February, 19, 2003 archives

them: i'm calling about your account at walmart that has been $56 overdue for two months.

me: i don't have an account with walmart.

them: just a minute.

(a minute passes.)

them: is your name james winstead the junior?

me: yes.

them: is your address p.o. box 12345, burbank, ca?

me: no.

them: okay, thank you.

this first-hand account about the world economic forum in davos, switzerland is amazing. i keep seeing deflation talk pop up in more places, although it is hard to sort out whether it is really becoming more prevalent, or if my pattern-matching engine is just locked into finding it. (via rafe colburn.)

the recipe calls for two cups of flour, not one. oops.

smartmontools is an enhanced version of the smartsuite disk-monitoring tools (that jeremy zawodny pointed out a few weeks ago). more descriptive syslog messages is a nice touch, as well as being able to tell it to not log changes in some values (like the temperature).