2006-09-18

Talk Like A Pirate Day

September 19 is Talk Like A Pirate Day. For help with this important language option, consult the How To Talk Pirate video.

2006-09-09

Tom Limoncelli's Time Management for System Administrators

I saw the talk and bought the books, but it's handy to have this link available. More useful links (to the book etc.) are on the right-hand-side of the Google Video page.

2006-09-05

Just Try Voting Here: 11 of America's Worst Places to Cast a Ballot (or Try)

A wonderfully shocking summary of the biggest things wrong with the USA's electoral system, which is right up there with Zimbabwe's. The problems are, briefly:

  1. Citizens can't vote without a special token issued by the state (normal ID is not enough)
  2. Electronic voting machines screw up all the time with huge effects on count results
  3. Citizens in poorer neighbourhoods wait hours in line to vote
  4. No training for poll workers means no voting until afternoon
  5. Good old dirty tricks are used to mislead voters and disrupt campaigning
  6. Gerrymandering is now a widespread craft
  7. Citizens convicted of felonies are not told if or when their voting rights are restored
  8. The careful selection of pessimal electoral schemes is used as a creative means of minimizing representation for minority groups.
  9. Citizens away at university are simply denied the right to vote
  10. Voter registration forms are selectively "lost"
  11. It has become acceptable for election supervisors to abuse their power to favour their party

Dónal's Stag Party

My good friend Dónal had a stag weekend recently, and people took photos of the respectable bits:

Dónal's Stag
Sep 2, 2006 - 34 Photos

Here's the video that Brian shot at the same time:

Gideon announced he'll be posting his photos of the event as soon as he JPEGizes them this week.

Failure recovery

I've been categorizing distributed system designs into four groups, according to how they recover from the loss of a single critical ele...