splitting hairs, trading spaces

I'm getting a haircut today

I saw an ad for "Japanese hair straightening". Why would there be a Japanese straightening technique? Don't the Japanese already have straight hair? A quick check with google shows that some of these products really are from Japan. So what do they call them there?

I've heard said that you don't see signs for "Authentic Philly Cheesesteaks" in Philly or "New York-style Pizza" in New York. But Dominos (or Pizza Hut or somesuch) has a national campaign that they surely aren't exempting one of their largest markets from. And was in Philly a few years back and saw signs touting that one store was more authentic Philly than the rest (and therefore tasted better, etc.).

Regardless, I'm getting a haircut. I'm using ancient United States buzz-cut methods passed down from one generation of immigrants to the next (my usual barber was born in Vietnam).

It moves!

I have been amazingly inert for almost a month now.

I've been a homebody, and home sucks. I just finished sending off a bunch of emails to strangers from Craigslist asking to live with them. I've never done the roommate thing before, so I'm not sure what people are looking for. The usual trick is, If you were on the other side, what would you want to hear? but not ever having dealt with this sort of thing, I can't imagine anything other than the basics: someone modest and relaxed with a steady source of income so they pay their share of the rent.

But so I've been inert. I haven't been minding my own blog; I haven't been reading yours (for any given value of 'you'). I haven't sent a note to the conductor girl, and now I can't find where I put her email address (dammit!). I haven't exercised. I haven't gone anywhere different or interesting (I'm not including the Morrissey concert here, obviously).

At least I've been sleeping a little better than my average, which is still crap for most people, with the exception of last night when I was just too cold and the heat was not working. Yet another reason to move.

For those of you about to Cygwin, we salute you

and also encourage you to try something else instead. Seriously, scrounge around for a cheap, used PIII 300-based box and install OpenBSD on it instead; get Services For Unix now that it's free, and can mount NFS shares where Cygwin can only serve them; download VMware. Don't get me wrong, Cygwin is an amazingly detailed and clever set of sophisticated hacks. The development crew is a cool bunch. But a hack is a hack.

Anyway, in interest of giving something back to the community: if you find people can't see mounted directories when connecting to a Cygwin server, check the registry keys.

In Cygwin, the mount command will only take a folder, like "/usr/bin", and point it to a Windows drive, like "D:\cygwin\bin". Cygwin can't open a device directly, it depends on Windows for the filesystem and device drivers. What's more, the mappings are stored in the registry, not in /etc, like all us UNIX weenies would expect. I was running ProFTPD and was setting default directories to folder that, via a mount, redirected to the D: drive. After I upgraded my version of Cygwin, users FTPing would find themselves in the directory and could list the files, but the permissions showed up wrong and they couldn't send or recieve any files. Turns out the upgrade reset registry key permissions so that the user that the ProFTPD server was running under (BUILTIN\SYSTEM) could read them but normal users couldn't. Since this was a Windows 2000 box, I ran regedt32.exe, went to "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Cygnus Solutions\Cygwin\", clicked on "mounts v2" branch, went to the menus under Security -> Permissions... and added the group Users and gave them read permissions. Permission inheritance propagated the change down to the sub-branches and the problem was fixed. Yay.

Concert going.

So now that I think of it, while I might like listening to Death Cab for Cutie, do I really want to pay to see them in concert?

There's a fairly representative collection of DCFC mp3s here. But I'm more up about ...and you will know us by the trail of dead, Flogging Molly, and PJ Harvey. Now I'm fairly sure Double-D has a Flogging Molly CD if not two, and you can't tell me you haven't at least one of PJ Harvey's songs.

I'm trying to be good w/budget. But if I'm going to see Morrissey, too, Polly Jean might just have priced herself out of my price range. But she's so cool. It's not fair.

To sport or not to sport

aye, there's the rub

Erica and I have been going back and forth about the Olympics and what counts as a sport. Her suggestion is for a more objective scoring method for figure skating. My argument is that it doesn't matter: I like figure skating as it is, but it's not a sport.

> [...] Is windsurfing a

> sport just because you can measure who crosses the finish line first?

> I will acknowledge that there is a degree of finesse involved because

> you need to read the wind, but are they the same kind of athlete?  I

> couldn't do what any beginning gymnast or figure skater does, and I am

> in awe of the top athletes, Paul Hamm, et al.

Exactly. Because you can measure who crosses the line first. I'm not sure if I like racing as a sport, either. To me, that straddles the line but is easily closer to sport than figure skating.

I'm thinking by writing here, so forgive me if this isn't fully clear. My definition of sport: Sport is a direct physical competition between people that gives the competitors an opportunity to demonstrate good sportsmanship. And by good sportsmanship, I mean primarily fair play.

• Direct physical: take soccer as an example. As a team sport, there is an important mental aspect needed to win a soccer match, but if you can't stay active on the field for an hour, you aren't going to make it to the Olympics. While there is the intermediary of the ball, the physical actions you take directly and clearly affect the actions your opponents then choose (this has to happen if you want to play
  competitively, anyway).
• Between people: the measurable part of the struggle is between you (or you as part of a team) and another person or other people.
• Sportsmanship and fair play: Try hard to win, and always follow the rules; compete on equal terms. So there needs to be clear rules for you to follow, and clear, objective terms for the winning conditions. The measurement of whether the winner won a match should only be important because it is compared, on the same terms, to the measurement for other competitors in that match.

Look, about last night

Thanks for helping me find my car, considering it took an hour. And yes, I noticed there was parking on both sides of the street.

Yogi Berra would be proud of me

"...all over again."

Today, I'm sitting at my computer looking out the window while trying to figure out a problem.

Then I get this strong feeling of déjà vu that I've been staring out this window thinking about the same problem before.

Then I get this strong feeling of déjà vu that I've gotten this strong feeling of déjà vu that I've been staring out this window thinking about the same problem before.

Déjà vu never feels to me like I've done something before but like I've dreamed it before. I usually take it as a sign I haven't been sleeping well lately. Either that, or the Matrix has me.

Roshambo for Radio (XM Radio, that is)

Rock-paper-scissors your way to fabulous prizes!

For my friends in the D.C. metropolitan area, you need to know that tomorrow is the The 2004 DC National Rock Paper Scissors Championship. Winner gets $1000 dollars and an XM radio. For those of you who can't/won't be going (like me), you can always play correspondence rock-paper-scissors thanks to the wonder that is the internet. No money it it, though.

Unrelated: The A-Team Resolves Lapses in Homeland Security. I like last two steps of our new plan for terrorists threatening to detonate a bomb that contains nuclear materials: "While terrorists' attention is diverted, replace radioactive materials with horse manure. Later, when bomb detonates harmlessly, have B.A. deliver line, 'Now that's what I call a dirty bomb.'"

Ignore it like it's pork

I asked Erica if she had seen that woman's story in the NYT this Sunday about OCD manifesting as religious observance. I've been saying for years now that Judaism is a great religion for the obsessive compulsive.

I remember reading about one of the Talmudic rabbis -- I can't remember who -- who had a hole in the wall just above his commode. I remember the rationale as:
An evil spirit would be more eager to beset a prominent rabbi than a normal man,
but someone else’s presence with you would warded it off,
but it's indecent to have someone watch you go to the bathroom.
So he bored a hole so his wife could put her hand on his head while he was sitting down without worry of accidentally seeing anything.

My mom used to always tell us how, when she was a kid, she thought flatware grew out of the ground. My grandparents had someone come in to help around the house when the kids were young, but she didn't know from keeping kosher and would wash all the silverware together. To clean something, you can use fire to burn away the treif, but you can bury it in the earth for however many days if you can't burn it. Mom would walk by and see silverware sticking out of the ground...

[ Listening to: "What Cool Breezes Do" - Digable Planets ]

The only thing worse than a bad poet is one who doesn't think he is.

H Monkey runs, H Monkey hides -
a monkey's always by our sides.
Mine sees no ill nor hears too well
but screeches that I'll go to hell.
(Or else he sings without one word.

Be glad if you have never heard
what buzzes raw and feels more fell,
a din of rage, a one-man cell.)