Thursday, September 02, 2004
“Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away”
I consider it very unlikely that this is a sign of alien intelligence, but just in case....
I saw the slashdot story about 4 hours ago, but they were thoroughly slashdotted (i.e., too overwhelmed to serve the page properly) until now. So if we ever do find an alien signal ... it'll be accompanied by a huge number of “This page cannot be displayed” and “This page has no content” messages ;-).
I saw the slashdot story about 4 hours ago, but they were thoroughly slashdotted (i.e., too overwhelmed to serve the page properly) until now. So if we ever do find an alien signal ... it'll be accompanied by a huge number of “This page cannot be displayed” and “This page has no content” messages ;-).
Yesterday was a good day
(This is a "dear diary" sort of entry; skip it if you want something more interesting.)
A lot of good things happened yesterday. I was half-awake when Julie tugged my hand to her stomach, and I felt our son kicking for the first time. (Assuming I didn't dream that ;-). I finished rereading David Gerrold's The Trouble with Tribbles. I started the last leg of marking up the September 2004 issue of Play for Performance. Midway through that, my boss (who is also my father) took me out for lunch at Asuka, Bloomington's nice Japanese hibachi place. There I mused with him that the two of us, with a little help from our friends, were putting out a monthly eZine that was read about about four thousand people all around the world. After I finished with the markup, I uploaded it so our proofreaders could look at it; naturally I found a typo, had to fix it, and re-upload the issue. And then I found another typo, had to fix it, and re-upload. And once more ;-) When that was done, I opened the package that UPS delivered for me: My copy of Pinnacle Liquid Edition Pro 5.5. I was startled to see some of the styrofoam peanuts move by themselves—there was a tiny snake in the box. Dad and I carried the box outside and dumped out its contents; Dad pushed the snake towards the woods, while I spent about 7 minutes putting the styrofoam peanuts back in the box. We didn't take any pictures of the snake, but I found the snake species on the web after a few minutes. (If we had taken a photo, it would have looked very much like this.) Considering (again) that Dad and me can put out a monthly eZine that's read by thousands, and that I could identify an unfamiliar snake species within minutes, I'd like to reiterate my belief that The Web Is Under-Hyped. And it's likely to have greater impact on us in the future.
I picked up dinner for Julie and me at Mark Pi's China Gate, our favorite (remaining) Chinese restaurant in Bloomington. And we watched Alias Episode 1-13, the second part of “The Box”. (Thanks to Ignacio for loaning it to us.)
Life is good.
A lot of good things happened yesterday. I was half-awake when Julie tugged my hand to her stomach, and I felt our son kicking for the first time. (Assuming I didn't dream that ;-). I finished rereading David Gerrold's The Trouble with Tribbles. I started the last leg of marking up the September 2004 issue of Play for Performance. Midway through that, my boss (who is also my father) took me out for lunch at Asuka, Bloomington's nice Japanese hibachi place. There I mused with him that the two of us, with a little help from our friends, were putting out a monthly eZine that was read about about four thousand people all around the world. After I finished with the markup, I uploaded it so our proofreaders could look at it; naturally I found a typo, had to fix it, and re-upload the issue. And then I found another typo, had to fix it, and re-upload. And once more ;-) When that was done, I opened the package that UPS delivered for me: My copy of Pinnacle Liquid Edition Pro 5.5. I was startled to see some of the styrofoam peanuts move by themselves—there was a tiny snake in the box. Dad and I carried the box outside and dumped out its contents; Dad pushed the snake towards the woods, while I spent about 7 minutes putting the styrofoam peanuts back in the box. We didn't take any pictures of the snake, but I found the snake species on the web after a few minutes. (If we had taken a photo, it would have looked very much like this.) Considering (again) that Dad and me can put out a monthly eZine that's read by thousands, and that I could identify an unfamiliar snake species within minutes, I'd like to reiterate my belief that The Web Is Under-Hyped. And it's likely to have greater impact on us in the future.
I picked up dinner for Julie and me at Mark Pi's China Gate, our favorite (remaining) Chinese restaurant in Bloomington. And we watched Alias Episode 1-13, the second part of “The Box”. (Thanks to Ignacio for loaning it to us.)
Life is good.
