Posts

“Paging Mr. Trip. The future you requested is here. Apologies for the 4-year delay.”

I have installed a copy of LiveJournal Server at http://testing.nekodojo.org:8080/. This is to help me evaluate whether LJ could be used as part of a larger spam-reporting collaboration system. Feel free to play, if you want to create a journal for the hell of it :) It might go away at some point.

Harley seems to be doing fine, other than a few lost teeth. He has some tartar built up on some teeth - including one large piece that the vet was able to break off with a thumbnail. He also has one tooth that is not really lost but has been covered over by gum and will eventually be re-absorbed back into the body. The doctor recommended that we should brush his teeth, once a day if we can. We haven’t started that, yet, but we are starting to stroke him on the face to get him used to being touched on/around the mouth.

1. SGI is cool. A lot like DEC I think. Lots of IRIX workstations. 2. People have been treating me really cool. I think someone told them that I’m the smart guy who will solve all their problems. This is better than starting from zero, I must say. Hopefully I can do a really good job! 3. No pager yet :)

I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here, to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world, without you. Some years from now, I may look back and wish that I had written more about this period, this week, this month.

Tonight we had: Filet, salt, pepper, garlic, and 13 min under the broiler Greek salad, courtesy of Safeway, with a bit of crumbled goat cheese added Asparagus, just a little butter and salt Yum! (Oh, and finding out that I won’t lose my severance after all, that was good too. Three months’ pay is always tasty.)

I have accepted a contract position with SGI, to work on sendmail and spam filtering. I am extremely happy about this. I will be terminating at AV on 4/15 (or maybe 4/16?) I am happy about this as well. Unfortunately I had already signed up to have my transition extended to 5/31 so I will most likely lose my severance package due to voluntarily (wry grin) leaving earlier than my planned term date. Which means I forfeit the 3 mo. of pay I would have got by sticking it out another 6 weeks. But, I don’t want to risk losing the new opportunity. I will still get my “please stay until 4/15 bonus” on 4/15 though (which is about 6 weeks pay) and I will get vacation cashed out (3+ weeks). ...

I need to find out how feasible it is to get something patented. Does anyone have experience with the patent process, who is willing to chat for a while? Thanks!

What’s the big idea here? Problem: Any spam blocking list is either too specific or too small/ineffective to be noticed, or it is effective enough to get spammers to attack/threaten/sue its owners and DDOS its servers into the stone age. Proposal: Make a blocking system that: is fed by raw data from its members so that there’s not one person or group “making decisions” allows members to show their policies and see others ...

OK, so my #3 job lead just dried up. There are two more leads at the Y, which are semi-interesting, and a lead at SGI wich sounds cooler, but it’s a contract. Six to twelve months, which is cool, and it involves mail filtering, so I could do much worse I guess. In other news, I have been extended at the Y to 5/31, though I expect not much work will be done in the intervening time. ...