zen.org Communal Weblog

My brother sent me a funny joke recently, and I thought about throwing it up on the blog. But I figured I should first make sure it’s not one that’s done too much traveling around the Net. The basic idea is:

A husband and wife are traveling by car from Atlanta to New York. After almost twenty-four hours on the road, they decide to stop at a nice hotel and take a room. They only plan to sleep for four hours and then get back on the road. When they check out four hours later, the desk clerk hands them a bill for $350. The man explodes and demands to know why the charge is so high. He tells the clerk although it’s a nice hotel, the rooms certainly aren’t worth $350. When the clerk explains that $350 is the standard rate, the man insists on speaking to the manager.

The manager enters the conversation and explains that the hotel has an Olympic-sized pool and a huge conference center which were available for the husband and wife to use.

He also explains that they could have taken in one of the shows which the hotel is famous for. “The best entertainers from New York, Hollywood and Las Vegas perform here,” explains the manager.

No matter what facility the manager mentions, the man replies, “But we didn’t use it!”

The manager is unmoved. Eventually the man gives up and agrees to pay. He writes a check and hands it to the manager. “But sir,” the managers says, “this check is only made out for $100.”

“That’s right,” replies the man. “I charged you $250 for sleeping with my wife.”

“What! I didn’t sleep with your wife!” exclaims the manager.

“Well,” the man replies, “she was here, and you could have.”

Holy cow, it’s apparently pretty popular. So frequently used, in fact, that there exist a wide variety of adjusted versions involving:

• an unnamed husband and wife; Yonkel and Sara; Steve and Sarah; a Sardarji and his wife; a Uclutian and his wife; Sordarji and his wife; a biker and his wife;
• driving from Key West to Boston; Miami to Boston; Atlanta to New York; Florida to Canada; somewhere to Tofino; London to Southampton; Edinburgh to London; Delhi to Mumbai; Yorkshire to Scotland; Johannesburg to Cape Town; Sydney to Cairns;
• $350 US dollars; £350 British pounds; Rs. 5000/- Indian rupee; R750 South African rand;
• husband charges for: sleeping with his wife; kissing his wife.

I could actually take the time to turn it into an Ireland joke, but it sure seems almost as pointless as the last hour I spent looking at all of those sites. 🙂

I wonder if Alberto Gonzales choose to resign now because Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert just started a two week hiatus.

The Princeton Protein Orthology Database (P-POD): A Comparative Genomics Analysis Tool for Biologists.

I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last night, and spoiler alert! In the end everybody gets ice cream.

Grist sez the New York Times sez Al Gore sez to commit civil disobedience!

I watched David Beckham make is starting début for the LA Galaxy last night. Well, I watched the first half and went to bed, it started at 22:00 and I need my ugly sleep! I’ve read that a few days ago, in Washington, DC United defeated the LA Galaxy even after they subbed in Mr. Beckham in the second half. That was a regular MLS game, but then last night in SuperLiga, in Carson California, Mr. Becham showed his stuff. Apart from a mediocre showing in the World Cup I’ve never seed him play, and wondered what all the hype was about. In the start DC United dominated, then the unfit Mr. Beckham got tackled, he stood up with a huge grin on his face and he was on. Until Philadelphia gets a team, I’m a DC United fan, but with a goal and an assist last night I see why fútbol fans love or hate him.

Try not to miss the Perseid meteor shower this weekend. I would not normally post such a thing, but it also happens to be a new moon. Unless it’s cloudy you will not get better viewing then this.

As the world now knows, the city of Minneapolis in the US State of Minnesota suffered an overwhelming catastrophe last night, as one of its major bridges collapsed into the Mississippi River, taking with it the lives, hopes, loves and dreams of several dozen innocent people. Nothing can ease the pain of the families, friends, neighbours and colleagues impacted by this horrendous event and for whom people around the globe now pray.

Yet, on every U.S. TV news report, Government Officials have engaged in a constant repetition of the words, “This is the United States of America; bridges aren’t supposed to fall down here.”

For a country which has spent billions upon billions to mount an illegal, murderous war against a nation which never posed any threat to it, whilst at the same time disregarding its own failing infrastructure and humane needs, this is a truly disgusting attitude.

But then, superciliousness and presumption of some imaginary superiority have never been lacking in America … especially and most obviously so, since the G. W. Bush Administration seized power.

It is heartbreakingly sad, yet at the same time overwhelmingly offensive, that any nation should assume so haughty a position as to claim its people deserve to be safer or more highly valued than those of any other country. Still, one has to assume that is nothing at all new for the self-aggrandizing United States.

Even more difficult to swallow is the interview one of the financial networks did with an investment adviser who said: “As soon as I heard [of the tragedy], my first thought was: ‘what will this do to the grain market?’

What a pathetically apt illustration of American priorities.

The last.fm has been looking at me from the Amarok configuration window for months. A few weeks ago I finally signed up. Now I’m not trying to get anybody to sing up, but I’ve wondered if anybody is already signed up want to be my friend. I remember when I playing with 30 Boxes it always said “You have no friends.” This kind of depressed me, but last.fm says “You haven’t added any friends yet” so it isn’t so depressing.

I had too many passwords to remember at work, MacOS X did a good job of remembering them but it kept them in a way that was difficult to extract. At home, with Kubuntu, KWallet kept things encrypted but also gave me access to them with only one password. So I installed KDE of my University surplus system and got osx2x to work to share the keyboard with my much newer Mac. So now when I need one of my LDAP passwords in a place I have not used it before I can read it and not contact systems to reset my password.

The odd thing is, slowly, I’m doing more and more on my slow Debian box with KDE then on the duel processor Mac. MacOS X: iTunes, iCal, GNU Emacs 22, web browser testing. KDE: KMail, web browser use, OO.o, RSS, command line. I still keep the Mac monitor in front of me, hence Emacs. Before I installed KDE, I longed for a GUI sftp access in the Finder, now I use KDE’s file browser to browse my Mac files more then the Mac finder, even though it is right in front of me!

Gotta go, meeting.