Eric Covener’s Journal

Why haven’t you subscribed to Michael Ian Black’s blog?

What’s on my iPod? Your dick.

Asking somebody what kind of music they’re into is exactly the same as asking them what their sign is, an attempt to discern something meaningful from the meaningless. What possible difference does it make? What are you going to learn from me if I tell you I like U2? That I’m into debt relief?

And there’s just no good answer. Turning the situation around, if I ask somebody the same question, here’s what I’m thinking based on their answer:

Jazz – douchebag
Classical – douchebag
Metal – douchebag
Country – douchebag
Rap – douchebag
Pop – douchebag
Classic Rock – douchebag
Christian Rock – douchebag
Alternative Rock – JUST LIKE ME!!!

And Why aren’t you reading his book?

New (remake) zombie flick: http://www.containthetruth.com/

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/wake/story/1191403.html

No more “Inner” and “Outer” for Raleigh’s Beltline. Soon it will be Interstate 40 and Interstate 440, east and west.

The state Department of Transportation is about to make good on a long-standing promise to get rid of the Inner Beltline and Outer Beltline signs that get lots of motorists mad, confused and lost.

A $1 million DOT sign contract to be awarded this fall will give Beltline drivers a new sense of direction.

Since 1996, road maps and signs have applied twin names to the opposing halves of Raleigh’s 24-mile freeway circuit.

The Inner Beltline runs clockwise. The Outer Beltline runs the other way.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1190105.html

A Troubleshooter tipster recently complained about the number of street signs his neighbors are posting of the “slow down, children playing” variety.

The writer of the e-mail, who lives in the Five Points area of Raleigh, said he finds the signs distracting and tacky. He thinks they are illegal, especially when attached to city speed limit signs.

He’s correct — at least about the legality of them, says Larry Strickland, the city’s inspections director.

I wonder what cause this hero will take up next — fighting Megans Law?

What in the name of bouncing baby Jesus is going on in the Geico commercial with the Caveman and Billie Jean King?

• Why does the Caveman think he’s winning?
• Why is he surprised by the sponsor on the scoreboard?
• Why is he offended?
• Why doesn’t Geico just drive to my house and take a shit in my mouth instead of putting this commercial on the air?

Edit: The 1% that makes sense is the Caveman retiring the match when he sees it’s sponsored by Geico, but that still leaves 99% that makes a 4c Seasoning commercial look topical.

A snoozer with a couple big laughs; save your ludder. Should have seen this coming after Seth Rogen stunk up Superbad.

Almost as good as Bert and Ernie do Casino:

I was debugging a perl script that invoked lots of external commands and checked return codes along the way. Somewhere in the course of debugging, I decided it would be a good idea to dump the output of one of the subcommands to a file.

I appended 2>1 | tee log to the command invocation, because this is a pattern I use in a terminal for running a very similar script (whose progress I want to track but still be able to get at it in a file).

But, when you add to the pipeline instead of just redirecting with the regular operators, you actually clobber the return code of the entire pipeline.

Compare:

false; echo $?

vs.

false | tee log; echo $?

vs.

false > log; echo $?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-techblog8-2008aug08,0,2837557.story

Its function is exactly what the name implies: to alert people that you have money in the bank. I Am Rich was available for purchase from the phone’s App Store for, get this, $999.99 — the highest amount a developer can charge through the digital retailer, said Armin Heinrich, the program’s developer.

Once downloaded, it doesn’t do much — a red icon sits on the iPhone home screen like any other application, with the subtext “I Am Rich.” Once activated, the user is treated to a large, glowing gem. That’s about it. For a thousand dollars.

Apple, which didn’t respond to requests for comment, apparently had some problems with I Am Rich. After initially approving it for distribution, the company has since removed it from the store.