Journal Entries
Belgium
Posted Apr 5, 2006
No new Battlestar Galactica until October? What the frak is up with that?
Now, I'm off to check my filesystem using fsck
(Rather obviously testing boundaries . . . 
)
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Latest reply: Apr 5, 2006
*bump*
Posted Dec 25, 2005
Just bumping an old, semi-ranting journal entry (whose relevance expired years ago) off the bottom of my page.
Oh, and the "BBC lurker" thing I mentioned in the last entry doesn't work anymore. 
Sorry there's not something more interesting here.
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Latest reply: Dec 25, 2005
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog . . .
Posted Apr 1, 2005
Or, at least, so says an oft-quoted cartoon from The New Yorker
.
Still, with the wide coverage offered by today's search engines, those aspects of ourselves that we share on the web (through postings on USENET, message boards, h2g2, etc.) are often indexed and made easily accessible to the public. As a result, someone with some time and familiarity with search engines can, with some ease, develop a sort of character portrait of those of us who have left our marks (however small) across the web.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that's been interested enough (vain enough?) to Google their own name--just to see where one stands in the vastness of the internet. Googling Jeffrey M. Smith shows my webpage as #15 on the list (not bad, considering there's not much of any content there). However, in playing around in Google, I discovered another interesting fact:
I am the BBC lurker.
Seriously. Go to www.google.com (I think this should work for www.google.co.uk too) and type in
bbc lurker
No quotes needed. Then, press the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. Now you're back to my page again.
Pretty strange, eh? You'd think that maybe it would take you to the Lurkers' Society here on h2g2--but no--it just comes back to me. Not that its not accurate, mind you (my last journal entry was--what?--two years ago?)
So, I've achieved a small measure of popularity on Google (well, assuming someone else is odd enough to go and Google bbc lurker on their own) through lurking--an activity that is, by definition, not one that is meant to attract attention.
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Latest reply: Apr 1, 2005
Inertia
Posted May 27, 2003
Been up all night, planning to work on catching up on coursework.
Instead, I've spent hours online reading articles on--among other such things--inertia (<http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl852811179d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&selm=3B2FAA02.A5A4D782%40intelligencia.com>
The irony's just now dawned on me. 
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Latest reply: May 27, 2003
Time's not on my side
Posted May 25, 2003
Okay, it is time for the traditional 'end-of-quarter-busy-be-around-more-soon' post! 
As is always the case (consider previous journal entries), the end of the quarter brings a lot of work. This quarter is no different. We're in the final weeks of the academic year, and I'm struggling so as not to be totally exhausted by the large amount of coursework that needs to be done (much of which is well beyond my comprehension 
).
So, again, I'll only be around off-and-on for a while. Normally, this is the part where I point out that I have vacation coming up, and how nice that will be, and how I'll have so much time to spend here on h2g2.
But, now that I'm older and wiser, I know better than that.
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Latest reply: May 25, 2003
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Jeff - Lurker <lurk> - nostalgia overload!
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