Chapter 10

:: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 ::

So I made this automatic posting program for fun. I turned it on last night to post every 32 seconds. Why 32? Because that is the max time that a timer can run. Actually it is something like ... let me look it up. Actually, the book says 64 seconds. Well, 64,747 milliseconds. Which correlates to 64.747 seconds. I tested it on the actual program and it goes up to 65,535 milliseconds, or 65.353 seconds. Hmmm....greater than I thought. I just assumed that the timer control could only go as high as an integer which is 32,767. Guess I was wrong.

Anyway, so it was going to post continuously my computer's feelings. I started it at 5:08 (as you can see from the last 'set' of postings) and it stopped at 5:46. This morning I was afraid that when I got here, the postings would be off the wall. A post every 32 seconds for the 16 hours I was gone would be approximately 1,920 posts. So I was freaked out. I was trying to figure up ways to write the program to go through and delete all of them!

Well, last night when I got home, I discovered that our apartment complex was out of power. Actually, the whole east side of Muskogee was out of power. So Anne and I decided to pack up and go to her sister's mother-in-law's house. Fun times. Before we left, though, our apartment got power back. We discovered it in an unusual way. See, we were going to run last night so I wanted to change into shorts. So I walked into the bedroom to find shorts and flipped on the light so I could see. Neither Anne nor I realized the power was on. So I got my shorts and walked to the bathroom to go potty and I flipped on the bathroom light. Then I turned to Anne and said, "Man, that sucks that we don't have electricity."

Stupid us.

So Anne goes to leave the bedroom and flips off the light and it dawns on her what she just did. She yells out, "Hey, did you know that we do have electricity! I just turned off the light!" Then I realized also that we did have power and we both sulked in our ignorance.

I got to work this morning and my computer had restarted for some bizarre reason. My program didn't run all night like I had figured. Then I called my boss and he said that the office lost power too. So I was like, "Okay, the power must of went off after I left so the posts shouldn't be but a few." Wrong. The computer was on until 5:46, when the last post was made. So how does that work? By 5:30 power was restored to the east side, but in the process the power downtown went out? Hmmm....

Then I decided to post on here about my experiences. I logged onto blogger and started this post. Suddenly I noticed a tiny addition to my create posts page. At the bottom, Blogger has installed a 'Word Verification' feature to block automatic posting. Usually you see those when you sign up for web mail so that the owners can block automatic account creation. Apparently the people at blogger don't like the idea of automatic posting.

Well, poop on that.

http://bloggylog.blogspot.com/

This is a blog that was created for a machine to follow you around and post about your events of the day because you are too lazy too. It has to have some kind of automatic posting. Now, someone please tell me what the difference is?

I'm now led to believe that there are two possibilites as to why my computer stopped posting at 5:46. One is that the power outage somehow rotated around to downtown Muskogee, and two is that Blogger caught on to my mischevious schemes and added the verification piece of poop around 5:46.

Another thing. I'm more led to believe the latter possibility because the aforementioned power outage may have been caused by the storms that rolled through Oklahoma last night. That was around 8 to 9ish. Lets check the system log!

Hold please...

OK, the system log says nothing about abrupt shutdown. Way to go Microsoft.

Hold please...

Well, a little further digging reveals more truth. My computer doesn't log unexpected shutdowns. They are too common I guess. However, Windows 2003 Server Edition does. Heck, that thing won't even allow you to shutdown without giving it a reason. A peek into its event log show that at 8:41:47 pm an unexpected shutdown occured. The last security event that my computer logged was at 8:40. (Apparently I messed up some features on my computer and now every 4 to 6 minutes I experience a security error)

So, I'm guessing that the power outage did not hit downtown like I first thought. Hmm...interesting. So that means that Blogger did install that pesky feature at around 5:46 pm. My program was designed to go to Google after every posting. So even if they did install that at 5:46, my computer still attempted to post every 32 seconds after that. Now if only I had put in the program log before I tried this...

Maybe the EULA says something about automatic posting. Maybe I should have read that before I agreed some four years ago...

Hold please...

This is the only thing that I found in the Terms of Service that they might use to justify the installation of this autrocious apparatus:

You acknowledge that Pyra does not pre-screen Content, but that Pyra and its designees shall have the right (but not the obligation) in their sole discretion to refuse or remove any Content that is available via the Service.

But we will see.

God is good. All the time.
Peace

:: Ben 10:40 AM [+] ::
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