the frig blig

Before:
After:

I run Windows XP in a Vmware Server VM on an Ubuntu workstation in my workplace cubicle. Every Monday when I come in I routinely reboot the XP machine in order to free up memory, which invariably will have crept up to > 1G used after a week of running time. I’m not sure if the leak is caused by my six instances of perfmon which I use to monitor server resource utilization, or by some other app which I use every day* — I never have been able to pinpoint the culprit, and learned to live with the workaround of weekly reboots. This is not a bad thing for a Windows machine, according to many IT folks.

So anyway I installed SP3 for XP a couple of weeks ago, and lo and behold (sic) — the most amazing unexpected thing resulted — the memory leak disappeared! I have now been running the same instance of XP for 11 days and memory utilization is only 667M.

Have to congratulate Microsoft on this quiet little bug fix. (Although how long did customers wait between the release of SP2 and SP3?)

* Groupwise, AD Users & Computers, cmd, errlook, taskmgr, SQL Management Studio

One of my favorite comedians George Carlin died last night. I used to watch him on Rowan & Martin when I was a kid and he always cracked me up.

He gained notoriety in the early 1970s for his ‘Seven Words You Can’t Say on TV’ routine. George was not afraid of controversy, of having unpopular opinions or of speaking them. He enlarged his audience with those tactics and made them think.

Lots of people are bold; few were as funny and observant and had as much fun playing with words as Carlin. He got cranky and mean in his later years, but was still an interesting character.

Dang, what’s that up there on the roof, looks kinda like a frisbee?

Right on time, the Fremont Fair 2008 solstice celebration welcomed the start of summer with, among other traditional and nontraditional activities, the art car outdoor gallery. My fav was CHEWBRU from Kansas, a truly impressive presentation of dental obsession and paranoia. This photo shows the top of the car.

Saw this hiking the Cedar Butte trail a few weeks ago. The owner kept out of sight however.

Is here. Read it and leap.

The U.S. Supreme Court just announced that, by a 5-4 vote, the right of prisoners to demand a court hearing to judge the legality of their imprisonment has been reaffirmed — overturning the Bush administration’s repeated attempts to kill it. This, on Bush senior’s birthday of all days!

I’m no lawyer but I believe this right is covered by the 6th amendment to the U.S. constitution? Which is, lest we forget, a living document as today’s news illustrates. There are plenty of folks who certainly didn’t forget, behind bars for years and still waiting for their day in court.

Freedom 1, Bush 0 (at least for now)… and Congress wasn’t even involved.

Does anyone else find it ironic that the art chosen by the U.S. Postal Service to adorn their ‘Forever stamp’ (“The Forever stamp will always be valid as First–Class postage on standard envelopes weighing one ounce or less, regardless of any subsequent increases in the First–Class rate”) portrays the Liberty Bell — with a large crack prominently visible. The bell was used for approximately 100 years before the crack rendered it unusable in 1846.

100 years == forever…eh, close enough for the U.S.P.S.

Q: How is playing guitar like shooting pool?
A: They’re both all about leave.

Viz. when playing guitar, in order to sound like less of a klutz and move smoothly to the next note or chord, the player needs to be thinking ahead about which fingers will be used in that next note or chord…and that means making sure those fingers are available by using other fingers now.

And when shooting pool, in order to sink more than a single ball, the player needs to be thinking ahead about positioning the cue ball to leave makeable shots.

Q: how is playing tennis like playing go?
A: they both can be approached using a certain style of play; i.e. keep making good returns or moves and wait for your opponent to make a mistake — then capitalize on it. With each mistake your opponent makes, he or she is more likely to try to overcompensate…to your advantage.

Bo Diddley died last week but his beat will be with us for quite some time to come.

I was learned about Bo during my stint with The Shakes in Tallahassee in the early 1980’s. I’d heard his name before but wasn’t aware of his seminal influence — viz. the Bo beat. It was used in so many great rock and roll songs it just seemed timeless, and in fact maybe Bo just channeled it first. But you know it. The songs I was familiar with at the time were ‘Who Do You Love’ (Quicksilver Messenger Service) and ‘Hand Jive’. There are countless others.

I was fortunate enough to see Bo perform live around that time, in an outdoor concert on a beautiful spring day on Florida State University’s infamous Union Green. He had his trademark box guitar, and his daughter played the crap out of the drums.

Hey, Bo Diddley! Thanks for everything. Be jammin wherever you be.