I almost thought infone might be real.

[pseydtonne]

They just had a commercial for infone, a lower case service that lets you call 'em anytime and they answer you capitalist research questions. "I need a hot tub dealer here in Albuquerque." "I'm lost in Denver and this guy told me to fuck myself. How do I do that?" "What's gramma's number?"

It's a subscription service. The good thing is that it can be your appointment tracker and a bunch of other stuff. Then again, so could a PDA. In fact, it's 411 and a PDA, but you pay monthly. I would just use Google or Anywho, but I guess that's because I can read.

Point is: there's a commercial where a woman says "there's this book I've been looking for for a year. I'm in Boston, three hours 'till my flight. I call... I get the book, I catch my plane."

I am here to call that bluff.

Logan Airport is within the city limits of Boston, but it's not what you'd call close to antiquarian booksellers. Even if I'm generous and say the woman found the book on her first or second call, she'd have to:

1. Leave the airport,
2. Take the Blue Line to Government Center, then any inbound Green train to the outbound Red Line (books are Cambridge, let's face it),
3. Walk to the store (let's even give her the benefit of a store near a T stop, like McEntyre & Moore or Harvard Book Store, instead of something in Inman Square);
4. Get back to the airport;
5. Go back through security.

Even if I'm polite and assume the store was Commonwealth Books, which is on Boylston across from the Common, she'd still have to hustle. She'd also have to find a book dealer not caught up in his own shit too much to sell. This is Boston; that's tough.

Maggie made the point to me that the woman in the commercial didn't say she was at the airport already -- just that she had three hours before her flight. Good point! It'd still be tough.

Speaking of tough, what in the flying shit is with these 7-megabyte partition spacers? Why do they replicate throughout the creation of logical partitions? What did that drive formatting utility do? Why does Disk Druid suck so Gah. I'm tempted to wipe the drive clean again, have a bootable Linux rebuild the partitions, and get it right. I'm tired of the foobamaloo formatting. I want proper partitions. I want to build a tank. If I'm being obsessive or I just flat don't need to care about this, let me know.

-and they stole that theme tune from the Bosstones, Dante

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

dust off, nuke drive from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Or to reclaim space on your HD.

Do you ever read the comments in your posts? :-P

It might be unavoidable

[sml.livejournal.com]

I've seen many drives which will end up with an empty 8M partition at the beginning or the end of the partition table. This happens with debian's fdisk or windows xp partitioning. I'm not sure why this happens, but it might be something unavoidable.

[mkhobson.livejournal.com]

Dear, you're not thinking like a corporate stooge, which is what the woman you describe so obviously is.

She does not take a train, she takes a cab. She merely pauses on the stoop of said antiquarian bookstore (the book is handed to her by a smiling clerk because she's called ahead on her cell phone and paid for it on the cab ride over), hops back into the cab, and is on her way back to the airport.

And because she's flying first class, she gets to go through the short security line.

MM

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

re: the book thing.

there are *two* bookstores inside the security barrier at Logan airport. Obviously the book she was looking for was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the only book they had on sale at either store the last time I was there.

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

I'm reading this one, and I don't understand it. Are you saying I should do a full repartition, or that I should spray it with air and then fling it into the Van Allen belt?

When are you going to call? Call today or tomorrow, dude. I could use a sale. (Tomorrow I'm only here 11 to 6:30.)

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

sorry, just facetiously quoting Aliens, recommending a hard low-level format as the sledgehammer solution.

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

Ah. Man, I can be dense. I only watched that movie twenty times when campus cable played it over and over back in '92.

-"We're in the pipe, five by five."

Playing Devil' s Advilkit

[michigansundog.livejournal.com]

So on Wednesday I got a phone call from my Aunt and Uncle at noon-thirty. They were at Logan and had to be back there for the next leg of their flight at 3pm.

They got in a cab and we met in the South End for a nice lunch, then walked to my place and played with the cat and took photos and went to the roof deck. At 2:30pm they got in a cab back to the Logan.

N/P

Re: Playing Devil' s Advilkit

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

You've proven me to be too jaded by half, and thus you win! That was fabulous. Thank you!

Infone

[(Anonymous)]

I don't use Directory Assistance very often but I resent having to pay $1.25 when I do. That's what the other guys are charging. Infone costs 89c and there isn't a monthly fee like you said. I haven't had to pay for any of my calls yet as the first five calls are free.

I just moved to the States and don't know my way around very well - it has helped me out when trying to find locations in new areas. If you're gonna use directory assistance while on the road and in a squeeze its defo the cheapest.