C’est Rire category archive

When my son was in elementary school, the lunch room monitors would roam the cafeteria.

If they judged that a table was talking too loud, they would start shaving minutes off of recess.

This makes that look tame:

A Roman Catholic elementary school adopted new lunchroom rules this week requiring students to remain silent while eating. The move comes after three recent choking incidents in the cafeteria.

No one was hurt, but the principal of St. Rose of Lima School explained in a letter to parents that if the lunchroom is loud, staff members cannot hear a child choking.

And for all that the reason sounds compelling, I have to think there’s something more going on here. After all, there doesn’t seem to have been a rash of cafeteria choking incidents in elementary schools.

Except perhaps here.

Looks to me like another case of grown-ups blowing it and penalizing the kids.

But what do I know? I’m 400 miles away messing with a computer.

Find out here.

But give his lawyer points for creativity:

The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected an appeal from a death-row inmate who argued that his sentence should be thrown out because the jury was denied smoke breaks.

Phillip E. Elmore’s attorneys had argued that the judge’s refusal to let jurors smoke amid deliberations made the jury antsy and overly eager to finish the case.

In a 7-0 opinion, Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton wrote that there was only one smoker on the jury, which took six hours to convict Elmore of aggravated murder and three hours to recommend his execution.

MySpace becomes the city jail’s space:

The man in the Donovan McNabb jersey got to the Philadelphia Free Library’s main branch at 9 a.m., as usual, and was seated at a public computer terminal, tapping away at his MySpace.com page, as usual.

So he did not notice that 15 armed officers were quietly converging on him.

That, authorities say, is how a fugitive wanted in Georgia and Massachusetts was captured last Thursday without a fight. They say they figured out that he had been going to the library regularly to update his MySpace page.

These days, many folks may not remember that the first computer games were text-based, as were the first multi-player on-line games. I remember one of the old No*Name BBS. I never played it, but I remember it.

Wikipedia describes the first computer-based adventure game here.

There is a flash versions of Colossal Cave here, so you can get a feel for how it worked.

And here you can find it applied to contemporary events, with devastating and hilarious accuracy.

And you thought instant messaging was the biggest hazard . . .

A three-year-old Lincolnshire computer whizz bought a £9k car on eBay while his mum’s back was turned, the BBC reports.

Last night my girlfriend noticed that the fridge was looking a little peaked.
This morning, it showed positive signs of running a fever. Now, old GE was 21 years old and didn’t owe me a dime, so it was off to Lowes.

Half an hour later I was on my way home with the new refridgerator in the back of my little yellow truck.

And hour later, I had the door flip-flopped, took another shower, and went to work.

And the new fridge was chillin’.

Why Lowes?

Well, several years back, we were in the market for a clothes washer.

We went to the local Best Buy and found one we liked.

No one was available to take our order. The only person authorized to order large appliances was tied up with a couple who, apparently, were buying every single possible appliance they might need for a new house.

I went back the next night and told Mr. I’m the Only Person Competent To Sell Large Appliances, “I have half an hour. After that, I’m outta here.” Twenty-nine and one-half minutes later he got to me. Two minutes later, I was outta there with the order placed.

The thing arrived on-time, three days later. I picked it up and installed it. Ex came back from a business trip and noticed it had a dent (no, I didn’t dent it).

I took it back. The returns guy was great–sent someone out the take it off the van, was courteous, and prompt. Then he asked, “Do you want a check or would you like the reorder?”

I said, “I’d like to reorder.”

He said, “Then you’ll have to see that man over there,” pointing to Mr. I’m the Only Person Competent To Sell Large Appliances.

I asked, “You mean you can’t just place the order from here?”

He said he was not allowed to.

I said, “Give me a check.”

Then I remembered there was a Lowes five minutes up the road. I went up there, and 20 minutes later, I was on the way home with the SAME IDENTICAL WASHING MACHINE in the back of the van. For $10 less.

To this day, I avoid Best Buys–I go to CompUSA for computer stuff. If I do get desparate enough to go to a Best Buy, I will not purchase anything that I can’t take out of the store in my hands.

And Lowes? That’s where I will forever more purchase my large appliance. And anything else that they carry, from lumber to cabinet knobs.

Once too often to the trough:

A light-fingered California crook has been convicted of stealing computers from a courthouse while on trial for computer theft.

Jon Houston Eipp, 39, of Novato, pleaded guilty on Monday to the computer theft crimes along with various burglary, theft, and drug possession offences. He faces up to five years in jail.

In the course of my employment, I meet a lot of technicians who work on ATMs. Almost all of them have stories of abortive attempts to steal ATMs.

• The fellow down in Carolinas who chained an island ATM to his bumper and tried to drive off with it. He left his bumper behind, along with his license plate.
• The fellow in New Jersey who attempted to knock one over with his truck. My old boss actually got called to remove the tapes and review them with police. This was in New Jersey. New Jersey has front license plates.
• The fellow who managed to get away with one, then discovered that the top, the vulnerable part, is a computer, but the bottom is a concrete-lined steel safe, so he buried it in his back yard–still intact.

These fellows tried an excavator (apparently an excator is sort of a front-end loader with a college education):

Thieves toiled for almost an hour with a stolen excavator to dig two cash machines out of a bank branch in the northeastern town of Kuala Terengganu Tuesday.

But they were forced to flee empty-handed when the excavator’s digging arm got stuck in the ceiling of the bank, Malaysian newspapers reported Wednesday.

Optimist that I am, I keep expecting that people remember that the work computer is the work computer and the home computer is the home computer:

Workers at Oregon’s department of revenue have been banned from using their PCs for “non-business” purposes after a porn-hunting employee accidentally downloaded a Trojan which spirited away personal details of over 2,000 taxpayers.

El Reg has a new installment:

A California hacker has pleaded guilty to disrupting computer systems – including the network of a hospital – through a malware-fueled attack designed to install adware on infected PCs.

Christopher Maxwell, from Vacaville, California, 20, also confessed to disrupting US military systems during the January 2005 attack. As part of a plea bargain agreement, Maxwell agree to pay $252,000 in compensation to Northwest Hospital and Medical Centre in Seattle, the main victim of his attack, and the Department of Defense.

The local rag had a fascinating little story this morning.

Long before Doc Johnson:

By the late 19th century, hysteria was hitting epidemic proportions, with women complaining of paralyzed limbs, sudden inability to speak, and other bizarre symptoms magically relieved by their doctor’s touch.

But some doctors complained the technique was difficult to learn. According to one biographer, Sigmund Freud tried to learn it, Maines says, but never got the hang of it.

So appliances were developed to assist the doctors in their work.

For a scholarly discussion of the topic, follow this link (and imagine how long it took me to find something scholarly!).

It seems to me that, if states wish to outlaw these appliances, they should also consider outlawing watermelons.

The heartland turned vicious this week when an Oklahoma town threatened to call in the FBI because its web site was hacked by Linux maker. Problem is CentOS didn’t hack Tuttle’s web site at all. The city’s hosting provider had simply botched a web server.

This tale kicked off yesterday when Tuttle’s city manager Jerry Taylor fired off an angry message to the CentOS staff. Taylor had popped onto the city’s web site and found the standard Apache server configuration boilerplate that appears with a new web server installation. Taylor seemed to confuse this with a potential hack attack on the bustling town’s IT infrastructure.

(snip)

(Taylor emailed CentOS) “I am computer literate! I have 22 years in computer systems engineering and operation. Now, can you tell me how to remove ‘your software’ that you acknowledge you provided free of charge? I consider this ‘hacking.'”

Click here to see a screen capture of the “404” message. (Use your browser’s “Back” button to return to this page.)

Click here to see the CentOS homepage.

(Maybe I’ll take a few minutes tomorrow and work up a neat 404 page like that one!)

Update, 3/26/06 (Thanks, Bob):

Here are the emails between Mr. Tuttle and CentOS.

Despite all the other stuff that’s going on, the current Federal Administration has demonstrated a complete lack of a sense of humor by going after The Onion for using the Great Seal of the President of the United States in its satire. (Picked up from Phillybits)

It seems appropriate to remind the current Federal Administration that the Seal is not a trademark, like the Golden Arches. The seal belongs to the United States, not to whoever happens, quite by accident (or, in this case, by act of the Supremes), to be holding the office of President. There is no trademark infringement nor copyright on items that belong to the citizenry of the United States of America.

So I post here, and tip my hat to The Onion–always biting, often funny, and, I hope and trust, never cowed:

Participating So Far
(Updated 10/28/05 8:00 a. m. courtesy Phillybits)

Pandagon
All Spin Zone
PhillyBits
Jesus General
The Poor Man Institute
Majikthise
Ablogistan
Three Bulls
Ken Ashford
Watching Washington
Dommynicius
If I Ran The Zoo
Uncle Horn Head
BCFTU
Lair Of The Blue Cat
Ang’s Weird Ideas
Bloody Knee Jerk
MsGeek.org

Others commenting:
Chaos Digest
Praxxus
KAILiPuGos
The Comfy Chair
Myopic Zeal
The Next Left/a

Know computers? Understand CSS and PHP? According to The Register, Al-Qaeda is hiring: