I know this isn't a heavily USian forum, but I had a brain spark while staring at the electronic touch-screen "voting" machine paid for with "my" tax dollars.

Today the sun is a hungover showgirl, leaving pink and purple smears on her pillow-clouds. She washes with lazy rain, dripping on Mediterranean colonnades, quirky Arabian facades, memories of ancient Baghdad by way of Spain. It drizzles into your Calle Ocho cafe con leche. It puddles the driveways of a hundred thousand SUVs and a dozen kinds of palm; all of them, like you, recent imports.

It's one of Eric Raymond's rules of Unix Programming: Write code to generate code. It's a great technique but maybe not as widely understood as it could be. So let's get our hands dirty: reasons for it, when to do it, and a few techniques. Along the way we'll touch on some of the differences between programming languages in common use today.

Well. Hurricane survival is one thing with which I'd rather not have Extensive & Varied experience. Over the years some things have gone well, others turned out to be Bad Moves Indeed. We live and learn.... but it's easier to do it the other way around. The essence is that you have to plan to live without electricity, phone, water or some combination for an unknown period, with minimum of effort. Since there will be several million people in the same situation it's best to do this without having to fight through mobs of dehydrated idiots^W^W crowds of fellow stricken citizens.

Jesus fuck. My baby is in Europe for three weeks. This morning I made the big pot of coffee out of habit, drank it all. I feel my body vibrating at a frequency that can stun small birds at 30 meters. There's a couple on the grass beneath the trees, twitching fitfully.

I am reminded of a old, bad joke:

Q: What's the difference between sex with a partner and sex alone?

A: You reach for the tissues beforehand.

Lady Fortuna is a mad, mad bitch. The following have come to our attention in the last 6 days:

• Me: partially detached retina & high risk of cataracts. Also an allergic reaction to an old (& large) tattoo.
• Nephew, 22 months: hospitalised for pneumonia, rotovirus and an unidentified allergy. He is stabilised but under supervision.
• Two other nephews & one niece: chickenpox.
• SO's mother: malignant tumors in the lymph nodes & breasts; full mastectomy. She is now asking el doctór for "las tetas guapas".
• SO: pregnant, with possible complications, attendant soul-searching and conversations in the dark.

After the usual bullshit saying use constitutes agreement and that the terms can change at any time (which invalidates it as a contract to any reasonable person), there is this boilerplate gem:

YOU SHALL NOT use the Yahoo! APIs to operate nuclear facilities, life support, or other mission critical application where human life or property may be at stake.

Is this a common problem? Are programmers using the Stock Ticker to monitor the pile temperature?  EKGs that send an IM to the duty nurse?

$ tracepath miami.ourcompany.com
...
 6:  200...                    asymm  7  16.604ms
 7:  XXX.telefonica-wholesale.net (213...)
...
12: XXX.car.belbone.be (213...)

Notice that? 200 to 213. They are trying to route packets from Brasil to Miami through BELGIUM, where they apparently can't pay the VAT and get stuck in Customs.

And our customers are wondering why the Miami site is "down". ..

People vary. It's not kosher to say so any more, unless you are an insurance company and want to separate the good risks from alcoholics and people with dodgy genes. Yet it's still true.

I'm 26 years old. I have a lease, my own company and a dependent feline. No more acne, no more embarrassed mumbling around the creatures with funny bumps under their shirts.

So why in the name of Bog are my wisdom teeth coming in now?

That was unexpected. You can thank Reaganites who wanted to be "tough on crime" in the 80's.

Now -- what are we going to do with the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people still in prison because of manditory sentences?

...

...exactly. Arrest them for trespassing. And God Bless America.