I stepped out into the smoking area of my department and I was startled to find a guy who I’ve been working with for some time, smoking. Just as surprised as I was, he asked me if I smoked… while I was lifting a cigarette to my lips and striking my lighter. We made polite small talk, we talked about the weather, his shoes, my shoes (I must admit, the Imelda in me brought the subject up), and weekend plans. With pleasantries dealt with, he left me to finish my cigarette. Walking back, I stopped in the restroom to wash my hands, (smokers… wash your hands) and I noticed a familiar pair of shoes in the stall. I giggled to myself as I remembered a little story.

Years ago I had a conversation with a smoking buddy, about our day-to-day routine and we got onto the subject about morning ablutions. We heartily agreed all mornings had to start off with coffee. I was, and still am, a light-weight smoker and I didn’t require a cigarette with that first cup of joe. A rabid creature of habit, my friend admitted that a coffee and cigarette was the only way to get up and go this morning. “It’s like intestinal yoga. When you have your cigarette and coffee, it gets stuff moving before you take a shower.” I have to admit, this chemical cocktail does not do the trick for me, but I don’t doubt that it works.

PSBTW: My co-worker, is from Bangalore.

I am very paranoid over what comes in and out of my computers. I’ve got scripts that monitor incoming packets, I pour through logs to see what’s going on in the network at home, I try to make sure that what there’s no malicious things starting from or ending up in my system.

I’m an avid bluetooth fan, for its ease of use and implementation in a lot of devices that I find cool. I’ve had confidence that my machine was safe at work, until this afternoon. I got back from a meeting and I noticed a small window saying that I had a received a picture from a Nokia mobile phone. I clicked on the magnifying glass to see where the image was downloaded and the picture below popped up. My computer was set up to automatically receive files from stray bluetooth devices. Pissed off, I poured through the ‘Bluetooth’ preference panel in ‘System Preferences’. Under the sharing properties of ‘Bluetooth File Exchange’, I opted for the rule “Refuse all”

666, mark of ‘the beast’ in the bible’s book of Revelations , the total sum of the Roman numerals in the name Nero Caesar, an integer which sales and marketing find oh so sexy due to its curves but stay away from because of its connotation? Those of us who are fairly secular look at this event as nothing more than another blip in the cosmos. It was just another humorous little event just like 00:01:02:03 04/05/06, but there is some significance to 06/06/06 because religious, non-religious, adjunct-religious alike have all been attached to this number.

So thank you, religious, non-religious, and the people that couldn’t be bothered in coming up with their own original idea who decided to re-make “The Omen“. I apologize for the short and incoherent post… the devil made me do it.

I haven’t tootled around my apple IIgs emulator and I was tickled to find that I had an old disk image for “STICKYBEAR TYPING”. I was just going to take a few minutes and knock out a few rounds of “STICKYBEAR THUMP“. Seventeen rounds later, where the graphics of the IIgs fail me and I cannot recognize that the weird pink and black squiggle as a hash/pound mark, I find that I had squandered the majority of my lunch hour and missed a few phone calls. Damn you pappa bear… why are you so addictive.