Misc stuff

[rhu]

Rebooted my Linux server tonight. (367 days continuous uptime; downtime for the reboot was 4 minutes. That's five 9's, baby!) Turns out there were still a bunch of frozen email messages left over from my mid-February woes. So if you receive an email from me that looks like it would have made more sense four months ago, just ignore it. Apologies.

When did WGBH start using canned generic pledge breaks? "Please support this station." Hello? We're WGBH. We provide much of the programming for the rest of the country. The least we can do is produce our own annoying pledge breaks! (Member since 1991)

One of the local churches has had a sign up for the last few weeks announcing this weekend's Newton Pride parade. I found this confusing: was it an LGBT Pride event or an event of the Newton Pride Committee (your basic civic pride-in-our-city group)? I assume the former. If so, isn't it ironic to hide an LGBT identity behind an elision and the generic word "Pride"?

Which reminds me: There was a wonderful interview with Russel T. Davies in today's NYT Arts section. I haven't seen any of Season 4 yet, but if there were spoilers in there I didn't notice them.

I checked out the USGS web site tonight and downloaded a topo map of Newton, and found a route with a slightly less steep ascent to try for my commute home. Of course, the weather forecast for the next few days doesn't look encouraging.

Comments

[sethg]

By calling it "Pride" rather than "LGBT Pride", they spare themselves any future contentious debates about what other groups might deserve to be included in the acronym.

[introverte.livejournal.com]

Yes, but it's still not clear if it's Civic Pride or Queer Pride. As I said to Andrew, I want to know what kind of pansies I'm cheering for when I show up.

(kidding)

[elainetyger.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reminding me. It's just the right time of year for Gay Pride weekend, and I'll have to go down to the waterfront this weekend. Unlike Macy's, the gay fireworks are easily visible from the Hudson River.

[autotruezone.livejournal.com]

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/ is very good for planning out routes for both distance and hills (the elevation feature is turned off by default, but you can turn it on with a checkbox).

Also, Rubel's Boston Bike Map has topo contours, and shows all bike paths, as well as suggested bike routes. Its available at most bike stores. See also http://www.bikemaps.com/