Matthew "Gallon of Strawberries" Sachs

11:09 pm: New Blog
I've gone live with my new blog at zevils.com. This is the first major overhaul of the site since August 2000 (according to the Internet Archive.)

I've seeded the archives with some of my favorite content from the old website and this blog. I still plan on writing some stuff here (to the extent that I post personal stuff), but I won't be cross-posting things both place. The plan is to post there more frequently than I have been here; we'll see how that works out. If you want to read the new blog from LJ, friend zevils.

Tags: meta

12:10 pm: The Mystery of Irma Vep

We're seeing a play in downtown Boston (Back Bay) Sunday evening. It's The Mystery of Irma Vep:

A werewolf, a vampire, an Egyptian princess, a cursed estate, and more haunt one "dark and stormy night" in this Obie Award-winning, uproarious high-camp tribute to Gothic horror films and Victorian melodrama. Lyric favorites Neil A. Casey (This Wonderful Life) and John Kuntz (Fully Committed) portray eight characters in a quick-change marathon and gender-bending "tour-de-farce" -- a treat for the whole family! "The funniest two hours unfolding anywhere!" – The New York Times"

We have season tickets here, their stuff is usually good. If anyone else wants to come, we can get you tickets for $5 off, so it'd be $35. It's from 7:30 to 9:30 at 140 Clarendon St, Boston, near Back Bay and Copley stations. We'll also probably be eating dinner beforehand if you're into that sort of thing.

Tags: social

10:26 am: Oh dear, they're trying to kill me.
Yesterday, my office had a pie buffet. Today, a couple of the guys at work (who do this periodically, apparently just because they're nice guys) brought in Verna's Donuts (which are awesome, for those of you near North Cambridge) for the entire place.

And then, walking back downstairs from picking up my donut, I see that someone else had brought in Dunkies for the 5th floor.

10:16 am: Something that will only make sense to dgr8bob and ravenword... the chorus of Chanson du Bon Chose always sounds like it's describing voting up stories about the former Brandeis sysadmin on a social news site.

("I am Digging Graves...")

03:54 pm: Who wants to buy an arcade machine?
They're auctioning off all the stuff from Good Times.

04:42 pm: Stream of Consciousness + Animals = Comedy Gold!
Sometimes, the simple things are the best. (Really needs to be watched with sound...)

( Cut for philistines who don't appreciate Hamster On a Piano, or Boogie Boogie Hedgehog )

Tags: media

04:47 pm: Free Stuff

We're getting rid of things like an air conditioner, a coffee table, and a TV. All free unless otherwise noted. From Liz's LJ:

• 25-ish inch Sony Analog CRT TV + stand. I have no idea how old it is. I got it as a free cast off from the media services department at Brandeis. Still works, has lots of connectors.
• beat up old orange armchair. It's pretty comfy - if you feel like re-upholstering it, it would probably be pretty good. It has lived in many, many houses with cats, though, so I'm not sure the cat allergens would ever quite come out. :)
• Ikea Lack coffee table in black. One of the legs is sort of loose; if you're more patient than I am, it could probably be repaired with some wood glue.
• Window air conditioner, ok, I lied, not all free. Window air conditioner, with remote control (I think I know where it is, anyway) and owner's manual. I bought this for probably about $150 3 years ago and used it for a summer; moved to an apartment that had windows it didn't fit in, so I loaned it to a friend for a summer and it's sat dormant ever since. It was a great air conditioner, complete with thermostat and timer so you can have it turn itself on an hour before you get home. Great feature! It's yours for $70, OBO.

11:46 pm: Claws von Stauffenberg
Liz seemed to think that I shouldn't smash a bottle of champagne against him, but we've named the new cat Claws von Stauffenberg. (Some possible nicknames include Claws, Claus, (the) Count, and Bergie.) Claus von Stauffenberg attempted to assassinate Hitler. Claws von Stauffenberg currently likes to attempt to assassinate my glasses by shoving them off my face with his own.

There are some new photos in Liz's flickr.

Tags: cat

11:06 pm: Kitty!
Not taking him home until next week, when we've "finished" moving in and Tabi's had some time to adjust, but... kitty! Name pending, possibly inspired by this list or this list. My current favorite is Claws von Stauffenberg, since it's a great name and he almost assassinated Hitler, but we'll see what he's like when we get him home.

Oh, and his eye was born like that.

12:11 am: Barack the Vote
roguesylph and I are heading down to Providence to canvas for Obama on Saturday if anyone wants to join us.

I haven't quite managed to get around to writing up an endorsement for Zevils, but Liz has a thorough one up on her blog. RI may not be delegate-rich, but its polls close before OH and TX's, so a strong win there would be an important signal to voters in those states.

Tags: politics

11:13 pm: WIP teaser

A teaser for a work in progress:

No, I don't like that yellow either, not on that background.

Tags: tech

05:22 pm: The Rule of Law
(Or, So That's Why The Lady Is A Tramp!)

In Massachusetts, riding a freight train is prima facie evidence that you're a tramp. (There are also separate sections of the code dealing with vagrants and vagabonds. Tramps who also meet the criteria for vagrancy are deemed tramps, but not vagrants. These "statutory tramps" may, however, also be vagabonds. I smell a sequel for John Hodgman...)

Also, in our fair state commonwealth, it's illegal to advertise contraception, and only registered physicians may administer/prescribe it (and only to married persons.) I am glad to see that they took into account the needs of same-sex married couples when authoring this legislation.

Tags: misc

11:13 pm: Miscellania
Liz ( should know better than to try to outweird me. )

I saw a frog hopping across the shoulder of I-90, looking like he'd just successfully crossed.

The Mass Turnpike's Charlton Service Center is great for three reasons. There's a doorbell in the men's bathroom (pressing it did not appear to do anything), you can get both pretzels and burritos there, and the souvenir penny machine has a sticker explaining why it's legal (because defacing federal currency is okay, as long as it's not for fraudulent purposes, according to 18 U.S.C. §331.

Finally, some quick research into how the Chinese handled telegraphs in the late 19th century. ( Read more... )

Tags: life

10:48 am: Smarter Spam
I just received a spam comment on my Diagnosis of Inferior Social Proclivity Disorder in Young Adult Patients: A Case Study entry (a "re-mix" of That's Why The Lady is a Tramp, written in the style of an article in a psychology journal) advertising medicine for OCD.

Tags: tech

12:09 am: I really only update Facebook for events of this magnitude.

roguesylph and I got engaged yesterday. ( Read more... )

Tags: life

06:21 pm: Scripty Goodness
I've finally moved my personal repository over to Subversion and added some recent scripts.

g2export will grab all of the images from a Gallery 2 website,
preserving the album structure on the website as a folder structure on
the disk and taking file names from captions if available.

ul2shoplist is designed as an iPhone bookmarklet for doing shopping
lists. It takes the first unordered list on a page whose first list
item doesn't contain a class attribute and transforms all of the items
on that list into checkboxes; when the boxes are checked, they will
move to the end of the list, and they will return to their original
location if they're unchecked. We do our shopping lists on a wiki,
and this is designed to work with that; the "first list item doesn't
contain a class attribute" restriction is so that it skips over the
"table of contents" list that MediaWiki puts in. I used the ever-nifty John Gruber's Javascript Bookmarklet Builder to convert it to a bookmarklet.

sms2txt and jotter are programs I wrote to export data from my P910
UIQ smartphone; I wanted to move my Jotter notes and SMS messages stored in the P910's Mail application over to the iPhone.

Tags: tech

12:23 am: Deathly Hallows
The scene where Harry wakes up and he was actually Harry from Harry and the Hendersons having a dream is fantastic!

(In the grand tradition of Voldemort is Harry's sled, I haven't read it yet.)

Tags: humor, media

07:32 pm: Ratatouille
(roguesylph, posting here since free accounts can't email to post photos.)

Standing in line for opening weekend of Ratatouille at The Alamo Drafthouse. They frequently have special extras and this is no exception. We got to meet the star himself! This is mom
with the big rat himself.

06:51 am: tabiPhone
The best feature of the iPhone is that it has a quacking ducks ringtone which I can set for roguesylph.

Tags: life

10:37 pm: IM IN UR XKCD REIFYIN UR MEME


Tags: humor, media