I just got this precious phishing e-mail, warning that my Gmail account is going to be closed if I don’t confirm my identity. I love the Ring-like seven day warning, and the “warning code” that appears in the lower left-hand corner.

I’ve installed a lot of memory in desktop computers over the years, but this is the first time that I’ve tried to install memory in a notebook computer. I’ll go ahead and warn you that it’s pretty difficult to get the SIMMs seated properly. My thumbs are really sore from pushing those suckers into the slots! After the first attempt, when I thought I had them seated well enough, the notebook just wouldn’t boot up. Luckily, the memory slots are fairly easy to get to — you just remove the battery and unscrew an L-bracket that covers the slots. On my second attempt, the memory was seated properly and the MacBook booted up just fine.

After the upgrade, everything seems snappier, and I’m confident now that it was a worthwhile investment. From the time I start the VM under Parallels, it takes just under fifteen seconds to “boot up” to the Windows login screen, and once I’m logged in, programs that should start up quickly do so. The Activity Monitor also reports that Parallels is using up a lot less CPU since it’s no longer having to swap out to disk so much. If you’re currently trying to run Parallels on a computer with 1Gb of RAM or less and it’s not working well for you, I can strongly recommend this upgrade.

My friend Charlies provided me with his archive of about 9600 e-mail messages from the mailing list (in mbox format, if you’re familiar with it) and so the first challenge was to decide how best to import them into DEVONthink. I ended up writing a little Ruby script to chunk the file into separate HTML files (one per message) and then imported them into a new DEVONthink database. So far, so good.

Next, I wondered how well DEVONthink’s “Auto Group” feature would stand up to the challenge of grouping this volume of data. I tried a couple of small samples — say, selecting a hundred or so messages and auto-grouping them — and it finished the job in a few seconds time (and it did an admirable job of grouping them, I might add). But I did wonder what the “big-O” level of complexity was for this operation, and if would cause my MacBook to burst into flames if I ask it to auto-group all 9600 items. But I charged ahead and tried anyways.

I selected all of the message items and asked DEVONthink to auto-group them. The first pass, in which it “compared text” for the items, took approximately 20 minutes. The second pass, in which it actually grouped the items, took another 35 minutes. So, close to an hour’s worth of processing on my 2.0 GHz MacBook with 1Gb of RAM — but it did finish. Note that these are all relatively small files; I’m assuming the problem becomes progressively more difficult with larger documents.

I was a little surprised, and disappointed, by the results. It did create 303 new groups, each of which contained a handful of messages — presumably with each group corresponding to all of the messages in a given thread — but it left the remaining 9000 or so messages ungrouped. I think I’ll try again to auto-group those remaining messages, but I assume that it will take another hour to do so and I’m not sure what to expect at the end of the run; will it attempt to construct groups for those items this time?

Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 06:43:50 -0800 (PST) From: mindyfine on 43 Things <mindyfine@gmail.com> To: lyle@knology.net Subject: mindyfine has invited you to do something with them at 43 Things

mindyfine has invited you to do the following at 43 Things:

Help Ariah Win $10,000 in the My Office Makeover Contest @ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8985887/

Message from mindyfine: I saw one of your things is to change someone's life. You could make a HUGE difference in my husbands life by helping him win $10,000 to help pursue his small business plans...

I suspect that people have been abusing 43 Things since day one, but this is the first time I personally have experienced it.

As I was walking around, I noticed one booth that seemed out of place. This booth was also present at last year’s Street Festival, so I wasn’t entirely surprised to see it again, but still. Rather than taint your decision process, let me just take you on a kind of virtual tour of the Street Festival and see if you notice anything unusual.

1. Park at the church parking lot and then walk down that little side street that leads into historic downtown Madison, where the street festival is held.
2. Hang a right and see the table set up with fresh fruit, as well as jars of locally made honey and sorghum molasses. Boy, that looks good. Might have to stop by this table on the way back.
3. Walk a little further down and see a fellow who is a professional storyteller. He’s taking a break right now, but he is selling one of his CDs.
4. Up ahead on the right is one of the city’s fire engines. They’re letting little kids get up on it and have their picture taken. The kids seem to be having a lot of fun. I bet my two year-old nephew would seriously get into climbing around that fire truck if he were here.
5. Time to cross the railroad tracks over to the adjoining street where there are more booths. Here’s the Salvation Army, with their little red bucket, collecting money for disaster victims. Their lone saxophone player is playing “April in Paris”, and doing a fine job of it. I stop and put a twenty in the little red bucket.
6. Ahead on the left are the Raelians, described by Wikipedia as the largest UFO cult in the world. Next door to them is a lady selling various handwoven items with the logos of different football teams.
7. Further ahead, up on the hill, is a tent where art work by local school kids is displayed. I stop by to check it out (and to enjoy the shade for a few minutes). As always, I’m amazed by how talented some of our local young artists are.
8. I leave the art tent and pass the mayor’s booth that I mentioned earlier. He’s talking to a small group of citizens and pointing out something on a large map of the city.
9. Hey, there’s my friend Steve! Hi, Steve! Steve tells me that his girls played with one of the bands earlier this morning and so he came out to hear them. We talk for a few minutes and then go on our separate ways.
10. Up on the left is a big stand selling lemonade, hot dogs, funnel cakes, you name it. All of that bad stuff that you only ever eat at places like this. It’s a little too close to lunch so I walk on by for now.
11. Ahead on the right are the Madison County Democrats, their table not too far from the Republican Women of Madison. They seem to be peacefully coexisting.
12. I round the bend and cross the railroad tracks again, heading into the home stretch. A group of cheerleaders and someone dressed up as a dog pass by. The dog is wearing what I think is a fireman’s helmet, so maybe he’s some kind of safety dog. I chose not to ask him.
13. Heading down the street, I pass several games, like a beanbag toss and a fishing booth. Finally, I turn back down the side street I came in on and head back to my car.

So I was disappointed to read this afternoon about a lawsuit that Keillor’s brought against a blogger for a t-shirt that parodies his show. When you consider the show’s tradition of poking lighthearted fun at people from all walks of life and political persuasions, Keillor’s reaction really just reinforces the stereotype of the humorless liberal. I’d like to believe that these are the actions of an overzealous lawyer, that Keillor’s not aware of how petty this makes him look, and that he’ll still take the opportunity to retract his cease and desist order against the blogger and his Web site, but it doesn’t sound like that’s going to happen.