Okay, so I try not to lift stories straight off of Slashdot, but this is amazingly cool.

The article, from New Scientist, talks about the work being done on supercavitation, essentialy, creating amazingly fast underwater projectiles and, conceivably, ships by creating a standing cavity in the water that the object flies through, instead of relatively dense water.

As interesting as this article is simply on its own merits, I like it because it shows another example how an area we think is relatively hammered out, underwater travel, can make a huge leap. It's things like this that give me hope for interstellar travel, and these guys are just the ones to take us there. Well, it's more likely than this menagerie.

It makes me wonder if "What to do if you're floating in a vacuum" is covered in The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook.

Sorry for today's downtime. I was building office furniture and reorganizing my office. Along the way the power cord was tripped, and I figured it was just as well not to power back up until everything was done.

It's funny how some things keep getting put off. I've been making an earnest attempt each day to go to the library and take a practice GRE to get ready for Monday's test, but something necessary always comes up, and tomorrow's library hours aren't ideal, but hopefully it'll give me a chance to work on my vocab flash cards.

Another feindish distraction is O'Reilly's Mastering Regular Expressions. No matter how much you think you know about regexes, this book will teach you more. I love O'Reilly books, and this one's even better written than most, with a really good balance between history, challenges, and new information. It's intended to be read cover to cover, then used as a reference, and I don't think it'll be far from my desk for a while.

Already my long perl scripts are getting shorter, and my short ones can sometimes be made into egrep one-liners.

PS: If you've no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry about it. regexes are just things geeks like to use to impress other geeks.

I was in high school when I got my first car, an '84 Toyota Camry. Being 16, I treated it as a bigger, portable version of my school locker. Stuff accumulates, windshield flyers put into the car never make their way out, and books and all kinds of junk find their way into a less than watertight trunk.

All in all, it's a bad deal.

In '97, eight years and two cars later I finally bought my first new car, and hit upon a new philosophy: the wind test. As any convertible owner knows, an object at rest tends to stay at rest, unless it's in a convertible on the freeway with the top down. Well, with a sunroof and two passenger windows, I wanted the same freedom, which means thinking of a car not as a locker, but as a backpack. Not that backpack you took around junior high, filled with crap and that apple you forgot about two weeks ago, but the backpack you carefully pack before going hostelling overseas. Only hopefully with a little more room. The gist here is that everything should be deliberate, and if it's not, it should be gone.

So (and I apologize for all the rambling) I'm taking the wind test principle to my apartment as well. I'm sure part of it has come from owning a cat that likes to get into everything (and at this moment is meowing at me to help her down from a shelf she managed to get up to herself) and part is from looking at too many home furnishings catalogs and design mags, but they just never seem to have clutter, and rather than spend thousands imitating the furniture in the room, I'd rather spend hours recreating the state of the room.

I've heard the same advice from three organizational specialists, so I'll repeat it here in case it helps even one person:

There are three rules to organization:

1. Everything in the space should have a place where it belongs.
2. There should be only one place that each item belongs.
3. That place must be easily accessible.

If any one of these three rules is absent, it gives an opening to entropy, and entropy is all bad when you want organization.

Well, I'm still working on getting my apartment towards passing the wind test, but I suppose I should take a break. I'm taking the GRE on Monday, and I've still got some studying to do.

To all those visiting hoping for the illicit shots: Apple's officially announced the G4 Cube, so go take a look.

Okay, I promise this is the last IKEA post (unless I find any of the glass panels in the boxes are broken), but I'm having an IKEA building party today!

Like Ranchers of old (and Amish of present, I suppose), I'm hosting the yuppie equivilant of a barn-raising! Building bookcase after bookcase and an überdesk, what could be more fun or bonding for friends?

Apple's announcing a new computer to their lineup tomorrow, the PowerMac Cube. They also have some beautiful displays on the way. Check AppleInsider.com for more, or take a look at Apple's site after noon tomorrow.

Or at least it will be soon in California.

Take a look at your proof of auto insurance card. There's a good chance it give brief directions on what to do if you're in an accident. One of the items is usually, "Don't admit guilt or apologize." The rationale is that saying "I'm sorry" can be admissable as a confession in court. Unfortunately, not saying you're sorry results in a much higher chance that you'll be taken to court. Sort of a karmic catch-22.

Anyhow, a bill pushing its way through the California legislature will remove any implied guilt for saying you're sorry.

It makes sense to me. After all, my friend Evan had his car stolen this morning. The first thing I said when he told me was, "I'm sorry" but not because I did it. It's a pretty shallow world if the law is so cynical that nobody could feel sympathy towards another person unless they were the reason for the pain...

Well, to all those curious, the actions from Apple are real (it's not a rumor-site publicity stunt) and I was asked to remove the two images purporting to depict Apple products from my site.

All I can say is I've never seen them work so hard at quashing something that wasn't a real product, so with any luck we can see these things for ourselves tomorrow during the Keynote, or perhaps next month at Seybold SF.

Sorry for the runaround!

Hard at work on structural updates to the site... Well, as hard as one can work with a sleeping kitten on your lap.

Also, IKEA's fially delivering tomorrow morning. (Actually, later this morning!) So much to do!

PS: Saw X-Men. It was really, really good for what it was, but it felt as brief as a comic book. It could have been more epic.

Sorry for venting to you. Please feel free to ignore, but for the curious, this was (and continues to be) my IKEA Experience:

IKEA Log:

Dear Sirs:

This is a log of my IKEA experience.

April 30th: Ordered and paid for Effectiv Desk and Verksam Chair. Total cost: $830. Estimated delivery: 3 weeks.

1st week: Reserve $1400 in Bonde shelving. Told most of it is on backorder, due in one week. I'll receive a postcard in the mail when items are in and will have 10 days to pick them up.

2nd week: Emily had her Effectiv desk (ordered at the same time) delivered to her home free of charge.

3rd week: No word.

4th week: Call IKEA to find out if desk is there. No extentions at Emeryville, so Los Angeles call center sends a fax to Work IKEA in Emeryville. No response to fax.

5th week: Get call center to fax Work IKEA again. No response to fax.

6th week, Thursday, June 8th: Told Call Center I'm leaving the country for two weeks in 5 days and I need the furniture before I go. Asked Call Center for corporate number, ask them to fax Emeryville marked extremely urgent. Get a call back from Daryl. He says the items are in and shipping will call back. I get a call from shipping. I tell them I have to have it by Tuesday, June 13th. They say they'll call me back within 30 minutes with a confirmed day and time for delivery. Never received a call back. Have no way to call them.

7th week, Monday June 13th: Using voicemail extention Daryl gave me, I leave a message telling Work IKEA that I am going out of town until July 1st, and since items can't be delivered, to hold them and not sell them away.

10th week; Friday, July 7th: Back in town, I go to IKEA. Following up on the reservation for Bonde furniture, I'm told that they have discontinued their reservation service. They look up my reservation number and find my name and address, but no items reserved. Ironically, all the items I want are in stock, except for the 28x57cm Bonde Bookcase in Beech Veneer, and 2 two-drawer Bonde inserts and 2 three-drawer Bonde inserts. This is ironic because these were the only three items that were in stock when I made my original reservation, and now they're backordered for 6 weeks.

I purchase the available items ($1254) and proceed to Work IKEA. Work IKEA was very helpful, not only by remembering me, but by helping add my Bonde purchases to my imminent shipment. Proceeding down to shipping, I pay for and get my Bonde shelving, and pass it to IKEA Home Delivery where, after some confusion, it's incorporated into my Work delivery. Delivery is scheduled for Thursday, July 13th.

11th week: After not receiving the expected call by 6pm on Wednesday July 12th, confirming delivery window for the following day, I call the Call Center, where they tell me my delivery window is between 9am and 12pm.

Thursday, 1pm: No delivery. I call the Call Center and they connect me to Emeryville Home Delivery. Emeryville informs me that my pallete is marked for customer pick-up, and they're waiting for me to pick it up. Informed of their mistake, we schedule another delivery attempt for Monday, July 17th. Triplechecking shipping invoice, I notice two purchased items missing from the shipping manifest. I call in to Work IKEA to verify that these two items will be included in the shipment.

12th week; Sunday, July 16th: Received call from Home Delivery confirming delivery window between 9am and 1pm on Monday.

Monday, July 1th: Receive shipment. All boxes are stacked against the wall so when asked to sign the manifest, I verify that the two items not on the original manifest made it on and arrived, which they did. Later on in the day, moving my boxes to begin construction, I find that two of the three table surfaces for my desk (Items 30012742 and 84865508) are missing. I currently have calls in to Work IKEA and Home Delivery but have not heard back yet.

Suffice it to say that while every person I have spoken to in this saga (around 25 people) has been positive and helpful, the fact remains that every time I'm told everything is okay, something goes wrong. It's always something that I'm told can be fixed in a matter of days, but the solution creates, or at least precipitates, another problem. It would seem trivial to locate the two missing pieces, either on a palette or in a shipping van, and I hope that it will be, but I think it's just as likely that another unforeseen occurance will delay the conclusion of this matter another week, and then another.

I have put dozens of hours and three months of regular attempts at communication to simply try to spend $2100 at your store. I had the option to rent a U-Haul 6 months ago and purchase these items from the Burbank store and drive back up, but though I needed the furniture, I thought it would be less hassle to wait until the Emeryville store opened. In hindsight I can see how wrong I was.

Early on (6th week) Work IKEA was kind enough to waive the $55 shipping fee because of the three week delay, and I thank you for that. Now that the delay has grown three times as large however, I'm hoping for a symbol that will restore some of my faith in IKEA. I've been a loyal customer of IKEA's down south for 8 years, and I'm looking for a sign that, even though the kinks aren't fully worked out of the system, IKEA retains its commitment to do right by the customer. My friends have all been watching my story as it unfolds (or fails to...) and I would like to give IKEA the chance to make this experience up to me.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Kevin Fox

Again: Sigh...