It's time for another repost of something I posted to eC some time ago! This time, it's one of my favouritest IM conversations ever:

(20:48:12) Person: Excuse me, do you know anything about falconry?
(20:48:47) General Wesc: Why, yes! I raise and train falcons for a living. I am a falconer by trade.
(20:49:31) Person: Oh I'm glad I asked! I want to be a future falconer, I just can't find any useful information on the internet so far. I was wondering if you could help?
(20:50:09) General Wesc: http://everything2.org/?node=Falconry
(20:50:44) General Wesc: 'Acquiring a falconry license in the US requires an aspiring falconer to serve as an apprentice to a federally licensed falconer for a minimum of two years, take and pass a written test, and have their facilities and equipment inspected to make sure that they meet minimum federal and state standards for falconry.' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falconry)
(20:52:55) Person: Thank you! I asked because I have always admired birds of prey, and red tailed hawks most of all, so the zoo saw me outside with the birds. Now I'm pretty glad I work at a zoo because they came up with the idea for a falconer to come in with his red tailed hawk and teach me a little about the sport. At the time I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my life, and I studied falconry, deciding it was something I definitely wanted to do. Thanks again.
(20:53:37) General Wesc: No problem. I'm also a certified everything-knower. I am a know-everythinger by trade.
(20:54:20) Person: I'm not. (:> So, if I have any left-over questions, can I come to you?
(20:55:15) General Wesc: You could, but I know next to nothing about falconer. I exagerate my accomplishments for a living. I am a professional accomplishment exagerator.

And a bit later:
(21:01:26) Different Person: You're a falconer, right? Would you mind answering a few of my questions? *hopes she isn't getting annoying*
(21:01:46) General Wesc: No, I'm not a falconer.
(21:02:14) General Wesc: I'm mre interested in shrubberies. Yes, shrubberies are my trade. I am a shrubber. My name is Roger the Shrubber. I arrange, design, and sell shrubberies.
(21:01:26) Different Person: ...Oh. Well, never mind then, unless you still happen to know a lot on the subject of falconry. And I'll ask you if I have a question on shrubberies.

'Yes, shrubberies are my trade. I am a shrubber. My name is Roger the Shrubber. I arrange, design, and sell shrubberies.'

Okay, some of you may already know about how I've had to teach Firefox' the British dictionary all sorts of unusual words it didn't know, such as I'm⁰ and Mom and Firefox¹. Well, I was writing about a 'Sergeant' a few days ago and I misspelled it as 'Seargent'. Stupid me. Luckily, good ol' Firefox knew what I meant to say Sargent. Yes, that's right, Firefox' only suggestion² for Seargent is some Italian painter from a hundred years ago. This name, they know, but not their own.

Firefox stores my additions in a plaintext file, so if necessary I can take a decent dictionary and parse it into persdict.dat. I don't know what effect this will have on speed or memory usage. Actually, I could probably just make my own dictionary separate from persdict.dat. I'd have to figure out the Affix file, though.

⁰ I actually see this in their dictionary, but for some reason, it was marked as misspelled until I added it myself.

¹ For those wondering, here's my current persdict.dat, commaised:
NaNoWriMo, math, humourous, Ogg, eeMail, Draega, pyromaniacal, nontheist, Fatboy, pomeranian, ruckus, eC, may've, Firefox, username, katana, GMail, slutty, AOL, eem, Zounds, sophomore, Google, Blogger, OMG, usernames, blog, mom, sterilise, toolbar, Yankovic, vulcanologist, Where've, chav, Why'd, quait, Nefeara, we'd've, Internalism, AOLspeak, Everything's, Tanenbaum, Crips, permalink, How'd, nutcase, what'll, eCritters, I'm, goth, Flaillip, long's, Sophomore, towelettes, Elrond, tad, Winamp's, dumbass, recognise, Firefox's, geek, Quaker, Pesce, IM, wanna, chowder, Realising, MSN, unschooling, food'll, cypherpunks, VRML, emo, Physicalism, ECU, Badfinger, Rammstein, Debian, Universalists, burrito, Yay, MxPx, snuck, NOFX, Wesc, VeggieTales, Whoot, Wikipedia, Mom, infinitly, NC, fantabulous, Tanenbaums, codswallop, pissy, IRC, genwesc, Strawhert, Cardassian, marvy, begetting, Chatspeak, Provolone, Elinks, favourite, military's, dang, olds, pomiferous, Luca, Ramones, Why's, okay, Nyrial, perfit, gonna, paddleboats, Galeon, Zeka, Kaceem, Okay, Bizkit, paddleboat, FreeNode, ACLU, bear's, Paddleboats, online, blogging, anymore, Pigface, Hilfa, geekdom, Chocowinity, Reliabilism, WMP, nutjobs, hollered, CJ, lkbm, STFU, sesquipedalian, sudoku, miso, plaintext, undead, Gorillaz, asshole

² I lie. Firefox also suggests 'Se argent' and 'sear gent'.

(Potentially relevant link)

Bloodflick.

You've all had the experience: you've just killed a passer-by with your katana and now it's covered in blood. What to do? These things are, of course, quite difficult to clean, and leaving the blood on their is not an option. It will not only destroy the shine, but will cause corrosion.

Perform this simple manoeuvre! Hold the katana in your right hand, with the hilt close to your hip and the tip pointing down to your left. Slash into the air and watch the blood fly off in an incarnadine arc.

If you're lucky and well-skilled, your katana may now be safely sheathed without inviting damage to the blade or the noto. If not, you will still have to wipe if off.

You are now well on your way to being an Iaido master.. Use this skill only for good.

(Potentially relevant link)

I just thought I oughta mention that for my NaNoWriMo, I have a separate blog. It's full of wit and wisdom and cleverness and nothing at all really, but just let me dream, okay?

I know I shouldn't have, but I named my JavaScript spelling checker function¹ spellcheck(event). This, of course is wrong because it's not for checking spells, it's for checking spelling². But I named it 'spellcheck'. Lame.

It turns out, however, that Firefox 2 uses the same function name for their spelling-checking-as-you-type. I had to rename my function.

Okay, so it took me not long to figure out the cause and fix it. But this isn't a JS1.7 change, so it shouldn't be messing with my scripts.

Fx2 is nice, though. It's much faster and less leaky, probably because Tab Mix Plus didn't support it. This means worse tab behavior, but I'll survive. Or I could try the RC.

¹ Not so much a spelling checker, as a tag parser for some forums I use. Convenient to type in, e.g., '[Staff]' and have it translate to a link to the staff list.

² Seafood node 1.

Since I've already turned this blog into a boring pile of crap by posting one of my dreams a couple days ago, I figure I may as well post about the most terrifying nightmare I've ever had:

My hard drive was full.

Now, I actually forgot about this nightmare for a few days, but when I remembered, I had to go check to make sure it really was just a dream. It was, of course.

Whew.

Thomas de Mowbray was the first Duke of Norfolk. His mother, Elizabeth de Mowbray, Baroness Mowbray and suo jure 5th Baroness Segrave, was the eldest daughter of Margaret Plantagenet, Duchess of Norfolk (and being the eldest daughter of someone who died 1399 makes you one old lady!) who was in turn the eldest daughter of Thomas of Brotherton, 1st Earl of Norfolk, was the seventeenthish¹ child of Edward I, [former as of 1307] King of England. Mr. Edward was a tall bloke. Actually, only 6'2", but they called him 'Longshanks' anyway.

Anyway, Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk got in an argument with Henry of Bolingbroke, 1st Duke of Hereford (who's most famous for usurping the throne to become King Henry IV and a title for a couple plays by that English playwrite.) So, Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk got banished (along with the future king). He's featured in aforementioned playwrite's play named after the guy who banished him.

But I'm not here to tell you about Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk. My point is the other Thomas de Mowbray, this one being the fourth Earl of Norfolk. And he's the son of the guy I just rambled on and on and on about. Thomas de Mowbray, 4th Earl of Norfolk was beheaded, by which I mean deheaded.

Now, the point is, this headless man, Thomas de Mowbray, 4th Earl of Norfolk, had both a brother named John de Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk and a son named John de Mowbray, who just so happened to be (after Thomas quit due to nonheadedness), the second Duke of Norfolk. (What a numbering system they had in those days! Brits. I tell you.) And he had a grandson, John de Mowbray, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, whose only son was John de Mowbray, 4th Duke of Norfolk. And Thomas de Mowbray, 4th Earl of Norfolk's grandfather was John de Mowbray, 4th Baron Mowbray.

So, in chronological order or something like that:
Thomas of Brotherton, 1st Earl of Norfolk
Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk
Thomas de Mowbray, 4th Earl of Norfolk
John de Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk
John de Mowbray, 3rd Duke of Norfolk
John de Mowbray, 4th Duke of Norfolk

Now, my actual point--and I know I keep saying 'my point is' when it really isn't, but I'm telling the truth this time--is that when I was fairly young, I memorised all the presidents of the US² in order. And I could recognise their portraits.
The closest thing we had to duplicate names were John Adams and his grandson John Quincy Adams.

Yay for living in a young country! (Too bad it behaves immaturely as well.)

¹ Wikipedia lists only five children for Edward I, probably because most died in infancy. One of the survivors (until 1284), Alphonso, Earl of Chester died at age ten, but was still apparently Earl of Chester, except maybe he wasn't actual and is only considered so retroactively. Alphonso's mother, by the way, was considered a 'greedy foreigner' by the general public, but she bore sixteen children and didn't eat any of them, which makes her better than Britain's own Johnathan Swift. But she's not Thomas of Brotherton, 1st Earl of Norfolk's mother. Thomas of Brotherton, 1st Earl of Norfolk's mother was Marguerite of France.

² Yes, I know Dukes and Earls and junk aren't analogous to presidents. Shut up. I needed something to post, and this is it. It's also the longest, most boringest post in the history of this blog. Gosh golly gee whiz, who the heck will want to read this mess?

You have to write to them and tell them not to do stupid things. They probably won't listen, but you're obligated to try.

In 2001, I told my reps 'Pay UN dues. UN good.' A few months later I told them 'RIAA bad.' About the same time, I wrote to say 'SSSCA bad', so they renamed it.

One of my former reps voted against the USAP AT RIOT Act, so I wrote to say 'You good', which was a refreshing change. Then in 2005 I wrote other reps to let them know that 'Nuclear war with Democrats bad'.

Of course, the actual letters tend to be a few hundred words, not just two words.

Dreams are usually boring. But this was lucid. It's still probably boring. But I've not posted recently, so I'll post this:

Okay, I was taking photos. And people I knew online were there. I think. But then my camera ran out of power. And was almost full. So I had empty it out onto the laptop, but I was aware that this was a dream, so I was all 'can't I just decide it's been done? You know, fast forward?' but I knew I couldn't 'cause I'd know I hadn't really done it. So I thought 'Well, how about I've written a tiny scripts to handle it for me?' and that was okay, but the camera wasn't totally full; that wasn't the problem. It was out of power. And recharging takes a while.
I don't think it occurred to me that I could run out and buy a second battery. Or maybe it did and that was unacceptable as well.

Lucid dreaming sounds fun until you discover your mind is so logical that it won't even let you bend reality in your dreams.

Though how I copied photos from my camera when the batteries were dead, I don't know. I hadn't a chip reader. And this was internal memory.

(Potentially relevant link)

I had some fun with the Google Image Labeler a month or two ago and some more tonight. It's fun.

Only, sometimes:
* An image won't load. Major annoyance.
* My partner won't do anything. Maybe they quit.
* My partner will do stuff, but somehow, he's incredibly stupid.

Tell me I'm wrong.