The Lair

Most people with a ken for finding out about this whole Loonix thing have heard of Ubuntu by now. If not, please come out from that dark cave that you’ve been inhabiting and venture forth into the sunlight… it won’t burn. much. Anyway, of all the bizarre ways in which a person can advertise their love (or lust, thereof) for the Ubuntu Linux distribution, wearing a branded thong has to take the cake. Not that I go around looking for branded underwear in Cafepress (I don’t ok? honest!); but a BBC article on Clinton’s recent visit to the Labour party conference yielded a news story on the word Ubuntu. Check out that Ubuntu Linux thong halfway down the page.

Gents of the world, rest easy. In addition to bringing about world peace, making Linux accessible to mere mortals and any number of other miraculous tasks; Ubuntu Linux-ware can now protect your nadgers. I gotta also concede that it was a ballsy *cough* move by the Beeb to run that particular image. Here’s hoping that this doesn’t become standard dress at LUG meetups though. Ubuntu. Is there anything it can’t do?

Two links doing the rounds recently; 25 signs that you’ve grown up. Ok, lots of that stuff didn’t apply to me. One thing, however, did strike a chord. “I just can’t drink the way I used to,” replaces, “I’m never going to drink that much again.”. This is so completely true that it’s scary. Somewhat related. “A $4.00 bottle of wine is no longer “pretty good stuff”.. So, imagine my disgust when I took the beer quiz and got Guinness. There’s something not quite right about that picture.

For entertainment, I am happily hunting down the list of book recommendations sent by Sin. I’m also on one of my periodic downloading sprees so everything from Aphex Twin and Aphrodite to Sting and assorted trance on the playlist. Productivity has zoom climbed.

Yeah, so all the things I’ve found funny recently are of geek interest. Sue me.

I’m coordinating a programming effort where we’re using Soap. No, not the detergent; but the “protocol for exchanging messages across a network”. We’re doing Soap over HTTP; which is a fancy way of saying that we’re sending XML messages over the internets. We have a series of suppliers (with test servers) that we need to exchange said XML messages. One supplier, despite our best efforts, kept on throwing an error. So I got in touch with their tech support. After several hours of to-and-fro, during which we didn’t get any response from their server; I had the following conversation snippet.

drac: wooo
drac: we got our first error *shock and amazement*
support person: what?
drac: no SoapAction set .. that’s the first time there’s been a response body at all
drac: ok, I know how to fix that
support person [triumphantly]: i told u! soap action [to be fair, she did. But she also said that there would be an error message when, in fact, their server kept crashing and throwing an HTTP error code]
drac: let me tell them [the programmer types] and we’ll see if it works
drac: this is the FIRST time we got any error at all
support person: somehow programmers are always forgeting about soap action

…

*sniff* How rude. If you didn’t get the joke (to do with a stereotypical Loonix/Programmer hippie’s attention to hygiene), then never mind.

Web services, Axis and parts inbetween. It’s all work related, folks… But whenever one searches for Axis on the web, a certain entry by Hani Suleiman (ancient historical reference) emerges prominently.

Of course, in the grand yak shaving tradition, I was then diverted into reading some of the Bileblog archives and discovered the following gem.

I.like(bigButts) && I.canLie(false);
otherBrothers.canDeny(false);
when (girl.walksIn()){
  if (girl.hasIttyBittyWaist() && roundThing.getLocation()==your.FACE){
    you.getSprung();
  }
}

I’m sure Sir MixALot is proud. Yes, I laughed. I am unashamed.

Also, a recent research attempt (aided and abetted by Ed’s childhood memories and Sage) into discovering the existence of clown porn videos on various video sharing sites met with mixed results (although lots of weird stuff was unearthed). Then Google Images yielded the following message: Uh, clicky here. It’s safe for work, I promise.

Yeah. I should get back to work now, huh? The proxy log for my browser’s internet access should make for interesting reading, anyway.