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      Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 23:56:24 -0400
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I got this email today after it snuck past all my filters and actually landed in my Inbox. So, I figure, google for "report child pornography", and I see a web form to report it. I didn't really look to see where I was submitting the information until after I sent the form. It turns out I sent this info, including my email address (hey, I'm nice) to the Adult Sites Against Child Pornography. Yeech.

Clouds over Ft. Wayne, Indiana, on the way home tonight.

So, it's that time. While much of the car noise I mentioned the other day turned out to be cicadas, Kat's car has also started making one of those,"I'm not going to die right now, but you're going to be paying soon, and it's going to cost a bit," noises. I'm guessing it's a bearing in the rear axle, which means taking things apart, and replacing things, and putting things back together.

Kat's car is old enough that if it can't be fixed by changing a combination of fluids, it's probably not worth doing. It just hit 60k miles, and we're looking at the first of a long stretch of annoying $1k repairs. After a handful of those, we will have been better off digging a hole and burying the car.

Holy diamonds.

I had read the same Brood X news articles as everyone else, the ones that claim that the synchronised emergence of 6, 10, and 17 year cicadas would create an incredible cacophony, the likes of which the earth has never seen.

And I scoffed.

I live in a relatively newly-constructed area of Bethesda. The building I live in is less than a year old. The buildings around me are no more than 10-15 years old, I'm guessing. No tree that I have seen within six blocks is wider around than a child's arm. As a result, the only cicadas surfacing nearby are the smaller six year creatures, and of those there are not many.

I finally figured out how to fix the problem with Bloglines and the (Edit: Old) RSS feed on this site.

In index.php:


define('COMPRESS_OUTPUT', false);


It seems that mod_gzip and phpwiki compressing its own output come into conflict, something that cannot be handled by the library Bloglines is using.

Flew home early, didn't take a nap on the plane because I had to keep my palate moist to avoid the death-cough from the allergies and make them think I had ebola of the lung, discovered the cable and more importantly, broadband was out, tied back into the apartment building's lagtastic three bonded t1s and misconfigured router so I could bill^H^H^H^Hwork from home tomorrow, went to Grapeseed Bistro with Kat, went and saw Mean Girls at the theater and did not tell Kat I had already seen it, as I am ever unable to avoid the siren call of sirens, got home, saw it was 12:04

Holy diamonds. Now I know why there weren't any gratuitous shots of Kate Beckinsale's breasts in Van Helsing.

On a brighter note, I have had this horrendous allergic reaction to something this week, both in MD and MN. One of the nicer symptoms is a truly nasty lung-clearing cough that sounds like a cat coughing up a hairball.

Coincident with this is Kat preparing for her final final Saturday. She crams while awake, and obviously needs to get a decent amount of sleep at night. This has been fine all week, because I have been gone, but last night, the coughing started around 2am. (About when sleeping with my mouth open, because my nose is clogged shut, dries out the back of my throat.)

Grapeseed Bistro
4865 Cordell Avenue
Bethesda, MD 20814
(301) 986-9592

Hours of Operation:
Monday thru Thursday: 5:00 - 10:00pm
Friday: 5:00 - 11:00pm
Saturday: 5:00 - 11:00pm
Sunday: 5:00 - 9:00pm

This place is right down the block from us (we're 4835, they're 4865.) so we've been here a couple times. We're always the shabbiest-dressed people in there, because, honestly, getting Kat to dress up for dinner is just a little tough.

The wine list is pretty good, and the preparations are not bad. As neighborhood bistros go, this isn't as good as Chez Papa near our old place on Potrero Hill, but it could be a lot worse. It's just that they take themselves a tiny bit too seriously, or that could just be the Bethesda "we're the young and affluent part of Washington, DC" scene, which is pretty thick around where we live.

A few days a week, I've been working with about eight other people to redefine the software development lifecycle for a large-ish organisation. We're trying to achieve compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for an IT organisation of about 1000 people, within a corporate headquarters of about 6000 people. (100k enterprise)

Within this organisation, they have varying levels of development immaturity. We're talking CMM level 1, with some groups peeking up at the floor of level 2. Not that I'm a big CMM fan, but I think it helps you get the picture.

I've noticed two things that I will call "amusing" for want of a better word. The first is that every company seems to feel the need to tailor their own SDLCs. Usually, they start cutting code and producing software without thinking about how to do so. Eventually, the whole things becomes unwieldy, and they think,"We need some process!"

I went and got a new license today. I've only broken the laws in three states and one district (California, New York, DC, and Maryland) by living and driving illegally on my Washington license. Unfortunately, it was timed to expire next Friday, and since I rent a car every week, I couldn't let it slide.

Process was quick and uninteresting, but for one amusing incident. An obviously disinterested MVA employee was copying my information into his terminal, taking information from my Washington State license, birth certificate (with attached apostille!), and application. He asked me to confirm the information on the secondary display.