recent happenings

Version-control systems should not behave differently depending on the location of a file. That is, "cvs [operation] somedir/file" and "cvs [operation] file" should produce the same results with respect to the file in question. You may infer from the fact that I'm writing this that this is not the case. Hrmpf.

In happier news, last night was the Transarc doc group reunion dinner. I had fun; Dani had less fun because he knew fewer people. (We were also seated near people I didn't know all that well, though enough conversations got shouted down the length of the table that this wasn't that much of a challenge.) Jim and Laurie were both there. We haven't seen them in ages! (Well, I saw Jim at a previous reunion dinner, but it's been a long time since I saw Laurie or Dani saw either.) Gotta fix that. Jean, too.

Coincidentally, the NetBill gang is talking about holding a reunion dinner next month. It's been about a year and a half. That'll be fun too. I volunteered to host that one; there are fewer NetBillians than Transarcians.

Tuesday was D&D. It was largely a role-playing session this time; I infer that there will be monster-bashing next time. :-) (I also need to figure out the best use of my character's share of recent loot.)

I've been having an annoying experience with a third-party seller through Amazon Marketplace. Almost a month ago I ordered the second season of B5 on DVD; it's not here yet, though it was required to ship three weeks ago. The seller has given me two different bogus tracking numbers for the package, and doesn't really answer email. (Those two tracking numbers are a significant percentage of the total word count of his messages.) He has thus far failed to tell me when the package actually shipped; I'm betting on either "a few days ago" or "never".

If worst comes to worst I can file a claim with Amazon for the money (in another few days), but I'm kind of irked that this loser seller will have cost me a month and some extra money. (The going rate is higher now than it was then.) He's got a large pile of negative feedback (all since I placed my order); I haven't left any yet. I wonder what makes people like that tick. I mean, I assume Amazon is going to go after him for all the insurance claims they'll have to pay out. How stupid is this seller?

But in happier news, according to Amazon the third season will be out in August. Yay!

short takes (pretty random)

Erik (the orange cat) bites his nails, but he won't let me clip them without a fight. That can't be efficient; consider the cross-section of a cat's tooth and the shape of a nail, versus the parameters of a tool designed for the job. Silly cat. He looks so industrious when he decides to shorten his nails, and I could solve that problem for him in just a few seconds.

When you save a web page in Mozilla, by default it creates a directory and collects in it all the associated graphics and stuff, rather than just dumping the HTML for the page. Handy!

The provider of my shell account and web space will host (and register) a vanity domain name for very small amounts of extra money. Just small enough that I'd go for it, if I could come up with something interesting. But I lack creativity. I've occasionally considered grabbing "cellio.org" (we're an Italian family; of course it's .org :-) ), but it doesn't really excite me. I don't want to use something so hobby-centric that I'd be embarrassed to use it professionally, but since I'm not currently planning to use it for business, I don't really want to build a business domain into it. I assume that all singleton English words are taken by either real people or squatters by now.

The morning minyan started using a new siddur a couple weeks ago (new daily version of Sim Shalom). I noticed that it uses a very handy typesetting convention that the Reform siddur (Gates of Prayer) adopted a few years back: writing a certain vowel (qametz) differently when its pronunciation changes. I approve.

(Hebrew is mostly a regular language when it comes to pronunciation, but there is one vowel that is sometimes "ah" and sometimes "oh", depending on rules that are only partially articulated. You just have to know, in some cases. So now there are two siddurim that are using the same minor variation in typesetting to signal this. I find it extremely helpful, and I'll be very disappointed if the new Reform siddur (due out in 2005) doesn't continue it.)