Dead Programmer's Cafe

Author: deadprogrammer

  • John Crapper Would …. Hmmm, I Don’t Know How He’d React.

    Now, robotic cat crappers have been around for a while. I’d get one too, but my wife is a litter box Luddite. I am thinking of buying a Roomba vacuum cleaner because there are clearly not enough robots in the Deadprogrammer household.

    The surrealism of this cat box impresses me to no end:

    Another fine choice is the C.A.T.S (Cat Approved Toilette System) which was clearly designed by a retired missile silo designer

  • Hey,

    If you are not subscribed to , you are missing some good stuff.

  • Unrussian Profession or Dig Me My Grave Long Wide and Deep

    Thanks to a recommendation from I bought “Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs“. It’s really a tribute to an older book called “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do”.

    Gig consists of monologues of a wide cross section of working people. There’s a porn star, a software developer, prison guard, a prisoner (don’t know if that’s technically a job), an air force general, a high school teacher, a journalist and enough representatives of other professions to make a thousand “x y and z walk into a bar” jokes.

    My favorite little story was about a single mom who had a gig as a psychological warfare specialist. She ended up getting my dream job when an Army recruiter asked her about her specialization preference. Since “spy” was not an option she took the next best thing.
    Modern psywarriors, like this girl, sometimes hail from rather somewhat rural places, so they get a lot of multicultural sensitivity training. One point brought home to them is that it is very important to never refuse native food or drink that is offered to them by friendlies, even if it’s gross. In training they even have a mock dinner during which they have to down “weird” drinks and eat “weird” food. That training kind of came in handy to our protagonist, as she was offered “gruel goat” meal in Africa which you had to eat with your hands. She handled that well.

    Turkish coffee turned out to be a stumbling block for her : ” … Turkish coffee. It’s got like a half an inch of grounds on the bottom. Well, I didn’t know if I was supposed to eat the grounds or not …”

    What to do, what to do? Of course she decided to ask one of the guys. Guess what kind of advice he gave her. Riiight. I’d do the same thing.

    Anyway, you can read her story here tanks to the guy at Amazon who sneaked full text search past the lawyers.

    touched upon the most fascinating topic of what professions “Russian” immigrants never choose. Police officer appeared rather often on the list of professions suggested by her readers. Well, a guy who’s desk was right next to mine in a High School pre-calculus class finished the Police Academy here in New York. I am not sure if he actually became a cop though.

    One story that he told me was kind of funny (I can’t judge it’s truthfulness though) . He smokes a lot. And once he was caught smoking right next to what he described as an “ammo dump”. The instructor who caught him came up with a creative punishment. My friend was forced to dig a proper human size grave and then bury the cigarette butt in it. Yeah, being an NYPD cadet is tough.

    Another “Russian” classmate of mine became a US Marine. I wonder where he is right now. “Semper Fi” means the same thing even with a Russian accent. Yeah. By the way, the motto of NYPD is “Fidelis Ad Mortem”.

  • One Hundred Views Of The Empire State Building # 6

  • One Hundred Views Of the Empire State Building #7 and #8

    Only 92 more and I’m done :)

  • Space Panties

    From an article at space.com :
    “Space lingerie is one of the major components of psychological support which we provide to women in orbit,” Yarov said. “The goal of this support is to make women on board feel like women, not just astronauts or cosmonauts. Shannon Lucid and Elena Kondakova liked their lingerie very much.”

    Psychological support? Don’t know about that. Those granny panties look ugly and uncomfortable at the same time.

  • Beaux Arts Of The Brooklyn’s Mother Road

    Starting out as a dirt road that was named after King George III more than 200 hundred years ago, Kings Highway had a very rich history. You can still see remnants of it’s former glory in the dilapidated remnants of it’s buildings.

    How would you like to enter your apartment building every day under the gaze of two titans and two griffins?

    Caw, caw!

    How the hell is Beaux Arts pronounced anyway?

  • The Sonic Quality of My Fridge

    I recently learned that there is such a thing as “hospital grade” electric outlets and plugs. Apparently they are slightly more robust and have stronger, springier contacts that keep power cords from unplugging. Here’s an example of a Hubbel brand 20 amp outlet (that’s why it has a T-shaped slot) and surge protection (that’s what the light is for, I guess).

    The prices range from 8 to 70 bucks per outlet. Of course audiophiles could not pass by such highly priced electrical components.

    Greg Graff writes in this Usenet post:
    “I was stunned at what a hospital grade electrical connection could do in my system. Much tighter/deeper base (which is saying something for the WATTS), larger/deeper soundstage, fuller midrange, and a sigificant increase in dimensionality. ”

    That’s nice, Greg. But some are a bit more skeptical :

    “Personally, I use the hospital grade plugs on almost everything, because I used to work at a technician at a medical center and salvaged several dozen plugs off surplus equipment. I strongly recommend them if you don’t pay anything for them. I doubt they’ve improved the sonic quality of my fridge, though…”

    I wrote about audiophiles before in my article Brilliant Pebbles, Lost Marbles or The Proud Audiophile.

  • TT: Though Tally :: Gratuitous Linkage And Stuff

    I’ve got a postcard from Eritrea. writes that there is no television and no radio there, but he had 3 different people asked him if he had a copy of TV Guide to give them. God knows I have a sizable stack of them here in my cubicle. :) It’s so nice to get a postcard. If any of you want a postcard from me, email me your address. It’ll probably be one of my photos.

    is so much better than . Check out this amazing photo. I wonder what their story is.

    A deep philosophical question from : “The Triple Chocolate Meltdown…is that chocolatey?” (The comments are hilarious too. “I like vegetables, but what’s in the chicken vegetable?” – another deep philosophical question.)

    My High School chemistry teacher was absolutely sure that drinking a half liter bottle of vodka would inevitably lead to alcohol poisoning. Well, of course it depends on a person, but I know a lot of people who can handle a bottle. Three bottles in a short period of time is rather deadly of course. is pretty good.

  • Dreamblog : Deadprogrammer Takes A Picture Of Respected Leader’s Wife

    Saw this dream yesterday morning :

    I was walking by Kim Jong Il, who looked rather silly. I really wanted to take a candid picture of him, but did not want to be thrown in jail for that. I saw a Japanese reporter photograph him, and decided to ask for permission. Respected Leader did not want to have his picture taken, but said that I could take a picture of his wife. She started walking through the palace. When passing through a dungeon she was overcome by a pain in her leg. I thought that the ghosts of women killed by her husband were causing her that pain. Finally we made it outside. She sat down on a brick parapet. The Sun and the Moon were in the sky at the same time. Also in the background was the spire of the AIG building. I started to take the picture, but the camera lens fell apart in my hands.

    Although, to me the AIG building is the Ace Of Swords, not the Tower.