Friday, May 19, 2000    Does anybody remember a TV series in the late '70s about Lucan, a boy raised by wolves? I don't think it lasted an entire season. It may not have lasted an entire half-season. Lucan was incredibly strong and fast, and highly ignorant of civilization. A condition every 10-year-old boy aspires to. (Aside: that stuff's fine for kids, but it freaks me out when adults go for that Rousseau noble savage junk when presented in more sophisticated forms.) I couldn't find anything on the web about Lucan -- but I did find the unofficial Quark home page (Quark was another short-lived late-'70s show). Adam Quark, played by Richard Benjamin, was a garbage collector in space who had one mis-adventure after another. I loved this show. I wish Nick at Nite would show it -- a 4-hour marathon would do the trick, there were only eight episodes. PR: VA Linux Servers Support Victoria's Secret Cannes 2000 Fashion Show Webcast. Ah, Linux is a force for good in this crazy, messed up world.

Thursday, May 18, 2000    Sheila on the anniversary of the Mt. St. Helens eruption: "I remember looking out the living room window and seeing a big mushroom cloud of ash, which then settled all over everything like a fine powder." ZDNet News: Microsoft's 'Clippy' a security nightmare? "Yet the friendliness of the Office Assistant hides a great deal of power. In fact, it's essentially a back door for Microsoft to allow macros that can take control of a PC and help out users." ZDNet News: Looking for a pot of gold? Go to Seattle: "Boosted by lucrative software jobs and a bullish stock market, high-tech workers in Washington earned an average of $105,000 in 1998, the last year for which there was comprehensive data." New Jersey (!) came in second, California third -- but neither were even close to Seattle. Forget the analyst's reasons for the salary difference -- it's the rain. Get to the root of Linux's file system. A quick tour of Linux's directory structure. Via oreilly.linux.com. Archipelago: My trip to San Francisco or Marvin, the taxi angel: "Of course, just for an added tweak, everyone around me slept like the world would stop if they didn't fulfill their sleep mission. Bastards."

Wednesday, May 17, 2000    It's a girl! Congratulations to John and Indigo. Halama pitched a complete game shutout in 86 pitches, facing just 29 batters. It doesn't get much better than that. In other Mariners news, they've signed Rickey Henderson. The Dewbie: "My primary goal with Linux in general is to get it up and running, so that I can get t-shirts." Sprezzatura: Go to Italy. "Italy is every bit as romantic, as sensual, as grand, as intimate, as disorganized, as luxurious, as simple, as sophisticated, as earthy, as its reputation claims; except that everything is more so than anyone can imagined: a certain drama attaches." Mariners beat the Twins 9-5 last night. Mariners regain first place in the AL West. Don't click here unless you want to be grossed out. If you can stomach it, it's oddly enthralling. www.stinkymeat.net TV The 2-hour season finale of Beverly Hills 90210 conflicts with a new Voyager and a new West Wing. We've got two VCRs. As insane as it sounds, we may watch one of the shows and tape the other two. Hello, my name is Brent and I'm a TV addict. People say that TV is mostly garbage -- and they're totally right. It's worse than garbage, so much worse than garbage that there are no words for how bad it is. But there are a few, very few, good shows. (No, 90210 isn't one of them -- the season finale is a cultural event.) It's good that TV is mostly worse than garbage. If it were mostly good -- were high quality the norm, not the rare exception -- we'd be in a lot of trouble. Imagine that there's something genuinely worth watching every hour of the day. The economy would collapse from the loss in productivity. I kid thee not.