short takes

[cellio]

This line from a restaurant review made me laugh: "I fear that waiting for them to hunt and trap the duck entree may be coloring my review." (tangerinpenguin)

CNN reported that a court had accidentally subpoenaed a dog to testify in court. (The inmate wrote a letter to said dog, which is where the lead came from. Look, I don't make this stuff up.) A court official, upon learning of the error (by having the dog show up and be barred from the building), reported that the dog seemed very friendly and probably "would have been a cooperative witness".

Today at work we were given a t-shirt for the new product launch. It includes some code snippets in the background. My first reaction was to wonder if the code went through code review and intellectual-property review. :-) (Personally, I think that if a t-shirt's worth of code gives away your trade secrets, they probably weren't secrets worth protecting anyway. But this code was in no danger of doing that.)

We had a party to celebrate said release this afternoon. The venue had several pool tables (pool? billiards? is there a difference, or is that just a US-versus-UK thing?). Sadly, theoretical knowledge of how objects move (in a frictionless universe, natch) does little to impart actual skill in propelling a cue stick in the desired way. So I stink at the game, but I still enjoy trying.

Conversation with a 911 dispatcher yesterday:
Me: I'm calling to report a disabled vehicle blocking traffic.
Him: Where?
Me: [street] at [street], eastbound.
Him: (pause) You're calling from Pittsburgh, right?
Me: Um, yeah. In [neighborhood].
Him: Ok. It's just that you said "eastbound".

(People around here seem to have a lot of trouble with compass directions. Sure, part of it is that the roads aren't exactly straight, but still, if you describe a place as being, e.g., on the north side of the street, likely as not someone will ask which side that is.)

Comments

[goljerp]

The venue had several pool tables (pool? billiards? is there a difference, or is that just a US-versus-UK thing?)

Obviously you're not a fan of The Music Man:

Well, either you're closing your eyes
To a situation you do now wish to acknowledge
Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated
By the presence of a pool table in your community.
Ya got trouble, my friend, right here,
I say, trouble right here in River City.
Why sure I'm a billiard player,
Certainly mighty proud I say
I'm always mighty proud to say it.
I consider that the hours I spend
With a cue in my hand are golden.
Help you cultivate horse sense
And a cool head and a keen eye.
Never take and try to give
An iron-clad leave to yourself
From a three-reail billiard shot?
But just as I say,
It takes judgement, brains, and maturity to score
In a balkline game,
I say that any boob kin take
And shove a ball in a pocket.
And they call that sloth.
The first big step on the road
To the depths of deg-ra-Day--

And, no, I have no idea what he's talking about for the most part, but at least according to a fast-talking scam artist in a musical, there's a world of difference between billiards and pool, but they were both known to people in Iowa in the early part of the 20th century.

Why, yes, I do believe everything I learn in musicals. :-)

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly, technically billiards tables have no pockets. It's played with (I think) three balls) and I don't entirely remember the object. Nowadays billiards also refers to any of several related games including pool, which is played on tables with pockets. (I think the name of the game came from the pocket...they're pools for the balls, or some such thing).

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm, sounds like a potential article for my Game of the Month column! Thanks! -- Dagonell

[madfilkentist]

You remember the "This shirt is a munition" T-shirt, don't you? It had a couple of lines of Perl code (I think) which implemented an encryption algorithm that the US government had classified at the time as a munition for export purposes.