Sounds Like Weird
27 August 2004
I’m sure this one will probably get kicked up to the Supremes, but in the meantime, a federal appeals court has restored a $6 million award for violating a couple’s rights under bankruptcy and debt collection laws.
27 August 2004
Well, I went out to look for the wonky USB adaptor I have. I didn’t find it at Fry’s, so I almost came to the conclusion it doesn’t exist.
I found it on eBay in 2 minutes flat. Cost less than the gas to get to Fry’s, too.
26 August 2004
Got my used Sony Ericsson t68i today, a tri-band GSM bluetooth phone. With Bluetooth.
Go, me!
Oops, stealing from the cat’s lingo again.
Naturally, I had to get a couple of el cheapo Bluetooth adaptors too.
Catch is, even though I have a Canon i80 printer, seems I forgot that printers use a variant form of the USB connector. Bad me. I realized it at 9:02 p.m., two minutes after Fry’s closed. Hrm.
26 August 2004
I haven’t seen much of Lizard since shortly after he met his wife, but I really do miss his movie reviews. At least he’s got them online now.
25 August 2004
24 August 2004
Got a headache late at night, but that was only after a day where I felt darn peppy. Didn’t get any writing per se done, but got a lot of cruft-clearing done.
I have two packages to send off and spent a fair amount of time looking for the contents of them — I only found the stuff for one package. There’s a third package that’s really easy to put together, so that’ll go out. But there’s that one other one that’s really bugging me. I know I saw the stuff recently, too. Normally, that’s some of my best-organized stuff.
Grr.
23 August 2004
Recently, I bought a Récife pen from Swisher Pens.
In terms of bang for the bucks, this is probably my single best pen purchase. It holds about eight cartridges worth of ink, though it has no formal feed mechanism. In terms of mechanics, it’s a very old-style fountain pen.
The gold-plated steel nib is much more flexible than I’d expected, too.
Very happy. Want more colors.
22 August 2004
21 August 2004
Well, I have a story that’s been out in the ring five times and received five rejections. In each case, it wasn’t a form rejection, so I know the story is being read. However, three of the rejections contradict each other.
You’ve got an intriguing set-up and a nicely metaphorical ending but….
While that editor got (at least in part) what I was attempting to do, part of it resonated with a Twilight Zone episode. I edited it to be a little different, then sent it out again (not really changing very much, just making clear that it wasn’t a rewrite of an old TZ episode).
I have misplaced the next rejection slip, but one of the comments went something like, “nice story, but the tacked-on horror show ending didn’t work for me.” Hrm. OK. The editor knows what he or she wishes to buy.
So, today I get one that says:
Alas, we really didn’t get it. Too subtle?
Well, I figured that market was a long shot, but they do publish things with kind of the same feel. Admittedly, this was a more literary story, so I’m not surprised at the response.
But it does seem directly contradictory to the second rejection, doesn’t it? And yet, it wasn’t edited between those two submissions.
Now I just need to figure out where to send it next.
19 August 2004
So, discovering that I had no JDBC driver for Oracle, I go to Oracle’s site to obtain one.
Naturally, I had to assert that I comply with the following:
I am not a citizen, national or resident of, and am not under the control of, the government of: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, nor any other country to which the United States has prohibited export.
I will not download or otherwise export or re-export the Programs, directly or indirectly, to the above mentioned countries nor to citizens, nationals or residents of those countries.
I am not listed on the United States Department of Treasury lists of Specially Designated Nationals, Specially Designated Terrorists, and Specially Designated Narcotic Traffickers, nor am I listed on the United States Department of Commerce Table of Denial Orders.
I will not download or otherwise export or re-export the Programs, directly or indirectly, to persons on the above mentioned lists.
I will not use the Programs for, and will not allow the Programs to be used for, any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, for the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction.
OK, so if I were part of the Iraq reconstruction process, I couldn’t use the JDBC driver there? Hrm.
Irony value: as if having posted about this weren’t enough, what I didn’t say in the original post was that I was working as a Network Geography Analyst for Quova at the time. My job was to determine where in the world IP addresses mapped to, including, understandably: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Syria.
In 2006 and 2007, I consulted for PGP Inc, ensuring that their beta PGP encryption software met the same export standards as those listed above.
It all comes full circle, doesn’t it?