The making of Superman V is getting a lot of links out there today and yesterday. I’ve never been a comics reader but always enjoy the Films. I was aware of Kevin Smith’s involvement but thought it had died after that. Intriguing.

Edit: It’s really really long.

I no longer have an RSX. Ethan helped me pull out all of the audio gear I’d piled into it to replace the very sub-par stock sound system. The component speakers and head-unit have been claimed, I figure the sub should go quickly at clubRSX or some similar place.

The car was cursed.

• A few weeks after I got it, shifting into fifth gear became very difficult - I think I was less than gentle with the gearbox but only ever driven stick in cars with over 100k miles on original equipment and I didn’t know any better. It’s been explained to me that the synchro for both third and fifth gear are no longer mint but it is pretty consistent now, after scareing the shit out of me at the time.
• Amanda put a scrape in the right quarterpanel using a cinder-block wall and reverse against my “YOU ARE TOO CLOSE TO THE WALL!” advise from the passenger seat.
• I backed into a 14" PVC pipe and punched out the left tail-light, costing me a few hundred dollars, trying to get “just-right” in my tight parking spot.
• Another evening, I backed into a concrete pillar and put a vertical mark in the bumper because Amanda swore the loft was flooding and all of our storage space was being water damaged (not the case).
• I was hit on NY Ave requiring a new left door and quarter panel.
• A client’s son rolled it into a tree requiring a new front bumper and lights and hood touchup.

I normally would not care in the least, cosmetic damage on a car gives it character right? Wrong, it costs money because the car is leased and I have to return it in mint condition. 😢

The car also attracted parking tickets with a force I can’t explain with any physical or logical model.

The salesman driving it now called me Friday night - it hadn’t been to the body shop for the rear bumper damage yet because of the separate body work getting done on the front thanks to the four-year-old. He’d just been rear-ended. He was totally fine and the car was totally fine but it needs a new rear-bumper now.

Stock body pieces: right (scratched) quaterpanel, roof (mint), hood (slightly dented by a rock on the beltway). trunk/spoilter (mint).

Stock pieces on my last work laptop: Power supply. Which should be replaced as the fan is bad and noisy.
Replaced components: Everything else; keyboard, screen, motherboard, RAM, CPU, case.

Bureaucracy reaches out to the suicidal. I’m amazed that he was able to break the glass - must have been an old building. The 1000 block of 15th is near K St in a business corridor for you outside-the-beltway folks.

Picking examples from Star Wars as illustrations of security concepts.

Very clever.

Exactly.

reverse mapping checking getaddrinfo for eyeout3.airnetlink.com failed - POSSIBLE BREAKIN ATTEMPT!

I use rsa keys and have aliased ssh to add -2v to make logins as fast (and geekily detailed) as possible on both this server and the debian box I have at the office.

Disabling the reverse mapping check on my mac is confounding me.

So we are continuing to need people at work. Interviewing has been a curse and a treat. A networking fundamentals exam and an interview with myself or an associate (or both) are the next step up from a decent resume and a phone interview pre-screen.

The exam is very telling, although seemingly simple. Staffing agencies will rave up a candidate so under-qualified that I’ve had to apologize for wasting people’s time driving to our office. Some people phone interview well and bomb in person. Some ace the test and bomb in discussion. Some ace everything and then refuse the background-check (or fail it). Government contractors ace 1/3 of the exam and leave the rest blank (I kid, I kid.).

The hated “strength/weakness” question as well as the “where do you see yourself in a year… three years… five years?” actually aren’t as dumb and obviously answered as I thought. I still hate the questions, but some times a person is so hard to read or not forthcoming that it is the only hope of determining ego and goals respectively. Ditto “what are you into besides this field?” and “describe an achievement you are proud of.” :gonk: cliche alert.

If a candidate answers every one of these questions absolutely perfectly in discussion, cool as steel, and seems like a real winner that might need some technical ramp-up for how behind their test showed, there is a 95% likelyhood that they are a sociopath and will fail the background check. Red flags should go off.

I pepper the cliches with resume buzzword skeet shooting. “Uh, you have VOIP listed here… tell me about it?” “Linux?” “VPN?”

If someone is obviously nervous at first but lightens up when hobbies or interests are discussed, they are likely human beings with real interests. This is a win.

What’s the dumbest thing you ever did in an interview? What’s the dumbest thing an interviewer has asked you or done?

1. I filled out a questionnaire for a used record store clerk position with an honest answer to the “Have you ever stolen anything from your employer?” question: Sure, food sometimes from McDonald’s when I was in the grill section, everyone did." thinking I was being honest. :downs:

2. Employer hiring me after arriving over an hour late to the interview (I got lost, had no cell phone, didn’t anticipate traffic well, blah blah)

…a guy that knows his way around computers. 😃 haha… I mean that in a good way of course. 😃

– Anonymous, technical consulting meeting, 2005

I should clarify that I was the subject of the statement.

MJR has an RSS feed now.

Headlines only.

I can only assume it’s because he didn’t care enough to configure it, wrote the feed generator himself and stopped at “functional”, or the log-watcher in him wants to keep hit counts accurate. A younger-me probably would have ranted about the frame based site and font=arial tags, and it’s still an asshole-move pointing it out in a statement about not pointing that sort of thing out anymore, Captain Manipulative.

Check out Marcus playing MythBuster.

The EFF have sent an open letter re: this whole SONY/BMG rootkit fiasco.

EFF:

We look forward to hearing that you are in the process of implementing these measures by 9:00am PST on Friday, November 18, 2005.

It’s mildly interesting watching an industry die.

15" Intel Powerbooks.