{"id":108,"date":"2008-11-07T12:18:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-07T16:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=108"},"modified":"2008-12-13T22:41:45","modified_gmt":"2008-12-14T02:41:45","slug":"odd-lots-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=108","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>I got drilled and post-ed yesterday and am mostly over it. The                  weirdest part of the whole procedure was listening to Dr. Salcetti                  cranking the implant post down into my jawbone with a small tool                  that sounded like\u2014and in fact actually <i>is<\/i>\u2014a miniature                  ratchet driver. (We will not speak of the earlier sound, of her                  drill going into bone, both sounding and feeling like a drill                  press working its way into something gummy.)<\/li>\n<li>For the first time I managed a major-release upgrade of Ubuntu                  without any fussing. Going from 8.04 to 8.10 took about half an                  hour, but it went absolutely without incident. (In the past I&apos;ve                  had to restart the upgrade after it froze, and once I just gave                  up and did a clean install after reformatting the partition.)                  I don&apos;t see a lot of differences in Intrepid Ibex beyond the wallpaper,                  which initially puzzled me. It looks like a soda glass ring on                  somebody&apos;s dirty leather couch arm, but after staring at it for                  a moment I saw the ibex. Sorry; I liked the heron better\u2014and                  I tremble to think what the wallpaper will be for <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/news.ars\/post\/20080908-ubuntu-9-04-to-be-called-jaunty-jackalope.html\">v9.04                  Jaunty Jackalope<\/a> next spring.<\/li>\n<li>Well, alas, Kubuntu didn&apos;t fare as well\u2014the upgrade crashed                  somewhere partway through, and the instance (which is still shown                  as v8.04 in grub) will not boot. At some point I will reformat                  the partition and reinstall from the ISO. KDE 4 is an acquired                  taste, but I&apos;ve watched it evolve for many years and won&apos;t stop                  now.<\/li>\n<li>November 2008 is the 25th anniversary of the release of Turbo                  Pascal 1.0. <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.codegear.com\/davidi\/\">David                  I will be printing selected &#8220;How I discovered Turbo Pascal&#8221;                  stories in his blog<\/a>, and although mine is well-nigh legendary                  (I practically had to be beaten over the head to try it) I will                  be writing it up and sending it to him shortly. Damn little in                  tech has ever affected me more than that!<\/li>\n<li>Bob Ballantine W8SU sent me a scan of John T. Frye&apos;s 1985 obituary                  the other day, and it was severely disturbing: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.copperwood.com\/JohnFryeObit.jpg\">Frye                  died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound<\/a>. Maybe it could have                  been an accident, but somehow I doubt it. Too many lonely writers                  (Piper, Disch, and others) have died by their own hands. <a href=\"http:\/\/incass-inmiami.org\/cass\/cemeteries\/mthope\/MTHfrefy.html\">He                  is buried with his parents at Mount Hope Cemetery<\/a> in Logansport.                  Scroll down or search for Frye in the plot listings.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, Pete Albrecht reports that the <i>New York Daily News<\/i>                  spoke of an election day get-out-the-vote promo in which <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/news\/politics\/2008\/11\/04\/2008-11-04_free_coffee_donuts_and_sex_toys_just_the.html\">Krispy                  Kreme handed out &#8220;donut-shaped stars.&#8221;<\/a> (See the                  figure caption.) I&apos;ve seen these in SF (recall that long-forgotten                  turkey, <i>Nova<\/i> by Samuel Delaney) but never in a donut shop.                  Maybe Olaf Stapledon&apos;s Star Maker works there. Talk about fresh                  from a hot oven!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got drilled and post-ed yesterday and am mostly over it. The weirdest part of the whole procedure was listening to Dr. Salcetti cranking the implant post down into my jawbone with a small tool that sounded like\u2014and in fact actually is\u2014a miniature ratchet driver. (We will not speak of the earlier sound, of her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}