“Where’s your Messiah now, Flanders?”

It’s lovely day in Toronto today. As I type this, I’m looking out the south wall of my bedroom/office/looooove palace (as I’m fond of mentioning, the south wall of my room is entirely glass and has a door that opens to the Casa Di AccordionGuy back deck) and seeing a cloudless sky. I’ve propped open the door to let some fresh air in. Even though I’m two blocks away from a major intersection — Queen and Spadina — the buildings due south and west of the house absorb most of the traffic sound. The loudest things you can hear are a plane in the distance and the birds roosting in the tree. It is, as Bill Withers put it, a lovely day [that’s a .WAV file]. There’s nothing I like better on days like today than to…

…have my beliefs in God challenged! C’mon, belief! You want some, you punkass bee-yotch?

In Batteground God, you’re asked 17 true-or-false questions in the game. Every time an answer contradicts a previous answer, you take a hit. Your mission is to get through the game alive (that is, taking fewer hits than needed to kill you). Every now and again, you may also have to “bite the bullet”; this happens when your answer is consistent with your previous answers but has some “strange or unpalatable” implications. You also want to bite the bullet as little as possible. Think of it as a philosophical version of “Hangman”.

I came out alive, taking two hits and biting two bullets, earning me their third-highest award, the TPM Service Medal:

You have been awarded the TPM service medal! This is our third highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.

The fact that you have progressed through this activity without suffering many hits suggests that whilst there are inconsistencies in your beliefs about God, on the whole they are well thought-out.

For those of you who are insatiably curious (or who wonder what kind of belief system a guy who carries an accordion everywhere because stange and wonderful things happen would have), the analysis of my answers is here.

Have a lovely Saturday, folks.

What would Optimus Prime do?

(In The Happiest Geek on Earth)

Morbus Iff writes about MacOS, Windows, Un*x and how they can all be joined together to form Superion. Well, maybe not that last part.

Read it here.

Wesley for sale

After getting countless requests to sell some kind of personal memorabilia, super-unlikely sex symbol Wil Wheaton — yup, Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation has a five-day auction for this photo:

The current bid at the time of this writing is somewhere in the low two-hundreds. According to the description, he’ll sign it for the lucky winning bidder with the message of his or her choice. He’s set some very clear limits on what he’ll write:

There’s no way I’m writing “Dear Bubba, I loved being your bitch.” So don’t even ask.

Well, there goes my idea.

National Day of Prayer

President Bush declared yesterday, May 2nd, a national day of prayer. I’d like to leave a reminder for you holier-than thou types, from your own instruction manual:

Matthew, Chapter 6:

5 “And when praying, you must not be like the hypocrites. They are fond of standing and praying in the synagogues or at the corners of the wider streets, in order that men may see them. I solemnly tell you that they already have their reward.

6 But you, whenever you pray, go into your own room and shut the door: then pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father — He who sees in secret — will recompense you.

7 “And when praying, do not use needless repetitions as the Gentiles do, for they expect to be listened to because of their multitude of words.

8 Do not, however, imitate them; for your Father knows what things you need before ever you ask Him.

See? I was paying attention in Sunday school.

The first one’s free

(In The Happiest Geek on Earth)

The geek equivalent of the “Today, I ate a cheese sandwich” post: Today, I installed some trial/”lite” IDEs.

Read it here.

Wrist PDA! Bobo want!

Fossil, the company that makes big retro-funky and chunky digital watches, has come up with a wrist PDA. Here it is:

This wrist PDA uses infra-red beaming to communicate with your PalmOS device and download the databases from the Address Book, Date Book, To Do List and Memo Pad applications. Then you can leave that bulky ol’ PDA at home and still be able to have your information with you. Handy for clubbing, swimming (it’s water-resistant to thirty metres, should you want to check your to-do lists while snorkel-fishing) or if you’re one of those guys who’s already loaded down with way too many damned devices.

It sells for US$145.00 at the Fossil site. Feel free to buy me one.

New blog

I’ve decided to go ahead and create a new blog, The Happiest Geek on Earth. The first posting, which summarizes the differences between my work environment six months ago and now, is here.

I’m not actually planning on increasing the amount of blogging I do; I think I do more than enough already. Instead, it’s just a way for me to keep things from getting too tech-heavy for what really is a “slice of life” kind of journal. The rule of thumb will be that anything more about programming in Happiest Geek and the rest goes into AccordionGuy. Some stories are going to straddle the line between “slice-of-life” and programming (for example, today’s post); in those cases, I’ll make a judgement call. You won’t miss a thing if decide to bookmark only this blog; since I consider The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century to be the “main” blog, I’ll post a link to any Happiest Geek postings here.

As for the title of the blog, I’ve got to hand it to Cory Doctorow for coming up with that one. He’s often used it to descri himself, and he recently used it to describe me. I thought it was a fitting title for the blog, and since I couldn’t think of any decent titles (“Actually, AccordionGuy does have a day job”, “Yet another goddamned programmer’s soapbox for bitching”, “Reading this blog is like pissing in OpenCola’s mouth”), I went with that one.