The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net

This was pretty widely linked yesterday, but if you haven’t seen it, you really must go play with it: It’s an “If $RANDOM_CONDITION, that means the terrorists have already won” generator.

Examples:

“If I can’t get free porn on cable, that means the terrorists have already won.”
“If you do not use the new cover sheet on your TPS reports, that means the terrorists have already won.”
“If THIS SHOWS UP IN ALL UPPERCASE, that means the terrorists have already won.”

You can submit your own, of course.

Tom and I went out to Wolftrap tonight to catch Guster. Well, the concert was Rufus Wainwright, Guster, and Ben Folds, but we were actually there to see Guster.

A few thoughts before I’m off to bed:

Wolftrap is a great place to catch a concert. The upper tiers are stadium seating, so even if the people in front of me had stood for the whole show, I would still have been able to see if I also stood. A nice touch for short concertgoers like me- I’m frustrated when my choices are between staring at the butt of the person in front of me or at the back of his shoulders rather than actually seeing the show.

I didn’t expect to enjoy Ben Folds as thoroughly as I did- it’s not that I disliked him before the concert, it’s just that I wasn’t all that familiar with his work and didn’t have any particular opinion one way or the other. But he was great, and I might have to add some of his stuff to my iTunes library.

George Michael’s “Careless Whispers,” which you might know as “Never Gonna Dance Again” or “Guilty Feet Have Got No Rhythm,” would have been a much better song if Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright had recorded it first. (Or was it a Wham! song? Does it matter? Does anyone care about Andrew Ridgeley? And why is it that I can’t remember to charge my cell phone, but I knew the name of the other member of Wham! without even Googling?)

Thought for future blog topic: Parker Lewis Can’t Lose was the spiritual ancestor of Scrubs.

This morning, I walked past our development office to hear the Director in charge of the development team asking why we don’t have a virus scanner on our application servers. That’s dangerous!

Our application servers.

The servers that run Linux.

*cries*

Once again, some asshat is spoofing my other domain name to send spam, and every morning my inbox is full of bounces.

Maybe the death penalty for spammers isn’t such a bad idea…

Random name-related meme, kifed from Meg, hidden in the extended entry
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By the way, Carmina was outstanding. A triumph.

At the end, I had to remind myself that I was at a cultural event, not a sporting event, and that screaming “OH HELL YEAH!” and jumping up and down after the closing notes of “O Fortuna” would be inappropriate. Instead, I joined the immediate standing ovation.

UPDATE: Apparently the Post’s reviewer was also impressed. Congratulations!

Guinness was a stray at just 5 weeks old, way too young to be away from his mama. He was found, sort of stuck between fences between the yards of two District townhomes, by two very large dogs. He was bony and likely hadn’t eaten well in a couple of days. The dogs’ owner is a kind-hearted sort and immediately set about to find the little kitten a home. You all know the rest.

So as I watch Guinness frolicking around the house, knocking things over, chasing his jingle-ball, stopping at his food and water dishes, snuggling up against my leg for a nap, all I can think is, “Wow, God was really looking out for you, wasn’t he?”

It’s a comforting thought.

Tom’s choir, Choralis, is going to be performing Carmina Burana tonight. Oh yeah, and Stravinsky’s Symphony of the Psalms, but really, it’s all about Carmina.

It’s going to be outstanding. And if you’re wondering what Carmina Burana is, all I can tell you is that “O Fortuna,” which opens and closes the work, is probably one of the best known pieces of choral music ever. You know how you learned everyhing you know about classical music from Bugs Bunny cartoons? “O Fortuna” has been in, well, everything- people use it when they need a really dramatic piece of music that’s in the public domain. It’s even the soundtrack for the opening scoreboard animations for Pittsburgh Pirates games. Listen to the iTunes previews for it.

In any case, you must come. Tom provides a link to online ticket purchasing. Nevermind. Online ticket purchasing is closed. Buy them at the door tonight.

I just need to take a minute to throw in my $.02 on Jack and Jeri Ryan (Go to GoogleNews and search on “Jeri Ryan” if you haven’t heard anything about it.

First of all, I tend to believe her, because Jack’s whining about her trying to ruin his political ambitions is crap- the records were sealed with the consent of them both, and it was a third party who sued to unseal them. If she were really concerned about his political ambitions, she wouldn’t be releasing statements to the press about what a good man and good father he is.

So let’s assume for the moment that Jeri’s story is true. People are freaking out over this, but most of them are missing the real point-

The thing that makes Jack Ryan scummy is not that he tried to go to a sex club with his wife. After all, she was his wife; it’s not like he was there with his mistress. I’m not interested in sex clubs and exhibitionism myself, but two married consenting adults in a private club with other consenting adults doesn’t set off my scumbag meter. Besides, he was married to “Seven of Nine” and I know a number of people who would want to show off if they were in that position.

I also don’t see a compelling reason that the records should have been unsealed. Of all the court proceedings that can be sealed, divorce proceedings seem to be the ones most reasonable to lock up.

There are three points here that do set off the scumbag meter, however:

1. He tried to hide behind his young son. He led the Illinois Republicans to believe that the records were sealed because of information about his son’s disabilities. And now he’s whining about how terrible it is for Jeri to say such things when his son might find out about them. Please. We all know that’s not what he’s concerned about.

2. He evidently has no respect for his wife, which leads me to question how much respect he has for women in general. Look, dummy, what marriage doesn’t need a little spicing up? And if this is what you’re into, it’s really none of our business. But if you’re going to expect your wife to participate in exhibitionism at a sex club, perhaps you should show a little respect for her feelings and needs and discuss it with her in advance, rather than surprising her at the door and saying, “Well babe, while we’re here, how about you…”

3. He apparently has no idea what he’s done wrong. His attitude is, so I “propositioned my wife in an inappropriate place,” big deal. Look, idiot, propositioning your wife in an inappropriate place is when you whisper dirty things in her ear while you’re out to a romantic dinner. Publically traumatizing your wife is surprising her with a visit to Madam Lola’s Spank’n'View, mmkay? It is not as though you bought some trashy lingerie home that she didn’t like. Instead you treated the most intimate act between a husband and a wife as a spectator sport, and while some people think that’s hot, evidently she didn’t, and not only did you not ask her permission first, you ignored her adamant resistance to the idea on more than one occasion.

Dumbass. And people wonder why the divorce rate is so high.

Jack Ryan shouldn’t be a senator. Not because of his fascination with sex clubs, but because he’s a thoughtless idiot who uses his child as a shield to hide what a complete waste of DNA he is.

There’s a nasty exploit going on right now that will infect your computer if it visits a compromised website. Which are the compromised websites? Apparently a major auction site, a price comparison site, and a financial institution have all been affected. There’s malicious javascript attached to an image file, so when the image file is loaded, the script installs a program on your computer.

The exploit works through two flaws in Internet Explorer for Windows that haven’t been patched yet. At the moment, antivirus software companies haven’t released updates to protect you from this.

Alternative browsers and Mac users are unaffected.

People, really, I understand the resistance to switching to Macs, but there’s just no reason to continue using Internet Explorer. Go get yourself a decent browser post-haste. I promise, it’ll only hurt for a second.

UPDATE: Krempasky has found the updater for those of you using Symantec’s antivirus software. Find it here, because it won’t be put into LiveUpdate until Wednesday. Those of you using McAfee are apparently still SOL.