The Alarm Which Cried Fire

There once was a fire alarm who was bored as it sat in a college dorm watching the students sleep. To amuse itself it took a great breath and sang out, "Fire! Fire! Clang-a-lang-a-lang-a-lang-a-lang!"

The students came running out of the dorm to heed the alarm's warning. But when they left the dorm, they found no fire. The alarm laughed at the sight of their angry faces.

"Don't cry 'fire', fire alarm," said the students, "when there's no fire!" They went grumbling back into the building.

Later, the fire alarm sang out again, "Fire! Fire! Clang-a-lang-a-lang-a-lang-a-lang!" To its naughty delight, it watched the students run out of the building to heed its warning.

When the students saw no fire they sternly said, "Save your frightened song for when there is really something wrong! Don't cry 'fire' when there is NO fire!"

But the alarm just grinned and watche dthem go grumbling back into the building once more.

Later, the alarm saw a REAL fire spreading towards the people. Terrified, it leaped to his feet and sang out as loudly as it could, "Fire! Fire!"

But the students thought it was trying to fool them again, and so they didn't run out.

At sunset, everyone wondered why the shepherd boy hadn't returned to the village with their sheep. They went up the hill to find the boy. They found him weeping.

"There really was a wolf here! The flock has scattered! I cried out, "Wolf!" Why didn't you come?"

An old man tried to comfort the boy as they walked back to the village.

"We'll help you look for the lost sheep in the morning," he said, putting his arm around the youth, "Nobody believes a liar...even when he is telling the truth!"

All the students died. The end.

Original text courtesy of Story Arts.

Border Crossings, Linux, and Roaches

Stories of people's laptops being "searched" at border crossings amuse me. I particularly like the second comment on the post:

This happened to me once, but it was while entering the US. I have a dual boot laptop. First thing the guy sees is grub. He didn't know what to do and he asked me: "What is that Solaris?". So I boot up Solaris. He looked very puzzled. He was looking for the same thing - porno. He asked where my picture folder was. I opened a shell window and used 'find -type f -name "*jpg"'. It totally freaked him out. :)

I would dearly love to do my part in confusing border agents. This is what they will see if they manage to get as far as my desktop (after a GRUB menu, lines and lines of scrolling text, and a SLiM login screen):


Not much to look at, mainly because there's not much there at all. Fluxbox, people.

In case people are curious, my wallpaper is randomly selected everytime I log in (or when I press Ctrl-Alt-Enter). All backgrounds are images by Blatte. I really like the guy's site, because of his fractals, but also because of his URL. He has roach.org, which is fine, and he calls himself Blatte. The connection? "Cockroaches are insects of the order Blattaria."

And the reason I know this is I once used "blattodea" (largely interchangeable with the order name) as a username for an online dating site, after someone sent me a random link to "check out her profile". Yeah...

Global Warming and Religion

Two highly unrelated subjects, but today I came across a newspaper article about the two.

USA Today: Might Our Religion Be Killing Us?

I've never thought of it that way before, the affects of a large family on global warming and resources. I think there are better ways to save the earth's environment than chastising people with large families though, like starting moving off fossil fuel and directly using the sun's energy, designing everyday items and activities to enforce greener living. If you let someone pick between a car and a bike, of course they'll pick the car. What you need is to make the alternative attractive enough... although, I must say the mileage on the bike looks pretty darn impressive.

But then, of course, I don't really care about this issue. We'll (speaking for all live here) survive.

Look Ma, No Hands!

As my twitter says, this exercise thing is getting to me.

I went for a morning ride today, again to the Botanic Gardens. This trip was much shorter than the last, both in distance (20-24 miles compared to 33 miles) and in time (160 minutes as opposed to an embarrassing 270 minutes). The reason it's shorter is because I didn't get lost this time. Last time I went around a loop in the Skokie Lagoons before figuring out how to continue, and I went past Church to Dempster and had to go back.


The coolest thing about today though, is that I managed to ride without holding onto the handlebars. I kept that going for 100 feet or so, before having to turn a corner. BUT THAT IS SO COOL!

:D

Have Fun!

I realized (some time ago) that I tend to use "have fun" as a goodbye, especially if I know what the other person is doing. If I don't, I tend to use "see you".

There's probably some psychology and philosophy behind it, something about the purpose of life is to be happy (but with restraints like not directly decreasing other's people happiness). Or maybe it's just because I wish I was having as much fun as they're having.

Nah, I think the first explanation is better.

Cycling

Cycling's tiring.

Last week (Saturday 2008-04-05): 37 miles, to Chicago just north of Promontory Point and back.

This week (Sunday 2008-04-13): 33 miles, to Chicago Botanic Gardens. North on Sheridan and Green Bay Trail, south on North Branch Trail with an extra loop around Skokie Lagoons.

Next week (???): ~40 miles, probably down to Chicago again.

Fun.

Spring Break Pictures

Spring break pictures are up!