Jeff got his first piece of unsolicited paper mail from a college (Oberlin) today. I suspect it won’t be the last.

Two years until Freshman year begins….

I spent all day Friday trying to get MoinMoin, Apache, and an IBM-internal authentication/authorization module to play nice together.  I would have been better advised to leave early in the afternoon like everyone else.

Today, I was back at it again; and by lunchtime, I thought I had it nailed.  Until, that is, I showed a colleague, who noted that I wasn’t really using SSL for the userid/password.  And then I also noticed that only the front page of the wiki was visible at the root of the server — all of the other pages were down a level in names.

Fixing those problems took me the rest of the afternoon.  But now I’ve got it working, for sure.  Except for a couple of corner cases, and maybe they don’t matter that much anyway….who needs informative 403 responses, anyway?

I’m ready for another three-day weekend.  Unfortunately, the next one is Yom Kippur!

One of the nice surprises at LACon was to be found in the Con Suite. LASFS stocked the suite with books from their library — books that they were discarding, and that attendees were urged to take home.

Not all of the books were gems, but I kept finding ones I needed. I even read one during the con, The Syndic, by C. M. Kornbluth. I’d read it once before, back in elementary school or junior high — I’m sure I got more out of it this time. I also picked up a copy of Bester’s The Demolished Man, as well as Volume IIB of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. But it turns out I already had both Volumes IIA and IIB in SF Book Club editions, so I guess I’ll pass that one on to someone else.

And I’m still sorting through the books I picked up in the huckster room; I’ve already finished one, Poul Anderson’s Operation Chaos.
Now I’ve returned to the book I was reading before (and during) the con, last year’s Hugo winner, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke.  I’m not quite sure why it’s fascinating, but it is — I can’t wait to find out what happens to English magic.

We’re just back from friends who hosted a Labor Day weekend barbecue and games party.  One of the games we played was the TV edition of “Scene It”.  I thought I’d do terribly, because I watch almost no TV (about the only show I watch routinely is Monk).  But I guess I’ve absorbed more than I realize, because I was able to identify shows like Survivor, The Simple Life, and Major Dad, none of which I’ve ever seen.

I don’t know whether to be proud of this or ashamed, but there it is.

Our not-so-trusty Panasonic PT-52DL52 is flickering more and more every day (we are not alone in this), and it’s getting to the point that I’m giving serious thought to replacing the set (though I’ll call Magnolia Hi-Fi first — that’s where I bought it, and they fixed it the last time we had problems, at a reasonable price).

I don’t want to buy another DLP set (I can see the rainbows at times), and I don’t want to buy a Sony. We still watch enough 4:3 material that burn-in might be a problem on a plasma.

Any suggestions? Any recent experience to share?

[updated:  I don’t want to go any smaller than the 52″ set we have now, and probably nothing over 56″ would fit.]