11. July 2008 by Ben.

“Back Stage Tour*”

How exciting!  A back stage tour!  I wonder what that little star refers to.

“* for insurance reasons the tour does not go back stage.”

Wait, I’m sorry, what?

I’m certain there’s a Simpsons line to this effect, but I can’t think of the precise wording.

Posted in Quips | 1 Comment »

11. July 2008 by Ben.

Dear Frontier Airlines,

I do not believe you are using the word “lowest” correctly.

$219.00	lowest fare	5 seats left at this price
$189.00		1 seat left at this price

Don’t worry. All elementary school students have difficulty with this concept at first.  One of my own elementary school teachers – I vaguely recall it being Mrs. Magliolo in the fifth grade – taught us a helpful mnemonic device.  The little alligator is very hungry and always wants to eat the bigger number, so 219 > 189 because 219 is a bigger number than 189 is.

With a little practice I’m confident you’ll be able to master this.  Don’t give up!

Sincerely,
Your Most (or is it Least?) Loyal Customer

Posted in Letters | 1 Comment »

11. July 2008 by Ben.

The following command reports the number of files in the 2006 directory, including files in all subdirectories:

find 2006 -type f | wc -l

The following command deletes all the files in the 2006 directory, including files in all subdirectories:

find 2006 -type f | xargs rm

When both commands are in your bash history (left over from when you moved the 2005 directory), you should probably be careful before hastily executing one.

Posted in Programming | 1 Comment »