Change One Letter

These came to me via email today with the follwing lead-in:

> The Washington Post’s Style Invitational once again
> asked readers to take
> any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding,
> subtracting, or changing
> one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this
> year’s winners:

I thought some were kind of neat and wanted to pass them on. I also wanted to include the link to the Washington Post’s site for your enjoyment as well. A Google search quickly discovers that I am not alone in wanting to blog about these “new” words. After clicking on a couple of the links it is starting to seem like these may have been from 2003. They may not even have been more than one. Most interestingly I found reference to these words from 1998! This is entirely possible as it is a weekly item and they are up to number 592 (meaning they started about 11-1/2 years ago.) Here is a link that will let you peruse the previous 100. With out further ado I present the rest of the email, 1-18 came today, the last 20 some odd I culled from the 1998 reerence:

  1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
  2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
  3. Bozone: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
  4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
  5. Cashtration: The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
  6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
  7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
  8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
  9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
  10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease.
  11. Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
  12. Decafalon: The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
  13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
  14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
  15. Arachnoleptic fit: The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
  16. Beelzebug: Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
  17. Caterpallor: The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you’re eating.
  18. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
  19. Fortissimoe: the musical moment produced when someone serially slaps the faces of the first-violin section.
  20. Tatyr: a lecherous Mr. Potato Head.
  21. Doltergeist: a spirit that decides to haunt someplace stupid, such as your septic tank.
  22. Conratemps: the resentment permanent workers feel toward the fill-in workers.
  23. Whitetater: a political hot potato.
  24. Impotience: eager anticipation by men awaiting their Viagra prescription.
  25. Auto-da-feh: the extermination of heretics via drowning in a vat of pus.
  26. Stupfather: Woody Allen.
  27. DIOS: the one true operating system.
  28. Writer’s tramp: a woman who practices poetic licentiousness.
  29. Taterfamilias: the head of the Potato Head family.
  30. Guillozine: a magazine for executioners.
  31. Adulatery: cheating on your wife with a much younger woman who holds you in awe.
  32. Suckotash: a dish consisting of corn, lima beans and tofu.
  33. Emasculathe: a tool for castration.
  34. Burglesque: a poorly planned break-in.
  35. Genitaliar: an image-enhancing object that can be carried in a man’s front pocket.
  36. Antifun gal: a prude.
  37. Vaseball: a game of catch played by children in the living room.
  38. Eunouch: the pain of castration.
  39. Hindkerchief: really expensive toilet paper; toilet paper at Buckingham palace.
  40. Deifenestration: to throw all talk of God out the window.
  41. Hozone: the area around 14th street.
  42. Acme: a generic skin disease.
  43. Hindprint: indentation made by a couch potato.
  44. Coiterie: a very VERY close-knit group.
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 10

Casablanca (2005)

Ever since I saw Casablanca on TMC last Sunday I have been thinking about how I would cast a remake. As breaktime fodder, a co-worker and I have been working the names of who we would see in the roles, here are our picks:

Role Actor 1942 Actor
Rick Blaine Hugh Jackman Humphrey Bogart
Ilsa Lund Laszlo Catherine Zeta-Jones Ingrid Bergman
Victor Laszlo James Caviezel Paul Henreid
Capt. Louis Renault Jude Law Claude Rains
Maj. Heinrich Strasser Neal McDonough Conrad Veidt
Signor Ferrari John Goodman Sydney Greenstreet
Guillermo Ugarte Colin Farrell Peter Lorre
Sam Laurance Fishborne Dooley Wilson
Carl David Keith S.Z. Sakall

We are thinking of forming a casting company, now we just need a snazzy name…

This Is Why I Had A Separate Miata Blog

I’ve already posted here twice today and neither one seemed like a good one to add the top transitions to, so I’ve made a third post just to keep you updated on what the top has been doing today – nothing.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 10

The Century Mark

Between 6:00 AM yesterday and 6:00 AM today Postini stopped 102 messages from reaching my in box. Do you think that they know this is a business address? Most of the come-ons are about stocks. There are the usual pharmacy ads and of course a couple references to the size of my manhood and it staying power, but I bet 75% of the spam is about stock opportunities, my favorite: Under The Radar Stox from xfxjkvrjmzlt@dora.com.

Winner of best spam message overall today is: don`t be an asshole Tom from ovnhc@move2va.com

Converting a Pivot Weblog to Movable Type

Last May I converted two of my blogs from Movable Type to Pivot, mostly because I was severing from frequent database crashes. I was stuck using the flat Berkley DB because of my web host and I thought a different blogging system would might help. Plus I like a challenge every once and a while. I had over two years worth of entries that I exported and easily imported into Pivot.

While mostly happy with Pivot, there a couple of things I didn’t like. The main one was I could never get a spell checker to work right when posting and boy do I need a spell checker. MT had so many more people developing applications for it and I longed for some of their plug-ins. Plus I now had a new web host that did allow MySQL DBs. It was time to change back to MT. Unfortunately this is not any way to easily export your Pivot entries in a form that Movable Type can import.

I searched the Pivot support forum with no luck. There were a few folks asking the same question, but no one had an answer. Here comes that challenge thing again, so I read the Movable Type manual for importing and I read their import file format pages which led to a series of steps that allowed me to convert my pivot weblog into one of Movable Type.

This procedure worked for me, your mileage may vary. It was fairly time consuming, I converted two separate instances of simple Pivot weblogs into one MT blog and it took most every waking hour of a full weekend.

Good luck.

Letters, We Get Letters!

Back on December 16th I posted about how the email spammers had scored a new record by hitting my work email with 75 messages, well that record has fallen. Not once, but twice in the last two days. Saturday the Postini program blocked 85 slices of spam. Sunday it stopped 92 and was circumvented by 2 more.

The spammers must be busy this time of year, because last Friday’s total came close to that earlier record too, but was just one shy at 74.