Catspaw's Guide to the Inevitably Insane

I found the above on a big whiteboard in the hallway outside of my office. Googlers have too much fun. Clearly not enough work to do.

em0ry pointed me to this awesome 3D sidewalk art done by Julian Beever and Kurt Wenner. I've included a few below, but you should really go see it all.

Stuff like this makes me wish I had any sort of artistic talent whatsoever.

After many, many weekends of spending hours and hours of searching (and those who know me well can attest to the amount of time I've devoted to this), I finally found my US passport.

And everyone said I was crazy for not giving up yet.

Who's crazy now, huh?!? (Well, me, still, but not for this reason anymore.)

I know that the phrase "web 2.0" has been so used, and abused, and reabused, and mocked, and parodied, that it's hard to take it seriously anymore. But if all you've ever caught of it is the parodies ("I heard it on the interblag!") here's an opportunity to learn a little about the spirit behind it, in an awesome video:

I just got back from a snowboarding trip with Google. For some reason whenever snowboarders were like "your ass is gonna hurt", I was picturing sore asscheeks. I wasn't imagining that my tailbone was gonna feel like someone was taking a sledge hammer to it.

Anyway, I'm sore all over, covered in bruises and sore muscles, and it totally ruled. I probably can't post pictures, but imagine huts around a fire with hot chocolate, smores, coffee, cookies, etc., and a party mirroring the insanity of the holiday party, and lots of snow and falling while strapped to a snowboard, and you'll start to get a good idea of what went down.

Oh, and it was during the work week.

KevinMarks pointed me at the below comic.

Just replace "Pitr" with "Catspaw".

...But you can't take the Lab out of the Catspaw!

I'm working on my PyCon presentation this weekend, and digging up some old materials from the Citizen Lab to get content for it.

The more stuff I run across, the more that I miss what we had.

Both metac0m and Graeme play World of Warcraft now, so I see them in-game all the time, and I have to admit that I'm extremely grateful that I have that venue to continue to keep touch with those guys.

Here's just a small handful of the old conversations that we had, that make me laugh:

metac0m's perpetual hatred for reporters:

metac0m: You know what I'm worried about? Is that CBC guy is gonna get here and say "Jump like a monkey", and I'm gonna say "no", and you guys are gonna say "C'mon, let's jump like a monkey". And then he's gonna be like "do you have any protest footage?", and we're gonna go "no", and he's gonna be like "okay, let's make some signs and you guys can pretend to march around and protest things. Just walk around with your signs and it'll look like you're protesting. Dance monkeys, dance."

metac0m: You know what we should do? Memorize a bunch of Mao quotes. And then whenever the CBC guy asks us questions, we should respond with 'As Mao says...'

metac0m: You know what else he's gonna do? He'll say "take me to a place you guys hang out", and we'll say "well, we don't really hang out anywhere, but we eat lunch at the Pita Pit all the time", and he'll be like "let's go to Spaha", and I'll be like "we don't hang out at Spaha", and he'll be like "yeah let's go to Spaha and get some great footage of you guys at Spaha. The hackers at Spaha. That's great." I don't wanna do this.

Graeme: You know where we should start hanging out? Spaha.

Unending sass:

Interviewer: So did you learn anything from those you were helping?

Graeme: No, I make an effort not to learn from people.

Making every task fun:

metac0m: "[Catsy], I think we're going to need you to be the point person in terms of this Vietnam data."

Catspaw: "Uh oh. Why me?"

metac0m: "Are you familiar with Vietnam movies?"

Catspaw: "Um. I've listened to the Good Morning Vietnam soundtrack. Does that count?"

metac0m: "No. That doesn't count."

Catspaw: "Oh. Then, no, I don't have enough experience with Vietnam."

metac0m: "In Vietnam movies, there's always a point person who has to go in front when they go through the jungle. It's your turn to do that."

I miss you guys. I love my Google job beyond all reason, make no mistake, but I miss that feeling of being able to leave my back uncovered cuz I knew someone else had it. Remember the dance we used to do, when we went into "talking to the media" mode? We knew what all the questions would be, what the answers would be, which of us was going to answer them, etc.

Every time I lean back in my chair too far, or hear The Darkness, I smile a little. I just wanted to put here, in the archives of my blog, where some anthropologist one day will no doubt be reading to gain extra insight into my character, that you guys ruled. Thanks.

NO INSANECATS FOR YOU! BECAUSE IT CONTAINS DANGEROUS MATERIALS ON DANGEROUS SUBJECTS LIKE...."Games".

Thanks to Javert for discovering this.

For those of us who watch YouTube more than TV, this is just insanely cool.

I'm here in Texas for PyCon this weekend. So far, I've been here nearly 24 hours and have yet to be shot or hung. Could all of the rumours I've heard about Texas be false?

On the other hand, there was a notice at the airport advising passengers that if they plan on transporting guns, they should inform the airport staff. Oh, and there are signs everywhere saying "We Support Our Troops".

But I'm not shot yet!

I consider this to be a total success.

Though far from being able to claim myself as an expert traveller, I think I've reached the point in my life where I'm able to claim myself as an expert in airline security. I feel that I can claim this because in the past year, I've been on eighteen flights and stopped by security for "extra screening" on over two thirds of them.

Based on my experiences of what gets removed from my carry-on luggage versus what doesn't, I've been able to determine a list of Dangerous Weapons and a list of Not A Weapon.

Dangerous Weapons (things taken from me):

A bottle of water
Chapstick
Two needles in a button repair kit
Nail clippers

Not A Weapon (things that got through fine):

A large glass bottle
A laser pointer
A bottle of water (this bottle of water was okay)
A cat
Three feet of strong rope
A travel screwdriver
Me

And that's your lesson for the day about what is and isn't a weapon. Enjoy!

Since I moved into my new apartment, the toilet's had this problem where you have to hold down the handle for a few seconds in order for it to "catch" and fully flush.

This morning I decided that this was unacceptable, so I looked up solutions online.

Turns out that the trick is that you have to shorten the chain inside the toilet.

It now works perfectly, and I feel pretty cool for doin' my own lil' home repair. Even if it took ten seconds and took me nearly a year to get around to it. Go me!