June 12, 2006

Things that annoy me

Posted on by Patrick
No Left Turn

Atten­tion dri­vers in my town: This sign means “No Left Turns”. It applies to you. Yes, even you. If you see this sign, you are not allowed by law to make a left turn.

Not even in the Wal-Mart park­ing lot.

* * *

What right-think­ing, ratio­nal indi­vid­ual decid­ed that, in the VBScript lan­guage, the Boolean val­ue False would equate to 0, and True would equal ‑1? I mean really.

Or were there CInt(False) right-think­ing, ratio­nal indi­vid­u­als on the team that cre­at­ed the VBScript specs and code? Hmmm, that would explain quite a lot.

FlickrBlogging: Turkish Coffee

Posted on by Patrick

IMG_9369
Found in weerasak’s Flickr photostream. 

She invit­ed me in. While I sat in front of the fire, fum­bling toward satori as I let my mind van­ish in the per­fect ran­dom­ness of the flames, she bus­tled about in the kitchen. A dim cor­ner of my mind, ignored, heard the rat­tle of met­al on met­al as she retrieved a tiny pot from its niche deep with­in a cupboard.

The last log had shriv­eled into hot white coals by the time she came into the den with two thim­bles of strong, sweet cof­fee. I’d nev­er tast­ed any­thing so fine, I told her. It’s Turk­ish cof­fee, she told me.

In silence, lis­ten­ing to the hiss and crack­le of wood turn­ing to ash and vapor, we drank.