The day after an attempted install of Red Hat Linux failed, I found an e-mail with this subject in my inbox: "For Red Hat Linux, this problem occurs if the server machine has the Linux kernel patch installed for aliasing the loopback device." It's a lot of mumbo jumbo, but I thought since the box was hooked up to the internet, maybe there was some weird automated troubleshooting service. I opened it.

It was like no spam I'd ever seen.

From: "anhyeuvn shipman"
To: ramanujan@geocities.com
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 09:34:18 +0200

H.u g'e N e'w s To Im_pact C-Y_T-V
Chin.a Y_ouTV C-o r+p..
Symb,ol: C'Y_T_V
We h,a'v*e alrea-dy s'e e'n CY*TV's ma rket im+pact bef+ore climb in*g to o+v_e,r $2.0-0 w-i+t*h n-e'w-s,.
P.ress Relea se:
Ch.ina YouTV 's C nBoo W_e*b S,i't'e Ra,nks N'o,.'1 on Mic_r+osoft L*i.v+e Searc*h Eng*ine
CnBo+o Traffi'c Increas.e-s 4.9-% O v'e_r T*w-o Mon*ths
R*e a*d t*h'e news-, th.ink abo'ut t h_e imp-act, and
j,u_m+p on t+h-i.s fi'rst th.ing Tomor.-row morni_ng_! $ 0.4_2 is a g,i+f t at t,h-i,s price ...,..
Do y_o,u,r h-omewor.k a*n'd w*atch t'h_i*s tr*ade Mo-nday mornin*g.
Luc ius, a_l.l ha+il, Rome'+s gra_c ious g,ov+ernor.
EJclC_-ounterError St.a rtCount St.opCou-nt T.Jcl_Counter.
Oth'er Sis'ters al-ways m-a+d e an attem*pt to l.o,o,k as d.r.a_b as t*h'e m.e_n so as to go l,e s-s n*oticed a+n+d be l.e+s s des_*irable.
T'h*e Rewr+iteLo g d,_irective s e*t*s t_h-e n*a-m_e of t*h,e f,i*l*e to whic_h t-h*e serve*r l+o g,s a_n,y r-ew,riting action s it p_erfor+ms.
E.L O - T_i,m+e - Tr,ack08.

I've seen spam-filter-defeating obfuscated subject lines like "v.i@.gra," but in this case the message itself was almost unreadable, and there were no links or images. Was it an encoded Botnet call to arms? A freak error from a script kiddie? I was able to make out enough of the message to determine that it was some kind of stock shill, but it's so scrambled I can't be sure what stock it's for.

Oddly, that obscurity and the coincidental subject made it the only spam I've opened and read for years.

Three weeks ago, veterans of the Letter Pair Grid were invited to take part in a vocabulary challenge. A section of a large word list (AGID) containing 1125 words, 1% of the total, served as the master list. Participants had to list as many words as they could think of that might appear on the list, which contained words alphabetically between "lunate" and "marauder."

Three submissions were received, Ray's a last-minute effort arriving a bit late. With one point awarded for each master list word a participant submitted that no one else thought of, here are the scores:
Eric, submitting 526 words, wins with 154 unique matches.
Steve, submitting 430 words, found 56.
Ray, submitting 82 words, found 2.

The complete entries are here.

The Fedora Live CD promised a small download (smaller than three CDs anyway) with the option to install over the net. It booted up fine, but meagre system resources rendered it unusably slow. I double-clicked the "Install to hard disk" icon and the CD started merrily spinning, and went on spinning all night. Come morning I had to do a hard reset and was relieved to see the old Mandrake system come online.

Plan B is now in the works. I grabbed the "alternate" CD, which permits a barebones install that needs only 128 MB of RAM. We shall see if one can really turn on a LAMP in around 15 minutes.

It's been over two years since the last major housekeeping was done on this server, and the time is right for another rebuild. With any luck Hecat will be online again tonight, if only in skeletal format, with a brand new OS.

This and other insights can be found in the Reagan diaries. Turns out the guy was ripping one-liners nonstop after getting shot.
To the doctor about to operate on him: "I hope you're a Republican."
To his wife: "Honey, I forgot to duck" (quoting Jack Dempsey).
To a nurse: "All in all, I'd rather be in Philadelphia" (W. C. Fields).

San Francisco cowboy bar mistake
Perhaps not as bad as the title makes it sound. Near the end of our trip, we went to some fancy restaurant/lounge that had been recommended. They wanted a $10 cover, and we decided it was too swanky for us. So we got back in the rental and drove around and eventually ended up in some Western-themed joint near that awful Fisherman's Wharf. There was no cover, but the food was not as cheap as it tasted, the music was a nuisance, and I would have paid to stay hungry.

Canard solitaire
As told elsewhere.

McDonald's in New York City
Not a bad dining experience, but it was a rather poor judgment to suggest getting supersized while we were still dating. As I remember it, we couldn't decide on anything else, and there may have been some toilet-related urgency. We don't pass by McDonald's in New York too often, but whenever we do, I get a little reminder of my cheapskate past.

Gouged in Barcelona
Ah, but traveling only got better once we were married. On this trip, I was supposed to make vacation plans for the first time, but I just hit a few websites the day before we left. It didn't help that I packed a bunch of socks and no pants. By the third day we were wandering around wearing beach clothes and unable to find the beach, leading naturally to a fight that evening.

After an awkward dinner, we found an internet shop and booked train tickets to an outlying town for the following day. Still a bit sullen, we walked back up Las Ramblas toward the hotel. We stopped at one of the many cafes and I ordered two Cokes. The waiter brought out two giant jugs, together at least a gallon of cola. On another day that might have been welcome change from the usual half-pint glass with an ice cube or two, but it was after midnight and I just sipped at mine, trying weakly to make conversation. The bill arrived. Later I would regret not having documented the evidence, for a blinding rage prevented me from making a clear note of the amount. I recall it being 22 euros. The waiter had gone into hiding, so I threw what vitriol as I could translate at some employee, who presently brought out a bill half as large.

While not all that much of a gourmand, like anyone else I enjoy eating. My favorite memories of food on the road combine memorable locales with tasty repasts. Here are my top five.

Dessert in St. Maarten
There was a humble and disarmingly charming little French cafe just down the street from our resort with its typically passable buffet fare. All we had was a single plate of something dense with chocolate and a couple of coffees, but with the exquisite presentation it seemed almost a shame to consume it.
location

Tomatoes, basil and mozzarella in Rio
After making the not-to-be-missed sunset visit to Pão de Açúcar, we took the cable car down to look for some grub. There was an establishment right on the beach, but we were scared off by signs which seemed to indicate that it was some kind of military facility. A passing tourist assured us that we could eat there, so we walked in and got a table on the patio. The gibbous moon rising over the water and a miracle of geology looming overhead made it a magical evening. We had a plate of sliced tomatoes topped with slices of mozzarella, basil and olive oil, a dish that helped cure me of a childhood hatred of tomato.

Later, we had pizza on the balcony of a casual restaurant in the Botafogo Praia shopping mall, by nearby Botafogo Beach. It was tasty enough, and the view over the water with Sugarloaf Mountain in the distance was like something out of a dream.
location

Marriott Grand Marquis
Not particularly exotic, but I was quite taken in by the hotel's dizzingly cavernous lobby and the view from the top floor revolving lounge, where I had some cocktail or other.

[Edit]
Midye Dolma in Istanbul
I neglected a favorite memory, more relevant to this post than some fancy hotel. On an early visit to Istanbul, we took a ferry across the Bosphorus and I stepped into Asia. My first act on that continent was to walk up to one of many guys selling stuffed mussels. The pictures in this recipe make my mouth water. These are the ingredients:

large mussels
olive oil
dried onion
rice
dried mint
tomato paste
dill
a sugar cube
salt and pepper
hot water

The vendor would grab a mussel, scissor half of the shell around to serve as a spoon and squeeze a lemon half over the morsel inside. His practiced hand was just efficient enough to keep up with the two of us greedily shoveling bivalves down like candy. When we were finally satisfied, we asked to settle up but the guy had apparently neglected to keep count. We had to tot up the shells in our trash bag to calculate the bill, which in those days was in the millions but worth every lira.

Tossa del Mar hotel balcony lunch
This economical DIY snack from the grocery store across the street was more enjoyable than any expensive meal I've had.

low-res approximate location

Any old beef in Buenos Aires
My standard order at any restaurant is whatever comes in chicken without bones. I made that mistake on our first day in Argentina, but after tasting my wife's lomo, I didn't order anything but beef for the rest of the trip. Wherever we went we got a slab of red meat the size of a boot sole for the equivalent of a few dollars, the meat tasty enough to tempt a vegan.

location of a sidewalk restaurant on the corner of Córdoba and Florida that we happened to visit twice.

Another Top 100 list from a self-appointed authority: the American Film Institute's choices for the best films of all time. To see their PDF list, use the bugmenot credentials moviebuff100/hundred or check the Washington Post's copy.

I've seen 37 of these titles; three of them were assigned viewing in school ("Apocalypse Now," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," and "To Kill A Mockingbird"). Only ten of them impressed me enough that I am reliably drawn in when they come on TV.

Top marks:
2001: A Space Odyssey
A Clockwork Orange
Apocalypse Now
Blade Runner
Casablanca
Citizen Kane
The Godfather
Pulp Fiction
Saving Private Ryan
The Shawshank Redemption

Okay:
Chinatown
Dr. Strangelove
Easy Rider
Forrest Gump
The Godfather Part II
The Graduate
Jaws
King Kong
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Platoon
Psycho
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Rear Window
Rocky
Schindler's List
The Silence of the Lambs
The Sixth Sense
Spartacus
Star Wars
Titanic
To Kill A Mockingbird

Enh:
Annie Hall
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
The Maltese Falcon
Tootsie
Vertigo
The Wizard of Oz

My first trade on Swaptree was just realized. I've listed 20 books I would like to have, and a dozen books and CDs which I would be willing to give up. Last week I shipped a beat-up copy of Harry Potter to someone in California, who shipped something to someone in New York, who shipped me a book by Bill Bryson (here's the first chapter).

This week I added a "Metropolis" DVD to my "have" list, and was informed that someone might give me another Bryson book for it. I've proposed the trade and am waiting to hear back.

So I'll probably not be getting The Complete Calvin and Hobbes anytime soon, but meanwhile I can reduce shelf clutter and get some new reading material for the cost of postage.

But with major pop culture icons, the assumption has to be that the great majority of people who see your Bart-bedecked paraphernalia are already familiar with the dude. So why drop jack on a Cartman plush doll? --RWH

Couldn't the reason be as simple as that the Mr. T aficionado likes to see Mr. T, that seeing Mr. T makes him happy, therefore he surrounds himself with images of Mr. T? True, there's no need for these displays to be public; a private shrine should do the trick. Perhaps the admen have calculated that they'll get more mileage from their kitsch if they license products more likely to be seen in public, like T-shirts. Bumper stickers, in particular, aren't designed to be seen by their owners. I think they've tapped into something primal and profitable: Ha-ha, it's a Bart sticker! Bart's funny. I like Bart, therefore I like this Bart sticker. I can buy this Bart sticker, therefore I will buy this Bart sticker.

One could argue which of those two "therefores" is more irrational. The first one seems to follow this logic: "Oh look, they make labels that adhere to motorized conveyances. And this one has my favorite cartoon character on it, so it must be the one for me." Pretty crazy. The second one is hard to believe too, but studies have demonstrated that the mere fact that something is available to purchase makes it more desirable to purchase.