Napalm

There are days when I half-expect the Pre-Crime goons from Minority Report to drop out of the sky at any moment to arrest me before I commit some crime of passion. Days when, more than fire exits, I care about flamethrowers. Days when I would gladly lay down 500 meters of mines and barbed wire around my desk and, in case of intrusion, demonstrate the fine art of making human kebabs, in the spirited tradition of Vlad Dracul or Torquemada.

When I really have to shout: “LEAVE ME ALONE FOR FIVE MINUTES, DAMN IT!!!”

Add in a power cut at five in the morning, swapped passwords, a tangled network and little boxes that go ping. Shake well, slice a few reboots with assorted interruptions, sprinkle with crude jokes like “grumpy today, huh?”, and sandwich between two things I absolutely HAD to have ready last week. Remove a couple of potential outlets for stress and tune in to other minds in a similar state.

Stick it in the microwave and press NUKE. Hide behind the fridge or a lead block (whatever’s closer). Remove with asbestos gloves.

Then, just because you feel lucky, add a pinch of someone else’s paranoia—because there are still people who haven’t grasped that we’re working with them, that we’re local citizens and not part of the Russian Mafia.

Put on GNR, volume at 11. Serve boiling.

Point Release 1.32 of Quake III Arena is out: Windows, Linux. Graeme Devine is diligently hammering away at the Mac OS X version.

We finally have a somewhat stable rxvt under Cygwin (“stable” here meaning 48 hours without the window magically evaporating) and a decent /proc emulation (with top and all, yay!) — Download.

Apple dropped prices on the 15” iMac, one of their typical signs they need to clear stock. It’s been nearly three months (if I’m not mistaken) since the 17” model launched, and nearly 18 months since the PowerBook/iBook line saw a significant update. We’ll get news for Christmas, we will—at least in the rest of Europe. Here, well, you know how it goes.

Funnily enough, I get home and notice that my login image in Mac OS X is called “Rukai”.