Dan/Дмитрий

A friend suddenly lost her roommate, and is now in search of a replacement.
Please leave me a message if you're interested.

The details: She's a non-snorer, non-smoker, doesn't hog the bathroom, and knows how to tiptoe into the room when arriving late. Would prefer same, of either gender, but is OK with snorers and/or smokers.

Staying at the Embassy Suites, Checkin August 6th, checkout August 10th.
Embassy Suites info.

Just got a call from someone looking for the Free Clinic of the Twin Counties. Needless to say, I'm not it. I learned that my number is on her prescription slip; someone at the clinic had entered their own phone number incorrectly in the database (I'm one digit off). Thank the ghods I live in a low-density area, and have so far only received two such calls in a month. If this was a city of any size at all, my number would now be on thousands of prescriptions, instead of a few hundred.

My ghods, do you people live on LinkedIn?

That is all.

how much do you think this would have hurt?

(Definitely NSFW, once you clue into what's in the photo.)

A friend posted a youtube embed. I watched it, in a great deal of puzzlement. "I didn't know zie was a gamer..."

You know how sometimes youtube embeds don't parse correctly on LJ?

Yeah.

Intended.

Resulting.

Web 2.0:Maintaining healthy levels of insanity on a screen near you.

A one-pager from a journalist friend. Three minutes of your time.

Thanks!

The only surprise in this film was that anyone thought it was a good idea to make it.

A new album by one of my favourite musicians.

We got off the plane from NJ (visiting my parents) in Charlotte, and headed straight to the concert. Despite Kat's tiredness, I think we're both glad we went. As usual, Vienna was spectacular on the stage.

The new CD has a number of excellent tracks competing for the top spot on my personal list, but this one is particularly poignant: No Gringo.

"They say the fence turned round
Now the razor wire keeps us out"



Enjoy.

$180 each, for Worldcon 2009 in Montreal, QC. Aug. 6-10.
See here for details and to set up the membership transfer.
Edit: Sold.

I get it: Sand is natural. Must you belabour the point?

No love,

Me.

The Pest was sitting on the porch railing, just outside the kitchen door, when something spooked him. Next thing we knew, he was up in a tree a good 50m away and 15m up.

Edit: April Fool's?

It isn't actually an April 1st joke -- the birdie really did escape. (I'm not that mean. Hell, I couldn't even leave you folks in suspense for very long before I started feeling too guilty)

Except that was two days ago (on my birthday, with his usual impeccable timing for causing inconvenience) and we recaptured him after about two hours.

( The sordid details. )

Oh! Forgot to mention: While up there, he got dive-bombed by a cardinal. Who then settled down on a nearby branch and the two spent a few minutes trying to decide who was scarier-looking. The cardinal lost (or got bored) and left eventually.

Man, I feel old.

So I have a computer that I *really* don't want to open up unless I have to. Not so much because the innards are scary (which they will be), but because it's a pain to dig out from where it's located.

Said computer desperately needs a memory upgrade. I have an exhaustive FreshDiagnose system report on the machine. The MoBo results from the report are enclosed below. I believe I identified the board in question as the MSI 845G Max, but I'm not sure that is true.

My question, then is two-fold.
1) Have I correctly identified the motherboard? If not, are you able to tell from the provided information what the blasted thing is?

2) What is the top flavour of RAM the board will support? I'm OK with -- in fact, would prefer -- newer RAM that will downgrade itself to the maximum the board will support [1]. As best I can ascertain, the highest I can go are 1GB sticks of PC2100 DDR.

( The specs from the report: )

[1] I want to allow for future upgrade plans and, frankly, old RAM becomes more expensive than current mainstream RAM after a certain point

Pest: *cuddle*
Me: *wastes time on internets*
Pest: *look cute while cuddling under beard*
Me: *plays some computer games*
Pest: *quiet omnomnomnomnom*
Me: *is oblivious*
Pest: *omnomnomnom*
Me: Hey! Aw, crap...
Pest: *looks innocent. Chews on my beard*

Balance for the day: T-shirts -1, macrame +1.

Lighter Into Zippo Hack - video powered by Metacafe

For anyone who hasn't yet seen the numbers.
A selection of expenditures. Bush->Clinton->More Bush.

But hey, , it's in pretty graph form!

1. How the current economic crisis is going to negatively impact the developing countries, as remittances sent home by citizens of those countries working in the western world continue to decline.

2. What growth and development has been funded over the last few years by these same remittances.

(for full geeky effect, click through and read the alt text)
XKCD, as always, nails it.

I'm a wee bit overcommitted at the moment. I've progressed from having too many ducks lined up in a row to something vaguely resembling a bout of Space Invaders.





And now, armed and armoured space ducks are in your head, too.

We are returned from the ocean and mountain views, where much fun was had and much travel was committed.

Details later. Going to work for first time in two weeks.

*wibble*

As previously mentioned, there's a trip to Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver coming up. Below is a more concrete scheduling version.

( cut for the unaffected )

As you all may or may not know, katfeete has a webcomic. It is nifty, so you should all read it (and I'm not saying that out of some misguided sense of spousal obligation).

However. Said comic requires Kat to render fairly large graphic files. The current machine (a MacBook Pro 1.5GHz if memory serves) is not the best-suited device for the purpose. It can take anywhere from 20 min. to 1.5hrs to render a single panel. And since the end result frequently differs in important ways from the preview, correcting problems requires many many rendering passes. Which means I never get to see Kat except behind the laptop.

We're entertaining two notions at the moment:
A Mac Pro (USD$2200 price tag minimum)
A cluster of some sort, spreading out the load

I have a number of questions I hope people can offer insight into.
( Cut for the innocent bystanders )

Thanks!

Hey there, west-coasters. We're comin' over!

Edit: Schedule no longer most current. See here for updated version.

katfeete and myself will be travelling to Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland, in an attempt to scope out the scenery for potential relocation at some unspecified point in the future. Which isn't the truly important part: The important part is that if you're (somewhat) local to any of the three, we'd love to get together!

The plane tickets are already paid for, and thus are the only actual fixed piece of planning. Everything else is largely up in the air. Feel free to make comments as to scheduling conflicts, preferences, or local knowledge that will influence our planning.

The still to be finalized itinerary is as follows:
Arrive: Seattle Airport, Feb. 17, 6:54pm (in theory), Delta Flight 1125. (don't say nasty things about Delta; tickets are non-refundable)

Stay with Kat's uncle in Seattle for 3-4 days. Depart Feb. 22nd for Vancouver, BC.
Stay in Vancouver (location TBD. Avoiding Surrey on advice of a local though) Feb. 22-26. Depart Feb. 26th for Portland, OR
Stay in Portland (location TBD again. Local knowledge people, you're our only hope!) Feb. 26-Mar. 2. Depart for Seattle again.

Leave: Seattle Airport Mar. 3, 12:10pm Delta Flight 1054

I don't usually post memes. Hell, I don't usually *post*. But this one, in light of recent events, is certainly an interesting momentary amusement. The questions are massively US-centric, and I take issue with some of the phrasing chosen, but there you have it anyway.

(As an aside: Is there a reason checkboxes and radio buttons don't even appear in Chrome?)

My Political Views
I am a left social libertarian
Left: 5.82, Libertarian: 3.86

Political Spectrum Quiz


My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -7.73

Political Spectrum Quiz


My Culture War Stance
Score: -8

Political Spectrum Quiz

As I suspect you all know, I'm a geek. (geek code to be provided later)
Among other things, this means I have a thing for office supply and electronic hardware retailers. One of the more fortunate arrangements of this dependency has been my relationship with Staples.

The relationship, I admit, wasn't due to a reasoned, careful comparison of available options and free market-driven choice. Rather, Staples is the only sizeable office supply store within a 50km radius. But at this point, I don't expect to be switching any time soon.

Staples frequently loses out on price, and I've previously passed on the chain when looking for electronics. Most often, I've gone to TigerDirect, a relationship stretching back to when it was still MISCO Canada. Tiger keeps its prices low mainly through rebates. And through charging you painful amounts for shipping, and charging you shipping on returns.

Contrast this to Staples. The return period on electronics is pretty short, I admit -- only two weeks. But the Staples return process is: No questions asked, any reason whatsoever; with a free pickup included.

That would have been good enough, but I've twice now had the following experience: Call to return an item, get told that due to the low value of the item, no pickup will be necessary, and while I will receive a full credit, I can either throw out the item, or donate it to someone who can make use of it.

A cold calculation on the company's part, certainly. But this is one company that was smart enough to turn a small financial loss into a sharp increase in its public image.

Think about it: You aren't calling to return an item because you're happy with the original transaction. Based on experiences with other businesses, you expect the process to be at least somewhat uncomfortable, and potentially fraught with argument and aggravation. Staples takes this negative expectation, and flips it completely. I won't say that I look forward to calling their return line,but I sure as hell remember the experience when I am deciding where to look for my new gadget.

Oh, and to top it all off? The two-week return limit is extended by more than a month for items bought after Nov. 25th and before Dec. 25th. Full points for encouraging Christmas gift buyers.

[This post brought to you by yet another painless return completed a few moments ago]
[Cynic moment: I wonder how much of the helpful treatment is dictated by the size of the account?]

Hi folks.

A question occurred to me today: Given that bulletproof armour and the venerable M-16 are roughly of the same age, has the evolution of the former finally reached a point where it can consistently defeat rounds fired from the latter?

For simplicity's sake assume one round rather than a burst, and an engagement range of 55m (10% of M-16's effective range)

Happy new year!

I, as you may or may not know, live in the mountains. Elevation of about 800m or thereabouts. The nearest major city is about an hour south, but the journey begins with a massive serpentine descent, to the tune of a vertical drop of 400m over about 1.5km horizontally. In addition, the vagaries of local weather are such that the bottom is far warmer and wetter than the top. Gotta love the mountains.

I was reminded of all this rather poignantly last night, while ascending the mountain, after a nice meal at the best Thai restaurant in a 50km radius (also the only Thai restaurant within that distance, but still quite excellent). The approach to the mountain was rather soggy, as a light pre-Christmas/early Hanukkah rain started up. katfeete was following (we met up at the restaurant, hence the two vehicles), and everything was going great until we got about halfway up. And stopped.

Please note that the thing about living on top of a mountain ridge is that there really isn't a non-inclined way of getting home. Also note that the temperature for the last day or two has been rather below freezing. Now think back to the light rain.

I figure it's a minor miracle we'd made it even halfway up the mountain. While a good portion of the northbound/upwardly mobile lane was navigable, the southbound lane was a solid sheet of black ice. When I saw cars crawling at 15kph in the opposite direction, flashers on, I first wondered if a funeral chose a particularly stupid route and time of day. Then, sitting fourth in line behind cars stopped solid and at least one visibly in the ditch, I finally figured it out.

For the next twenty minutes, I had the pleasure of watching emergency vehicles and their occupants try to crawl up the southbound lane, performing manoeuvres best attempted on ice skates. Fortunately, a wide spot (left for that very purpose) was right next to us, and soon there were two volunteer fireman pickups, a full-sized fire truck, a sheriff's dept. SUV, two state trooper cars, and one unmarked police car, providing very festive illumination. Also, going nowhere farther, due to the ice.

This symphony of light continued for about half an hour longer, until finally a massive combination salt truck/snowplow showed up. Chains on and all, the guy managed to get to just below where I was stopped, and from that point, it was slow going. Get out, drop some salt from the back, shovel it in front of the truck. Drive up a dozen metres. Lather, rinse, repeat.

By that point, I got bored and volunteered my services. This is where the society part comes in: Of all parties attending, firefighters and police included, I was the only one who offered to help. I guess I was the only one who wanted to get home sooner. Hell, I was one of only three people to get out of the car at all, and it really wasn't that cold.

The conclusion is rather boring, if happy. No one was hurt, though four or five cars got banged up farther ahead. We got the salt truck all the way up the hill, where he managed to turn around and rolled down the mountain, clearing the southbound lane of ice. The tow truck pulled the unluckiest among us out of the ditch, and home we went. Total time spent in the middle of nowhere: 2.5hrs.

And damn it, had I played my cards a bit better, I'd have gotten a shovel out of the ordeal.

Please, *please* tell me that Word-bloody-2007 did not remove "EditPasteUnformatted" from the *command* list!

So, as some of you may know, Kat is a well-linked geek.
Said geek has (fairly) recently started a web comic based on the setting of one of her books. Said comic was recently referenced in *another* web comic. A somewhat more famous one.
See panel 2 of linked comic. Hear Kat Squee. Squee, Kat, squee!

(No, there was no previous indication that the Foglios knew anything about the existence of Kat's comic. Which is triply cool, because it means she's been linked on the merit of her comic alone.)

I ♥ my geek.

Curried Lentil Soup.

Just the thing for cold fall/winter days. Great to serve while warm, with some homemade bread (Kat's making that part).

Please note the recipe below is doubled, because I'm making the communal lunch for 8 people, and don't have the time to divide it back down.

I use homemade curry powder (recipe to be posted later), and Better than Bouillon canned chicken stock, since I haven't made any stock recently. Try this yourselves and enjoy!

4 T olive oil
4 onions
4 medium-sized potatoes
2 1/2 T curry powder
1 lb. dried red lentils
8 cups chicken stock

Chop the onions and dice the potatoes. Saute in oil until golden. Add the curry powder and cook for a minute or so. Add lentils and stock and simmer for an hour

I know there are quite a few (professional/technical as well as fiction) writers on my list, so I hope you folks are reading LJ on the weekend.

( wherein I ask for advice on writing collaboration )

Thanks!

This time, at the SacBee.

Also, such pearls as this one.

"The contractors who showed up to bid on a job as part of the string were compiled from consumer complaints and from looking at newspaper and online ads, Lt. Dan Stroski of the district attorney's office said Thursday."

Edit: Fixed link to point to new location

My special ballot, which had to be received at the Elections Canada offices in Ottawa by 6pm local time on Oct. 14th, did arrive in the end. On the evening of Oct. 13th. Even next-day courier wouldn't have gotten it to its destination by then.

The insult? A little note in the envelope saying "it's up to you!" and pointing out how it was my responsibility to ensure the ballot was received on time.

And a hearty "f$%k you" goes out to Elections Canada.

No Canadian election vote for me, it seems.

Submitted my request to vote by special ballot on the 3rd, by fax. In response? Silence. No confirmation, no ballot, no nothing. And seeing how it has to be *there* by 6pm on the 14th... Yeah.

Not like I'd have made a significant difference in my riding, thankfully, but still. Not impressed.

I've just encased my documents in a solid block of Carbonite. You should do the same.

It occurred to me a few months ago, "for someone who has a few thousand dollars in pretty much irreplaceable audio files sitting on his drive, I should probably do the occasional backup."

So I did. I'm in the middle of a Carbonite trial. Haven't tried restoring from backup yet, so there will be an update. But so far, it's smooth (though annoyingly Windows-only for the moment and far too reliant on Windows Explorer) and silent. And at $50/yr., a pretty damned good deal for unlimited storage space.

The first backup is slow, I'm guessing because of the encryption process that the files go through. Probably on the server end of the process, so as to not overwhelm the client machine with funky math. Or possibly to discourage people from backing up their *entire* drives. I might still do that, and then we'll find out if it's possible to get kicked from Carbonite for abusing their "all you can eat" policy.

But seriously. If you have significant amounts of work sitting on your drive, and you're as bad as me about backing the stuff up... BACK IT UP.

Hi folks. Slow Food Nation went by in a mad rush of people, cheese, and hills. Fabulous time was had, but it was utterly exhausting. We're recovered in some small measure due to the wonderful labelleizzy and eeyore42, but are just now catching up on sleep after the very, VERY early wakeup for the return flight. Either way, we're alive and almost back to normal.

Which means I'm planning to put up a website.

I get this urge every now and again, but so far have limited myself to going out to look for a web host, doing a search for "$Host sucks", finding a bunch of horror stories, and giving up in frustration.

So... Who are you with? Are you happy with them? Would you suggest I go with them, too?

Same question about registrars. I've got a name picked out, all I need now is to decide who to go with. The default setting (GoDaddy) has a nightmarish interface and a torrent of ads that even I can't stand. But if they're the most reasonable/non-scammy option, so be it. But if you can suggest someone with a glimmer of aesthetic sense... I'll be very grateful.

--Taking the Plunge in VA

So here I was, entering volunteer application forms for Worldcon 2009 (Anticipation), when I saw a name I instantly recognised.

Please note: I only saw *one* name I instantly recognised. So what are all the rest of you doing, sitting on your hands? Come on out, and join the ranks of volunteers! It doesn't hurt and you get a Free Hat*!













*Free Hat offer void where prohibited, or where the offerer is lying outrageously

So tomorrow night, katfeete and myself begin our trek to sunny, windy, foodie town of San Francisco. I know some of you are there. Wanna meet up? We're tentatively scheduled to get together with labelleizzy and eeyore42.

Why are we to be in SFO anyway, you ask? I'll tell you, says I!

The Dairy is an active member of Slow Food International and Slow Food USA. If you aren't familiar with the groups, you should be, if you at all care about what you eat. In short, Slow Food promotes quality, small-scale, artisanal, farmstead, non-industrial food production. Everything that fast food isn't.

The big Slow Food USA event for the year is Slow Food Nation, Aug. 29-Sep. 1 in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza and Fort Mason Center. There will be 15 tasting pavilions alone, ranging (alphabetically) from beer and bread to tea and wine.

We're going to be, unsurprisingly, at the Cheese pavilion, most notably on Saturday. If you can't make it (a distinct possibility, to my regret, as the website claims the event is sold out), we'd love to meet up with you outside of the festival itself, for... Well, you're the locals, so you tell us what's fun to do in San Francisco.

See y'all soon!

Support two local businesses: The Queen of Hearts costume shop and your own.

BEGIN Signal boost

WANTED: Photographer for Royal Medieval Faire on Sept 20, 2008. Reply to sales@queenofheartscostumes.ca with Name(obviously), Hourly rate, Daily rate, and any supplies you cannot provide yourself.

END Signal boost

1) Mirror trick

In a book I cannot recall the name of ( I suspect either Charlie Stross or John Scalzi of being the author though), a weapon is described which is a ground-based laser battery, used to fire on ground-based targets via indirect lines of fire. The trick is achieved by launching multiple, long dwell time mirrors over the combat theatre, and then reflecting the beam off the mirror to strike at the target.

Let's assume for the moment that the issue of getting the mirror to hang in the air at just the right angle has been solved. What is to stop the opponent from using that very mirror to fire on the aforementioned battery? The only possibility I can think of is that the mirrors are polarized to allow only specific wavelengths to be reflected.

The question, then: Is such a specific polarization possible? How fine can it be? Would we be limited to four or five bands at which coherent light carries enough energy to be effective as a weapon, or would the spectrum be split into a myriad possible wavelengths to be used?

2) A light bender
A recent BBC Science in Action report talked about the development of a material that could, some day, be used to produce an "invisibility cloak." The trick is that the material bends light around itself, making the enclosed object invisible.

The question: Would such a "cloak" protect the wearer from being detected while passing between a transmitter and its associated receiver? Infrared, visible, ultraviolet -- I don't care. The only thing I'm wondering about is whether the longer path the light beam must take would be detectible. Or would the object have to be ludicrously large for any detectable deviation to occur?

A recent report says conservatives as a whole are happier than liberals. Why? Because "[l]iberals, claim New York University psychologists Jaime Napier and John Tost, have a tougher time rationalising social and economic inequality than conservatives."

Highlight from the article: "The result: conservatives mix a martini and hit the country club, while liberals write angry letters and stage protests."

Alfie, our conure, likes peanuts. I mean, really likes peanuts. In fact, that's how you entice him to go into the cage at night -- hold a peanut, and he skitters inside all on his own.

That said, he likes peanuts at other times of the day as well. In fact, all times of the day.
So the box of peanuts is never safe.

After he's succeeded in opening the tupperware container, succeeded in dropping whatever was holding down the lid of the container on top of himself (he got into the peanuts, so it's still a win in his books), and entertained us by rolling around the sealed glass jar full of peanuts comes tonight's entertainment.

The peanuts are currently in an open tupperware container inside a large tupperware shelving unit, with sliding drawers. The one with the peanuts was cracked open, but the crack was too narrow for the birdie to sneak in. He persevered, and did eventually manage to slip inside.

Except that the inside was rather smooth, and the opening rather narrow. I decided not to wait until he discovered he was stuck -- it would have been a good while, what with him having gotten his peanuts -- and fished him out. Or tried to. Every time I tried to get him to step onto my hand, he'd do so only with a peanut in his beak. If I made him drop the peanut, he'd climb back down, squawk indignantly at me, and grab for another peanut. I was losing rather badly until I finally got him far enough away from the box that I could wrestle the latest peanut away from him and avoid him diving back in for another one.

That's right, you 4.5oz beast! I won!

So I hear there's this month called August. I hear it used to be a nice, quiet, peaceful month of solemn contemplation and sunshine.

Well, here's what mine looks like.

3rd-10th: Fiddlers' Convention is in town. Think something to the tune of 10,000 people, in a 6,000-person town. Largest fiddlers' convention in the world, incidentally. Traffic this week sucks.

8th: katfeete's college friend comes for a visit, staying with us for the weekend.

11th: Articles due. All three, one of which I've had exactly zero interviews for. Not for my lack of trying, I assure you.

19th-20th: My uni friend and his newly-acquired wife come for a visit.

23rd: Big picnic we promised to attend. May skip that, if the madness level gets too high, but we'll see.

26th: My parents come for a visit

29th: We fly off to San Francisco, to present at one of the booths for Slow Food Nation.

All this with the background (currently at a dull roar) of:

A major cheese competition win -- and I do mean MAJOR
Losing a permanent employee with little to no notice, losing (expected, but still sucks) a month-long employee on loan, and being generally swamped with interest due to the win. Something like four distributors called in one week, all wanting to start carrying the cheese.

Did I mention that I'm still doing interviews for the other pair of articles (both massive, pretty much no word limit), due Monday?

Yeah.

So. How's *your* social calendar?

If you're Canadian and aren't aware of Bill C-61, you should be. In very brief, the bill is a rewrite of Canadian copyright legislation, to the point where it's far, far more restrictive than the US DMCA. FLuke provides a good summary, following a talk by Michael Geist.

That was your PSA of the day. Now, for the project. BoingBoing, rightly, urged people to write their MPs. But as I sat to do just that, I realized that I didn't actually know whether a) there were any related bills that were voted on in the past, and
b) What, if any, was my MP's voting record on the issue.

The project I wished for, then, is the voting record of my particular MP. And since I doubt I'm the only one, the resource I wished existed was a database of voting records for each MP. Current to start, but ideally, past as well.

Know of anything like it? Let me know.
Edit: northbardcomes through. How'dTheyVote.

Now, what the resource needs is a tag cloud...

Howdy folks.

I'm trying to figure out the cheapest way to get to World Fantasy this year, in Calgary, AB. The challenge is in the crossing of the border -- it magically tacks something like 30% to the plane ticket cost.

We're pretty flexible in terms of what we're willing to undertake for the sake of saving some money. Flying into a nearby airport and busing it or renting a car and driving it to the actual location are a possibility. Weird-arse transit points are definitely an option. But, sadly, none of the above has yielded any useful results.

Do you know of any secret transport methods that will get me and Kat to Calgary and back and don't involve witches, flying houses, and magical sandals?

The vitals
Dates: Arrive in Calgary, Oct. 30, 2008 (ideally morning/afternoon). Depart Calgary Nov. 2, 2008 (ideally evening).
Airports potentially involved in order of distance
GSO
ROA
CLT
RDU

And on the other end, as far as I'm aware, it's just YYC

Help!

I have just submitted the absolute worst piece of drek I've ever written for money.

I think I shall go have some whisky¹ now.


ETA: Couldn't have been timed better! Just as I wrote this, an email hit my inbox. For those unaware, I'm a subscriber to Cook's Illustrated, a fine, fine cooking magazine. I'm also a recipe tester for them (sounds impressive, but is actually a pretty large and not very exclusive club). Anyway, the new email was titled: New Recipe to Test: Brownies with Chocolate Glaze.

Oh. Hell. Yeah.







1: "The Scottish maintain that the distinction is clear. What they make is whisky. What everyone else makes is whiskey." Here's to Scotch.

For anyone not aware, we were supposed to be flying to Scotland this Sunday, to attend a wedding.

As far as I know, we're still flying to Scotland Sunday. We're just no longer sure what car we're going to be driving to and from the airport.

Because, you see, tonight the car's driver-side window decided to go on vacation a few days early.

( The (not very) sordid details )

I recently have come to the conclusion that I must expose my readers to more cool and wonderful stuff.

It turns out that I must expose you, dear audience, to scary stuff as well.

So I give you The Good:
A Softer World.
Indexed (with particular emphasis on this post

And The Scary:
The WASP knife. (Gakked from the William Gibson blog)

It's understandable, really. At a mere 142 grams, the package was small, and easy to lose in the chaos of the millions of people passing through Tokyo's Narita International Airport. But this package was special. So special, in fact, that they sent the trained canines to search for it. So special, that the airport security staff had hidden it in the first place.

Not special enough to remember *where* they stuck the bag of weed, though.

The author of this half-baked (see what I did there?) plan is very sorry, he says. The security force in general are just mighty hopeful the lucky passenger returns the package. Pretty please?

Let's just file this in the "can't make this shit up" category, shall we?