this doing exactly a reverse of what this complaint is about? The author complains about the lack of females in the male-dominated hacker community.. so creating a female-dominated community is the fix? I thought we're striving for equality.. not segregation.. Another contradiction.

It was mentioned earlier that the skills at which women typically excel include UI and psychology, language and communications, and group interactions. In conjunction with a solid grounding in technical subjects and hacker culture, female geeks may be able to use these strengths in an as yet largely unconsidered field: that of integrator, leader, and facilitator. Social skills which may be a barrier to hacking may in the end turn out to be what is needed to give direction and support to a project. In particular, the "bazaar"[2] style of development prevalent in the Open Source/Free Software community could greatly benefit from the input of technically-literate females, even if they are not actively producing world-shaking hacks.

This is offensive to me on many levels.. More contradictions in thinking.

To women I say: Use these skills. Don't write them off as "non-hackerly". Don't presume that they're unrelated to technology or hacking. Don't think that they're not needed to bring a project to maturity. And most of all, don't discount their value to the Open Source/Free Software community.

I can agree with this to a certain extent.. with one change: get rid of the "women".. try "people".

The author is seemingly asking for equality and equilibrium, but in the way she expresses it she insults me, as a woman and me, as a computer geek.

Forcing this issue will only anger some and create mediocre programmers out of others... Society will naturally right itself, as it has been doing for the past 50 years.. I resent the implication stated in this article.. and I am a geek chick.

About the DMCA at The Chronicle.

About a year and a half ago, I was playing around with Tomcat source trying to customize some things (work, don't ask). Well, I merrily forgot all about that, until today...

I attempted to get a newer version of tomcat running on that same machine.. it kept giving me really odd errors.. Couldn't figure it out, until I ran a trace on what it was doing.. Low and behold.. It's using the old hacked-up source I haven't touched in over a year instead of its nice, shiny new jar files.

rm -rf and problem fixed.. but in the meantime, several hours of debugging nightmare..