More spam poetry

Cleaned out my spam again, deleted the via*ra stuff out, and this was what was left. Random, bizarre, strangely beautiful.

Just answer my question

We only have 15 minutes between classes to pack together our equipment, move to another part of the building, and set up the computer or whatever in the next room. Not a lot of time, and I usually spend the time also reviewing what I will be doing while I am fighting with the beamer.

I am in the lab trying to coax my laptop to connect to the Internet. Stu Dent enters, he speaks German with a Russian accent.

Stu: Where do I get the login forms for these computers? [in German]
Me: We passed them out on orientation day. [in English]
Stu: Where do I get the login forms for these computers? [in German]
Me: We passed them out on orientation day. [in German]
Stu: Where do I get the login forms for these computers? [in German]
Me: [$%&§] What program are you in? [in German]
Stu: The first semester. [in German]
Me: [$%&§$%&§$%&§] What program are you in? [in English]
Stu: The first semester. [in German]
Me: [$%&§$%&§$%&§$%&§$%&§$%&§] What program are you in? [in German]
Stu: International Complexification
Me: Hey Stu, you better get used to speaking English, because many courses in that program are in English!
Stu: Where do I get the login forms for these computers? [in German]
Me: We passed them out on orientation day!!!! [in English]
Stu: I just want a login form for these computers. [in German]

He leaves.

I return to fighting with the beamer, now one minute to go until class starts.

He returns.

Stu: What is your name? [in German]
Me: [I give him my name and add that I am a professor. In German]
Stu: What is your name? [in German]
Me: I just told you my name, it's [my name]!
Stu: I'm gonna report you to the dean!
Me: [Smile. I'm the vice dean.]

Ah dear. I don't think he will survive the semester. The form is also available on the web site, if you didn't attend orientation. But that would involve navigating the site.

Google Wave: Is it fun yet?

One of my Web 2.0 thesis students invited me to Wave so that he could have someone to wave with. He gave me an invite, so here I am. Duh. What do I do now?

I put a pic in my profile, and then Google told me:

This is exactly the way I want it. Thank you.

Men who Hate Women: The Movie

Just saw Men who Hate Women on DVD. We bought it in Sweden because we just missed the first movie in the theaters and the second one wasn't to be out until we were gone. The Swedish Embassy showed it the night before it opened in German in Germany as Verblendung, but I had handball that night, so only WiseMan saw it. So since he is up in Stockholm meeting with all sorts of folks, I made a great dinner and then curled up.

Condensing this massive volume into a movie, even a longish one like this one which clocks in at 2 1/2 hours, is a difficult task. A lot of the very many side stories that Stieg Larsson so craftily wove into the story to lead you astray had to disappear. Also, the journalism involved in producing the story is collapsed into a party at the office and some headlines.

But the movie is very well done, great music and the two main actors do an excellent job - they fit right in with the ideas I had in my mind about who these two were, although I had Mikael down as being a bit handsomer. But Nyquist is sooooo well-known (for example in Så som i himmelen) I suppose he is just handsome by definition.

Do see the movie - but read the book first, because it would spoil the book to know how it turns out.

Fun with the Pre - not

Okay, Pre is out of the box, SIM card is activated, I am logged on. I'm using one of my many Googlemail accounts that speaks English, I was using this one for the Android in order to upload my contacts.

My Mac Address Book always asks me to put in my contacts last name first, so I do, and it sorts nicely by last name. Uploading to Googlemail they were written in the field "Lastname Firstname", and the Android managed to understand this. The Pre, however, reads the fields as "Firstname Lastname", so now everyone is stored under their first names! Duh, like metadata hasn't been invented yet! All right, I'll just sort my data by "Firstname", and we are back in business.

Now let's hit the calendar. My alter ego is allowed to see all of my calendars. And indeed, soon my little Pre (I think it needs a name soon) has a list of all the calendars - but it didn't take the colors I have assigned! In my Mac iCal *and* with Google calendars I have work appointments in green 'cause that is the school color. Ah, okay, I can assign the calendars colors. Why don't they use the ones I already have assigned? Grumble. But still no dates. Maybe it needs some time to download my years worth of data.

The gestures are nice and smooth, though. The positioning is off by a city block. I was at work, though, when the picture was taken, my car is not there, just the neighbor's. My garden table is out, though, so it was in the summer.

So, let's calculate the way to work. Duh. Berlin has a gazillion streets with the same name. It calculates the one to the street in the alphabetically first listed part of town. Okay, try another street nearby. Okay, sort of. It says 20 minutes (hahaha, fit of laughter at that) and routes me through the worst traffic jam part of the way. No thanks!

I manage to get the WLAN hooked up (save on small download amount, 200 MB before it gets throttled, that's nothing these days) and fire up Twitter. Now I need a real Twitter app. Typing with my thumbnails is kind of, well, strange. But the gestures kind of grow on you.

Will continue this saga....

Update: the calendar still won't behave, but I got it hooked up to the eduroam at work today - very painlessly. But ohmymy, it needs a lot of electricity, must be plugged in every night!

Error: "Frau Prof. Dr." does not exist

I was just at the O2 store to get my new Palm Pre this afternoon. The guy gave me page 4 to sign, and I asked to see pages 1-3 as well. He handed them to me, and I saw that it said "Herr Dr.". I did a quick body check, but I appeared to be unchanged from the morning. I requested that this be changed, and suggested that he enter in "Frau Prof. Dr.", the whole 9 yards as a sort of compensation.

He cheerfully did this, then sent me off to shop while O2 did a credit check on my. I 'm sure this is a plot to get us to spend money, which of course I did because I found the cute peacock I don't have in my collection yet.

On returning he got out my precious box, scanned in the bar code, pressed the button - and got an error. Hmm. He tried it again. He laughed. I asked what was so funny. He turned the screen to show me - "Frau Prof. Dr. is not a valid title. Please select a valid title from the list!" Except that the list did not let him either edit or select.

He called the central office. They suggested starting over. He started over, but again: no such title. He called back - there has to be some way to get this solved! He was put on hold, and eventually he was put through with someone. He explained the problem, and spelled the title for the guy on the other end. Then he was asked to restart the system. Now it worked!

It turned out that they had actually gotten hold of a Real Programmer with access to the database on a Saturday afternoon. He had added the title "Frau Prof. Dr." to the database so that the transaction could clear. The only version in the database had been "Frau Prof. Dr" (without the final period).

Aren't you glad they so rigorously check for errors? But O2 does get extra points for solving the problem in real time.

Poetic Spam

I was wading through the spam in my private E-Mail account (our spam killer at work does a really great job) and had clicked on all of these to have them deleted. I realized that these lines actually make a rather poetic statement, only the line in German seems to be a bit out of place.

The rest is just bizarre and seems to be just random words taken from the Internet (except the male tool bit).

Maybe I can start a new genre: found spam poetry.