mkb's New Writeups

E2 Bugs (recipe)

2009-11-18T16:27:35Z

I have prole's enhancements and Everything2 Ajax enabled. I was able to vote on a writeup and not use up a vote by hitting the C! link. While the page was loading, I hit the upvote button. When the page finished loading, it showed a reputation that didn't match the vote count. The next page load had a correct count, but I still was not down a vote for the day.

om sez: This is the same as the infinite ching bug. I have an idea how to fix this, but I'm not sure how much of a database hit it might be. Since we have row-level locking under InnoDB, though, it might be viable.

August 25, 2009 (dream)

2009-08-25T14:18:21Z

I had two distinct, very strange dreams last night. I can only remember the first.

The first involved Bruce Springsteen as a tall, spindly devil chasing me down an impossibly tall bridge. This bridge was somewhere over the water in my dreamworld New York City*, and appeared to resemble something out of Super Mario Brothers; it had no structural support and parts of it would fall into the water as soon as I stepped on them. I could run faster in this dream than any human possibly could.

This scene was intercut with scenes from a nonexistent Bruce Springsteen video. I was in his band, and we (well, super-deformed caricatures of us) were all standing on top some enormous amusement park swing. I was playing some weird electronic harp. At some point I jumped off the swing, at which point my harp reconfigured itself into a guitar and I started playing a Helmet song.

* In my dreams, along with plane crashes I sometimes experience…

August 6, 2009 (person)

2009-08-07T15:34:14Z

Today I found out that my friend is not going to jail. Yes, there's a backstory.

This friend ("Jeb"), like so many others in the rave scene, was into recrea tiona l phar maceut icals. In college, we were both members of a student organization whose basic purpose was to throw raves. They had asked me back to play at an event a couple years after graduation, and everyone involved was hoping that Jeb would show up, as he had been one of the founding members of the organization before graduating the previous summer. However, he never showed.

The following day, he called me to explain his absence. He had gone to to an illegal party with some online acquaintances. Jeb reported that the event was actually a setup by the police, and that one by one, the attendees were led out in cuffs. Despite the fact that he was on something at the time, he was not arrested. He was tailed home however, and decided that the only way to escape the constant surveillance…

August 3, 2009 (idea)

2009-08-03T15:54:21Z

This meme, which has made its rounds in years previous through LiveJournal and e-mail before that, is now wending through Facebook. Here is my response:

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people you like and include me.

PICK YOUR ARTIST:
Cannibal Corpse

ARE YOU MALE OR FEMALE:
Butchered at Birth

DESCRIBE YOURSELF:
Worm Infested

HOW DO YOU FEEL:
Shredded Humans

DESCRIBE WHERE YOU CURRENTLY LIVE:
Buried in the Backyard

IF YOU COULD GO ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD YOU GO:
Chambers of Blood

YOUR FAVORITE FORM OF TRANSPORTATION:
Carnivorous Swarm

YOUR BEST FRIEND IS:
Headless

YOU AND YOUR BEST FRIENDS ARE:
Sentenced to Burn

WHAT'S THE WEATHER LIKE:
Endless Pain

FAVORITE TIME OF DAY:
When Death Replaces Life

IF YOUR

…

March 14, 2009 (dream)

2009-03-14T17:39:32Z

The following things occurred in my dream last night:

First off, my parents in this reality owned a restaurant. This will be important later.

I went into a toy store and saw a toy plane which was a two-seater F-16 Fighting Falcon painted in Thunderbirds livery. I also watched a promotional video featuring the Thunderbirds in combat bombing something in Afghanistan. On the toy plane was written a former coworker's name and the pilot was his miniature likeness. When I congratulated him on his achievements, he warned not to tell anyone as the fact that he was a pilot was supposed to be a secret, and officially he was still on Microsoft's payroll.

I was caught in a wine store without clothing. Every attempt I made to get dressed resulted in me only having a single article of clothing, or fumbling around not able to get anything on. The wine store was run by fervent Christians, and all the bottles on display were empty. Much like some video rental and video game stores, one…

Clover Food Lab (place)

2009-03-13T17:28:19Z

The area of Cambridge surrounding MIT is particularly dense with offices; research at MIT has spawned numerous electronics, software, and biomedical spinoffs and this climate has attracted Google and other companies that wish to feed off MIT's recent graduates. The office and student culture in the area has become very interested in lunch trucks. These are not your average roach coaches that pull up to an office building and have no competition. There are at least 4 area lunch trucks in the area, all dispatched by restaurants looking to compete with brick-and-mortar restaurants for the Kendall Square lunch crowd.

Enter Clover. Ayr Muir, a 2000 MIT graduate in Materials Science, came up with the idea to offer seasonal, fresh, local fast food (organic whenever possible) with the plan to open up a chain of restaurants. For some reason, he decided to first create a lunch truck. This is a truck like no other around.

First, the design and construction of the…