It seems that the LJ RSS feed for this 'blog is or was broken beginning with my entry Another 'Bot-'Blog (posted 26 Feb 2008 at 17:24:32). I'm not sure what the problem is-or-was, but I do note that it uses brackets as text and WordPress makes peculiar use of brackets. I have attempted a work-around by replacing the raw brackets with HTML ampersand escape sequences, though I am doubtful that this response will fix the problem, because WordPress has otherwise demonstrated an obnoxious propensity to replace escape sequences with raw characters.

Addendum (05 March): Using escape sequences for the brackets seems to have fixed the problem.

Sprint has changed the web interface for their mobile phone service customers. Some of the changes increase functionality for the user. Others appear designed to increase security, for which increase I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of convenience.

But they got my back up by refusing to accept my last name as, well, a last name. When I removed its blank space, the name was deemed acceptable. But my last name is two words. A lot of people have multi-word last names.

It's trivial to write computer code that will tolerate spaces in last names, and we are long past the day when computing power was so dear that the cost of running such code was prohibitive. In some cases, an issue can arise because some members of a family spell the name with a space but others do not; however, it is also trivial to write code that, for various purposes, treats names as equivalent if they only vary in terms of blank spaces. (This will also creäte some problems, but these problems are a proper subset of those that would exist if people were simply forced to report their names as if they had no blank spaces.)

The Woman of Interest heard Richard Simmons for Richardson this morning.

Some years ago, I gave three macaroons to Felix. To-day, he made a present to me of those same macaroons. He boxed them, and gift-wrapped them, and presented them to me.

I don't know why he didn't eat them when they were edible. Instead, he let them do, well, whatever, exactly, macaroons do at room temperature over the course of something like five years.

This morning, I smell of garlic. Last night, I ate a considerable amount of the stuff: three bulbs of baked garlic, perhaps a quarter cup of pesto, three little garlic buns, and fettuccine Alfredo made with garlic.

I am to meet my friend Felix early this after-noon at Lestat's Coffee Shop, to return his copies of those movies that he loaned to me so long ago.

The Dell Bluetooth module arrived yester-day. Physical installation seemed to go off without a hitch, the little Bluetooth light on the case now lights-up, and my Linux installation sees the device (when it is activated).

However, the Windows program for setting-up a protocol stack isn't working. It will run for a while, doing no more than showing a little bit of disk activity, then tell me to activate the unit (by pressing Fn+F2). It doesn't seem to much matter what I do at that point, whether it be to turn the device off and back on, or just turn it off; the program repeats its unhelpful behavior.

The Windows package in which that set-up program was included is obnoxious in other ways. Although it promises otherwise, its only function after a failed or damaged installation is to remove all of the installation. And when one seeks a reïnstallation, it insists upon re-writing the firmware of the unit, which takes a fair amount of time. Partly, this is dat Ol' Debbil, software that assumes that the user is more stupid than the code.

Since I now have another Bluetooth device (my cellphone), I am retrofitting my principal computer for Bluetooth capability. I could have got a USB Bluetooth 2.0 dongle for about US$25, but there's a compartment in the case for a Dell-specific Bluetooth 2.0 module, and Dell sells refurbished modules for about US$20 (counting tax and shipping). The module, like a dongle, connects by way of the USB host interface, albeït not with a standard USB connector.

What I'd like to do is get something installed so that the phone would see the computer as a head-set, and the computer would alert me when the phone were ringing and so forth.

Another virtue of installing the Dell module is that the already present, built-in Bluetooth light will actually do something.

I felt another earthquake at 10:23 PST.

Addendum: The USGS doesn't admit to the occurrence of such an earthquake. So perhaps something else shook the building in similar manner.

I felt an earthquake at 06:14 PST.

Addendum: A 3.6 on the border, some miles to the east.

I was asked by the complex manager to pull my plants from the walk-way onto the bridge from the door to the walk-way, and to remove the potting supplies from that bridge; so I have done so. But there just isn't enough light on that bridge for more than one of my trees, so I'm going to have to give them away or surreptitiously plant them somewhere.

The hyacinths, BTW, have mostly done very well this season. Perhaps it was the removal of the 'mums from the pot; perhaps it was the redistribution of the bulbs within the pot; or perhaps it was something else. But the four largest bulbs have flowered very nicely. The little bulb in the center of the pot is developing at a much slower pace, but it seems otherwise to be doing fine.