The fun with the troll group continues. But it's actually kind of amusing, really. They've scooped my picture off of my work and personal pages, pasted it onto some not-suitable-for-work pages in a kind of childish way, and have been bugging me on IM to go visit it so they can get my IP address. Of course, I use an appliance to get on the net, so they can't really do anything to me except track where I go when I visit their sites. Probably not too useful to them. They continue to vandalize wikipedia, and naturally have also found my phone number (not too hard to find) and have pranked a few times. There was also some guy who called me up and had some set of interview-like questions, and wanted to broadcast the "interview" over internet radio. No reason not to play along -- its not like it's impossible to find my voice elsewhere on the net. The theory their group seems to be operating under is that I have some kind of vendetta against them, or hate them, or something. As I understand, childish groups like that really have a need to have an opponent that hates them, and their harassment is probably designed to make their opponents do just that, so they can butt heads with an incoherent raging opponent, and perhaps get into some kind of stupid defacement contest. Presumably this sometimes happens between such groups, and they have a 'war'. It's indeed childish, but also kind of funny too. The psychology behind it is probably worth studying -- reminds me a lot of hacker culture, which I was involved in about 15 years ago (I was rather young). Actually, more of the script-kiddies -- actual hackers were different. Anyhow, back to the interview, I answered questions about music I like, video games I like to play, a few about Wikipedia and why I proposed the article about them for deletion, and a really odd question at the end, where they asked me if I thought it was likely that "the Jews" were behind the September 11th attacks. I'm not sure if it was just thrown in there for laughs, or if it means they're rather racist, or if it means they think I'm racist. Anyhow, it's presumably been broadcast on the internet somewhere, although I imagine possibly in some kind of edited form, like the pictures. Anyhow, I do wonder how long this kind of thing will last. If you can take it as lightly as I am, go check out

Oh, looks like IA64 has been hit by another car -- HP is no longer selling workstation-class machines with that CPU. Yes, there are still the server-class boxen, but this really has killed IA64, and AMD has won this battle. Hurrah.

I'm looking forward to this weekend's New York trip with N. It'll be nice seeing the Opera and TMBG... I need to pick up my suit tomorrow from the tailor, and pack.

I've been thinking today about what I want from a house or a home. Design, features, etc. Brainstorming about it is fun... drawing up idealized house plans, sketches, etc. Some years ago, I bought an issue of Dwell Magazine, which really adds charge to the brainstorming.. One common theme between the ideal homes of N and I is an observatory. Hmm.