Pat's Place

Over the weekend Adobe announced a critical security issue in a few of its products. This is a particularly serious issue for machines running recent versions of Flash, Reader, and Acrobat, because it's easy to stumble across something that can compromise your computer: you can pick it up just by clicking on a URL shortener link (e.g. tinyurl.com, bit.ly, etc.) that sends you to a hacker's website, or by just unknowingly visiting a hostile website or opening an unexpected PDF file someone sent you.

I had a TSA Checkpoint Experience^TM at ACY (Atlantic City, New Jersey) last Monday. I made the mistake of wearing cargo pants through the checkpoint, not realizing that this article of clothing is a sure sign of a terrorist. I made it through the magnetometer just fine, but I was stopped upon passing through it by an over-zealous TSA agent. In my heart, I just know that the agent would rather have sent me packing, or made me run my pants through the X-Ray machine; and that he was disappointed that he had to settle for a pat-down.

Greetings LA Times,

I received your email asking me to sign up at your new website today so that I could continue receiving emailed headlines. I was a little surprised to see that you've set up single sign-on through Twitter and Facebook, and more surprised to see that you offered explanation neither on *why* Twitter asked me to make sure I trust you, nor what you would be doing with the broad access to my Facebook data that Facebook provides. (Yes, I read your privacy policy, and it doesn't seem to address the new signons.)

We can't be in two places at once, much less three. But if I could, yesterday I would have been at the venues for Cornell Men's Hockey at the ECAC semifinals; for Cornell Women's Hockey at the NCAA Women's Frozen Four semifinals, and for Cornell Men's Basketball in the first round of the NCAA tournament. It's amazing to see the Big Red doing this well in so many sports at the same time, and I'm glad I was able to make it to one of the games, Men's Hockey.

Today is another day, and while there are important games ahead, with all three championships still up for grabs, it's going to be a long time before I forget how many tournaments I was following the Big Red in on one day.

My beer menu as of 09-Apr2010

• Rogue Dead Guy Ale
• Corona Light
• D. Carnegie Stark Porter vintage 2004
• Sam Adams Irish Red
• Sam Adams Double Bock
• Fat Dog Oatmeal Imperial Stout

Variety is pretty bad right now...time to go shopping!

Mark and I will be cheering on the Big Red Men's Hockey at the Times Union Center this Friday. Yale, with a 2-0 lead over Cornell in the regular season, was knocked out of the ECAC quarterfinals by Brown in three games this past weekend. Meanwhile, Cornell trounced Harvard with a pair of definitive wins on home ice. (Maybe they call them "Crimson" because that's the color of their faces after an embarrassing 3-0 shutout in tournament play :-) ) Cornell will be facing Brown on Friday at 4:00 PM, and the Big Red is coming into the game bolstered by a regular season 2-0 winning record vs Brown. Then again, so did Yale, and hopefully the Red will not be complacent.

While we'd generally stay in Boston for the Hockey East tournament to root for BU, the only reason they're even in the tournament is that the stars lined up just right two weekends ago: were it not for some surprise losses in other games, BU could have been sitting out this year. While we of course want BU to win, between the two teams, I think Cornell stands a better chance of winning its tournament.

Today's customer service commentary comes to you courtesy of Disney, owners of the ABC television network. Disney and Cablevision (metropolitan New York cable TV provider) have been unable to come to an agreement over Cablevision's retransmission of WABC programming. At midnight this morning, Disney pulled the plug, leaving 3 million households without one of the country's major TV networks. The timing was clearly intended to tick people off, as it took place the day of the Academy Awards. This is Mickey Mouse politics at its best, figuratively and literally.

This headline crossed my desk today:
Breaking News: GM to discontinue Hummer brand

Well, it's about time. The military's hummers were downright cool looking when they came on the scene a number of years ago, but the civilian imitation was missing that coolness, was priced for the "conspicuous consumption" crowd, and consumed far too much gas. I can't say I'm sorry to see this monstrosity go away.

The Cardholder Services people called me on two lines at once again. I held cell phone up to speakerphone and the reps started talking to each other. As soon as one of them observed that the lines were crossed, I shouted "They're crossed because you people called me on two lines at the same time. Take me off your damned list." Obviously, they both hung up immediately.

Last night Mark asked me to make him a PB&J sandwich. The peanut butter was too hard coming out of the fridge, so I put it in the microwave to soften it up. I hadn't noticed remnant flecks of the foil seal on the jar's rim, so in went the whole jar. After a few seconds, and and then milliseconds after a couple of flashes, the entire inside of the oven was blazing blue/white plasma. Luckily I was right next to the oven and able to shut it off within 1/2 second. Very exciting! The oven seems no worse for the wear, as it brought a liter of cold water to boiling in a nominal 9 minutes.