It wasn't me. You can't prove anything.


2009-03-31

Poetry Corner

Software Development

At work again.
I can't wait to get to work again.

Making software with my friends.
I can't wait to get to work again.

No one understands.
Software is creating something out of nothing. out of nothing.

No one understands.
Telling a computer what to do is oh so hard. oh so hard.

The bugs come by the dozen.
We knock them down one by one.

We are expected to kill ourselves for the next release.
We have no peace.

We learn as we go on our way.
Our work is never done.

We do this for our families.
Though we miss them as we run.

Twelve hours or more a day.
We work hard then we say.
I can't wait to get back to work again.

Very Local News

  • Ford mortgaged themselves to the teeth in order to have cash on hand. this puts them in a position of dominance. If GM goes in to bankruptcy, and Chrysler is indeed purchased by Fiat, There may be a missing year of U. S. vehicles because it will take that long for the auto parts makers to shake out the loose bits and get on steady ground.
  • I took the job I have now partly because of the good health plan. Now Obama is going to take that away from me. Soon it will not pay to have a good health plan. Every one will end up with exactly the same health plan whether we want it or not.
  • Dell is going to come out with a stand alone server that can have up to 196 gigabytes of RAM. How sweet it is!!! Others are right on Dell's coattails. That's bigger than my hard drive at home.
  • I walked in to work this morning and got rained on. No big deal. It was hot under my poncho. By the time I went to walk around outside after lunch, it was cold when the wind blew.
  • Got home at 21:30. Still have to pay bills. At least there sie some money in the account. Praise God.


2009-03-30

Ignorance

This is why you hunt moose with a moos gun. I don't use a stick and a clay tablet to send in my taxes because they invented pen and paper. Then they came up with with electronic filing. I want a repeating granade launcher to take on one of these beasts. Maybe an M1 Abrams. Not a twig-slinger.

Shit!

What is the noodeling record?

I wonder if I would be any good at this sort of thing. Those are a couple of stout country folk wrestling those monsters in to the boat. What else is there to do on a Sunday evening in the swamp? I'd come out with the fish stuck over my head.

Would you say this is a hill-billy activity? I don't think it will show up in the Olympics next time round.

Very Local News

  • Six word stories
    • Network down, people chatting in halls.
    • Never get to know your heroes. (Did I already do this one?)
    • My heroes have always been cowboys. (Willie Nelson)
    • Sleep, lest yee forget to sleep.
    • Spare the rod, spoil the child. (old saying)
    • Survival is knowing when to duck.
  • Money woes:
    • Nat couldn't get a loaf of bread yesterday because we are broke. We will have to eat our hot dogs plane.
    • The dryer blew up. $200 to fix and $400 to get a new GE from Home Depot. This will take the balance back up to $2000 or $16 a month charge for the privilege of owing them money.
    • Elle can't go to the good school any more. We just can't afford it. No more dance lessons.
    • I get paid Tuesday. that money is already spent.
  • The network was down when I got in this morning. We have a server that has become unreliable the last couple weeks. It needs to be replaced. I was quite proud of myself. I got my MP3s to play from the command line.
  • Went to a buddy's place for lunch. We had salt with mushroom Parmesan, good tea and chocolate cheesecake. I got to hang out with my friends and shoot the breeze. Looked at an overhang they have over their back door. I like it. We something like it on our back door in addition to a storm door.
  • It just pisses me off that the Mexicans cant take care of their border security, so the U. S,. has to install very expensive equipment on our side to prevent bad stuff entering their country. Reparations, the U. S. pays Mexico's debts here and there, open border, ... I'm telling you, it is a frigging out of control fifty first state.
    Wasn't there a comedy not too long ago with The Cable Guy about dropping U. S. troupes in Mexico? Truth stranger than fiction I say.
  • I've had to take Ny-Quil the last couple nights to be able to breath. I'm not taking it tonight.
  • Worked from 07:30 to 20:00 today. Got the nice lunch though. Came home to a big stack of bills I do not have the money to pay. Where is my bail out Obama?


2009-03-29

Watchmen comics

I do not know how abridged the video version of the graphic novel is, but now I've seen it. Way too much psycho stuff and way too few machine-guns. I understand why it would be so difficult making a movie out of this thing.  I do not know how they did it. I've heard criticism of the movie and I can understand it.

I liked it. It was hard to follow. It was tragic. It was brilliant. It was 1985. How many movies are made about 1985 any more?

All in all, I give it a thumbs down.

Sunday Continued

Nat is making prints of the phones she might want. That is one nice thing about obsessing over the G1. I don't have to do the research, it just comes naturally.

Natalie has a great print out retrieval system. She complains a lot though.

Nat says the one Samsung she likes for the music capabilities is not full featured. It does not do conference calling. She is hiding behind all the prints. There is a storm of activity. Well, a lot for this household.

I found videos of the Watchmen graphic novel. Watching them.

Book

I want to have written something. That is, I don't want to write anything, I just want ot have written it. I want to think of myself a

I want to have written something. That is, I don't want to write anything, I just want to have written it. I want to think of myself as an author first and a whatever I am to pay the bills second. Or is that a family man, then an author, then whatever? I never get that right.

Nat likes reading books. I do so enjoy writing this blog. I just haven't had much to say lately because work is taking all my energy. I sit here writing a bunch of uninteresting glop while Nat makes lunch for the family. I need to take out the trash. BRB.

...

Yum. Chicken salad sandwiches an a whole tub was like $5. Go Nat!

The dryer is not blowing hot air any more. There may not be much point in running it. I'll have to start hanging the cloths somewhere. We can't win for loosing.

When will I find time to write anything? Life keeps getting in the way.


2009-03-28

More Saturday

Well, I'm reading blogs like mad and trying to come up with something to say. Then, giving up on that, I try to come up with something to comment on. I've failed on that as well. I'm trying to not be so down or so boring as I have been lately,but things are just not working out that way. I may start up a what the weather looks like out my window section on the blog any minute.

My parents are off trying to sell cool stuff they built. Some of my friends are out doing cool things.  Elle is colouring .Nat is off taking a well deserved nap. She made some awesome chicken and rice in the crock pot this morning. She is under the weather too.

Videos

I'm sick of videos of people driving cars through store and restaurant fronts. This sort of thing must happen all the time because there are a million videos out there on every site on the subject. If I open a restaurant or quick-mart type place I will insist on the side walk vehicle stopper pipes to prevent this thing. That or I'll become some kind of authority and ban the videos from being highlighted on LiveLeak and YouTube. There is like one of these things on the front page every day.

I want more low flight videos like the following. I find them interesting.

I just like them. I don't know why.

Don't get me started on car crashes. Some are interesting to watch .Some are scary. Some are boring. Some make you think they deserved it.

Saturday

Saturday

I intended to go in to work today. I got something done last night and felt pretty good about it. When I got up this morning I was sick with coughing and lots of snot. Thus, I called in sick. On a Saturday. I do not know if any one was really depending on my presents or not. They have my phone number. No one called. I was out to catch up on a few things that didn't get done last week. I put in like sixty hours or more. I worked every single one of them. I didn't get much of a break from start to finish.

I pulled my butt out of bed around 14:00 and mowed the front yard. I ran out of energy, or I might have mowed the back too. The weather was beautiful. I wish I could have gotten the back yard mowed to let Elle out there. Nat doesn't want her playing in a bunch of weeds due to bees and such.

Now, I'm watching movies and listening to blogs. I tried to look for a video of other people having fun on a Saturday, I came up blank. I don't feel so down about being sick on a Saturday.


2009-03-27

Deflation Fears

Governments all over the world are terrified of nagative inflashen which of course is deflation of the eccomonmy. Every year countries aim for about 3% inflation. This is enough to make things that are static slowly deteriorate. Any thing or even service being rendered on a regular basis must increase in price slightly to stay at the same value. This motivates people to invest in new things and keep their money moving around.

Basically, whomever is printing the money, read 'the government, makes 3% on everything that costs money just bye the fact that the value of that item will depreciat by at least inflation and cause movement in the economy.

Deflation causes a spiral. People make less. What they get is worth more to them. What they get must last longer, thus less people are needed to make said things or performing said services. Thus, you end up with people making even less and what they have already is now worth even more to them so they hang on to things even longer and wait longer to spend a dime, look harder for deals, give up on many things all together.

If I get a 3% raise in one of these typical years, that means that I'm staying in the same spot. If I get a 6% drop, which happened to me a couple years ago, I'm really down close to 9% over the year. Those numbers are not exact. Someone can give the exact amounts.

2009 is poised to have high inflation. So high, that the 'experts' may change how they measure inflation just to make the numbers go down a bit better. No one I know is getting a raise unless they switch jobs. The price of everything is going up. This summer, OPEC is going to put the screws to Western Civilization, I just feel it. It is what I would do if I were them. It is the perfect time for an oil embargo. Kick us when we are down and agree to call it off for concessions like help with nuclear power and stock in all those electric car companies.

Very Local News

  • this morning I noticed the jack rabbit again. This is the second day in a row. Yesterday I tried to walk slowly and let the rabbit get away. The little guy tried to run, but that section of roadside is between a fence and concrete barrier next to the road. I ended up chasing the scred thing to the end where it could turn. Today I waited for the rabbit to get to one side and I took off running until I past it and kept going to the end. The rabbit stopped.
  • There is a VMWare appliance out there that is Mac OS X. I forget the cat name it is, but it works. I booted it up under Linux last night and it ran slowly on my machine, but it worked. I surfed the net and poked around in the OS. It won't let me change the screen resolution. Sound didn't appear to work. Flash, YouTube and the like, is unusably slow, to be expected honestly. Not sure I care about that. I want it to check web pages on a Mac.
  • TPeople complain that nano-technology is against God. I wander if the first guy who road a horse had some bearded sage shouting that it was not what God intended. I wander if the first wheel rolled past naysayers on the way to a market. I wander how fire was received on day 3 or so. Are there anti-mobile phone organizations around?
  • Worked very late again. Catching up on my lost episodes. I don't care if we are broke, we are going to get some new phones. Both our phones are messing up. We need some good news to keep ourselves in good spirits.


2009-03-26

Very Local News

  • My thy muscles still hurt. It has been several days since all the knee bends cleaning up a lab. It is getting better. Now I'm noticing another source muscle in my back between my shoulder blades. That is from pulling some packing material apart trying to dispose of it.
  • Europe proposes a migration tax to help offset the use of public services used by the groups of people overrunning the collective. Only people from outside the EU would have to pay the tax. I like it. I like it a llot.
  • The world population is increasing about six million a month right now.
  • Nat made yummy spaghetti tonight. Good stuff.

Ktorrent Sucks, Long Live Deluge

Well, that or the Gnome Panel Notification Area sucks. One or the other. I vote both. Ktorrent is a KDE application and I'm using Gnome. That should tell you something right there.

When I got home last night I checked the downloads. Things were running fine. The power blinked and I had to restart the computer. When it came up, Torrent would not run. That is, it would not come up on the screen. It starts minimized in the system tray that is called Notification Area in Gnome. This time, the icon was not there.

I tired all kinds of stuff like Alt-Tab, command line parameters, removed the notification area and put it back, built a new panel, reboot, google alternate ways to maximize programs, Ktorrent was running (ps -ef(). There was just nothing to be done with it because the GUI was no longer accessible. Nothing worked. No good. I ended up loosing all my current torrents.

So, I use Deluge now. It doesn't suck nearly as much as Ktorrent yet. Give me time. I'll break it too eventually. It does come recommended by people who had the same problem I had. This seems to be the standard solution to the problem above.


2009-03-25

Very Local news

  • I have quite a bit of respect for the BBC. I complain a lot about podcasts having one part at too low a volume and another part at to high a volume. Well, the BBC can't get it right. I should cut the rest of them some slack. it sounds like one of those things that is difficult that seems like it should be easy.
  • Remember when I banged myself on the head with the Maglite last year? Well, I banged my head on the corner of a desk recently on the other side of the forehead in nearly the symmetrically identical spot.  i think something got bumped back in its correct spot.
  • I'm sick of hearing about the AIG bonuses. I'm not happy with it. I do not think they should be strung up either. Settle the matter and move forward.
  • In this age of trillion dollar navies and nuclear weapons, pirates still rule one square millimeter of our seas.
    • Many of the ships being hit fly flags of convenience. Those are constructs of the country to collect some form of taxes while allowing the ship owners and operators to avoid most taxes and labor laws. Now they want someone to do something, but they do not want to pay for it.
    • Insurance companies are profiting from the piracy by charging higher premiums. Some say they know the military will not do anything about it.
    • Nothing is going to change until there is a stack of bodies to rally public opinion. So far few people have died. It cannot last.
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger has been in the U. S. for 40 years.
  • Zypad 1100 Military grade iPhone.
  • People keep talking about new battery technology. I want a gizmo that runs on my belly fat and charges all my stuff. I bet that one would sell like hotcakes. It would probably help the sale of hotcakes.
  • In Open Office 2.3, you can't just open an HTML file in the HTML editor that has "view HTML source" available on the view menu. You have to open Writer, then create a new HTML document to get that viewer up. I'll have to give it a try in 3.0 at home.


2009-03-24

Tuesday

I just don't have much to say. I wish I had more to say. I could complain endlessly if that would make people happy. Things are not bad. Things are OK. We are broke, but so what. It isn't about money.

Our company has some pretty cool stuff on the horizon. We are working like mad to make things good.

I just don't have the energy to complain. That's a good thing right? It is a good worn out though. I mean, I'm getting things done at work. I'm helping build a future. That is a good thing I hope.  It won't always be like this. 

I'm off to bed. Got to get up early tomorrow and start all over again. That's a good thing. Right?


Very Local News

  • I have a hard time listening to some of the tech podcasts because they are mostly done by idiots. Others are done by dolts. Some are agitators, and some are just boring. I like the ones that just read Slash Dot.
  • I got reTweeted. Someone told their followers on Twitter to look at my feed. How cools is that?
  • Yesterday, the cleaning up that I seemed to enjoy in one of the unofficial labs, came round. The guy who told me to clean the place up gave a tour.
  • I made a quad boot box today for Win 2003 32, Win 2003 64, Win 2008 32, Win 2008 64. it was pretty straight forward except you must remember to keep the partitions straight. You must also remember that you end up with two boot loaders. I still have not figured out how to add Linux to the mix without breaking everything.


2009-03-23

Very Local News

  • I got a pare of over glasses sunglasses. They look scary, but they do the job. The only place I can find them is Wal-Mart. They used to be $25 and up. Nat found a pare for $10. They still have $20 fit-overs. They have padding and form fit and are not quite so bug-eye looking. The cheep ones will do me just fine.
  • Knoppix may have gotten the idea. I need a boot CD that gives me a bunch of recovery tools and tons of drivers to get things up and running. I do not need a CD that turns nearly any computer in to a netbook.
  • Long, my office partner at work, saw his first wreck at the intersection in front of our building. He described it as one of the typical screech-crunch happenings we get every week or so. If you work here, you hear the screeches three times a day. The crunch is thankfully a bit more rare.
  • I'm cleaning up a lab at work. It is one of those areas used by fifteen different people to do things that they wee in a huge rush to do. The big boss came round and said to clean it up. I'm glad because that means I can take a bit of time and do it. There is a set of shelves in there that I'm consolidating. There is pile of random stuff that might be useful at some point. There are pieces of things that might, maybe be useful one day. Then there is a pile of junk. Honestly, it is like rummaging through someone else's belongings. I feel a bit voyeuristic, but I have permission. And, it is a bunch of nerd stuff. Surprisingly fun.
  • It takes longer to set up an XP box than it does a 2008 machine. There are a dozen or so programs you have to install to get an XP machine up and running. Vista is not much better. It is many times easier to set up a Linux box in a production environment because it can so easily be scripted.


2009-03-22

Sunday

Woke up several times during the morning with a headache. Felt ill. Went back to bed several times. Finally got up without a headache around 14:00.

Surfed blogs. Watched some movies. Surfed some more blog. Waiting for Elle to get home. Miss her deeply. Our little glob trotter has been off in another state visiting her dad. The cats are even beside themselves.

Nat and I were looking at new phones, but we just don't have the money at the moment. She wants a phone that does music and I want one that lets me do some online stuff like blogging and such. They are pricey, but they are worth it because my phone will prevent me from getting a laptop. I won't need one if I can use the phone to blog and look at documents. The issue will be typing and reading the screen. It won't let me have things read to me.

I changed the cat box, did the dishes. Need to mow both yards. Need to spray the weed killer stuff. Need to do something else. The house could really use a vacuuming, but I just don't want to. It is no wonder Nat walks around in shoes. We need a maid.

The blogs are all about the hypocrisy of the Obama administration and the loss of Obama's popularity points in poles. The man is not perfect and people seemed to think he was perfect there for a while. It could only go down. Many people Obama trusted to take part in his government turned out to be untrustworthy. The guy who was going to run the economy said no thanks and is no saying the Obama is going to bankrupt the U. S.. Obama has embarassed the U. S. with a visit from the U. K. leader recently. Nothing has gotten done except a bunch of rich people getting far more rich, and the government all lying about their involvment in said rich-getting-richer episodes. Then Obama takes a shot at disabled people on Leno. At least Carter could speak an intelligent sentence without a Teleprompter.

It is hitting the fan people. I thought about taking today off. It is getting to the point I do not want to read the news anymore. I'm adicted to the news so that may be an issue.

Back to watching movies.

Flying car leaves ground

The best thing to say about this video si that it is boring. That is what you want to hear when you are talking about flying cars or flying anything for that matter. This was taken during a short test flight and at least proves the thing has some potential in the real world.

Now, make one a blind person can drive and fly. I'm serious. The way things are going, blind people are going to be the only people with jobs soon. Who are you going to sell that thing too?

Found here .


2009-03-21

Evening

Nat is on the T-Mobil site looking at new phones. The g-1 is on some kind of special deal. I wonder if they are ready to come out with the next version soon. I know one phone on the Android OS was killed because it had too low resolution screen. There is a constant state of deflation for electronics and technology. Now e are having a set your phone up for different tasks meeting. Alarms, internet, goodness know what else. I'm too tired to blog. More later when I have some energy.

Very Local News

  • These are a mix of yesterday and today.
  • That guy who imprisoned his daughter and had a bunch of kids by her is pleading guilty. He probably wants to get it over with. The European laws are so liberal, that people are worried this asshole will live long enough to draw free breath. One of the charges is murder by neglect for one of the children who died soon after birth.
  • Built a three OS system today. Win 2003 x64, win 2008 x64, and rhel 5.2 x64.
  • Cysco is now in the hardware business. Their new datacenter box is all about virtual computing. Good move. Now that I know the details, man, I'm thinking they have a good product if it delivers.
  • I dislike working late on Fridays almost as much as i hat coming in on Saturdays. I stayed until 21:00 on Friday and was right back at it Saturday morning. I had to wait an hour for someone to turn up to let me in.
  • Off to have dinner with the family. It is to cellebrate multiple birthdays.


2009-03-19

What exactly is an "executive bonus"

Notice that there is now a 90% tax bracket in the U. S.. This bracket is somehow related to "executive pay" or "executive bonuses". I do not know the details. Welcome to an overwhelming Democrat majority in our federal government. We look more and more like Europe every minute. There are taxes designed to punish success in Europe left and right.

This is how they get ya. Public outrage over public money being used to pay off a bunch of losers who should get docked for their performance, not rewarded has been whipped up by the media and our representatives. After things settle down people will not realize the 90% tax bracket on income that suddenly appeared.

This is how the income tax started. In 1905 people who made over $50,000 a year or more had to pay 5% to the government. That sounds reasonable in 1905 dollars. That must be like a million now. I'll have to find that calculator again. Every chance they get, they will lower the minimum and raise the percentage until voters squeal. Then they take one more bite just for good measure.

This progression in baby steps is called nickel and diming. The best time to get all this crazy trillion dollar spending done is when the fan is covered in shit and the populous is scared. Who cares if it doesn't fix anything because the normal business cycle will take care of that. Or not. If not, someone gets another shot at spending a bunch of money. Remember the Republicans and their version of fiscal responsibility? I do. My wallet still hurts.

What is the solution when you do not trust your government to have your best interest at heart? There are several. You can vote the bastards out. That hasn't work so far. You can over throw the government. That won't work because so many governments would pounce on an internally week U. S. that you would simply end up bringing her down for no good reason. You could vote in a tyrant. That causes stability many times, but no one but the tyrant gets what they want for a long time.

Well, I'm out of ideas. Any help is appreciated.

Very Local News

  • This morning was foggy again. Saw someone pull across an unlit intersection. Half way across, they switched on their brights. The whole area lit up, but your couldn't see anything. They nearly hit the curb. The would have been fine if they had just slowed down and left their low beams burning. Half the cars one the foggy roads had their brights on. Idiots. I'm glad I had my mag light to direct traffic away from me through the mist. It is like a laser in the fog.
  • Had left overs for lunch today. They were left overs from the lunch yesterday. Basically, I had sloppy-joes. The chili was great. I worry it will exact revenge before the day is done.
  • Some motherboards have a slot that looks like a PCI Express x16 that is really a PCI Express x8, but the pins don't go all the way back. I haven't tried sticking a x16 card in the slot. I haven't had time. I would love to know what happens. PCI Express is supposed to be robust and handle it. The card may blow a gasket if placed in the wrong slot.
  • My goodness, I'm tired. I need to turn in early tonight. Maybe listen to my latest book. It seems to put me right to sleep.


2009-03-18

Get Some!!!

The last one is the best. Stick it out. Why have I never heard of this show until now? It is called "Trigger Time" and is on some cable channel. This guy pulls a Top Gear on classic firearms. I like it.

Company Lunch

We had one of those rare occasions today where Nearly everyone had some fun at work.

We had a pot-luck lunch. I brought potato salad. That is and adventure in it's own. Nat and I went to Sam's last night to get a few things including potato salad. We got nearly $300 worth of stuff and no frigging potato salad. I had to leave work thirty minutes early to run to Randal's. When I got there I waited in line to ask about potato salad. They tried to get me to buy some from behind the counter. When the lady asked how much I needed, she pointed me to the tubs out in the refrigerated islands. $13 or so for 6 pounds, 3 of mustard and 3 of 'classic' potato salad. I could have gotten a barrel at Sam's for that.

I signed up for potato salad because you can buy a barrel at Sam's for pennies. that plan back fired. Just as I'm walking away from the sign up list, the big boss walks in and says to the admin "tomorrow I want you to find out who hasn't signed up and make a list ..." I missed the rest of it, but the gist was "bring something". I was not about to show up empty handed.

The whole crew showed up hungry at noon. I made it back just in time and made some jokes about slaving over a counter and paying for the potato salad. I waited a bit longer because I have such a hard time dealing with so many people in such a small place. It is a book room, but every one there has a different conversation going on. It drives me up the wall. I can usually take a meal or a meeting. concerts work for the most part. Just so long as every one is focused on a conman theme. It is random that really gets me.

We have these new employee stand up meetings where people introduce themselves. Someone fell through the crack and Quinton stood up and called them on it. The guy had to come up and answer a bunch of questions This happens all the time at our company. It is a great way to break the ice I suppose. This time, Holly told Quinton to ask the questions. Quinton revelled in the part. He was perfect at it. I nearly choked on my root beer when Quinton said something and I bit my lip hard enough to make it bleed. I had to leave and take care of it, so I missed the rest of that episode.

I did make it back in time for the rap. My phone only shoots a half minute of video so I only got the first verse. Sorry. I'll try to get someone else's video. there were a couple of us filming. This was one of our most fun meetings and the big boss mentioned that it didn't cost him a dime because every one brought something to eat. We still have that small company feeling sometimes. We are growing and have the pains of a large company sometimes too. I suppose that is inevitable.

The Flip was in my bag back in my office. I just didn't have time to run and get it. I really missed not having it in my pocket. The whole second half of the meeting was worth videoing. Hope no one is upset, but it is too good to keep.

I wonder if I win the prize for most mentions of potato salad in one post.

Very Local News

  • Fog was even thicker this morning. The side of the building was dripping when I walked from the bus stop in to the office this morning.
  • I want to write something. There is little boiling up from within that calls to be loosed upon the unwitting masses. The itch is there.
  • I listened to a poem in a podcast about a dog vomiting that didn't suck. It was really about the meaning of life.
  • One of the podcasts spoke of Fedora 10. They said it was great. As I listened I figured out they thing they liked was not really Fedora at all. It was the repositories available. This is consistent. The reason people use Windows is because of all the available software. The same is happening to several Linux distributions.
    Linux, for a while now, seems more and more like Windows. Linux crashes without good reason more often. Linux makes more and more stupid decisions based on popularity over usability or function. The list grows by the day.
  • One of the news texts I get from Yahoo is my horoscope. It said to take a break. I can't.
  • The pictures taken yesterday were put up on Picassa instead of my home server. I'm slowly going to retire the web server at the house. No one hits the web side of it and it ends up going down more from sitting in my house with power outages and me updating things without testing and the like than if I just used some free space out there somewhere.
    The site is over a gigabyte with the tons of pictures. I need a good piece of space to plant that space.
  • The new model for talk radio is going to be podcasts. Limbaugh may go that way. Stern may go that way. The model has been worked by a few already. I like it.
  •  The Fed is a federal agency, right? If the Fed is buying $300  billion in T-Bills, does that mean no one else wants them? China says "We have enough, thank you."


2009-03-17

The reason the internet was invented

What else can she do on that pogo stick?

Very Local News

  • Austria is putting that prick who imprisoned his own kids on trial. There are protests out front of the place that have no relation to what has happened. They just want to leach off the furor.
  • I grabbed a shirt that I thought was green this morning. It turns out it is gray. Drag.  Fortunately, political correctness has forbade pinching. Now, rather than a playful pinch, we get a ridicule and harassment. Well, not really. No one said anything. We are so busy, I don't think any one remembered.
  • There is a twist on that whole volume for commercial thing. Four Dudes on Tech are four guys in different places. They are all at different volumes in the final podcast. It is their ninth effort. Maybe they will work out the kinks soon.
  • Someone estimates the sum of credit available on credit cards (people's available credit) will be halved by the end of this year due to lowering limits and attrition (cutting up people's cards).
  • My eyes are dilated. I'm blowing the text up massive to view even the largest detail. Forgive misspellings or blatantly obvious mess ups. This is why I didn't go back to work. I'm useless with dilated eyes.

Random Snaps of the da

Kelly Resistant Drinking Glasses. We picked these up at Sam's. We went for Potato-salad, but forgot that. The glasses are nice though.

Elle at the eye doctor's office. We played with Lego blocks. It was a moment. I'm assured the rhino is not dead, it is sleeping.

Lunch of Champions. Before the eye doctor, Nat got me a chicken-pot-pie from some chicken joint that I swore I would never eat from again. It was fantastic. Bastards. It is the one thing they consistently fail to mess up.


2009-03-16

Very Local News

  • My right sock wanted to toe of my boot on the commute in this morning. I had to stop four times to adjust it. There was nowhere dry to stop and sit down and take care of it until I got to the bus stop.  It is a relatively new sock.
  • The fog was very spotty this morning. One block was locked up and the next was nearly clear.  It reminded me of a movie set.
  • I had about the worse night sleep I've had in a while. I couldn't get to sleep. When I did get to sleep I dreamt of being an executive at a company trying to make soy squares of different flavors. These were made in the shape of the Enron logo and tasted like flavored cardboard. I was in charge of selling them. Is that a nightmare?
  • A third of all money that is 'off shore' is in a Switz bank that charges fees and sits on the pile. The U. S. government wants the names and details of 52,000 people from Switzerland banks. The Switz are looking at letting that information out. How times have changed.
  • Some say Madoff was so successful at getting people to invest because he didn't just take any one. There were minimums and rules. That jut made people want in more.
  • http is 45 years old. The guy who came up with it was just trying to prevent information from disappearing on the inter-connected computers between universities.
  • The 'Totally Geek Podcast' is cool because the guy uses products like Mt. Dew Code Red, Oreo Cakes and Coffee Cookies. When he doesn't have a sponsor he uses water. The guy has kids and likes playing with toys. How quickly his boys steel the geek toy is part if his rating system. How much better could it be?
  • There is a story about crematoriums taking titanium hip joints out of people to sell on a macabre black market. You couldn't make it up.
  • I think AIG is using the executive bonus thing to hide something bigger. They are not stupid people. I fear they are playing some kind of shell game.
  • Obama pulls another page from the Republican book and says he will not veto a bill that goes across his desk and taxes employer health care coverage. this move means your employer will give you the money, you pay taxes on it as income and you are on your own for heath care.
    yet another u-turn from the Obama administration.
  • "The Stars Are Also Flame" is a sci-fi book about people colonizing the moon and other places. Along the way, they have to change themselves genetically in order to thrive. the book goes in to one group feeling like the others have made a mistake. There is a whole discrimination overtone. I t is hard to read in places.
  • I've tried to watch both the American and British version of "The Office". I just can't make it through an episode. I just end up wanting to watch something else.
  • Eye appointment tomorrow. If I need a new prescription, I'll dump the ugly glasses for something a bit less ugly. Wish me luck.
  • Tax guy tomorrow. Nat is dropping of the paperwork. We should know soon if anything is a miss. hopefully not. We can't handle any unforeseen hiccups.
  • I'm excited about google voice . I for one welcome our web based overlords.  Google is taking on and really competing with a bunch of companies that have pissed me off. First it was Microsoft, which better look out. Now it is a bunch of phone companies that I have no love for. Hell, next it will be Proctor and Gamble. That is another blog entry.
  • Got home and weed-whacked the front. I didn't get much accomplished beyond getting covered in grass related gunk. At least this time I swapped pants before getting a clean pare dirty before their time.


2009-03-15

Plan

I'm not hating this plan.


2009-03-14

No pancakes for me

I turned on a show and they were eating pancakes. Now I want pancakes. I want flapjacks. I want some grittled startch product smuthered in surip on a plate in stack form.

We do dnot have the stuff for pancakes.

Nat is not in the mood to go get any. This is a time that it really sucks to be unable to drive.

There do not appear to be any resturants that delivore pancakes. Nore are there grocury stores that deliver this late.

What is a pancake fiend to do? I'm dying here.

Maybe I'll get over it soon. I'm not even hungry to be honest. I'm just fiending for some

Saturday stuff

Some guy is really pushing a world currency. I imagine a one world currency working about as well as eh Euro has worked. There will be good ties and bad times as long as Germany and the U. S. keep propping up the rest of the world. Ever since Gore wone a Nobel prize, I have absolutly no respect for any one who has one tacked to their name.

Last night the boom-boomers behind our hose were going full tilt. I slept like a baby right through it. I just didn't care. I woke up just before 06:00 to pee and they were still going. I went right back to sleep.

I've been watching The Outer Limits on hulu all day. No matter if I kill every thing else on my network, hulu blips and churps. Well, all day means ever since I got up at 14:00 or so. It felt so good to sleep in. I didn't go in to work because the things I need to get done require othe people and I really don't want to disturb them on Saturday. Work is nuts. We have a couple huge projects that are keeping us all nose-to-grindstone. It feels good to be honest. I don't think I know any one who is dead weight. I can't tell you how many people were driftwood. How did that place stay in business? How does it stay in business?

Natalie mentioned that she hadn't turned on the TV to be a TV in a week. She uses it as a monitor. I don't use it at all any more. It is a really nice TV. I watch TV on my computer. I use hulu, other specific viewers or, if proprietary software does not work on Linux, I find what I want lying around. I get a great deal of use out of the computer monitor. There was an article recently saying the winner between TV and the computer has been the computer. Well, it has been so in this household.

Nat is playing a game. Correction, she is playing two games. One is called Yoville and the other is some MySpace game about gardens. I play Youville because she made me so she would have more 'crew' members. I really hate this. It is nearly a good enough reason to give up on places like MySpace and Facebook. I'm kind of tired being bullied in to playing by my wife.

The folly of optimism

Note: The pole is metal in case you couldn't tell.


2009-03-13

Very Local News

  • Six word story.
    • Boxes on buses and nobody fusses.
  • Isn't it against the law to have two months with Friday the Thirteenth in a row? Guess not.
  • Nat went to the rodeo last night. I heard nothing about it. I was long in bed by the time she got home. She poked her head in and said she made it back in one bit.
  • Citygroup and GM are about to get kicked off the Dow Jones average. Google and Apple just might take their places. Interesting.
  • There is a movement to start school later for sleepy teens in Briton somewhere. "Oh! Teens' biological clock is different." Bullshit. I say make a bed that lowers in to a vat of ten degree C water at waky-waky time. If you don't get up, you die of hypothermia. I'm telling you, the cure for half the problems with kids is a swift kick in the pants and just not putting up with it.
  • The other day I was walking in to work. My stomach hurt a bit. It didn't bother me. I just didn't care. "Let it hurt." I thought. After a couple of kidney stones you realize the bar has been bumped up a notch or two. Not too much. My neck has been hurting when I go to bed and after several hours on the computer, but I just don't care. I don't even take an aspirin any more. I just don't care as long as I know what is going on.
  • Some estimates say it took three million years to go from an ape like creature to humans. There has to be a challenge that requires smartness or it will not happen. Something in our past challenged us. I feel challenged every minute of my life just to cross the street. I'll evolve in to a top notch digital watch any minute.
  • Face book got a Facebook, lift and I lost my applications. How rood.


2009-03-12

Ramps! We don't need no stinking ramps!

I'm impressed. Now, automate it so no one has to drive it.

Very Local News

  • The L Word. is being canceled. NPR felt it was important enough to have a show about the end. Nothing happened. Several bullets were covered. Honestly, I'm glad I missed it.
    • gay women in LA.
    • race in combination with being gay.
    • adoption in combination with being gay.
    • The creator said "I don't care what the fans think."
  • "Don't drink the Cool-aid"  refers to the Jim Jones incident where his followers were willing to commit subside when he ordered them to do so. They drank cyanide laced Flavor-aid, which is a knockoff of Cool-aid. The  saying has become a way of telling people not to blindly follow people without question.
  • The Twitter creators were interviewed by NPR. They sounded lost and directionless
  • So many people are driving less and driving more fuel efficient cars that they are thinking strongly of raising the gas tax and taxing people for the number of miles they drive. The real solution looks like toll roads.
  • Something very strange happened today at lunch. I jogged to McDonald's. I had a coat on for the rainy chill. I had on steel toe work boots. I jogged because I just felt the urge. Then, when I had my food in hand, I jogged back. I tried to walk, but I wanted to feel my muscles work in my legs. I huffed and puffed, but it felt good. I didn't even cough that much.
  • That shooting spree earlier this week was described as "It sounded like were in Iraq." A few years ago it might have been Beirut. The gunman had a list of people who pissed him off and started at the top. There was another mass shooting in Germany by a teen. Unfortunately, this is a sign of hard times. The teen shot mostly girls at his school. No motive that I've heard yet.
  • ActiveX may be on the way out. Good riddance. Never had a good use for ActiveX. It was always more of a pain in the ass than a useful tool.
  • I heard someone use the term "Eurmarica" today. That scares the hell out of me. They were referring to he U. S. and Europe taking on the rest of the world in the financial markets. It makes me think of taking on China and other huge markets.
  • Book Titles:
    • Quantum from a Sane Person's Perspective
    • Quantum: The Ugly Truth
    • Bullshitting You Way Through Quantum Mechanics
    • Quantum in Death (J. D. Robb)
  • I was in the lab feverishly working on something and ran back to my office for something. ON the way I hear this error beep and my heart nearly skipped. It turned out to be the microwave in the common room. It cracked me up.


2009-03-11

Gulp!

"Do-te-do just hanging out and being a school of fish. Do-te-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!"

Cop Fiction


I heard a story this morning about a couple guys who were busted transporting marijuana plants. As the story progressed, I picked some bits up. The people were moving the plants after a break in to their house the previous night. I would like to know if the house thieves told the cops about the plants and the cops started survailing the suspects. If so, do the plant possessors have a case for dismissal because the police only started watching them after learning of their crime by the commission of an unrelated crime?

That is not entrapment. There is a name for finding out about one crime by the act of another unrelated crime. I can't think of it. I'm not a lawyer. This is a legitimate way to bust people I believe, but this situation could be worse.

When I put my writer's hat on (fiction) I envision the cops rousting a known hose thief and coaxing him to hit this known house of ill-plant-growing repute in order to find out if they are indeed growing marijuana.

This would make a much better story than say, the idiots were transporting the plants in an open pickup right down main street. You know, past the police station. That would make for too short fiction. Hasn't every cop and lawyer show in history done this same plot to death? I would try to think of examples, but it is just plane cliché.

This brings up a question I've had for a long time. Why is there so much lawyer and cop fiction? The genera I'm really sick of is writers writing about writing. The next is lawyer and cop stories. I do not have a problem with them on a philosophical level. I'm just sick to death of them. I include CSI and investigative shows under that umbrella.

I remember a show about a bus driver that was pretty good called The Honeymooners. Is there another profession or industry besides the two above that has nearly as many active stories written and produced about them? I think not. It seems everything is about writers, actors, producers, cops, lawyers, and criminals.


Missing Dreams

How many people have a pen and piece of paper by the bed to record their subconscious opinion on the matter of their lives? how many cures for cancer or devices for faster than light travel have been blown off? how many workable plans for world peace and answers to hunger have vanished before morning when a scrawl might have survived groggy morning rituals?

I do not keep a pad or pen by the bed. I do not wake up with recognizable things in my head. My ideas come when I'm daydreaming or doing something else. My ideas come while my mind is occupied or very busy running away from itself and the day's troubles.

It is easy for me to daydream. It just comes to me naturally. I wish I could channel that creative energy in to something constructive. Well, not so much constructive as Financially rewarding. Well, both.

Sometimes I'll daydream about some normal sounding boring situation and something really interesting will happen or something funny. It is satisfying. Sometimes I'll crack myself up. Sometimes an answer to a hard question will pop in or an idea that is good. I miss when I can't think in abstract terms. When I'm tired, I can't daydream. It takes energy. If I'm hungry I cannot daydream.

Once in a very important while, I find that magic. That magic that lets me daydream on queue, on subject, on my terms.These moments are precious. I wish to teach myself to control my daydreams. Since I started trying to control my daydreams I've caught myself controlling my dreams without even really trying. This tels me the two are related. That is another blog entry.

Very Local News

  • My mother is the only person I know using Twitter properly. I know of a few companies and celebrates using it, but my mother is the only 'person'. There is something wrong with that considering I work at a tech firm. To my knowledge, not one of them has an active Twitter account.
  • I miss warring a watch. I've been using my phone as a pocket watch. It works, but it is not a wristwatch. I miss the flipping of my wrist to get a feeling of the day going by.
  • Someone complained I post too may empty videos. I should post more personal videos. I like that idea. I think I'll tighten the criteria for posting videos from the internet. I don't know if I'll shoot more of my own video or not. That will be god-offal boring I think. It's my blog damn-it.
  • The bartender at the real Cheers that the show was based on worked there for thirty some odd years. He got laid off recently. Wonder if the bar will turn up for sale.
  • Trends say that two thirds of banking may be nationalized in the U. K.. That smells like a monopoly to some. The banks have been heard saying "You can't force us to lend." Isn't too much easy borrowing what got the world in this mess?
    Another quote "It isn't worth getting out of bed for 80 billion." For fuck sake.
  • Nat and Elle came up for a visit at lunch today. That was really cool. Too bad she had the sniffles and was ready to go to sleep the whole time. Poor thing has the same cough Nat and I have had for a while. It kind of worked backwards. I didn't even wish her good night for a week because I was sick and didn't want her to kiss my cheek. The best laid plans.
  • I get some yahoo news updates on my phone. I noticed an ad at the bottom of the latest one. I went back and looked at some that came in over the last couple days. They all had ads that I didn't notice. I have developed total ad blindness. Now I just have to work on deafness. =]
  • I'm a sweet-tart fiend. Nat bought me a whole box of sweet-tart "I love you" hearts after Valentine's day. They expire soon. ... What is a sweet-tart fiend to do? <sounds of crunching interlaced with sounds of giddy satisfaction>
  • Barbie Dolls were invented by a women. The all male high ups didn't like it.
  • Watchmen movie has had mixed reviews. I never got hooked on the comic. It sounds cool. The opening credits are the highlight I hear. It is too complex a story to translate. Someone said it should have been a TV series LOST or an HBO mini-series. Very knowledgeable people called it unfilmable. It could not stick to the source. It could not be something new. It should have been sixty hours long. It should have cut an hour and a half out of the existing two and a half hours. No one is satisfied it seems. Many people expected Iron Man or Spider Man and were disappointed because it hit too hard.
  • Its funny how often cool stuff takes five minutes and stupid stuff takes all day.
  • Still no comments on the blog. Humph.


2009-03-10

Sunsets

Very Local News

  • A glass truck drove through the parking lot next to work. It nearly blinded me.
  • A couple of the guys at work pickled some jalapenos that were left over from a pot-luck lunch. The last several work days I've had peppers for my Raman. Not too shabby.
  • NPR Talk of the Nation had some guy on saying that all those shit-hole countries in South America that never had real democracy are ll jumping with glee that the rest of the market driven world is falling apart. They are all on their way to starving while saying we are the ones who are wrong. That will show us.
  • Horses have been domesticated since 3500 BC. Bits were leather straps as per evidence from jaw bones. They drank mare's milk and hunted horses as well.
  • One of the guys who I respect for their geek knowledge, said today that he tried to get rid of Python on a Linux box not realizing that RPM is written in Python and ruined a machine. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who has done that.
  • VMWare and other similar software was a novelty last year. Now it is a necessity. I lack several build platforms. I intend to fill those gaps with virtual machines eventually.
  • 2 files I had to remove to perform an update - php-magpiers and moodle.


2009-03-09

Very Local News

  • Man, NPR is all giddy that Obama is just plan flipping the rules on stem cells. Something is just plane being undone that Bush put up. When you look at the strategies for Iraq and Afghanistan, they look remarkably like the status quo.
  • Time Change:
    • The time change has been strange. I didn't notice anything until I was on my way to bed last night at 22:00. My digital clock on my night stand had not changed. The clocks that I use, the computer and my phone had changed automatically. That means my alarm clock did change because I use my phone to wake me up.
    • The bus driver looked hungover. I bet I looked hungover as well. Every one on the bus looked normal. The same people seemed to be there.
    • Industry likes time change because people are willing to work longer hours when the sun is up.  it seems people are willing to come in while it is still dark as long as they leave before the sun goes down, things are OK. That is why the government wants to make daylight savings time the year round standard in stead of normal time.
  • Beckham is out. Thank Goodness. I care about soccer as much as I care about American football. Not that much. Still, I'm just happy there is one less celebrity running around California.
  • I'm never buying an HP product again as long as I live. I spent half the day today trying to get three printers on the network. Everything I tried, I had to stop, backup, and fix something else. I had to drag all three systems to a Windows box and hook them up using a USB cable because that is how the HP windows only firmware program works. This all put me behind on other projects.
    I hates-em I hates-em I HATES-EM!!!


2009-03-08

House show

That show where the fix up people's houses kind of pisses me off. Those people feel like they are doing a good thing. I think they believe it 100%. I think they provide several million people with a guilt free way to not do anything helpful for their fellow man. By watching the TV show, many people get rid what guilt they have by watching the show and thinking that someone is taking care of the problem. 

The people on the show really sound sincere. They are actors so I cannot guarantee they are not bastards milking the public for ratings. What do I know? I'm not out there making people's lives better. I cannot keep my family's shit together.


2009-03-07

Trees

Nat got some trees. We sat out in the back yard for bit this afternoon in the lovely weather and crucified them. That is, we put long bamboo stakes in the pots and up the trunks of the little  trees. Then Nat tied some crossmember bamboo stakes and lashed the burdened limbs to the crossmembers. The small trees already have fruit growing and bending the limbs. They both remind me a bit of Charley Brown Christmas Tree.

It is late in the evening. The trees sit between the house and the fence on the side closest to the sun, that's the South side by the way. I wanted to nestle them in so the wind would not hit them too badly. Someone at the nursery said to keep them in the pots for a bit. We may have to ad some soil to one of them. They both survived the first rain just a little bit ago.

Nat has a vision of some kind of relaxing place in the back yard. I hate to tell her, but our back yard will never be a relaxing place as long as we have no barrier between Westheimer and our home. I fear the bench she wants back there and a place to relax will just never happen. Maybe she wants to look at it from the back window or talk about it to her friends. I just know that I'll have to mow around it.

Eastern European Truck Dancing

I"m just glad this isn't on an American road. There was a movie about Australia where people kept setting cruise and going to the back for a drink. That or they would sit talking to someone in the cab only periodically glancing out the windscreen. This was the outback desert. There was not much to hit. Even at high speed, you would see it coming.

That truck looks higher tech than anything I've seen in the U. S.. I wonder if it is really driving itself and the rules just say you need someone in the driver seat to flip people off occasionally.


2009-03-06

8.1% Unemployment rate

8.1% unemployment is the highest since 1983. I don't think I can do it justice, but I'll try to describe 1983 from my point of view.

I was fourteen, in high school. I was the blind kid who had a huge scary birth mark on my arm. I was weired. I hung out with people who were not popular. I was quiet. I always wore a denim jacket, had white skin, freckles, bright red unkept hair and a stumble walk. I was a typical teen.

The work in Houston dried up in 83. The oil industry was just plane not doing much. I've tried asking people what was getting done, but no one knows. It was a good year to find someone who made six digits the previous year flipping burgers.

My father was out of work in either 83 or 84 for a while. He hooked up with a guy called Sunny who taught him to rebuild wrecked cars and sell them for a profit. My father fixed fences and roofs. I tried to help with a couple of those. Mainly I picked up shingles. That's helping.

My father never gave up. I cannot imagine how stressful all that was for him. My dad is a hell of a guy.

"When we all pile in to our Honda Pilots, where are we going to go?" Ken asked me this question this morning. He was using a Honda Pilot as a cheap ass car. He was referring to the Model-T used in The Grapes of Wrath to pack up and head to California. There is no California now. Even if you exit the U. S., our global economy has brought the entire planet to it's financial knees.

I listen to podcasts from people coming out of California. We may find the flood of Pilots heading East this time. The old saying was "Head West young man." This was a disguised effort to get rid of all the jobless. The only place to go now is online. No one makes money there.

Where was every one in 1983? Some of the people I work with every day were not borne. My grandmother was a child in the Great Depression. She was shopped around from one relative to another. She never really had a home growing up. She remembered being hungry a lot. She ended up working for the phone company (they only had one back then) for her entire life.

Very Local News

  • I've gotten in the bad habit of jotting down notes in my blog and not really proof reading them. Sorry. Work has been nuts. I get home and try to eat something. Then I try to get some sleep. My poor family suffers from it.
  • We had an impromptu meeting yesterday of all the engineering group. I'm not an engineer, but I'm in the group. My alarm went off for a normally scheduled meeting. I had turned my phone off. I did some playing around. My alarm will go off if I set my phone to silent or vibrate. It will go off even if I turn the phone off. I'm afraid to pull the battery because I might loose some information I have stored or something. I hate walking around without my phone because something bad might happen and I'm suddenly without a means of calling for help. This can happen to visually impaired folks pretty easily.
  • Madoff is going to cop a plea. Bastard. Of all the people in the universe who deserve to be tarred and feathered, he is near the top of the list.
  • Nat came up for lunch today. She brought some prepackaged salads and sandwiches. I think we coiuld have had some fast food for the price. I ended up eating her sandwich because she was full and couldn't refrigerate it because of a trip to South of Houston she needed to take.
  • Had some awesome beef stew for dinner.


2009-03-05

parted


### help

Usage: parted [OPTION]... [DEVICE [COMMAND [PARAMETERS]...]...]
Apply COMMANDs with PARAMETERS to DEVICE.  If no COMMAND(s) are given, run in
interactive mode.

OPTIONs:
 -h, --help                    displays this help message
 -i, --interactive             where necessary, prompts for user intervention
 -l, --list                    lists partition tables of all detected devices
 -s, --script                  never prompts for user intervention
 -v, --version                 displays the version

COMMANDs:
 check NUMBER                             do a simple check on the file system
 cp [FROM-DEVICE] FROM-NUMBER TO-NUMBER   copy file system to another partition
 help [COMMAND]                           prints general help, or help on COMMAND
 mklabel,mktable LABEL-TYPE               create a new disklabel (partition table)
 mkfs NUMBER FS-TYPE                      make a FS-TYPE file system on partititon NUMBER
 mkpart PART-TYPE [FS-TYPE] START END     make a partition
 mkpartfs PART-TYPE FS-TYPE START END     make a partition with a file system
 move NUMBER START END                    move partition NUMBER
 name NUMBER NAME                         name partition NUMBER as NAME
 print [free|NUMBER|all]                  display the partition table, a partition, or all devices
 quit                                     exit program
 rescue START END                         rescue a lost partition near START and END
 resize NUMBER START END                  resize partition NUMBER and its file system
 rm NUMBER                                delete partition NUMBER
 select DEVICE                            choose the device to edit
 set NUMBER FLAG STATE                    change the FLAG on partition NUMBER
 toggle [NUMBER [FLAG]]                   toggle the state of FLAG on partition NUMBER
 unit UNIT                                set the default unit to UNIT
 version                                  displays the current version of GNU Parted and copyright information

### info page (the useful example)
...
2.2 Using GNU Parted
====================

Parted has two modes: command line and interactive.  Parted should
always be started with:

    # parted DEVICE

where DEVICE is the hard disk device to edit.  (If you're lazy and omit
the DEVICE argument, Parted will attempt to guess which device you
want.)

 In command line mode, this is followed by one or more commands.  For
example:

    # parted /dev/sda resize 1 52Mb 104Mb mkfs 2 fat16

Options (like `--help') can only be specified on the command line.

 In interactive mode, commands are entered one at a time at a prompt,
and modify the disk immediately.  For example:

    (parted) resize 1 52.0005Mb 104.5Mb
    (parted) mkfs 2 fat16

It took me the better part of an hour to figure out that the 'partition' name is 1 and not /dev/sdb1. "illegal name' What illegal name, the drive, the partition? Give me an error that tels me what is wrong. Neither the manual page nor the internet told me what I needed. It took the info page to find an example that made any sense.

I've used gparted under Knoppix a couple times. It is a snap. That was another blog entry. The new Knoppix doesn't have all the utilities that the old one had. It appears they are trying to make any computer you sit down to turn in to a web based workstation. That is all well and good. I need a capable rescue CD that has all the bits I need to fix drives, partitions, network connections and trouble shoot all kinds of issues. The aging old version of Knoppix has failed me several times now. It just hasn't kept up with drivers.

I'm rescue-CD-less. I need a new safety tether.

Very Local News

  • Pakistan is falling apart. The bad guys are 100 miles from the capital's gates. The end is nigh. I wonder if the government of Pakistan will use nuclear weapons against someone before it goes down. I wonder if the Taliban, who is the umbrella name over the 'bad guys', will get the nukes.
  • Someone in one of the podcasts said shoulder pads are on the way back in. "Women will be waring armor again, circa the 1980's."
  • The same protein that is implicated in Mad Cow disease may have something to do with Alzheimer's.
  • Kirkwood Gaps:
    • If you live in Houston, Kirkwood gaps are the detours you have to take around apartment complexes and empty lots while driving down the road called Kirkwood. This was caused by lack of planning.
    • If you are anywhere else, a Kirkwood gap is a gap in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. These were caused by the gas giants of our soler system moving around 4 billion years ago.
  • If AIG goes belly up, it may bring down ... Europe. The EU is an ever crumbling agreement between a bunch of countries and cultures of people who have hated each other and are really only all in cahoots because they thought they could make a buck. The walls of Europe are creaking under the weight of false hope, false smiles and out write lies. The marriage is on the ropes. What will happen to the kids?
  •  Mobile phone jammers are illegal in the U. S.. They are legal to own in the U. K. but illegal to use. They are routine in the middle east in cafes and theaters. I want one mounted on the roof of my car that jams every phone for five miles .. .except mine. =]


2009-03-04

Mowing in the dark


Last night, Nat picked me up at the bus stop. I got out of the car and started mowing the yard. I didn't do a particularly good job. I mowed over some plants that I wasn't supposed to. I do that all the time. The weeds had grown a foot hight in some places. Tonight, I hope to spray some weed killer. Maybe find some weed and feed and spray it.

It was dark and I wore my little head lamp. That thing works great if you ware it over a baseball cap. There is something about the light shining on the end of my nose that throws me off.  It worked very well. As a matter of fact, as i was mowing the back yard, a car pulled up to that building behind my house. I gave them some looks. That is, I shined my light on them over the fence. they turned around and got out of there. not sure what they thought.

It felt good to get out there and kill me some weeds. Elle and Nat were out in the back yard earlier today playing with a Frisbee. Elle asked what that lid was for. Nat showed her.

It would be cool to have a video of myself mowing in the dark with a head lamp. I am terrified of videoing my own death and ending up as a Darwin Award Winner, with video. So, no video.

Very Local News

  • I used parted (Partition Edit command line version) for the first time today. It makes partitions on drives so you can use them for storage. It took me a minute to get things right because I was trying to say '/dev/sdb1' when the software just wanted '1' to describe the partition. The manual page had no examples. Online information kind of sucked. The info page had an example and I noticed what I had been doing wrong the whole time.
    Knoppix refused to boot with that drive regardless of the machine I hooked the drive to. The boot process would simply freeze at different points. Knoppix has gparted (Graphical/Gnome Partition Edit) that makes partitioning a breeze.
  • I came in from lunch with two bugs on me. It isn't like I'm traversing a jungle between here and the parking garage. That is worse than when I mowed last night.
  • Contacted the mortgage company to get the little tickets that you use to gage how much you pay every month. It turns out some payment got dropped because of my two loans, one was where I intended and the other was a month behind. I will get caught up this month.
  • Contacted the tax assessor's office and they are sending us a new set of homestead paperwork. Lots our original packet. Hope we still have time to fill everything in and get it all straight for this year.
  • Toyota is asking the Japanese government for a bailout. I have no idea if other Japanese car makers are doing the same.
  • We have an auxiliary air conditioner at my office that kicks in when the building AC turns off at 17:00. The fan sounds like a sledgehammer hitting a sheet of steel when it starts. The hum is toned down, but present. It is the five o'clock whistle of sorts.


2009-03-03

1965 Chevrolet Commercial

In honer of General Motors sales dropping 50% last month compared to last year, I present to you a commercial from the hey-day of U. S. automotive excelance and the best cars ever to come out of Michigan. These cars are before emissions worries. They are before exhaust worries. They are just cars all made four years before I was born.

Somewhere I remember someone saying "You can tell a good actor by the way the do the shit work." Some of these actors seem in to telling the viewers all about the new cars. Others seem to be phoneing it in. Guess there is some truth to that saying.

Palestinian in Training

Remind me never to go near a place where they have RC rockets. This thing sounds like it was breaking the sound barrier when it hit the ground. Do you suppose that might have killed someone? Duh!

No RC rockets!

Very Local news

  • Economy
    • AIG insures a bunch of European banks. Something like a quarter of a trillion dollars. This means the U. S. taxpayer is propping up a bunch of European banks.
    • Europe has been held together by the internal market. There is about to be a new iron curtin that the West puts up to keep the East masses at bay and salaries up. Some call this a split. Some call it civil unrest.
    • "Credit" has become a curs word. There is less and less stigma associated with being frugal. Parents are not considered stingy if they skip the huge birthday party for their kid this year.
  • Blog
    • I like having a blog. I like the release. I like the little bit of attention it brings me. I like it when people mention something that I mentioned on my blog.
    • It is a spooky when people know something about me I didn't tell them straight off. I wonder for a moment who ratted me out. Then I remember blogging about whatever it was.
    • Twitter is not blogging. It is twitting. They are different things with different goals.
  • Virtual machines rock. I have a need to build some software on stock Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.4. Sounds great. I have one machine that is 64 bit. I have no machines that are 32 bit. I use VMWare player running the OS I need to build. I have no extra machines. I really hate dealing with custom partitions on systems. Bad history there.
  • One of the podcasts spoke of a new study. They conclude that the vast majority of calories are the same. If you eat ice cream vs stake vs salad dressing, the calories all add up to the same blubber on your body. A soda is as fattening as a donut. A calorie is a calorie is a calorie ... apparently
  • I wonder if a netbook or web notebook would satisfy my needs for portable computing.


2009-03-02

Animé I kissed a girl

It's my blog and I pick the content.

Amazon is a collective pussy

They just sent me to a very generic statement that says nothing about how they intend to treat blind when it comes to charging for text to speech in their Kindle device. Pussies. Where is my lawyer? ... I need a lawyer!


Statement from Amazon.com Regarding Kindle 2's Experimental Text-to-Speech FeatureSEATTLE, Feb 27, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant in the professionally narrated audiobooks business through our subsidiaries Audible and Brilliance. We believe text-to-speech will introduce new customers to the convenience of listening to books and thereby grow the professionally narrated audiobooks business.

Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rightsholders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's seat.

Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title. We have already begun to work on the technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice. With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. We believe many will decide that it is.

Customers tell us that with Kindle, they read more, and buy more books. We are passionate about bringing the benefits of modern technology to long-form reading.

Pussies Amazon


Why do I listen?

I listen to Left Right and Centre because I'm in to self harm or something. Liberals think the generational theft act is "bold and brave" Conservatives just shake their heads and think God they will be dead before they have to pay for it.

The liberals are highly pissed that Obama is not just abandoning the wars and promises we have made. They are mad the money being spent on the wars is not going for coffee subsidies.

Lefties want to stop the whole left right debate. Why not, they won. Makes perfect sense to me. When Obama says bipartisan, he means left and way left.

The liberals believe they have been on the margin for very long time. They have been in control of congress for something like four years before the election. There have been swings one way or the other and If I were among their number, I would be worried that attitudes may already be rounding an apex.

Too many people agree that credit card debt is going to be the next big failure. I've heard this from so many different areas that I cannot help but to worry about it. If credit cards go south, people are going to have to wait until they can actually afford to buy something before they go get it. This will mean a three to five year lag before people can afford to become real consumers again.  Kiss off a recovery until then.

Symbolism of our times

Brian, one of my co-workers, came up with quite a comparison. He has been watching the Dow and other stock market numbers plummet. I told him I hear that sound diving planes made in all the WWII movies as they spun in. He said he pictures the scene from 2010 where the moon slowly turns black from all the prisms and implodes.

"That's our economy" he says.

"My God! It's full of broke people." I added. We both chuckled as we walk down the hall returning to our respective toils.

I sent around a note today forwarded from one of the email news alert organizations. It said the Dow hit the lowest number since late 1997. At least Brian can laugh it off. He has may investments and I bet he has taken quite a hit over the last year or so. I have invested in the house and my family. That returns every day. My long term investments are shotguns and MREs.

Very Local News

  • It was 39 degrees this morning on my way to work. The radio said the forecast called for mid sixties by afternoon. This made me think it was Oregon or some place. I heard they have weather like this in places far away like Austin. Houston is not supposed to be this pleasant. I'm afraid I might get used to non-shitty weather or something. Where is the humidity?! Where is the dank? the DANK!!!
  • Last night, I took the generic NyQuil  because I was feeling like crap and just wanted to sleep. I went to bed before the sun went down. I woke up at like 21:00 and took the NyQuil. Slept straight through. I was listening to a book on tape, but it has put me to sleep twice now. I have no idea what it's about.
  • Industrial purchases of equipment has fallen by unprecedented bounds. One thing that is growing is boos. Liquor is still going strong. "The economy is in free fall." is a phrase that keeps coming up from people who are not working directly for Obama.
  • Book Title Idea:
    • From a time when adventure mattered
    • A breeze in hell
  • If I kill a mouse with a hammer I get arrested. If I kill enough mice with a horrible chemical, I get a PHD.
  • Hair and fingernails do not continue to grow after death. The skin dehydrates and pulls tight. The bits of hair that were shaved to the surface of the skin now protrude. The fingernails appear to stick out far pas the end of the finger when it is really the end of the finger reseeding because of the same dehydration.
  • U2 was being interviews by the BBC. I hate the politics of U2. They are interesting blokes so I listened. Both sides were videoing each other. ... My mind is not changed.
    Can't you just go to your web site and listen to all the music wihtout paying for it?
    If you fall in love with the music, the band, you will want to be part of the environment around the music, be part of the experience.
    Pants philosophy. I will be part of the community. I'll blog the experience.
  • I read a fiction thing that was about full body replacement. It was cool that every one who had their conscious put in a body has tons of problems both with the new bodies (other gender, asthma), the dead person's families (they will see their dead relative walking around, but they are still dead), addictions, and their own friends (cracking bad jokes), work and family (who am I sleeping with?).
    It was a good read.
  • Lately, I've wanted to force myself to elaborate on the bullets in my very local news posts. The bullets just don't make me feel like I've told the story.
  • In the UK the average time to pay off debt of those with large debts is 93 years.


2009-03-01

Other Numbers

A while back I saw an episode of Family guy where someone was listening to an English version of a foreign news cast. Terms like "21:00" for time and "kilometres" for distance were used liberally. The idea behind the skit was to make people comfortably uncomfortable with the culture shock. I wasn't real affected that way. I was not made uncomfortable by the use of units that are not in daily use. I do use 24 hour time or military time all the time. I use it all day at work. I started using it all time time at home. Only when I'm talking to Americans, every one I know, do I convert the time to 12 hour AM/PM terms.

I bet I could convert to metric and 24 hour time in a week. I would do it and probably only look back a couple of times after the first week. I would catch myself using the term "... by a mile" and "by and inch" probably for the rest of my life. There might be several others. Who cares. It is not catastrophic to be dated by your words. Not most of the time.

This makes me feel like a liberal. Aren't liberal values the ones that move forward to better ideas? Aren't liberal values the ones that make our lives better? Aren't conservative values the ones that hold on to the past at any cost? Aren't conservative views the ones that promote making what is there work instead of making something new that works better?

Naked Soldiers

It amazes me how naked combat soldiers look without warring body armor.. They are running around and not ducking. I kind of hope this is some kind of exercise, but it looks like live fire. I'm confused. I glanced at the comments and others seem to raise the same concern. I wonder if the position started taking fire when the unit was standing down for whatever reason and they all boiled out on the roof without donning combat gear.

Someone had time to grab the camera. I tried to listen the second time round and someone says something about gearing up. I can't make it out. God bless them.

... and can suck the lid off a jar of pickles

I don't have any comment to add to this. She can rap her lips around a large beer mug and suck the lid off a jar of pickles. I'm speechless.

Got some lungs

For some reason I'm impressed. She is blowing up a hot water bottle with just lung power. Those numbers are pretty impressive. He should blow up a flat to good enough pressure to get you home for goodness sake.

Crazy.

Email to Amazon


Kindle 2 and the Visually Impaired.

I am Visually Impaired and Use text to speech to read on my computer. It is the same as a sighted person using the screen I am curious what Amazon's official policy is regarding the visually impaired and Kindle 2 text to speech. If I obtain a Kindle 2 will I be able to listen to a book even if the author or publisher does not want that functionality available without paying extra?

I await your official response.

In Texas I can get some kind of digital book reader from the Library for the Blind. I wander if it is a Kindle 2. Really, I just want to rattle Amazon's cage. It seriously upsets me that Amazon would be the first with this sort of innovation and just bend over. I mean, someone has to fight this fight and if Amazon is not going to do it, I, as a blind person, will have too. Thanks corporate America for refusing to stand up for your customer's rights yet one more time.

If I get anything resembling a response, I'll put it on the blog of course. Wish me luck.