10:24 - I was reading Michael Connelly's Lost Light yesterday, and I think I've stumbled across a very subtle clue. It came when I read this paragraph, describing a female FBI agent who had disappeared.

"... And she would have been a formidable opponent. She was a highly trained federal agent after all. She was also tall, standing almost six feet tall and weighing a hundred and forty pounds. She worked out regularly at the L.A. Fitness Club on Sepulveda and had been taking Tai-Bo training for several years. Her charts at the club showed she had four percent body fat. She was mostly muscle and she knew how to use it."

That immediately struck me as very odd. Off the top of my head, I thought that a man in superb condition, such as an active-duty SEAL, might have 6% body fat. A woman in equally superb physical condition might have 12% body fat. As it happened we were visiting our friends Paul and Mary last night. Mary runs marathons regularly. She stays in shape by running fifty miles or more a week--the equivalent of two marathons--and is literally nearly Olympic-class for her age group. I asked Mary what percentage body fat a female marathon runner would have. She told me something in the 10% to 15% range. When I asked about the possibility of a woman with 4% body fat, Mary replied, "Only if she's dead."

So, assuming that the 4% figure is correct, the rest must be mis-direction. Rather than a female FBI agent in superb condition, this character must actually be a male, anorexic, transvestite zombie. I haven't finished the book yet, but I can't wait to see how Connelly ties it all together.

Our washing machine died yesterday. I was doing a small load of mom's clothes, and when I went down to put them in the dryer I found the washer was still full of soapy water. I jiggled things around a bit, hoping that it had just gotten jammed (which it's done before), but no joy. I pulled the clothes out and put them in a bucket, hoping I'd find something tangled in the agitator or something. Nope. I tried resetting the dial to the part where it empties and spins, but it just sat there buzzing at me.

My first thought was to fix it, but it's probably not worth it. It's definitely not worth a service call, because it's 23 years old. I hate it when our appliances die premature deaths, but it looks like the best alternative is to head for Sears and buy a new one. I see that they have a sale on some models right now. The huge capacity ones go for anything from $270 to upwards of $1,000. I think we'll end up with a Kenmore that's a step or two above the basic model. I hope they can get one delivered in the next couple of days.

13:45 - I've been getting some interesting private mail about buying drugs from Canada. Here's an example, from someone who asked that I keep him anonymous.

10:19 - If you have any interest in desktop Linux, go read this document. It's long, but it's well worth the time to read it. I think they nailed it. Of course, the views expressed in this document are remarkably similar to my own, which I'm sure prejudices me in its favor. Oh, I might take issue with some minor points and some estimates of timeframes, but overall I think they have it right.

One paragraph did strike me as funny, though:

Especially in the wake of the Iraq war, there is an increased weariness of a United States perceived by people throughout the world as heavy-handed and controlling. People and governments around the world are eager to have a greater degree of independence when it comes to maintaining their IT infrastructure, rightly regarded as a critical part of their economic infrastructure. Many governments are weary about backdoors and other hidden features in US-supplied technology;

I think they meant "leery/leeriness" or "wary/wariness" rather than "weary/weariness". There is a word to describe the combination of two real words into a new hybrid word that conveys the essence of both words, but I forget that term. This isn't that, precisely, because the two words they've combined are synonyms and because the resulting word is a real word. 

I don't know why I can never remember that term. I have a similar problem with the term that is almost but not quite a synonym for acronym. Although it's often misused for any set of initials, an acronym is properly a set of initials that can be pronounced normally as a word. For example, SMART (Self-Monitoring And Repair Technology) is an acronym, while AGP is not. There is a term for those not-quite-acronyms, but I can never remember what it is.

Barbara and I headed down to Sears yesterday afternoon to buy a new washing machine. Washing machine makers have apparently standardized industry-wide on the following terms to describe capacities:

There's something deranged about perverting the language to the degree that "extra-large" means the smallest available.

At any rate, we ended up with a Super Capacity Plus Kenmore model that's five models up from the bottom. There were 34 Kenmore models available, ranging in price from $260 to $1,000. The one we ended up with was $400, which included delivery. Sears charges $50 to deliver, and waives that fee for any model that sells for $399 or more, so I'm not sure why anyone would buy the $350 model. But the important thing is that they deliver it tomorrow, so I'll be able to do laundry again.

As usual, Barbara and I descended on Sears like a SWAT team. Others may enjoy shopping and comparing, but we walked into the store, headed for the major appliances section, told them what we wanted, paid, and got out. It was 18 minutes from the time we left our truck in the parking lot until we returned. I think I beat my record from last year when we bought a dryer by a minute or two. I absolutely despise going to the mall.

13:07 - Regarding Intel, good news and bad news.

Bad news first. Contradicting earlier reports, this AnandTech article says current 875P and 865-series Socket 478 motherboards will not be compatible with the Prescott-core processor, due to be released later this year (and probably to be called the Pentium 5). The processor itself will initially ship in Socket 478, but apparently the voltage regulator modules on current motherboards won't support the Prescott-core processors. I haven't even bothered to ask my Intel contacts whether this is true. Intel's policy is to refuse comment on such things, and I've learned that there's no point even trying.

But there is some good news. This ExtremeTech article reports that the new version of the Intel Application Accelerator software (download here) adds support for RAID 1 for those motherboards that use the 875P or an 865-series chipset with the ICH5R southbridge. The previous version of the software supported only RAID 0 (striping), which provides faster performance but less data security than a single drive.

RAID 1 (mirroring) replicates data to two drives. If one of those drives fails, all data can be recovered from the other drive. RAID 1 is typically about as fast as a single drive or a bit slower for writes, but nearly as fast as RAID 0 for reads. Since most people read a lot more than they write, a RAID 1 array offers much of the performance of RAID 0, but your data is much better protected. With large, fast ATA drives selling for very little money, a lot of people may find it worthwhile to install RAID 1 even on personal systems. (Note that RAID 1 protects you only against a drive failure; it is not a substitute for backing up).

16:02 - Thanks to Alan, one of my subscribers, who cleared up the question that had been bugging me. The word I was looking for was "initialism".

9:18 - This is the funniest web page I have ever read in my life. It's called thingsmygirlfriendandihavearguedabout.com, and it's a series of snapshots from the life of Mil, a British guy, and Margret, his German girlfriend. It's a mistake to read it while drinking your favorite beverage. Trust me on this. I sprayed my Coke out through my nose, which is even more unpleasant than it sounds. The page is very long, but it's well worth the time to read. Actually, he could have had a much shorter web page if only he'd named the domain thingsmygirlfriendandihavenotarguedabout.com.

Disclaimer: If you are male, as most of my readers are, and particularly if you are married and have been for some time, you will find yourself nodding and thinking, "He got that right...". This guy's girlfriend, whom he's been with for 14 years and with whom he's had two children, is even less prone to using Earth Logic than most women. Two small examples, chosen more or less at random:

"... I'm about to cycle into town and Margret stops me as I'm setting off. 'Will you bring back that filing cabinet from Argos?' she asks. Can you, ladies and gentlemen, imagine a person cycling two miles through Christmas traffic on a mountain bike carrying a filing cabinet?
Margret can."

and

"... The proof is in the details, not the broad sweeps, so let me illustrate the, 'Do not fall into the trap of believing you exist in the same universe,' idea by the smallest moment, on the unremarkable Saturday that has just past. We are sitting together on the sofa. I say
'Brrrr - I'm cold.'
Margret replies
'Where?'"

If you are a woman, you will probably hate the page, at least at first. Barbara's first reaction was that the guy was ridiculing his girlfriend, but that's not the case at all. It's more like a long, loving, prose version of Billy Joel's She's Always a Woman. But much, much funnier. Dave Barry had better watch out. This guy is funnier than he is.

In checking the Internet, I found that this guy is a phenomenon in England. His web page turned into a book deal, and eventually into a job as a newspaper columnist. The book is fiction, but is clearly based on Mil and Margret. I may pick up a copy.

10:39 - I have more women readers than I thought, apparently. A couple didn't like the site, but most were good humored about it and thought the site was funny. More than a couple took exception to my crack about "Earth Logic". What can I say? It's something every man knows to be true, but few are brave (or foolish) enough to speak aloud about it.

Here is an example of male versus female logic. Barbara has a pinched nerve on her right side, which was causing her a great deal of pain until she went to the doctor and got some muscle relaxants and other stuff. Exerting force with her right arm can aggravate the problem. So, the other night, we went over to visit my mother, bringing a take-out dinner along. As we were getting in Barbara's Trooper to leave, I reached down to release the parking brake, which is between the seats.

A slight digression: Barbara was driving, which she nearly always does when we're together. Probably something to do with that night at a mystery convention a couple of years ago when I drove because Barbara had had a couple glasses of wine. On the way back to the hotel, we came to a major intersection, which was under construction and very poorly lit. I am on a ten-lane road, counting turn lanes, intersecting another  ten-lane road. I was trying to turn left from the leftmost left turn lane of the three turn lanes present into the intersecting ten-lane road. Okay, I admit it. I turned into oncoming traffic, of which there wasn't much, instead of into the proper lane. There was one of those raised concrete lane dividers between the wrong-way lanes I was in and the ones I wanted to be in. Being a man, I recognized my mistake immediately and set out to correct it. I was driving a 4X4, so I simply drove over the lane divider, at speed. I didn't hit anything. There was never any danger that I was going to hit anything. It was an honest mistake. So sue me.

At any rate, back to the story. Barbara turns on the ignition and reaches down to pull up on the parking brake to release it. I say, "Let me do that. You might hurt yourself." Barbara says, "You can't do it for me at work tomorrow, so what's the point?" And here we have the difference between male logic and female logic encapsulated. The man thinks, "At least I can do that for her this time, even if I can't always do it for her. Each time she does it she risks aggravating her injury, so the more often I can do it for her the better." The woman thinks, "He can't do it for me every time, so there's no point to him doing it for me this time."

I confess that I thought this was just an aberration in Barbara's thinking, but the other night when we were visiting our friends Paul and Mary, the subject came up. Paul, being a smart guy (a Ph.D. organic chemistry professor), kept his mouth shut. Mary, a smart woman and also a Ph.D. organic chemist, instantly understood Barbara's rationale. I still don't understand it, and I think it's safe to say that no man alive does either. This is what I mean by Earth Logic. Men are from Earth. Women are from somewhere else. Where, I'm not entirely sure. I'm convinced that we are actually completely separate species that just happen to be able to interbreed.

Note that I am not criticizing or belittling women here. As long ago as my college years, I'd understood that smart women come to correct conclusions and decisions by a completely different process than men use. Men use slow, plodding logic. Step A to Step B to Step C, and so on, eventually ending up at Result Z. Women leap straight to result Z with nothing apparently in between. I don't understand it. I've never understood it. But it is the way women's minds work. I suppose that's what's meant by intuition. An unconscious chained association of facts that occurs at such a high speed that women aren't even aware of the intermediate steps. And if women aren't aware of them, men have no prayer of ever understanding.

Perhaps we men actually are Neanderthals. I mean, think about it. Neanderthals are known for being robust, plodding, and having poor (or nonexistent) communication skills. That means women are the true Homo sapiens. H. sapiens is known for being gracile, fast, and excelling in communications skills.

Some interesting stuff going on on Pournelle's back-channel mailing list over the weekend. One of his servers, Creon, died with an awful sound (with apologies to Deep Purple). When he opened the box, he found that the heatsink/fan retainer bracket had broken and the HSF unit had literally fallen off the processor. Reasonably enough, Jerry was getting ready to go out and buy a replacement processor, on the assumption that the original processor had burnt itself to a crisp. I told him the processor was almost certainly fine, because Intel Pentium III processors have good thermal protection. Jerry ended up standing there holding the heatsink/fan down on top of the processor while he fired up the system. It came up fine and ran normally. Now all Jerry needs is either a new HSF unit or some way to clamp the existing one to the processor with the proper amount of force.

During the exchange of emails, Jerry mentioned covering this incident in his column. I sent the following reply, which I think is worth re-posting here, if only to remind people of thermal issues.

You can also mention the following in the column with regard to overheating:

1. Pentium III processors have thermal protection. When they detect an overheat state, they automatically shut down, which may lose data, but saves the processor itself.
   
2. Pentium 4 processors have more sophisticated thermal protection. When they detect an overheat state, they slow down. Even with no heatsink/fan installed, they will run, but at the speed of molasses in February. They can slow all the way down to a few MHz if necessary. The upshot is that you don't lose data with a P4, even if the heatsink literally falls off.
   
3. AMD Athlon/Duron processors are problematic. Until recently, they had no thermal protection at all. Some motherboard makers put a thermal diode on the motherboard inside the socket area, but that was too far away to do much good. Recent AMD Athlon processors have embedded thermal protection, but it is much less sophisticated than the Pentium III, let alone the P4. A current AMD processor is able to save itself during a gradual overheating event (such as the fan failing). But if the heatsink/fan unit literally falls off, the Athlon crisps itself a second later. In fact, the leading cause of DOA AMD systems is the heatsink/fan being jarred loose during shipping. I recommend that before firing up an AMD system for the first time, *always* pop the cover and check that the HSF is secure. Otherwise, there's a good chance you'll let the smoke out, after which the processor neither runs nor smells very good.