Murphy's Law

Murphy’s Law has been busy in my surroundings during the last few days.
Pieces of plaster broke and fell off from the ceiling of my apartment’s bathroom.
The entrance door’s lock’s cylinder began to be problematic and I was under threat of getting locked outside of my apartment if this were not attended to promptly.
My car’s battery died when I visited my parents in another city.
I was sick in the same visit and was stuck there until Monday noon. I originally planned to return home on Saturday night.
When my car’s battery was replaced, the charging system was checked and it was found that the alternator overcharges the battery and needs to be replaced.

Overall, nothing serious happened. If my bad luck is to consist only of such problems, I’ll be content.

The LJ Meme of the Week

Instructions:

Take a look at your LJ friends list, then list up to ten things you want to say to ten different LJ friends. DO NOT state who these people are. DO NOT confirm or deny any “comment speculation.”.

  1. Are there any news about that idea, which we discussed few weeks ago?
  2. You accepted a big challenge and were successful in dealing with it.
  3. Thanks again for the URL to that Web site.
  4. Your posts have the quality, which draws out of me creativity in composing comments.
  5. I owe you for those interesting contacts, to which you led me.
  6. Congratulations!

My LJ friends list is relatively short, so I have only six comments.

Unlikely inspiration for the characters of Xena and Gabrielle

According to Experts: Xena, the character of Xena could have been inspired by several characters from Greek mythology.

However, I would like to offer another source of inspiration. Xena is described as someone, who was evil in the past, but repented and is now virtuous. The hypothetical source of inspiration, who was in vogue about 30 years earlier, was described as evil. Both of them had coal-black hair and they both were sexy and domineering women.

Each of them even has a female companion, with blond hair and very youthful look. There is also an hint of Lesbian relationship in both pairs.

Welcome abroad, Wicked Wanda and Candyfloss!
Oh, Wicked Wanda!
Oh, Wicked Wanda!

Perl is not only a programming language but also a religion

This creates a problem when one wants to discuss the state of worshipping in the context of Perl.
bless is a reserved word in Perl, and it has a specific technical meaning.

Roget’s Thesaurus came to my rescue. It offered me three alternative words: hallow, consecrate, sanctify.

Now we can start hallowing whatever is holy and sacred in the magnificent language Perl.

August Penguin 5



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I am the accessibility coordinator for the conference, and I also volunteered to maintain their Web site. This gives me the moral right to criticize the big organizers and to get “big mouths, no deeds” type people to shut up.

Update, two days later: I resigned from the task of maintaining the Web site after an ugly argument about captioning a short movie to be filmed by a volunteer during the event. The general attitude of the relevant community was that this is my own problem, rather than to accept that it is the community’s responsibility to make such materials accessible.

Has AI been created at last?

Why Companies Shouldn’t Use Robots In Chat is a rant about customer service by chat. Rob May wanted to cancel an account, and found the cancellation process to be difficult. From the character of responses, he could not determine if he was interacting with an human or with an IRC bot.

Why do I feel as if a time machine is on the threshold of having almost been activated?

A reliable way to estimate unemployment rate

Instead of using statistics of people who registered as job seekers and/or getting unemployment benefits to measure the real unemployment rate, I suggest that supermarkets and grocery shops honor coupons for giving discounts on foods and other basic needs.

According to Eric.Weblog() and Joel on Software, coupons are an effective way to segment the market into people who are well-paid and people who are poorly-paid. Those who are well-paid do not bother with coupons, and those who bother with coupons to save some money are the ones who are not well-paid and/or have too much free time on their hands.

Thus, a well-oiled socialist government should keep tabs on the rate of coupon usage and use it to switch on or off its socialist policies.

A solution to the problem of ultimate boredom during exercise

To maintain one’s health, vigor, spirits and sex appeal, one should exercise regularly.
There is a big problem with this, however.
Exercise is SOOOO BORING!!!
If you choose to exercise by walking an hour a day, you walk the same route each day and eventually you get to know the plants, leaves and insects.
If you choose to run, swim or push weights, those exercises are repetitive and every time you do them, you perform substantially the same movements. If you are like me, you would scream of boredom within few days.
Competitive sport such as volleyball or basketball is always interesting. However, it requires the commitment of a group of people to meet few times a week. After one finishes one’s academic studies, such groups vanish into the thin mists of diversified jobs, family attractions, and varied volunteer obligations.

My parents found a solution to the problem of exercise boredom. The solution requires one to have a car and recommends that one live in or a near a big city with a lot of history and sights. Such as Jerusalem.

The idea is to drive by car each time to a different part of the city in question. Then park the car and walk in that part of the city for an hour. There are multiple benefits: exercise, no boredom, getting to know different parts of the city, cultivation of the ability to perform as a tour guide should this be necessary, knowing one’s way around the city should it ever be necessary to find some obscure address.

Yesterday I joined my parents in a tour of Beit Hakerem. My father showed me the pension (now hotel) where he recovered from the gunshot injury which he had during the 1948 War of Independence. We walked through a street which is too narrow for cars. The area was full of green and there were colors of flowers here and there. My mother told me that her father (my grandfather) worked also there as a construction worker when he was young. We know some people who live there. But yesterday did not get to see any of them.

Preservation of Al Aqsa Mosque and other Muslim holy sites

Two interesting Web pages about non-preservation of Muslim holy sites:

Updated at Sept. 17, 2012:
The second link above is dead. See the following links instead: