Plastic Kelly

Teach children to follow the money

2012-01-26T22:05:00.002-06:00

There is a movement to make people don't believe in climate change or global warming or atmospheric energy divergence or whatever it is called this week look like goons. The idea here is to compare climate skeptics antievolutionists. There is a movement in schools to capture children's beliefs while they are young. Give people something other than God to believe in. Something that they can rebel against their parents over.

This frightens me because if you want to convince people of something for their entire life, you need to catch them as children. They will believe it for the rest of their life and they will fight to prevent people from changing their minds. Look me in the eye and tell me this is not true. People can change, but they don't.

Fast food has excelled at hooking children on quick hot food over the last sixty years. Every fast food restaurant can thank McDonald's for their mascot and ad campaign that got people out of the kitchen and dining room in to a drive through.

Is there an organized conspiracy to convince people of global warming? Well, yes. It is just like any religion. It has advocates and and skeptics. It has proof and belief. The movement is organized and plans to induct as many people as possible.

The science is immaterial. The money is material. The simple fact is that governments want to invent a need to spend an infinite amount of money that is guaranteed to never achieve anything or have tangible measurable results. Companies love this idea and are in line to receive the lucrative contracts. follow the money, not the science or belief to the truth.

Notes:

2012-01-26T22:04:00.001-06:00

2012-01-25

Why can I not type in a date without errors? I have to type the year, back up, retype the correct year. Type the month, back up and type the correct month. Type the day, back up and type the correct day. It must be because I don't think of the date in form of numbers. I think if it in form of words. I have to translate the day to numbers every time.

In my universe, instant travel over great distances is not only possible, but mandatory.

Babylon 5 was a good show. It was a novel for TV. I wish I could get them all now. I cannot bring myself to watch it.

There is a movement on in parts of Europe to somehow account for huge executive payouts and base pay. The trouble is, no one wants to pay below average for a CEO. Boards look at averages across their industry and decide to pay the average for a CEO or higher. Thus, the averages keep going up. Shareholders could always vote to limit pay. They don't want to hurt the company making money. It sounds like the government is just trying to shut up poor people without loosing their jobs. The government people keep saying things like "pay linked to performance" and the like when the government people do not have any link between pay and performance.

"Get your skates on" is a British term for hurrying up.

I want a constitutional amendment that says something like "No one who makes 10 times the national median income can run for or hold public office." There would have to be some sort of method for calculating said income.

Liberalism. Tell me this is not bias. There is no entry anywhere for illconservatism. As a matter of fact, searching for the latter term switches to "conservatism mental illness". BIAS!!! It does crack me up that people want to think that people who disagree with them are sick. I mean, God forbid someone thinks differently than you and is still "normal".

Lunch conversation today consisted of the weather and a bunch of crap I cannot talk about here.

I have never gotten drunk trying to get over something. I hear so many stories about people drinking alone to get over some hurt. I've hurt. I didn't drink to get past it. I don't understand getting past something with drink. I've made it this far. I hope I never turn to the bottle for solos. It doesn't work. It nerve works.

Fiction podcast heard today "The future is stupid. You don't want to go there." I like it.

I want a lawyer and a PI to call my own. If only I had money and could afford to have a staff of researchers and perhaps some contract thugs. Driver, I would need a wheel man. A maid and a personal assistant would be nice too.

One of the podcasts I listen to had a story set in 1984. They mentioned the top songs. It was nostalgic for me. I was fifteen. I remember sitting at home in the middle of summer watching cable TV in the morning waiting for the pool to open. I was not in to music or reading or TV per say. TV was all there was. Remember, there was no internet.

Today was quiet. I had time to catch up on some back log. Been a while since that has happened. Felt good if I'm honest. Still had a full plate, just not so much stress.

2012-01-26

Taking down a web page is like tarring a poster off a wall. It is just not a big fancy attack to be honest. It sucks for the people who are dealing with the web site. It is not hacking.

Tourism has dropped by 50% in Egypt. Considering the place is on high alert and there is a loud, but so far nearly bloodless coops going on, I'm surprised that number is not much lower.

Someone came out with a silent film. Some people are asking for their money back. The art freaks love it. Normal people roll their eyes. Everyone else snorts and thinks to themselves that the entertainment industry is in genuine trouble.

I am not even worried about commercials much any more. It has gotten to the point that I don't remember what I just heard. Even when I stop and think about it during the commercial, I don't remember three minutes later when I think about it again. I can't tell you what the commercial was about unless it upset me. Either, my advertisement blindness has evolved, or I'm really loosing my faculties. I must remember that this is going on at the tender age of early forties.

"Sometimes assholes need to be shot." Quote from a fictional podcasts. It was a military speech.

It is funny how the muse comes and goes. I get ideas when everything else is going on. If I don't at least write down a note to myself, the idea and motivation may not hit me again.

Day

2012-01-26T22:01:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Peas!!!
Description	This is a compilation of two days commute home and dinner. See if you can guess which clips come which day.
Tags	vlog peas dinner family "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive Houston Texas
Link	Link

Lunch Conversation

2012-01-23T20:44:00.003-06:00

Lunch conversation consisted of at least one thing I don't feel comfortable talking about,

TV shows

How do TV shows without nudity and cursing compete with the shows that have it?
Torrent is your friend when you have no cable.
How sitcoms were ruined by Friends and Seinfeld. They are only just now coming back to their own. The execs are listening to other pitches apparently.

Work
Kids

Kids picking up bad words from TV shows.
Raising kids with the internet at their fingertips.

Some jabs at the IT department
One of the guys had to deal with the gas company not showing up in the four hour window they said
Something about mobile phones
Something about rain and cold weather coming on Wednesday

That about covers it. It is funny. The conversations we have would make for far better banter than is on any sitcom I've watched in years.

Supreme Court

2012-01-23T20:44:00.001-06:00

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled unanimously for a drug suspect who had an electronic tracking device attached to his car by police, who did not first obtain an extended warrant.
The justices on Monday said secretly placing the device and monitoring the man's movements for several weeks constituted a government "search," and therefore the man's constitutional rights were violated.

CNN Headline News email

Link

This makes a difference to me. Not that I expect someone of tracking me. Just, that I am a free citizen and want to know that some one in a position of authority cannot just willy-nilly track my or everyone's movements without cause or some sort of check in place. Let's face it, some people in a position of power abuse that power. If the decision stops with a single person, that is a single point of failure. At least having someone in position where they must listen to the police's reasoning and sign off will prevent a police officer from abusing their power quite so easily.

Not only this, but I cannot think of the last time that the U. S. supreme court made a unanimous decision in favor of individual rights. I don't really keep track of such things, but my impression is that police and other authorities expected this to go the other way when resewing the case.

Someone will say this is the pendulum swinging back after 9/11. All the rights American citizens lost during the orgy of rights drawbacks that came after that disaster are on the way out. I doubt it. This is a single decision. Looking at the layout of the current Supreme Court tels me the leanings are still aimed squarely at "The government knows best."

There was a guy who found a device attached to his car. He put it up on eBay and the cops came round wanting their device back. I bet he is rolling on the floor when he catches wind of this decision.

Notes:

2012-01-23T20:43:00.001-06:00

There is a huge drive to make poor people pissed off at rich people. It happens in Europe and in the U. S.. I'm sure it happens elsewhere. Rich people are a minority after all. I wonder why someone has not called poor people racist for complaining about rich people. Have we come to this? Are we out of people to vilify?

Walked in first thing this morning with a couple of servers that were hanging out on cloud 9. They refused to function. A reboot fixed them, but I can't track down a root cause. The root cause stuff took eight times as long as the fix. I hate that. Still don't have a satisfactory answer. Just a bunch of symptoms leading to more symptoms. It did make the morning go by quickly. I looked up and it was lunch time. Got back from lunch and bam, it was 17:30. Kind of like that part of disasters.

That ship that went down in Italy had 4200 soles on board. Now they are coming out saying there were some number of unregistered passengers. Expect this to be cracked down upon. Divers had to blow holes in bulkheads to get to some parts of the ship. There is a rumor that a women seen with the captain the night that the wreck happened was unregistered. Did this guy turn up to work in a devil costume?

Big Ben is leaning. It should fall over or slide in to The Thames in about a thousand years or so. The car park below ground didn't help things.

From memory: "John Anslow, also know as 'Skits' is a very dangerous man and should not be approached." BBC describing an escaped maniac. He is a murder suspect. The "Skits" bit cracks me up.

More and more vloggers are using their phones for their primary video device. Some even edit their vlogs on their phones. That is awesome. At the moment, you need a $600 or more phone or tablet to get the job done. The price will only drop. My phone is lame and only takes low res video. The new iPhone 4?? takes 720p video and can do some very simple editing on the phone. With bandwidth charge, it will cost you half a billion dollars to get it on the web, but it is still cool.

Gay parents

2012-01-23T20:41:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	My 2 cents on Gay parents
Description	Watch and pleas, criticize at your leisure in the comments and response videos. Original video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWaiWcUlZTQ&list=PL3212E73434C66C3C
Tags	"gay parents" "gay marriage" motivation c children parenting "20 minutes or less" "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Big pulling big

2012-01-22T16:23:00.001-06:00

Ever wonder how you get one of those apartment block sized dump trucks out of the mud? Wonder no more. You used a couple apartment block sized bulldozers.

Splitting logs

2012-01-22T12:42:00.001-06:00

I've only split one log in my life. I would rather spend the money and rent one of these.

George Lucas Strikes Back

2012-01-21T15:00:00.001-06:00

Just so long as the real George Lucas makes no money off it, I'm good.

My SOPA rant

2012-01-21T14:47:00.000-06:00

This one was difficult to edit. When I edit videos with someone else talking, it is easy. I cut and cut until it doesn't suck. With me, I sit there and wish I had said more. I always, without fail, think of better ways to say something. I still cut and cut. When it is me, I want to go back and reshoot with different details. Good thing I'm so lazy.

Field	Data
Title	SOPA rant
Description	Tribulations and predictions for what is next. Please comment and tell me how full of crap I am. SOPA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
Tags	"Stop Online Piracy Act" SOPA rant future "big government" politics politicians corruption "endless campaign" links copyright "copy right" "fair use" "late to the party" Houston Texas "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Notes:

2012-01-20T22:44:00.001-06:00

The grass was soaked this morning. The due point must have been in the negatives. Yesterday evening on the way home, I smelled a lot of smoke over a large area of my walk. I think, even though the wind was blowing, the smoke was being held on the ground by some atmospheric anomaly.

My inbox went empty early this morning for about 10 minutes. It was relaxing.

G. Gordon Liddy had a car salesman on talking about the Chevy Volt. He called it a "coffee table car". It is good for starting a conversation about going green, but no one who doesn't have money to burn wants one.

I don't really have a drink of choice. I need some ideas. What do you guys suggest.

Iceland used to have a women's prison. They had to give it up. There were three convicts.

The weight loss industry is thriving. It fails 85% of the time. -Dr. Karl.

Video ideas

Linux rebooting and pointing to a USB key
Useful tattoos
Phone rebooting
/user/sbin, why?

Just another day

2012-01-19T22:37:00.001-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Marten Luther King Jr's day at work
Description	Most of this footage was shot on MLK day, but the rant at the end was 2012-01-19. Enjoy.
Tags	MLK "Marten Luther King Jr" holiday work traffic lunch family friends "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Westheimer Kdenlive rant developers software crash
Link	Link

Lunch conversation

2012-01-19T21:27:00.001-06:00

Work

Coworkers
Customers
New products
Old products
Competition
Money

Video games.
Linux upgrades and the hassles there in.
Family

Kids
Siblings
Wives (we were all guys)

Gambling, particularly Vegas vs all other places in the U. S..
The collapse of the European Union.
Other restaurants different people have tried in the area.
Weather and global warming. The rest of the country is in snow storms and we have a high of 72.

Same thing every one talks about at lunch.

Notes:

2012-01-19T21:26:00.003-06:00

The Yahoo CEO resigned. Ya-who? Why did he exactly quit? Something about turning down an offer from Microsoft for forty billion dollars back in the day. It was bullshit when it was made. Yahoo kind of missed the boat. They didn't catch the social media wave really. The are still all about being portal with a couple bits bolted on for people to get hold of one another.

I'm getting sick of some of the fiction that is coming across the fiction podcasts. It is getting to the point that I've heard most of the plots. It is also getting to the point where I am jaded by the people who do a good job.

I had a goofy dream last night. I lost the battery that goes in my flashlight. It was like going on a quest in DnD or a video game. Everywhere I stopped to ask people if they had seen it made the adventure more complex. I woke up at 02:30, hit the head and got a glass of water. Nat was up. I should have mentioned my dream, but I forgot about it until later this morning.

"Shut up Watson! Liste to this." ... "Don't interupt Watson."

Sherlock and Mycroft. The Holmes brothers. I learned this today.

The difference between being sorted and rogered. In some cases when a Brit says "being sorted" or "getting sorted" They mean someone have sex. Many times "sorted" means having good sex. However, "being rogered" means one thing and one thing only. The term "rogered" means good sex or rough sex. Many times, it means being dominated and taken.

Tried building Kdenlive from source with the script I found on the forums. It worked with some minor modifications. I do, however, still get the same error. Back to the drawing board. ... Well, found a fix for that error and it looks much more promising now. Will try a full video shortly on the desktop at the house.

Another one bites the dust. Perry is dropping out. I never liked Perry. The only thing he did that I respect was shooting a wolf with his lawful carry. I have no idea who will take the flag. That is, who will win the election. I don't care who wins the nomination. That just doesn't matter. All these folks are political players. They all just feel like big business, big money, big power pons. No one sticks out as anything else. Democrats and Republicans feel the same.

NTFS quick format skips the bad sector scan step. Good to know.

Messed with VMWare ESXI server today. What we wanted to get done kind of blew up in my face, but it was interesting. I hope to learn more about the OS in the near future. We had physical drive errors holding us back.

One of the shows I listen to via online radio, The Shadow Knows, had a show with the following plot. A bunch of bad guys rig light bulbs to blow. People get scared of turning on their lights. The crooks can over run the city and steal the city blind. Crazy stuff. Sounds like something from an Underdog cartoon.

We have a huge black and silver server in our server room that no one knows about. It has been turned off for a while now. It has an older OS that we wouldn't have put on a system in over two years. I wonder if it is simply a DB server that no one got working. We desperately want to know what it was for. Oh, and to repurpose it. There are a couple other devices floating around with the "fuck if I know" handle attached to them.

Video ideas

Linux rebooting and pointing to a USB key
Useful tattoos
Phone rebooting
Making Kdenlive work (done)
/user/sbin, why?

Dead video editor

2012-01-19T21:26:00.001-06:00

Starting about Sunday or so, Kdenlive, my preferred video editing software on Linux, has been dead on my desktop. I realized it was an update that did it and stopped my laptop from updating. I've tried other software for video editing. They all stink to high heaven. I may have an entry explaining all the issues with each. I thought Kdenlive was a piece of junk. I had another think coming.

This is the bug stopping me in my tracks on ubuntu Kdenlive rendering on my desktop. The details say the rendering issues only occurs on some AMD processors. I believe my laptop at the house has an Intel. I'll have to double check. The laptop at work has an Intel Core2 Duo, but experiences the same issue. So, I have no idea what is going on. The latest entry on the bug is 2012-01-16. At least someone is looking at it.

I cannot tell if the issue only happens on old AMD processors. It turns out my new-ish desktop has an outdated CPU. I thought I was buying a middle of the road CPU, but no. I was buying a processor that may not be supported in the next release of the Ubuntu OS. Much less supported by all the programs that people use. That is a drag. I may have to look in to a new processor or system board upgrade.

I've tried to install from source. I've tried other binary installs. I looked in to using a virtual machine installs. Everything has issues. I was already using the PPA (Personal Package Archive) version of Kdenlive. That is for developers and has warnings all over the place that normal users should not use it. It is the only thing that works in Ubuntu 11.10 so I don't know what they expect people to do. This repository points to the proper libraries supposedly. I think I've tried most everything a normal user can. The next step is to fix the Kdenlive program. I'm not that good or dedicated.

The thought occurs that this problem may not get fixed to my satisfaction. If it is indeed only happening on obsolete chips the resources will be focused on other issues. This is a disturbing thought. I'm sure I'll complain about the outcome on my blog either way.

Broken

2012-01-17T20:09:00.001-06:00

This evening, I get to put up a video done entirely on my laptop. Hope all goes well. Kdenlive is broken on my desktop. This is going to be annoying because of having to bend over to use the laptop screen. It isn't a very happy posture for me because of my eyesight. What happened is a broken update.

I cannot tell if it is just my desktop or if others are having the same issue. Thus, I killed the update links for Kdenlive on my laptop before it performed an update. Kdenlive is still working because I rendered the video from Sunday on the laptop. I ended up losing some links. I ended up having issues with some of the output. No big deal.

Something I'm going to have to do is move several files over to the laptop to make the videos properly. Hopefully it will all work from a USB key. The rip time is about the same.

It is the rendering portion of Kdenlive that is broken. It just says "Rendering crashed". Helpful. There should be a law about useful errors in software. I'm thinking an international treaty is in order. I've tried to reinstall everything. I've tried hunting down a fix online. No one else is complaining. It must be my install at issue. I plan on dealing with it a gain this weekend. I've spent enough brain power on it to this point. I need to just get some videos out and not worry about it. Thank goodness the laptop is working.

Pen

2012-01-17T20:08:00.003-06:00

I forget how much I enjoy a fantastic pen making a sharp bold line across white paper. It is too bad that my hand is more suited to spaghetti than writing.

For so much of human existence the pen has kept track of us. The pen has scratched the numbers, the laws, the stories we based our lives on. Many think of the times before the pen as an era of barbarians. Societies without the pen are considered backward.

I remember may years ago in high school trying to use a shaped pen to write calligraphy. I loved how it put ink on the page and hated how much of an ox I was using it. The lines and dots were done in India ink. They were black as darkness without stars. They were beautiful. Well, they were beautiful when drawn by someone else.

I write with a keyboard. I can make the type black on white, but it will never scratch properly. It will never smell the same. The same as something that I've never really known.

Notes:

2012-01-17T20:08:00.001-06:00

Nearly one person in three has is infected with Tuberculosis on Earth.

Electricity was kind of hard for people to grasp. Think about it. Someone was trying to tell them that his invisible force was traveling through a solid and would kill you if you touched it at the wrong time. I await the day when people think of quantum and ponder "There was a time that no one understood quantum."

Lunch: Nat and Tracy came up for lunch. They each had a daughter in tow. I gave a half assed tour. They brought up yesterday's lasagna. I ate and they talked. I nearly fell asleep from relaxing. Elle rubbed my back. I had to stop her for fear of my head clunking in to the table top. Shot a quick video of it.

Sometimes I think I've never taught or learned anything in my life. Sometimes I feel stupid. Sometimes I feel tired. All the time I'm me.

I can remember having a snow ball fight when I was a kid. It was only the one I'm pretty sure. I had another as an adult. It was not as memorable.

This morning, I looked at cygwin and gnuwin32 this morning. How many ways can I turn Windows in to Linux? Why is it such an easy thing. I need to learn powershell. It is not easy. It looks like powershell is something that was create by the magicians at Microsoft for their own use. They were forced to release at some point.

One of the patients with totally drug resistant tuberculosis has skipped the hospital. Someone mentioned the words "Public Health Criminal" describing him. These words must be marked down and remembered. He was last spotted drinking my-ties (how do you spell this?) in The Dominican Republic. Just kidding. No one knows where he is. There are just no new drugs to treat bacterial infections because there is simply no money in antibiotics.

I left my memory card in the computer this morning. That would not be that big a deal except I wanted to take pictures of some serial numbers at work. Fortunately I had my video camera in my bag as well as my camera. Man, I'm a geek.

Video ideas: Useful tauts.

Video ideas:

Work Day

Time	Description
1	Look at email first thing. Diagnostics. Help calm a couple users.
1	wifi settings, email, change, user help.
1	Help a user move offices.
1	Help with server RAM swap after hours.
3	Misc Move [name] distro group. Install Office for a user. Sticker request for [systems]. Outlook printing issues. WSUS email. Hunt down [name] make file. Cable order details. Help a user with a locked up laptop. Move people from one [group] to another. DHCP for [user] Approve several emails. Recover cables.
2	Image several drives for [system]

Quantum locking

2012-01-16T20:43:00.001-06:00

Why isn't more money going in to this research? Who makes all the money? Oh, yes. Oil companies.

Complaining through my teeth

2012-01-15T21:12:00.000-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Lazy Sunday
Description	Time space and everything vlog fail. Trying to do something cool for the vlog and failing miserably. Made up for it by doing some really boring complaining. Rendered this on my laptop because my desktop updated me in to a corner. Oh, and I did end up getting a home cooked meal.
Tags	broken earphones space time continuum fail news ship "Toshiba H30" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Crowborder

2012-01-15T12:40:00.001-06:00

Too bad the window was closed so tight. You could hear him go "WheeeeeeeeeeEEEeeee!!"

DAMMIT!!!!

2012-01-15T12:33:00.003-06:00

They improved on my light. Bastards!

Stainless steel bezel. Mine has scratches from being dropped where this would have protected it.
Filters. They showed red and defuse. I need (OK, want) both.
Brighter

They do this to me all the time. I guess people know what I want for my birthday. It is so not worth it. The one I have is more than good enough for me. I've even made my own filters (reflectors). This is a never ending cycle of cool shit. Next year there will be another light that does it all.

Bah!

Update: Light link. Filter Link

Another Sunday

2012-01-14T22:28:00.000-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Just another Saturday
Description	There should be only 1000 laws on the books at any one time. Every year we have to re-vote in the thousand laws we are governed by next year. Each law can only be 1000 words. That is 1,000,000 words. That sounds like enough to me. Rants!
Tags	complaining "water company" "phone company" "toy train" "political rant" family fun "dirty house" "home electronics" "slow motion" "snapping fingers" "Canon elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Of mice and network cables

2012-01-14T09:05:00.000-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Of mice and network cables
Description	Just another day in the life of a guy who has nothing better to do than video his day.
Tags	day work bus "mass transit" pedestrian walking cold vlog mice network cables anecdote issues "trouble shooting" Kdenlive Houston Texas "Canon Elph 300"
Link	Link

Notes:

2012-01-12T22:35:00.002-06:00

When it is love you will be satisfied with the cheap screwed together kitchen table and chairs. It will feel perfect.

The reason poor are mad at rich is because the political class doesn't want any of us mad at them. Well more than half of Americans believe that rich people got that way because they deserve it.

The Morphia is Italy's biggest bank. 178 billion dollars worth of "loans" per year.

Lunch conversation today consisted of talking about work for the most part. I cannot repeat any of it. We also spoke of motorcycle crashes and death threats.

There is a movie about Margarete Thatcher. I always thought she kicked ass. Not sure how you are going to get a review of the film from a crowd of reviewers who are all Marxists.

Had to order some new CAT5 cables. These are the standard Ethernet cables you find all over the place. Actually, they are CAT5e cables I think. Not sure how that works. No sooner do I ask for the order than six or seven long cables show up unused. That sort of thing never fails.

Notes:

2012-01-11T19:35:00.002-06:00

What is the future of TV? In 5 years it is a 1.5 meter wide smart phone. What will it take to kill TV? If football and other sports wise up and make their own web pages for live broadcasts, they can quite literally write their own ticket. Two to five years after that, there will be no television industry as it stands today. This is not my prediction.

The company that does Twinkies is in trouble. Hostess is going down. Hopefully, they will slice Twinkies off and someone else will pick them up.

I had a chill this morning. I'm not sure if it is because I went back to bed after I got up and ready to go or if it is just because the air seemed thinner this morning. Today is warmer than yesterday. Tomorrow will be colder. It will keep getting colder until Friday. Then we will have a freeze they say. For the first couple hours this morning I wore my stocking cap. More than a couple people are walking around with their jackets on.

It isn't dark for blind folks. It is never dark.

Boom Boom troubles

2012-01-10T22:56:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Boom boom hiccup
Description	Boom boom behind my house has a fire code violation. Hopefully they think it is just not worth it. Also, there is an unboxing timelapse of 6 monitors in the background.
Tags	unbox monitors "time lapse" timelapse ViewSonic monitors LCD "boom boom" "loud music" "fire code violation" "Toshiba h30" Kdenlive Houston Texas "Harris County"
Link	Link

Failing to get organized

2012-01-10T22:35:00.002-06:00

Giving up on mRemote. It is a couple years out of date. It looks like the program has been taken commercial. Typically when this happens, someone continues working on the open source program and at least dealing with security issues. Not this time. Besides, It has issues with my multiple desktop program.

I'm looking in to Terminals. It is open source and there for more likely to be updated even after the people who created it give up on it.

Well, Terminals conflicts even worse with Finest, my multiple desktop program. It also does not appear to play nice with VNC on Linux. It requires a password be stored in the program to make SSH work apparently. I can't figure out folders. Can't get my X to point properly.

After playing with them, I'm giving up on them all. Using native apps and manual organization. That means I'm just running the individual programs and remembering the server information.

Hit the windows button, type in "putty" for SSH and "remote" for Remote desktop. Then, just type in the name of the server. For VNC I have to type in "tight" and run down to viewer. No biggy.

It amazes me how often I have to jump to another computer while doing everything all day long.

Notes:

2012-01-10T22:34:00.000-06:00

Roles Royce is owned by Germans.

My father is off to the transplant doctor today. It would be so awesome if he got a kidney.

Yesterday's weather was pretty cool. Actually, today is colder, but we really needed the rain we got yesterday. It was intense rain that came down in sheets for kind of a long time. That and all day there was some amount of rain going on.

Do juicers do anything? Does the juice you get from smashing up vegetables and fruit really all that good for you?

One layer graphite is called graphene. Once you get down to the level of one molecule of material and smaller, you get interference of reality between paths of transference from one transistor to another. A transistor is a switch that allows a computer to make decisions and run programs. If you get interference, you loose the place of the little switches. Grapheme allows even thinner places in which to build multiple transistors. One more step closer to fictitious computers that do the work for us.

Sometime soon, my Twitter feed count will surpass my blog count. I'm not worried, just noticing a trend.

Buddy of mine

2012-01-10T22:19:00.001-06:00

A buddy of mine is in this video. He is the one being harassed by cops. His name is Lance. He is one of the coolest people I've ever met.

Notes:

2012-01-09T20:37:00.001-06:00

Made it in to work just in time to miss the majority of the rain.

Helped a user this morning. She needed a piece of software installed. We have many of our systems set up so users cannot install on their own boxes. This is to nip virum in the bud and prevent spreading as much as possible. Not sure how effective this strategy is, but it does lower the calls to the help desk. People can't just install every little thing on the internet, any of which can cause problems with standard software.

Kodak is in trouble. It was once a giant. Now, it is falling below the level that stock exchanges will even run it on the big board. Kodak invented digital cameras. Talk about blowing an opportunity. There are 38,000 retirees. That is less than the number of employees. Retirement issues is a 2.5 billion liability for Kodak. I learned how to develop film in High School.

Lunch conversation: We had a new guy and a good lunch at a Mexican restaurant. It was fun if wet. We spoke of many things, but the subject stayed on Television and moves. I should have written down some of the names of shows that people said were good. Many went by that were bad. Some of the folks say they don't watch TV much any more. I'm with them. I just want to watch the frigging shows and get on with my life.

I listen to radio dramas online. Go to www.shoutcast.com and search for something like "old time radio". There are more if you keep looking. One funny thing that I come across occasionally is the redo scream. Many of these shows were done live and recorded just as things happened. The earlier ones particularly. I've not mastered the art of identifying who is screaming in these shows. There is some imagination required. I wonder if people from this era learned to identify who is uttering a scream.

Sunday morning

2012-01-08T17:27:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Sunday morning
Description	Sunday morning and a club foot.
Tags	medical foot kitchen breakfast cleaning morning Sunday "Toshiba H30" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Elle dancing

2012-01-07T16:03:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	9 year old dancing to LMFAO Party Rock
Description	Yippeeeee. This is for those who wonder why kids are so skinny.
Tags	"party rock shuffle" "LMFAO Party Rock" kid child dancing home Houston Texas "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Time lapse comparison

2012-01-07T14:22:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Time laps comparison
Description	Intro interrupted four times, but here it is. This is two time laps videos. One shot and put up straight off the Toshiba H30 and the other shot as a video and sped up the same amount of time in Kdenlive post production.
Tags	time lapse "straight off camera" "post production" interruptions garage studio family fun technical compare "Toshiba H30" "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Lunch conversation

2012-01-05T20:55:00.001-06:00

We went to the Chinese place. We do most Thursdays. This is the place we all sit at a big round table and order on mass. Everyone announces a number, rice preference, and soup preference. The ordeal of 18 people is done in a minute sometimes. One of the things that came up today was my desire to capture this on video for the internet.

We made it through lunch in just about an hour. This includes confusion over where people were when we were leaving and getting across Westheimer in more than one group. Nearly got squashed on the way back.

Past employees. One was on hand to defend the entire ilk.
DND and who has been showing up and who has not.
Work

Spare drives and locations.
Customers
Support stories. Wish I could elaborate.

How long we have been using this restaurant. A cricket had been in someone's meal many years ago. We came back.
Video games.

Star Wars New Empire bugs. Something about dancing and your enemies can't touch you.
Neither the other IT guy or myself have really played video games for many years.

Rice is the poster child of starch.
What I've been doing to stay busy. This is both on the job and for fun, from two different people.
There are holes in the sidewalk on the way to this restaurant. The guy from Europe said the local counsel would have been sued over them. I told him they have been like this for years.

Houston is anti-pedestrian. Not related to the bullet above.

Work

2012-01-05T19:23:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Work work work
Description	5 minutes of goofing off at work. Didn't get 5 minutes to myself the whole rest of the day.
Tags	work "goofing off" fun friends coworkers Houston Texas "Fujitsu H30" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Day

2012-01-04T21:30:00.001-06:00

Items in brackets are censored.

Hours	Description
1	Renew [url]
1	Odd even week issue for payroll.
1	Diagnose [name] machine firewall issues.
1	Setup [server name] with RHEL 5.5
1	Get [employee] a laptop and UPS. Setup email.
1	Imaging [name] prepare and image. [name] imaging.
3	Misc License meeting. Printer hookup for a user. (Why is this so time consuming?) New RFID card for [user]. Learn new Exchange from [IT]. Help [user] hunt down a server for development. Help a user with email password glitch. Semantic setup on a laptop for a user. Recover old equipment from [user]. Organize image drives. Touch up dd imaging doc. Approve several emails. Help some folks move.

Notes:

2012-01-04T21:21:00.001-06:00

Does fracking cause earthquakes? It is apparently cheap and effective. Some people are very much against it. France bans it for the time being. France uses a huge amount of nuclear for energy. That money is knocking.

Someone in California is suing over the 50 miles per gallon claim of a Honda Civic. It is about frigging time. There needs to be a hard standard on which to base comparisons. The federal standards are based on complete bullshit. When the government says 54 MPG, but in reality, it is more like 33 MPG. The idea is to not stomp on the gas or break. Drive like a grandmother and you will save gas. make a car that drives like a grandmother for people and you save gas.

I've found myself abandoning some lame Twitter feeds. It gets to the point you just don't care what someone has to say any more. One of the Vloggers only Tweeted when he had a new video. This is how I treat Tumblr. I don't have any followers on Tumblr.

Did you know this is an odd number week year? I do, now. This bit us in the but because we pay every other week with some employees. We will have to switch back next year.

There is a new conspiracy theory that says the world really screwed up by having all those nuclear tests in the 1950s and 60s. Some say it has caused a permanent mutation level blip in all genomes across the world. Below ground tests tend to be more contained.

Several podcasts had Christmas specials. I didn't listen to them until the first week of the new year. They all just got blown away. I tis depressing to linger on Christmas. We have still not taken down the tree at home, but work hasn't taken down the tree either.

The new camera works. I really like not having to worry about the ten minute crap of my other HD camera. The quality is lower. I have to run "normalize" on all the audio. I don't care. I may just start using it for the vlogging because I don't have to make multiple clips to get the job done. Just go and cut. Need wider angle, of course. I'm never satisfied to be honest.

The Commodore 64 is thirty years old. Judged from the introduction date, not ship date. I had three. They died from power surges.

China is digging tunnels for everything. They have thousands of miles of tunnels to hide nuclear missiles. They have dual use missiles for nukes and conventional warheads. The commentator didn't get the idea of dual use missiles. He kept saying if someone gets attacked we would have to retaliate with nukes. But, the expert tried to explain that they could be either nuke or conventional which means the Chinese have more options in intercontinental warfare than we do. The treaties between the U. S. and Russia don't really apply anymore if China is not going to sign in.

Notes:

2012-01-03T23:45:00.001-06:00

I would rather have no theory than the wrong theory.

We are hiring another IT person at work. Starting to sweat.

Didn't have five minutes to myself today. Didn't get anything shot for a video. Work is not the place for it to be honest.

Donuts in the Unimog

2012-01-02T18:35:00.002-06:00

This is what farmer hill billies do in Germany.

TV Shows

2012-01-02T18:31:00.002-06:00

Tera Nova

Tera Nova is, wait for it, a science fiction show. Finally. The world needs more. However, the society that they use reminds me of Fascism. I've heard from more than one place that it is a show about dinosaurs with too few dinosaurs. Need to check it out.

Boardwalk Empire

Boardwalk Empire appears to have cost a lot of money. Good acting, blah. Not sure what the draw is with it. Going to have to check it out one of these days.

Homeland

Homeland just doesn't sound like the kind of show I like. It sounds for all the world like a "did he or didn't he" kind of show. I'm just not looking for a laundry list of did and didn't to follow.

Walking Dead

Walking Dead is a show about zombies and the obvious break down of civilization. It is a liberal vent point for gun control and the idea that no sacrifice is worth upsetting the current values of liberal media. Not enough zombie killing. Too many debates about moralities.

I've watched all seven episodes made so far. Something like that. Not sure why, but there is just not a motivated production of this show.

Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad is a TV show about a guy who finds out he has cancer and, having the knowhow, becomes a methamphetamine cook. That is pretty much it. He becomes a killer. He becomes a very bad man. He was already intelligent and now uses his brains to keep one step ahead of the other bad guys and his brother inlaw who just happens to work for the DEA.

I've watched this show up through season four. I'm not sure where they are going to go with next season. Some say it is the last season. Surely the protagonist becomes the king pin or is taken out or both.

First sunrise of 2012

2012-01-01T21:12:00.003-06:00

Field	Data
Title	First sunrise of 2012
Description	Not the most spectacular sunrise, but it happened. Good sign for the year, right? Sunshine ver 2 by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tags	front door East morning clear sky "first sunrise of 2012" Toshiba H30 Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

New light

2011-12-31T01:48:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	New work light
Description	I bought a second of the work lights. This one is trying out the new Toshiba H30 video camera. Not too shabby. Light or camera. It is a bit of a repeat, but this time I have much better lighting.
Tags	unbox "work light" video lighting "night shot" "Toshiba H30" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Siren still works

2011-12-30T20:05:00.001-06:00

This is why they put snorkel kits on fire trucks.

Me and Merlin

2011-12-30T15:01:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Me and Merlin
Description	Merlin loves this stuff. Music: Gymnopedie No 1 - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tags	cute "classical music" cat scratch ears shake "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

One side light weight

2011-12-29T15:50:00.001-06:00

Dang slower traffic.

Yard

2011-12-29T01:09:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Cleaning up the yard
Description	Cleaning up the yard among other things.
Tags	yard Christmas decorations cleanup "clean up" "time lapse" "toy assembly" family "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Drive

2011-12-28T23:22:00.001-06:00

I ended up blowing away the Windows drive on the laptop. It got to the point it would not let me shrink the NTFS partition properly. It is really annoying that you have to jump through so many hoops just to get partitions to form the way you want. I've had to deal with crazy setups at work. I've had computers with 8 Linux OS installs on one machine. All set up to boot independently. Only one swap partition that worked for all of them. I have made drives work in just the way I wanted this one to work. It seems I'm more determined at work to finish the job. I just didn't care that much about this one.

Right now, I'm copying information from one partition to the other using, what else, the 'dd' command. It is so frigging easy. If only it worked every time. I tried to move the partition. It would not go because it was inside an extended partition. So, I created a primary partition and am now copying the data. Sounds easy. All kinds of things could go wrong. The alignment might be off. The system may not recognize the correct boot device. The data might be corrupt. The drive might blow up from all the copying. I need to stop dwelling on the negative. I'm upsetting myself.

The screen saver has kicked in. Every few seconds I look over to find if the drive light is still lit. It is going from and to the same drive so that slows things down. The worst thing about the dd method is the lack of a progress method. I can look at the amount of data that has gone by and get an idea, but in so many cases, it is just miles off.

After all was said and done, I ended up just wiping the drive and starting from scratch.

Putting Ubuntu on the laptop

2011-12-27T21:28:00.003-06:00

I want to put Ubuntu on the laptop. I intend to put it along side Windows. We will see how that goes. There is another partition on the drive that I don't understand. I believe it was made by a piece of software. It is going by by shortly. The restore partition is nearly empty. Not sure it works at all. This system has been restored once after a virus infection.

First things first. Download the OS. Well, I screwed up and downloaded the wrong OS. I downloaded Ubuntu Server. That is fine, but not what I'm after here. Back to the download page.

Unetbootin is what I use for putting the ISO file on to a thumb drive. I must then figure out the key to hit in order to boot from that key. I gave up using CD and DVD disks because of the sort of mistake I just made. There are so many choices out there that it just costs too much money.

Boot off the USB key. Make sure video, wifi, touch pad, drives, USB, and other bits show up in the "try Ubuntu" bit of the ISO install. Click install. Let Ubuntu shrink the NTFS partition as much as it will. Worry about getting it right later. The resizing partition step is scary because things are getting moved around. This is where you can break the existing OS the easiest.

Then comes the inevitable hang up during install. I then start over and the system appears to run smoothly for a while. The funny thing is that the lockup was not a bad one. I was able to kick off a terminal and execute top to verify that indeed, nothing was happening on the system. This is frustrating, but common.

On a side note. The count down timer on the download and install is fluctuating from 22 minutes to 1 hour 45 minutes. So, it isn't just Windows and iTunes that is useless in this area. It is just as useless on Linux.

Waiting ... Starting to look like it is going to take longer than the hour and forty five minutes. Glad I have nothing else on my plate. ... Now it says 1586 minutes remaining. Not looking good.

It was stuck on language packs. I clicked skip and things started moving. That is just not right. Was it trying to download all language packs? Was it trying to download English only, but having a hard time? I remember setting it to English when it asked.

First reboot. Always wonder if the dang thing is going to come up after. ... Came up fine, but the mouse pad is not working. Figures something would break. It worked fine when booting off the USB drive. ... OK worked after a reboot. Not sure what happened there.

Next. Run through one of the 10 things to do when after installing Ubuntu sites. There are any number of these sites. I recomend reading though several of them and pick and choose the things you want. I do recomend Gnome over Unity at the moment. Unity just has too many bugs right now. Maybe this will change, but not unless the developers start using the interface.

Run first (over sized) set of updates and reboot. Will it reboot and run? Will something break? ... Few!

Hmmm. It won't let reinstall better video drivers. That is kind of a drag.

Install Kdenlive from PPA (development) repository. Takes a long enough time to be worrying. Tons of scary crap going by on the screen. Check. ... How many frigging libraries does it take for a video editor? ... Half an hour later, it is still doing ... something. A bunch more scary stuff is going haywire.

Kdenlive keeps telling me that it cannot find the MLT modules. It is installed in the normal place. They told me the one I installed is the correct one for the version of the OS I have. Of course, something must not work just because it is me doing it. More tomorrow. Well, I need to pay bills and clean the yard tomorrow. We need to take down the tree as well. Humph. Chores. Bah!

More to come.

UPDATE

Finally got the Kdenlive repo working properly. Something about a key not matching. It only took me all day to get this laptop up and running the way I wanted it.

Random numbers

2011-12-27T16:58:00.001-06:00

The numbers generated by this widget come from RANDOM.ORG's true random number generator.

Christmas number two

2011-12-26T20:48:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Christmas number two 2011
Description	This is Nat's side of the fmaily's christmas 2011.
Tags	Christmas 2011 fireworks presents family fun Magnolia Texas "fire pit" country "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Christmas number one

2011-12-26T20:47:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Christmas number one 2011
Description	This is my side of the family's Christmas 2011.
Tags	Christmas 2011 family parents family fun kids presents wrapping paper "Santa hats" "Missouri City" "Ft Bend County" Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

How an Engine works

2011-12-26T19:34:00.001-06:00

It is nice to have one taken apart in front of you and someone who knows simply explain it.

Last day of work for the year

2011-12-26T14:43:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Last day of work for the year
Description	A couple things lying around the office.
Tags	Christmas "last day of the year" work labor wifi "access point" "poor design" electronics "dead hard drives" "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Imaging drives using DD under Linux

2011-12-25T23:45:00.003-06:00

I wrote this for work. It is highly transferable information. If I got anything wrong, scream at me. Comment on this post or email me. The address is somewhere on the page, I think.

I used Ubuntu 11.10 for the commands in this document.

Writing zeros to the drive before imaging

Remember, this is done on the drive you are about to make the image of. It will make the final file size much smaller.

Find out free size of disk.

>$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb1             147G  114G   26G  82% /mnt/disk2

Write the zeros

>$ cd /mnt/disk2
>$ dd if=/dev/zero of=big.txt bs=1G count=26

If you get an error saying something like “memory exhausted” Drop the number bs (byte size) and multiply the count accordingly. The result will be the same. Don't worry about running past the end of the partition. We are just trying to get loads of zeros out there.

>$ dd if=/dev/zero of=big.txt bs=256M count=104

Delete the file immediately after the above command finishes. The zeros are left behind on the drive.

>$ rm big.txt

Write partition to file

From the drive where you want to store the image, run the following command.

>$ dd if=/dev/sdb1 | bzip2 > file.bz2

Write file to disk/partition

When using a partition, first create a partition and format it the same as the original image. This command will only expand data to the “data” portion of the partition and not overwrite any partition metadata on the drive.

>$ bzip2 -dc file.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sdb1

When writing a whole drive, write directly to the top pointer /dev/sdb, for example. This will over write partition information. It should also allow boot information to transfer properly.

>$ bzip2 -dc file.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sdb

Image file integrity check

After making the image file, always do an integrity check before you let the machine go or do anything that will alter the data.

>$ bzip2 -t file.bz2

Errors will be listed.

Recovering broken image files

All this does is break the massive file in to billions of smaller files. Run an integrity check on all the files. Rename the ones that are bad so they do not make it in to the list. You can then use those files to write back to your partition using wild cards. The partition will be damaged and must have utilities run on it to fix those errors. Some data may be recovered and some may not.

The number of files will depend on the size of the original file. I had a 9.5G file break in to 26,933 files. Their total size was just a bit larger than the 9.5G original.

>$ bzip2recover file.bz2

Running integrity check on several files after they have been “recovered” above.

>$ bzip2 -t rec*file.bz2

Notes

File names

I strongly suggest using descriptive file names. Not only describing what is being imaged, but the type of file system and the whether it is a full drive or a partition that is being imaged.

For example.

<computer id>_<desktop|laptop>_<internal|external>_<part|disk>_<ntfs|ext3>.bz2

Time

All of these steps take a long time.

Machine

This is the sort of thing you need to do with a machine that is not used for anything else. I recommend using a thumb drive or CD boot system because you might incidentally over write your OS drive.

The right drive

Do absolutely everything you can to make sure you have the correct source and destination drives. In Ubuntu, I use a thing they call disk_utility on the menu to get a GUI description of the drives and what /dev/sd* they are trying to come up as. Most of the time you can use drive size and the partitions on the drive to double check.

The instant you hit enter on DD, the damage is done. The first part of a drive that is over written is the partition information. The first part of a partition is usually folder information.

Watching things happen

You can use the watch command to keep track of things like disk free space and file size. Open new terminals for these commands. The watch command updates ever 2 seconds by default.

>$ watch “ls -lah ”

and

>$ watch “df -h”

and

>$ top

Outstanding issues

This trick seems to work regardless of block size of the drive. I haven't done enough testing yet to know for sure.

Haven't yet tried to put an NTFS image on to an ext3 partition. That should be interesting.

The USB cables seem to cause errors, not to mention how slow they are. Stick to real SATA connections.

BZip2 is single threaded because of the way it works on variable sized blocks. GZ is faster, but does make larger files.

Notes:

2011-12-25T23:44:00.001-06:00

NPR ran a story about a guy in China who wrote a book about beating you kids in to submission. He sounded like so many tyrant fathers I've known over the years. He is doing the talk show circuit in China. The only thing that frightens me is some people will listen to him. NPR went through some interviews with people talking about how out of control their kids are. It sounds a lot like the U. S. and other western countries to me. Maybe we do have something in common.

I wonder if there is a business opportunity to create a service where you have one number to call and report a wallet stolen or lost. You could do the same for phones and laptops and such. You could not only have someone know everything you have to call about to report stolen property and information, but they could make the calls on your behalf. They could also help you one the road to getting back up and running. They could also write letters to the credit people to keep a lookout for stolen identify type hits. I would charge $20 a year or something, or $200 after the fact.

We did spend a few minutes today trying to track down the instructions for the funky automatic light switches in our offices. I don't think we learned much. These switches are befuddling. The one in my office broke and was replaced with a regular hand switch to the envy of many others. The fancy switches simply have about five ways of adjustment. Time on, motion sensitively, light sensitively, timeout for turning off without motion, blinders. It is all a balancing act beyond even the most inquisitive and annoyed engineer. It was interesting watching the engineer play with the light and try to diagnose the different seatings while manipulating them to his liking.

Q?

2011-12-22T18:19:00.003-06:00

What is quantum?

Answer 1

Don't worry about it. It isn't important. If you have made it this far in life without quantum, then just skip it and the migraine.

Answer 2

Quantum is a collection of rules made up by people who are, let's be honest, guessing why thing are happening that they can't explain in any other way. Scientists always want things to boil down and become more simple. They want finite lines and roles. When you divide and define, things are supposed to start making sense dammit. Some very smart people refuse to admin that maybe things get more complex as you get smaller, as you dissect. There are more choices instead of less for things or more interactions not less. Maybe those things you think are small are still just as complex and varied as all the big things.

Answer 3

The stuff the universe is made of. The material that can become anything on the smallest scale possible. These are buckets full of generic particles and forces that make up everything else.

Answer 4

The free memory in the simulation we all live in. These particles are the bits of random access memory that still have some traces of what piece of the universe was remembered at some point. Black holes are probably just memory leaks in the galaxy or sun subroutines.

Answer 5

No two things can occupy the same spot at the same time. Quantum is simply the act of very small things trying to keep out of each other's way. This is why they appear to travel faster than the speed of light. This is why they appear to change attributes or design without explanation.

Answer 6

The drone of creation. The soup of matter and happenings and changes.

Answer 7

Proof that God will always throw more at us. We are not in danger of figuring everything out and thus stagnating.

Notes:

2011-12-22T18:19:00.001-06:00

There is some bar that sets the price of beer like a commodity. The more of a particular kind of beer sells, the cheaper it gets. That is kind of backward. Still, people buy in, so to speak. There are margins to prevent 300 people from walking in and attempting to drive the price to zero. The only thing I walked away from was that people were paying $6.50 for a glass of logger.

If I had a goat that ate nightmares and shit rainbows, some people would find a reason to bitch. Some people will never be satisfied. These people seem to gravitate to the whole environmental movement.

Americans are getting fatter. Some port authorities are changing the rules for passenger capacity. They have to calculate the number using 180 lb instead of 160 now. Yikes.

Been a few days since I put up any online content. I've been ridiculously busy at work. Our company seems to stir the pot hard this week because most of the employees get next week off. I suppose this is a normal response for so much time where the company is basically shut down. However, Many people need me in order to get things done on our network or on their computers. It was not until today that I got a breather. I was able to catch up on some things today.

I ordered the frigging video camera. It will only fix one major problem I have with my current camera. It will take longer than 10 minute videos. It has a normal lens. That is, it does not have a wide angle lens. I intend to use it for long videoing something stationary for a couple hours and using the 30 seconds of video that is worth keeping. This is something that I've missed being able to do. It would be great if I were making money off this, but it is still in the hobby stage.

Once upon a time, I set up a web server to host my own video files. This was just as YouTube was kicking off. If I had known how much easier it would be after YouTube came about, I would have just waited. I have yet to upload those videos to my YouTube Channel. I need to do this.

Sleep is for the dead.

A couple months ago I sent out an email asking if anyone had extra unused DVI cables lying around. A couple weeks before that I sent an email around asking if anyone had seen a DVI splitter, converts a single in to a coble headed connection. Again, no response save a single cable that someone gave up. Today, I found a box of dusty DVI cables and splitters in one of the labs. I moved it to my office. I'm the one who divvies these things out. Now I have a box full. This also makes a couple of otherwise useless video cards work. Today, it paid to be nosey.

"Loads of people have PhDs. They are as dome as I am." -Mar Kermode. Film critic with a PhD.

Bliss is for the weak.

Notes:

2011-12-21T22:23:00.002-06:00

What do I wish? What is worth wishing? If I admit something selfish, does that make my wish moot? If I wish for something selfless, is it for selfish reasons? Is there a way to win this wishing thing?

The days will get longer and the nights shorter from today on. This is the solstice. Summer is right around the corner. Tomorrow is rain. Hope this is a good omen for the year. That is a good omen when you have come off a couple years as dry as we have had.

The bar I'm looking for smells like a wharf. It has only one light bulb hanging from bare wires. The wood is as rotten as the barman's stare. There is only one drink and they call it poison for a good reason. This is my place. These are my people, even if they would stab me for the price of a single shot. Good times.

The laptops I've been looking at are very cheap. The cameras I've been looking at are very cheap. Still, I can't really afford them. We need to pay off all the bills before worrying about these things.

Shit happens

2011-12-18T12:39:00.001-06:00

Goods

We have good insurance at my work.
The roof doesn't leak (yet).
I've been vlogging for a while and seem to like it.
Global warming has still proven to be bullshit.
Had a couple free lunches last week. Christmas and all.
Man's domination of the dog and horse continues unabated.

Bads

Illness

Nat is still recovering from surgery.
I'm sick.
My father needs a new kidney. God knows what else.
My right big toe knuckle appears to be too large. What the hell do you do about that?
I think I have a cavity and no frigging dentist. We don't need any new medical bills.

Our water keeps getting dirty because we are at the end of the water line. That is just plane disgusting, but a fact.
The bills are piling up faster than I can pay them. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but it keeps getting farther away.
People keep dumping work on me so they can take off early for Christmas vacation.

I'm sure I'll think of something else.

Game farming

2011-12-17T19:37:00.002-06:00

All your score are belong to us.

The first half of this video shows a little bit of how game farming works. This is a blip, but there are many people doing this. I've heard that there are entire warehouses full of people doing similar things.

2011-12-17T17:27:00.002-06:00

Vacuum Belt

Music: Faster Does It by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Field	Data
Title	Vacuum Belt
Description	An hour and a half to change a vacuum belt. It should have taken maybe ten minutes if we knew what were doing.
Tags	"time lapse" "vacuum sweeper" vacuum belt change replace adults "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Oil lamp

2011-12-17T16:00:00.001-06:00

I wonder how well used oil would work.

Lunch conversation

2011-12-15T20:48:00.002-06:00

The big story today is that someone accidentally copied someone high up on an email complaining about he company. I'm sure this kind of thing happens all the time at every company. It is just interesting to hear about it. I await the memo.

You can tell that people use email for work because they screw up their emails and complain when it is not around. If they didn't get use out of it, you would not hear about the problems people have with it as much. I should stop complaining about hooking up printers because that means people are using them.

People only spoke briefly about the latest Star Wars MMOLG. You can play a droid. The three minutes I spent playing World of Warcraft came up briefly.

It was hot outside today. The weather is nuts. On the way back to the office, the sun came out and everyone was sweating. Adam asked about the Greenland Ice Pack and if anyone had hard about it breaking up. He claimed that it is supposed to bring on the next ice age when it melts and dumps a bazillion tons of frigged water in to the Atlantic. I mentioned that today, it has my vote to break.

We walked past a car that had its alarm going off. It was one of those alarms where the horn just keeps beeping randomly. My father had one on his vehicle a couple years ago. The comments were made that at least it makes people turn their heads. Another person commented that we didn't stop. A third person mentioned that the two young ladies beside it didn't fit the profile of car thieves.

Notes:

2011-12-15T20:47:00.002-06:00

I am not a tree hugger. I wish our government would outlaw cutting down huge trees for Christmas displays. It is a waist. Try growing a big tree in one of those squares. Same for the Whitehorse. Stop it. You are contributing to killing the planet.

Then came the beginning.

I am so rooted in reality that you exist to me.

What is going on with gluten? "People try it and feel better." What is the problem with the gluten? "I don't know. Some people have an allergic reaction ..." It sounds like bullshit to me. it sound like a placebo effect to me.

The Voyager probes are still working thirty something years on. I can't find a light bulb that last more than a year.

Someone has really made entanglement work on a macro scale. This is amazing. This is the gateway for computers using thousands of processors all at once. It is the gateway to world wide mass direct point to point communications. It might lead to instant communications regardless of distance. I know this last one is not that big a deal on Earth, but will come in handy for space travel.

There is a movement to make photos have a rating system that tells how much retouching has been performed. I want one that is applied to politicians and how truthful they are while ~~bullshitting~~ ~~lying~~ speaking.

Today I tried to install Windows Vista Home Premium on a couple old laptops. They had the Dell license for that OS. The key does not work. You need the Dell copy of Vista to make it work. Goodness only knows what Dell would charge for two old laptops (really only one because the first one would surely work on the second) this far out of warranty.

There are going to be thousands of CIA and other special ops and even FBI staying in Iraq after the first of the year. No one is fooled. Least of all the Iraqis.

The clouds were so low this morning that you cold hear yourself cussing at them echo off them. The air was thick. It looks like rain. It smells like rain. The ground is wet and the grass is clingy.

CSI Pope has to come on to the scene to prove a miracle has happened before someone can become a saint.

Some reporter drove through Syria. The rebels gave the woman a tour. It never fails to crack me up. When the press agrees with a group they are rebels. When they disagree, they are terrorists. The rebels want a no fly zone. I also love how every side claims they are not free until they are fully in charge of everything. I didn't know that is what the word free meant.

Linux can look complex

2011-12-15T20:44:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Linux can look complex
Description	Sometime things are not ad complex as they seem.
Tags	image linux Ubuntu dd "linux commands" complexity Dell laptop "Canon Elph 300" unbox server Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Notes:

2011-12-13T21:49:00.000-06:00

When I write a blog entry or shoot a vlog video, it reminds me of how it must feel for a tree to grow a new root. I feel just that little bit more grounded. It is a feeling and there for not even close to mattering in reality. Feelings count for motivation.

Hooked up three printers today. One of them twice. I then shared most of them. Then I attached a couple users' machines to those shared printers. This is worth mentioning because we have printers in most of our offices that are hardly ever used. I try to put them in communal areas so anyone can connect to them over the network, but I am commonly overridden by the powers that be. Ho-hum. Another day.

I watched a man try to fix a motorized wood splitter. It turned out the crank case was cracked and he had to replace the engine. After that, the wood splitter worked like a champ.

Nat was very kind. She cooked a TV dinner for me. It stunk so bad from some kind of pepper in the sauce I had to throw it out in the garage. She hosed the place down in Febreez and we are back to normal.

I've had this running through my head half the day.

Europe

2011-12-12T19:38:00.001-06:00

Man, they are pissing themselves in Europe. Shit is looking like it will fall apart. Basically, Germany has let it slip that they are not going to pay off everyone's credit card. Everyone else is saying "That's why we joined in the first place." The bills have come due. The collectors are knocking at the door.

England, for a while wanted to join the Euro. The division was something like 5/10 yes 4/10 no and the rest undecided. now the numbers have apparently flipped. The news is full of what is on TV and sports on the BBC. That along with weather and traffic. Not much about Iran getting the bomb next year or the Russians tearing their government in little pieces.

Europe is upset that England is really thinking of telling Europe to go fuck itself ... again. Some diplomat or whatever came on the BBC and basically shouted at the commentator that England should just shut up and fall in line with the rest of Europe. More than a few Brits are not happy about the attitude of Europe.

I keep hearing therms like:

"epoch moment"
"world economy"
"not the end of the world"
"no one is starving yet"
"new EU treaty"
"worse thing in a generation"
Briton has a better negotiation stance now specifically because she is not part of the Euro.
Some folks throw their hands up and say the only solution is to give the government totalitarian powers to "fix" things.
Others throw up their hands and say giving government totalitarian powers was a mistake.
Others throw up their hands and say "Now is the time for action!" They then sit on their hands and wait for the Germans to sign the check.

There are 27 countries in the European union. Many use the same currency. Briton wanted a change to the treaty. Europe said no. Now Europe wants to change the treaty. Briton says no. Europe is going ahead anyway. This may be illegal. Offal convenient just ignoring laws that don't fit your agenda. This sort of thing is happening a lot these days. Egypt ignores the rights of their citizens not to be killed while protesting. The U. S. is working on suspending or abolishing Habeas Corpus in the near future. They say it is just for terrorist types, but the powers that be will really like the idea of just getting rid of trouble makers.

I listened to some debate on the BBC between people in Briton who want to fully surrender, I mean join Europe and people who Want to fake an independent nation joining Europe in a financial way only. They do not want to let it slip that both sides want the same thing. Europe will make and enforce the rules. Europe will collect and spend the taxes. The U. S. will supply the armed forces for foreign conflict and China will supply everything else. The debate was heated. Those in the hall were told repeatedly to shut up.

The European Union is fraying at the seems.

Notes:

2011-12-12T19:37:00.001-06:00

Coughing my head off. Have I mentioned that I'm sick of being sick? While sitting in my office this afternoon, I took a moment to listen to every single office around me cough. It seems like the whole office has come down with the same ailment.

Just can't leave it to one comment on thenews post.

Elle's Christmas fort

2011-12-11T15:06:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Elle's Christmas Fort
Description	Ever just wanted to get away from it all?
Tags	kid fort "Christmas fort" "hiding place" family fun "Christmas tree" "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Making it look easy

2011-12-11T13:17:00.000-06:00

Not too shabby. The mud looks pretty well packed. I've been watching a couple 4x4 type videos this morning. People seem to put a lot of stock in bald tires. I don't know if they just don't want to put good tires on an off road vehicle or if someone out there is telling people the slicks have some advantage. Half the problems in the off road community could be solved with some nobbies on an otherwise decent off roader.

Saturday

2011-12-10T18:48:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Saturday
Description	Work, family, shopping. Another day in paradise.
Tags	vlog "Sam's Club" "working on the weekend" "cat litter" family work shopping paradise "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Lunch conversation

2011-12-09T19:51:00.004-06:00

I went to lunch with one coworker. We seem to get along. Hadn't sat down with him and wrapped in a while. It was good.

Family

Commitments related to holidays.
Conflicts related to holidays.
Illnesses

Football and baseball in a moder era of the DVR an internet.
McRib and French fries.
Tethering our phones and battery life.
Old cars.
Women!!

Notes:

2011-12-09T19:51:00.001-06:00

found out at around 06:00 this morning via text message that I have to work tomorrow, Saturday. It is for a good reason. My buddy, the one I'm covering for, is adopting he and his wife's second child. This is so frigging cool. Not that I have to come in. That kind of sucks. Not like I had plans. It is coming in on a weekend. I have no idea what to do with the consultant coming in. I plan on rolling with the punches. It has to do with mail setup. It is amazing how difficult it is to keep email going.

Finally setup tethering on my phone. It turns out I didn't even need to root my phone. I'm so mad at myself for not checking Instructions found here for our Optimus V phones from Virgin Mobile.

It must be a chore to have a very special episode of a podcast/radio show. Thing is, I hate them for the most part. They typically have a live audience for the first time. I dislike when radio shows and podcasts take on the public. This is true for all shows so far except for Dr. Karl. Their callers rock. No idea why except it is purely educational. Both sides want to learn from each other when the calls happen instead of yell at each other which is what most other shows are after.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The Republican party needs to split right down the middle. The only reason it hasn't happened is because of numbers. I think you would be surprised how many democrats would run to the newly created centrist party.

Family evening

2011-12-08T21:05:00.000-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Family after work
Description	What goes down on a Thursday evening in the zhsy compound.
Tags	vlog "family fun" "stream of consciousness" Thursday evening garage "after work" home "chick fil a" "drive through" "drive thru" snickers Houston Texas "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Notes:

2011-12-08T21:04:00.001-06:00

Every day, I have to add a couple new technical terms like 'Unquarantine" to my spell checker. I've been using this spell checker for weeks if not months. You wold think it wouldn't be a daily occurrence.

A friend of ours is going through a divorce. Yet another one. I hate this. I've had too many friends go through the trouble and expense of these things. Divorce should be easy. Marriage should be hard. It should take two years and thirty five thousand dollars to get married.

Lunch conversation

2011-12-08T21:03:00.002-06:00

Today was one of those days I wish I could have shot a video. One of the guys had a children's play thing to go to. He had to deal with some asshole who had $15000 worth of camera equipment which he believed gave him the privilege of standing in front of everyone and videoing his kid, all others be dammed. My friend was not happy about it. He made his displeasure known with gusto and flamboyance. It would have made a good video.

We also talked about work a little bit. Not too much. It was refreshing. Mostly people complained about the recent changes to our email. They also commented on the state of the industry. I need to learn how to run a trout line.

Some of the guys spoke of a new video game based on Battlestar Galactica. The way they talked about it, the whole game was spot the robot. There was some rule that said if you just shove everyone out an airlock you can spot the Silon based on the gaming rules. There is just not a sufficient negative to this activity. There is apparently a supplemental set of rules that answerers this issue.

The subject of kidney stones came up as well. I was told I should keep a strainer and a jar next to the toilet. Perhaps not.

One of these days when we go to Fing Ling, I want to video us all taking our order. It is like clockwork.

Out sick, Kidney stone

2011-12-07T21:48:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Kidney stone anecdote
Description	My anecdote about today's kidney stone.
Tags	sick illness "kidney stone" medical story anecdote pain agony vlog "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Work craziness

2011-12-07T12:33:00.003-06:00

Email upgrade

I've just about had it with email issues. Wifi is right behind email in the list if issues that I'm sick of. Why is email an WiFi so frigging difficult? You would thing that they would have the kinks worked out of a 40 year old protocol. Alas, this is not the case.

Much of modern social media started as email. Blogs started as a list of people to email when you had something worth complaining about in your head. People wanted on the list. People wanted off. Finally blogs came about. Same with Facebook and Twitter.

These past couple days have been nuts. Not just for me either. Any time you mess with people's email, you get both barrels. It cracks me up how much modern work runs on email.

As I think about it, nearly every process of our company has an email component. If not something that happens every time the process is executed, then a step that has to happen if things go wrong.

We upgraded. Now, we pay the price. Why did we upgrade? Because we didn't want to tell people we had a ten year old email setup. Hey, it kind of worked.

Email Upgrade Timing

Of course this could not have happened at a worse time for most of the people involved. They refuse to admit that their crisis would have happened no matter when we pulled the trigger on this upgrade.

Laptop charger

One of our people has a laptop with either the wrong charger or a bad charging mechanism in the laptop. I've tried most of the charger we have. Nearly all of them list the correct voltage. many even have the same connector. They all fail.

Otherwise

Otherwise, things are not so bad. Most stuff that happens is normal every day IT stuff. I'm glad when I know how to fix something and I'm glad to learn how to fix things I don't.

Notes:

2011-12-07T12:33:00.000-06:00

"Whiskey fueled" "Jinn soaked" Get it right!

I've seen a cockroach fly. I've heard a cockroach hiss. Mainly I make them crunch when I can.

Remember "John and Kate Plus Eight?" ... Me either.

Remember the U. S. credit rating falling recently? Ya, I do too. Well, it is cheaper for the U. S. to barrow now than then. Apparently, the rest of the world fell further than we did.

I was watching a vlog and someone said they paid $9 for a set of clippers from Penny's. Is Penny's still in business? Is it in business in Canada?

Inside the shreader

2011-12-04T20:42:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Inside a shredder
Description	Just a quick video of the inside of a house hold shredder. Got to use my flashlight flood adapter.
Tags	POV inside shredder "paper shredder" shreader shreder "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Tipsy rant

2011-12-03T22:01:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	File name extensions tipsy rant
Description	Microsoft wants to rule the univers one file name at a time.
Tags	"file extensions" file names Microsoft tyrant "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive.
Link	Link

Antigravity

2011-12-03T15:39:00.001-06:00

I hope some of this is not completely bullshit.l

One good one bad

2011-12-03T15:04:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	One good, One bad
Description	Response video to Meekakitty. Name one thing you are good at and one thing you are bad at.
Tags	social interaction ask question meekakitty response "good at" "bad at" social "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Big Truck Videos

2011-12-03T14:07:00.001-06:00

Just drag whatever the hell that thing is up the hill why don't you?

Over the hills and though the water. Tankers of oil have to get through.

Up. Up. Up! ... and over.

Vlog for today

2011-12-01T22:00:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Vlog 2011-12-01 Clips galore
Description	Loving life and kicking ass. This is what happened to me today. http://justkelly.blogspot.com http://zhsy00001.homelinux.org
Tags	"ice cream" vlog bus "bus stop" complain "Linux complete command" book work job commute "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Westheimer Kdenlive.
Link	Link

Silly podcast

2011-12-01T21:41:00.001-06:00

I tried to listen to a podcast today while working. It wasn't working for me. It was a story about a woman who gives birth to a universe. I think. It was about the author and a miscarriage she had when she was nineteen. Miscarriages fuck women up. I can understand only so much, not having the equipment. I blame modern society assigning a stigma to miscarriages. I'm quite positive that there have been times in human existence where people didn't blame the mother for the miscarriage. I'm sad that we are in a bad place on the subject.

High Contrast

2011-12-01T21:39:00.000-06:00

Hold the left-ctrl and left-shift and hit the print screen prtscr button in windows. You will be promoted to set high contrast video. Try it for a couple minutes. Hit the same combination to switch back. There are times I use this to set other people's machines because I cannot read their screens with some settings. It trips people out. As long as you don't switch back and forth too quickly, all the settings come back.

Mac must have something similar. I haven't looked. Linux, that is Gnome, requires you to set a keystroke combination to accomplish this. I don't think there is one by default. I've looked.

When I use Linux though, I don't really need to use high contrast video modes. Most of the color schemes seem to be readable for the most part. Sometimes I change the background and mouse if I can (Ubuntu!). I usually set the zoom buttons to 'win-i' and 'win-o' for in and out.

All the high contrast settings, regardless of OS break things. Some programs just don't test their software in high contrast mode. The text disappears from some buttons. This is because they hard code the text color or they base it on the line color of the current scheme. This causes the text to appear the same color as the background in some cases. Simple lack of testing. How many times have I said that about problems I've had with software?

Office Software

2011-11-30T19:59:00.001-06:00

PDF editor - free - drag and drop pages and modify how everything looks. LibreOffice. Ye, people are terrified of it. You open the drawing package. Open the PDF. Start adding text, editing elements, swapping out graphics, filling in forms, moving pages around and all that kind of jazz. People are scared to death of using it. Just today, someone, who has LibreOffice on their computer, would not use it to modify the pages of a PDF they had just scanned in. Why? Because they had never done it before. How has Microsoft made the whole world addicted to their products?

I want to run a double blind study that brands LibreOffice Draw as Adobe Illustrator Lite. Then, have a bunch of lawmen people run though editing and modifying existing drawings and indeed PDF files. Then making up some drawings themselves. I bet money the test group who will see the name "LibreOffice Draw" will hate the package and the group that sees "Adobe Illustrator Lite" loves it. Then I want to re run the study with "Microsoft Architect for Office 2014" or something silly like that. I bet the results are the same.

Sheep!

Microsoft Office does not have the built in software for editing PDF files. Adobe products really only allow one package to edit PDF files and it is $200. There are a couple open source software packages out there that do it, but LibreOffice Draw is the best by miles for my money. Oh, wait, my no money because LibreOffice is free to consumers.

Ubuntu 11.10 over VNC

2011-11-30T19:58:00.003-06:00

When I run VNC server on my server, it uses the cruddy display system that is some combination of a broken Unity and Gnome 3. It is indeed broken because there is no menu button, think the start button in Windows, of any kind. Nor does the search mechanism work that is to replace the start button. Something has to give because, let's face it, you have to initiate or run programs somehow. It is a needed evil.

I had to remote in to the box using ssh. Then I needed to find the desktop folder and write a script that simply kicks off a gnome-terminal. I can do what I want from there id I'm honest. Still, it sucks not to have the damn interface. If I run from the hard terminal, ie the keyboard and monitor, Things work well enough. Apparently, the bits of Gnome 3 or Unity or whatever makes things work is simply not compatible with the bits of VNC that act like a display system and generate the graphics.

The following is one potential fix. I'll try it this evening. Hopefully, I'll post my results. maybe not.

VNC on Ubuntu 11.10 with Gnome. Watch out for the quotes if you are cutting and pasting. The xstartup example for Gnome is here. I strongly recommend just dealing with gnome-classic.

...

Worked. =]

Notes:

2011-11-30T19:58:00.001-06:00

I may have to start using my own credit card and get reimbursed at work for purchases. I hate this. Not just for the paperwork. If I order something that doesn't work, I have to deal with sending it back. OH!!!! someone please take the purchasing responsibilities over. Thank you.

D. B. Cooper is still at large. There is no statue of limitations on his crimes. It is the only successful hijacker in U. S. history. He drank a Bourbon on the flight before hijacking the plane.

Can Islam and Democracy coexist? As long as those taking part in Democracy do what the Islamists say, everything is fine.

More Unity

2011-11-29T18:40:00.003-06:00

I give up on Unity on Ubuntu. I'm going to switch to Gnome Shell if I can on all my machines. I think it will help my server. Gnome 3 has it's issues, but it is better thought out than Unity by far. Considering Unity appears to be sitting on top of the Gnome 3 back end, you would think they had a better interface already.

At the moment, I have to use an icon on the desktop of my server to run the command line and run everything from there. Unity won't run under VNC. I'm going to have to install one of the dumbed down GUI shells to get that working. Like I said in another post, this server is going to be made to work and not updated for the next couple years.

Maybe I want Unity to work. I don't know why I keep trying to make it do what I need. The idea of creating a new interface is kind of cool, but I'm hearing that many Ubuntu developers don't use Unity on their desktops either. That is the last nail. I'm done messing with it for now. Back to Gnome. Well, to the new Gnome 3, which is a whole new interface as well.

10 things to do after installing Ubuntu 11.10. I don't endorse all those changes. Pick and choose as you can get to work. It does show how to get VLC and Gnome Shell up on Ubuntu 11.10. Good luck.

Notes:

2011-11-29T18:40:00.001-06:00

I like westerns. Not real westerns. I like the myth of westerns. The realistic ones are not bad. I prefer the fake hero saving the heroin kind of thing.

Vampires are so last week. Not its gargoyles.

Fixed a problem I had today with this entry. I did not need to move a user profile folder. I had one vanish and the user could not save any settings from that point on. I was getting nowhere looking for instructions on what to do in this event. I had to change my strategy and look for how to move the folder. I was then able to find the settings in the registry and remove the offending entry. As soon as the user logged in again, the new profile and folders were created. Settings saved.

Apparently Pakistan is "too nuclear to fail". Bullshit. Watch.

What sounds your kids will never hear? typewriter, Those little bells you punch to get someone's attention.

Why I don't use Fedora any more

2011-11-29T18:39:00.001-06:00

The news that Wikipedia was in the process of switching away from Red Hat and Fedora—and to Ubuntu—has stirred up some Fedora folks. The relatively short, 13 month support cycle for Fedora releases was fingered as a major part of the problem in a gigantic thread on the fedora-devel mailing list. Some would like to see Fedora be supported for longer, so that it could be used in production environments, but that is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Fedora has set out to do.
The idea of supporting Fedora beyond the standard "two releases plus one month", which should generally yield 13 months, is not new. It was, after all, the idea behind the Fedora Legacy project. Unfortunately, Fedora Legacy ceased operations at the end of 2006, largely due to a lack of interested package maintainers. So, calls for a "long term support" (LTS) version of Fedora are met with a fair amount of skepticism.
...
Fedora is not meant for production use, nor for those who cannot upgrade at least yearly. It has an entirely different mission, which Jon Stanley sums up:
"Well, in all fairness, Fedora's stated goal is to advance the state of free software. You get that by being bleeding-edge. Unfortunately, being bleeding edge also means not being suitable for production environments - these are two fundamentally incompatible goals. This is why Red Hat Linux split into two - Fedora and RHEL. RHEL is a derivative distribution of Fedora."

lwn.net

Apologies for quoting a quote. It just gets the point across. I need to figure out how to indent inside a block quote. Something like that anyway.

We use in a position at work where people want to use Fedora for their desktops. The idea of being stuck with an OS for years on your desktop makes people weep these days. I have to agree. There are so many things that change from one month to the next in the world of computers that people are not willing to be stuck with something that doesn't at least try to keep up.

I know for a fact that some large companies use Fedora as a production OS. This is bad bad bad. It is like using a race car for hauling freight. Great things come out of race cars. You can think racing for things like struts, twin turbos, over head cams (may have come form diesel engines), rain resistant tread on tires, and heaven know what other innovations. Still, they are just not meant to move pallet loads of stuff around.

In April next year Ubuntu 12.04 LTS comes out. The LTS stands for long term support. That means security updates and long term support for base packages will continue until some time in 2017. The next LTS is supposed to over lap this time by several months. The real support, not the locked support or whatever they call catastrophic fixes only period that occurs the rest of the time.

At the house, I use Ubuntu. I've tossed around the idea of switching to Mint, but that brings it's own issues. Ubuntu has lousy upgrade ability. In the future, I'm will try to do full installs on my primary machine. When it boils down to it, I will use the next 12.04 LTS version of Ubuntu on my server and other machines for the five or so years it will be supported. It will be nice to put the last OS on my server. Upgrading a server has specific issues that I just don't feel like dealing with every 13 months. I wish more companies felt this way.

Why do companies take risks like this? Why is it a risk? It is a risk because something that you depend on may change to the point you can no longer perform upgrades. If you cannot perform upgrades and updates, you may be at risk of being hacked.

As far as why companies do it, why do companies do anything? Well, they don't want to spend the money for all the licensing. they already know Fedora or whatever distro is the issue. They needed the latest feature that the distro offered at the time that no one else had. etc.

Sunday Walk

2011-11-27T18:13:00.001-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Sunday walk
Description	What I did this weekend.
Tags	walk weekend sweep garage clean roses clear sky houston Texas "canon elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Ubuntu 11.10 sucks

2011-11-27T11:29:00.001-06:00

The mouse pointer in Ubuntu cannot be modified without intense scrutiny and effort.

I cannot control the interface or even launch programs in the normal way when controlling a machine through VNC.

The Unity interface is ridiculous at this point.

The more I read about people having similar problems the more it comes to me that half my problems are due to an upgrade rather than a full fresh install. I've had this trouble before. I should have learned my lesson.

There is a new distro in town. Well not so much new as I'm finally willing to try it. It is called Linux Mint. My biggest gripe about Linux is the lack of usability for normal users. Mint is supposed to handle this. The more I read about it, the better I like it. I don't care if it uses a three year old release of Gnome as long as it works.

I tried Linux Mint. That is, I tried to install it. I tried to install it on 5 different boxes, all with the same result. The install crashed. This is two different images of the install disk and 5 different machines including two virtual machines. The install crashed in 5 different places, different on each machine. This does not instill confidence for the OS.

A new rule for Ubuntu may be in order. Ubuntu is a pretty good OS as long as you A) Don't messe with the interface settings and B) Do full installs instead of upgrading. This is a sad statement. This is a bad thing for the OS.

This shows a lack of testing. What I'm sure happens is that someone installes version A on a box freash. Then they upgrade it to what will become version B. If the machine does not catch fire, they declare victory and go make a sandwich. This doesn't help when people have their own settings and programs installed. Nothing from this line of thought is valid. "We can't test for everything." Especially, when they are not getting paid for the most part.

The same thing happens in Windows. When you upgraded from Vista to Windows 7, you found that all the problems continued. The only difference was some features went away and some new one's showed up. If you didn't do a fresh install, the problems stuck around. That is because you are the problem. You installed the shit software. You changed things to a combination that no one else had tried. The upgrade tries to keep the system as much the same as possible.

Russia

2011-11-27T06:55:00.002-06:00

Mouth off in Russia, get thrown in prison and tortured and neglected to death. Stay to the very end. The last little jab is awesome.

Drive prices

2011-11-26T20:22:00.002-06:00

Hard Drive Prices Up 150% In Less Than Two Months
"The Register reports that hard drive prices (lowest average unit prices) have rocketed 151% from October 1 to November 14th. The worst days have seen over 5% daily price increases. This is commonly attributed to the floods in Thailand, but there are concerns of artificial price fixing and suspicion that retailers or members of the supply channel are taking advantage of the situation."
The number varies when you break it down to individual drives, but it seems to be in the right ballpark. Anecdotally, the drive I picked up on Oct. 14th would cost me 135% more today. The flood waters in Thailand have partially receded, but aren't expected to be completely gone until early December. The damage to the country's economy and property is measured in the tens of billions.

SlashDot

This has bitten me in the butt over the last couple weeks. We, as a rule, need a constant supply of hard drives just to keep our infrastructure going. I cannot imagine how the computer manufacturing companies are coping with this crap. I read somewhere that only a few components come out of Thailand. The idea that this trickle of parts is hindering the entire planet's ability to make drives is ridiculous.

Tag

2011-11-25T11:45:00.002-06:00

Field	Data
Title	Tag
Description	Shot Thanksgiving day 2011 at Sue's house. They had brush to burn anyway. The little square in the lower left corner is a slow motion video of the fire after dark.
Tags	"slow motion" fire vivid tag kids family fun adults playing yard thanksgiving "thanks giving" "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link