{"id":111,"date":"2008-11-12T13:04:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T17:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=111"},"modified":"2008-12-13T22:41:18","modified_gmt":"2008-12-14T02:41:18","slug":"odd-lots-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=111","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>The pseudobachelor life does not become me, but I&apos;m working                  on it. So far, the heuristics seem to be: Stay in touch (our cell                  phones are being given a workout), stay busy, and socialize whenever                  possible. I&apos;ve also found that I <i>must<\/i> get out of the house                  at least once a day or I get bitterly depressed. Today, at least,                  I had a mission: I FedXed Carol some papers and things that she                  needed, and grabbed lunch at the Black Bear while I was in the                  area. On the way past the Shell station (hardly the low-price                  leader hereabouts) I noticed that regular was down to $1.99.9.                  I do not remember the last time I saw gas break $2.00.<\/li>\n<li>I didn&apos;t read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\">Slate<\/a> for at                  least a month prior to the election, because by a month prior                  to the election I had already heard <i>quite<\/i> enough about                  the election without going to Slate. Alas, Slate still isn&apos;t over                  the election, but here&apos;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2202303\/\">a                  very good article on why we are always so angry<\/a>. The author                  seems to see unchallengeable genetic predispositions, but I see                  spoilt brats: People who give rein to their anger are immature,                  undisciplined dorks. (Read the blogosphere for abundant examples.)<\/li>\n<li>And the severely liberal Slate has finally copped to something                  I learned 25 years ago in Rochester, New York: In tony urban neighborhoods                  where then-stylish wood stoves burned through the winter, you                  couldn&apos;t hardly breathe. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2204252\/\">Wood                  is not clean heat<\/a>. Wood is filthy, borderline toxic, dangerous-to-your-children                  heat that does not belong in urban settings, or anywhere with                  more than one house to five acres. (I cop to having had a wood                  stove on a third-acre lot in Rochester. I was part of the problem.                  I apologize, and I won&apos;t make that mistake again.)<\/li>\n<li>This seems too good to be true\u2014or at least permanently                  true\u2014but it seems like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.itexaminer.com\/us-court-throws-out-most-software-patents.aspx\">a                  US court has thrown out most business-practice patents<\/a>. (Thanks                  to Bruce Baker for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Well, Manischewitz Egg &amp; Onion Matzos are back at the local                  King Soopers markets. I brought home two boxes yesterday evening,                  and could barely get in the door before ripping one box open,                  slobbering a whole cracker up with butter, and stuffing it back                  with hazardous haste. (Had Mike Sargent not tipped me off, I doubt                  I would even have looked.)<\/li>\n<li>It&apos;s not just simple utilities like MozBackup. (See my entry                  for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duntemann.com\/Diary.htm#11-08-2008\">November 8, 2008<\/a>.) <a href=\"http:\/\/securityandthe.net\/2008\/11\/10\/avg-virus-scanner-removes-critical-windows-file\/\">AVG                  Antivirus triggered an alert on an essential Windows file, user32.dll<\/a>,                  claiming it was infected with a trojan called Generic9.TBN, <i>and                  recommended that users delete the file<\/i>. Urrp. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.clamwin.com\/\">ClamWin<\/a>                  is looking better all the time.<\/li>\n<li>I rented <i>The Golden Compass<\/i> at Blockbuster the other                  night, and I will say this: It sports the coolest steampunk backgrounds                  and retromechanicomagical gadgetry of any film I have ever seen,                  and if you&apos;re a steampunk freak, don&apos;t miss it. However, having                  seen it, I know precisely why it was a fantastically expensive                  flop: It was utterly <i>cold<\/i>, and not because much of the                  action took place in the perpetual arctic dusk of Svalbard. I                  mean it in the sense that I detected little humanity in the characters,                  with the single exception of the broadly-drawn Texas aeronaut,                  Lee Scoresby. (The anti-Catholicism of the books was so muted                  that the Magisterium might as well have been a crew of Sith lords                  in baroque attire.) When the film was over, I was awed, but depressed.                  That&apos;s the job of an art movie, not a big-budget, kid-oriented,                  special-effects blockbuster. I doubt that the remaining two volumes                  in the trilogy will ever be filmed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The pseudobachelor life does not become me, but I&apos;m working on it. So far, the heuristics seem to be: Stay in touch (our cell phones are being given a workout), stay busy, and socialize whenever possible. I&apos;ve also found that I must get out of the house at least once a day or I get [&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-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","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=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}