How cool is that? This little chopper would fit in a back pack. It looks like you would kill yourself on the first flight, but WOW!! It's cool.
This makes me think of all the work that the MythBusters put in to their single person flying machine. Their's did not achieve five cm off the ground. If this is for real, it is really nifty. It just needs a stabilization system and a whole lot of safety work.
I don't believe that. I should speculate that less people are
answering their phones these days. These people tend to be higher
educated and far more plugged-in than those who do not screen their
phone calls. That doesn't sound much better than just calling people
stupid. Oh, well, you get the idea.
I heard someone say it. I did a little impromptu questioner on the
subject of who answers their home phone any more. I found out several
people from my work do not have home land lines. Of those who had a
home phone, very few would answer it if the Caller-ID did not report a
number they knew by heart.
I heard a statistic the other day that 46% of Americans believe that
9/11 (the events of September 11, 2001) was staged by the CIA or at
least some faction of the American government to establish a bunch of
new rules and limitations of freedom. I think those people put a lot of
faith in the abilities of the CIA. Perhaps these folks are the first to
say the CIA is full of crap when talking about a county's weapons of
mass destruction.
This got me thinking. "Who answers their phone any more?" My parents
screen their calls as far as I can tell. Nat and my home phone has the
ringer turned off and no voice mail. You cannot get hold of us that way.
I should ask "Who answers their home phone any more?" Every one has
mobile phones and no one would answer a survey if someone called them
because they all pay for minutes. People are so in touch, they screen
their phone calls, emails, MySpace messages, IM, Facebook pokes,
everything. You have a better chance of shouting your message from the
top of a mountain because someone will video it and it will end up on
YouTube. People are afraid of direct contact because it says that the
contractor wants something from you. If you just happen upon something,
then the contacter wants the same thing from you that they want from
every one else.
Before I can accept any statistics done by contacting people and
asking questions, I have to know how they were contacted and I need to
know the questions asked. That is not a very good sound bite for the
evening news or the commercial break that advertises the evening news.
The next time you hear "__% of Americans think ..." Take it with a grain of salt because the first thing we need to know is what percentage of the sample was made up from stupid people?
What a plane crash looks like from the inside of the plane. Pretty scary stuff. This kind of thing is why I try to carry a flashlight in my pocket. And, I never take my shoes off while on the plane. I've heard horror stories about that habit too.
The field is thinning. I'm not sure I care. If anyone asked me who I
was planning on voting for I would still say John ?Robert Bolton. I'm
planning on writing him in. I have no idea if I can do that. I have no
idea how. I wonder if that sort of contingency is covered using
electronic machines. I'll probably change my mind before the elections.
I wonder if Mickey up for it.
People I speak with daily are not talking about the races. It's all that is in the news. No one cares. People are more concerned with their pocketbooks and jobs. Things will pick up after we have the old Republican vs Democrat race. It is not politically correct to talk about politics.
It is 4100 lumen flashlight. Found here. For sale here. It will blind you. It will start fires. It will fry an egg. It is $300. The batteries last like fifteen minutes. Shine this in a suspect's eyes in broad daylight and it will knock them off their feet.
It is hot, but is it bright? There are no comparisons of brightness. I'm not interested in starting fires. I want to light up helicopters.
So, I used some skills today. Skills that I learned on my computer
at home though trial, error, more trial, pounding the snot out of
something, calming down after a couple beers and more trial. What I did
was easy considering I had already done it at home and at work before.
That's called experience, right?
Setting up an Apache web server for SSI Server Side Include. It
isn't hard,unless you have never heard of SSI. Then you have no idea
where to start. It took me ten minutest to set up a server for use with
a new page today because I found out I had zero time to convert an
entire site from IIS to apache. That is, from asp to html. Go me.
Something I learned today is that Red Hat 8 came out in late 2002.
It sucked so bad that it was quickly followed by Red Hat 9, which was a
bundle of fixes to Red Hat 8. Thus RH9 was relatively stable.
Enterprise Linux has been a challenge. It seems like Linux has been in
transition for the last ten years. It isn't transition. Linux is
chasing Windows. That is bad because Linux will never be Windows. That
is another rant.
This afternoon I applied knowledge I'd learned just messing around.
Then Nat tells me you can nearly do it with public libraries.
DAMN!!! She downloaded some ebooks today. I would like to get in to
that sort of thing, but I have Linux and their DRM software is not
designed to work on open source platforms. I'll keep looking in to it.
I know there is some ebook software for Linux.
Nope. I'll have to stick to ... alternative methods of reading books.
I have a strange feeling that I should get a passport. I have no
desire to travel outside the U. S., but I do believe that the day of a
national ID card are coming and having a passport will make the
transition much less complicated. Do you know how much of a pain in the
ass getting
a passport is?
I have a reoccurring nightmare of my family being held on a very
crowded side of a fence covered with U. S. soldiers aiming guns in our
direction while saying something threw bull-hors to the effect "If you
can prove you are a citizen, come to the front of the line." Maybe not
having it is the better option.
Today is one of those days that I ask myself if I've done the
correct thing. Ever. It is one of those days where I question all the
decisions I've ever made. I will not accept the place I find myself and
I will try to tare myself apart to generate change of some kind. I
think the country finds itself in this position on mass.
I hit this level of self doubt now and again. I'm not sure what
triggers it. I used to hit it more than I do now. Maybe getting older
simply slows the frequency of self doubt. Maybe it is the other way
round for some folks.
I know people who do not hit this self questioning stage. Nat as far
as I can tell anyway. They are folks I respect. They are folks who I
might say are happy. I envy them a bit. Hitting these walls of self
doubt are scary and a bit painful. They dampen the accomplishments and
amplify failure.
There is no episode of crying or deep depression. At least, not any
more. Those seem to have run their course log ago. Now, when I
experience one of these torments, I simply feel down and want nothing
to do with the world. I don't care if it is a sunny day or if Nat wants
to do something. I just can't get myself out of the house. I find that
blogging helps satisfy a need to feel like I have accomplished
something. That taste is a godsend on these days.
If only I could take hold of these days and strangle them out of my
life for ever. Surely they hold no real value except to prevent me from
taking over the world. God's safety valve for the superior ... oh, I
can't even complete that joke. I'm just trying to make myself laugh.
This is one of those days where I fear that every mistake I've ever
made will come back and bit me in the ass double. They will, but I
shouldn't let the fear of it keep me from moving forward and making new
mistakes to fear in the future.
Why do most nerds I know spell poorly? What causes good spelling and
bad spelling? It has to be genetic. The rules are not absolute. I'm
sure there are some nerds out there in who are closet spelling bee
champions. I'm just asking.
I can't find anything on using Google about how spelling skills are
related to medical conditions or genetics. There has probably been no
research done in the field because the spell check lobby is far too
powerful.
Spelling has been a bane on my life. I have suffered greatly by not
having the gene that makes me a good speller. Being blind has stopped
me from driving and being a pilot. I'm sure there are other things it
does for and against me. The spelling thing is all negative. There is
no good thing that comes out of being unable to spell.
All you have to do is read a couple paragraphs of this blog to know
that my spelling is off it's meds. I've tried to do things to help.
They have greatly. Things are still out of line. I'm almost 39 years
old. I'm in a comfortable rut and I do not picture myself getting out
of it any time soon. I suppose the view of this from on high is that it
is not a problem . That is most likely due to the idea that most people
who are successful can spell properly. I would like to have some real
research on the tendency of successful folks to be able to spell. I
know I have been ridiculed by friend and foe for not being able to
spell. For spelling inconsistently. For being stupid because I cannot
misspell the same word the same way in one text.
Spelling wasn't even a consideration until a couple hundred years
ago. Some dope thought it would be a good idea to spell words
consistently. I feel like I ware a scarlet letter. Or, a scarlet
collection of letters in the wrong order. I will never write or report
because I have trouble communicating in the box that I did not help
define.
I'll still run the spell check software before I publish the blog or
turn anything in to a superior. I'll still hate writing things down
because I cannot run the spell checker. My spelling will still keep me
where I am. I'm lost. Well, sometimes.
Biodiesel is
basically vegetable oil with the sticky stuff removed. People making
their own biodiesel at home typically start with used cooking oil from
some restaurant. You can use soybeans, corn, sometimes sewage, or any
of a million oily plant or animal fat to cut out the restaurant step.
I'm hearing some really good things about biodiesel. Remember the
corn shortages from ethanol? That sort of thing doesn't happen as much
with biodiesel because different parts of the plant form the fuel. Most
diesel vehicles or generators or pumps or what have you will just use
biodiesel straight out of the spigot, without modification.
Biodiesel burns cleaner than standard diesel. The efficiency isn't
the same, but it is like 80 or 90 percent. That sounds like something
that can change. Besides, you can grow it in your back yard. I've heard
that making biodiesel is on par with making beer. The process is
different, but the skills involved are similar. I do not know how much
land you need to grow a year's supply of juice. I have no idea how big
a tank or what other equipment is involved. I bet you could grow your
own for less than it costs to buy it from a dealer. Especially if you
spread the cost over a couple of years.
Land. Will farm land get more expensive? Depending on how many liters you get to the acre, I bet this sort of thing could take off and huge companies would start snatching up what ever land will produce plants that will work for the process.There is also talk of using bacteria to make biodiesel from even less usable plant matter. Perhaps even trash. . Wouldn't it be nice to have a Bionator 3000 (tm) sitting outside your garage where you threw your trash. Inside the garage, on the other side of the wall, you had a mini gas pump.The Bionator 3000. It slices it dices it eats the grass clippings and pees biodiesel. "Back to the Future" eat your heart out
Taxes. How is the government going to tax home grown
biodiesel? I have friends who make their own beer. Did you know
something like 65% of the cost of a beer is tax? I'll have to verify
that number. When they make their own beer, they pay no tax except on
supplies and equipment. I wonder how long the same would occur if say
FedEx started growing their own biodiesel. If FedEx does the process
from start to finish and only puts the stuff in the tanks of their own
trucks, would they pay tax on the fuel itself?
Tax exempt entities. How about coops? If a group of people,
farmers for example, get together and create a biodiesel coop, as long
as they consume their own fuel, how would that work? Churches still pay
tax on gas when they pull up to the pump. What about church or charity
biodiesel? Could they swap some homemade biodiesel for a donation?
Infrastructural taxes. The purpose of the gas tax is to pay
for roads and infrastructure for the roads. That is the idea any way.
If I'm a guy on some land with a diesel truck and a home brewery, how
am I to pay taxes on the fuel? If I make enough fuel to drive around in
my truck on the roads, I'm not paying the normal fuel taxes, and thus
not supporting that infrastructure. Same goes for electricity. If I am
good at making biodiesel and can make enough to run my house off a
generator and not the power grid, then I should not pay the same taxes
on that amount of biodiesel because I'm not using the existing
electricity infrastructure.
That second bit goes for plug in hybrids too. If you put gas in you
plug in hybrid car, you are paying for the road infrastructure. If you
put electricity out of the wall/grid in the same hybrid car, you are
not paying for the roads and bridges. Maybe that is why it is so
difficult to get real electric cars on the roads.
A solution for this discrepancy is to stop charging taxes on fuel
and start taxing the roads and bridges. That will go over like a new
tax in an election year. Short of putting toll booths everywhere, thats
not going to work in the near future. Besides, that is a whole new
layer to the infrastructure that must be paid for.
Another solution is to charge the same relative tax for gas and
electricity. One has to go up and the other has to come down. The one
that goes up will get used less and the one that goes down will get
used more. Gas is pretty much the same price if you buy one gallon or a
million gallons, as far as I know. Electricity has as many pay
structures as there are bureaucrats who can write the rules.
Another idea is to get rid of the tax on fuel and tax the vehicle at
point of sale or yearly that is based on real or estimated need for the
support of infrastructure. That would make cars harder for people to
afford over all. It would move the cost of vehicle ownership right up
to the front. The auto industry has far too powerful of a lobby for
this to occur.
Face it, they know how to turn shit in to fuel in the form of methane and no one uses it. The change to the next big thing will only happen when the current way of doing things is less of a pain in the ass than switching. That is always the way it happens, regardless of what you are talking about. Higher prices for gas will drive alternatives. Any one who knows anything about business knows the instant an alternative comes along, the price of gas will plummet. So, no on fronts the change for change.
Everything I start to write sounds so depressing. I don't want to sound depressing tonight. I want to be warm and sleep tight.
There has been a lot of talk about a UFO in Texas. I heard an interview with an officer who was very specific that he did not see a space ship. He does not know what he saw. Some folks swore fighter jets were chasing the lights. Someone said something was hovering in their back yard. The Air Force denied any jets were flying that night at first. Then they changed their story.
sometimes I think I would love a flying saucer would land on the front lawn of the Whit House and hold a press conference along side the current president. Just get it all over with. Maybe we, all of humanity, would stop with this attitude of self sustaining arrogance that we make such a huge difference.
Then again, I like the "Mars Attacks"
approach. Show up ray guns blazing, take no prisoners. Kill them all
and let Quantum sort them out.
Then again, again. I don't know what I want. No videos on YouTube
beyond tongue in cheek reports by TV news folks looking for that giggle
before bed story. No one takes any one seriously. I've only watched a
couple of the videos.
Of course there is an explanation. Humans make the explanation match
the circumstances as best they can. That is what an explanation is
after all. How do you explain dark matter or the flight of a bumblebee?
It would be nice to know for sure, but what is for sure worth. I know
for sure that radio waves let me talk over distances without sending a
guy on a horse. Tell that to someone on a ship in a storm in the 1700s.
Take a flashlight back to the building of the pyramids. Yadda Yadda.
What will tomorrow bring? More HTML editing at work I imagine.
Maybe I'll doom myself and say that nothing interesting ever happens
to me. No, I won't say that is far to frightening.
No, not mine. A lady riding the bus this morning lost her balance
and ended up bumping her head on the seat of the bus. She was
embarrassed. The bus driver had to wait for a supervisor. He wanted to
get people's information as witnesses. I didn't see what happened. I
was told later.
Most every one got off the bus and waited for the next. It was the same bus stop where a person got shot last year, on a bus. That was one of the covered topics. People spoke of other accidents they had witnessed or been in. I didn't add my two cents. I just stood there and waited. I still made it to work on time. Several people complained about the lack of a backup. There is another bus right behind this one. That is the backup.
I was sure there was going to be another crash among cars trying to
avoid the bus just on the other side of the intersection. As people
tried to merge left, the light would change and they would get stuck
behind the backed up traffic in the other lanes as the left terning
people headed south would fight to take their place in line. Then north
bound people would start honking. Patience folks. We are in in this
life together. The ambulance showing up seemed to calm people's moods
as they put up with the traffic problems. The lights signal a "real
problem" I suppose.
I have been trying to think of something to write about. I'm
watching the third season of Battlestar Galactica while typing. The
silons speak of projection. It makes me think of quantum. I wish I were
smart enough to understand Quantum Theory. I wish I were the
philosopher. I could take the time to explain quantum. It really makes
a difference to want something to happen. The universe is bent to the
will of life in more ways than pushing a rock up a hill, or throwing a
stone into water. We observe, there for we change the universe.
There is another word for will. It is faith. I have no faith in
quantum or the world or people or Battlestar Galactica. I have no faith
in government or freedom or rules or health care. I have no faith in
the universe or the tossed stone. I have no faith in the things you
have to see or hear or smell or feel to know their beauty. I have no
faith in knowledge or wisdom. I have no faith in the internet or things
or thoughts or dreams. I have no faith in me. I leave all this in God's
hands and go on about my day.
How is that for nothing to say?
I did web updates all frigging day. I mean all day. We went back and forth with changes and modified graphics. God knows what else. I couldn't get anything else done at all. Today I'm glad I have a policy of not showing work stuff because I'm not proud of the page. I'm so glad I don't care.
I watched a movie a while back where two guys were under water and shooting 9mm at each other. The video showed each firing and the bubbles going up. The bullets only traveled a few feet short of the other guy and fell without doing any damage. They were not even that far apart. It turns out this is pretty true.
The MythBusters found out that both a 9mm and a .357 revolver will
fire under water. They will not fire a bullet far beyond eight feet.
However, up close at about two feet, they were still quite lethal.
Hollywood got one right. I think they would have blown their ear drums
though. That's another job for the MythBusters.
The shotgun blew to pieces. Don't shoot a shotgun under water. The
M1 (Can you believe they shot an M1 under water?) fired, but the .30
had less penetration than the 9mm.
One of the there myths they went after was someone diving under
water to escape someone firing a machine gun. As it turns out, the
faster a bullet travels the more damage the water does to the bullet at
the surface. Which means, someone standing above the water firing, say
an AK, at someone, say five to ten feet under the water, just might
empty a clip right at them and not kill them. The bullets expend all
their energy on the water. High speed bullets disintegrate. A 9mm would
simply smack in to them and not penetrate their cloths.
So, the next time I watch "Borne Ultimatum" final scene, I shouldn't make the sniff noise. I probably will just for spite.
OK, most of my good videos come from LiveLeak.
I've heard Vietnam called the TV War because every night had TV footage of military stuff going on. Funny, I get zero footage of the Iraq or Afghanistan ware from news. It is all on YouTube from soldiers on the ground. I get zero news from Iraq that above how bad Bush has botched everything. There are whole blogs devoted to good news from Iraq. This is a war that is being lost by the media. I bet every moment we do pull out of Iraq, the bad guys will shot at us and every shot will be blasted on TV and headlines. Vietnam was lost by the politicians. Iraq will be lost by the media.
This one is a base of some kind. It is not nearly as impressive as the one I posted a couple days ago. I got some comments about it so I thought I'd go ahead and post another. Still pretty cool.
One day you are looking for something to do that makes you feel alive. The next, you wish you could butter your own bread. I still have zero desire to skydive, bunjy jump, scuba dive, or tempt fate. I believe in giving God every opportunity to let me live a long healthy life.
So, I've been walking around for days with broken glasses on. Most people didn't notice because the break was the little nose holders. The symptom was that my glasses sat right on my nose. This caused me to look down my nose at people a bit. It also caused me to lift my head way up at an angle to read things through the bifocals.
Nat ran me over to Wal-Mart a bit ago and the lady behind the vision
center counter was a peach. She showed me new nose holder thingies and
offered to put them on the glasses for me. It cost me $2 or so. Nat
picked up a glasses cleaning kit. She wanted to get one for each of us,
but it was a bit too much for our budget right now. What can you get
for $2 these days? Apparently, five minutes of a lady's time who knows
how to fix your glasses.
Just for the heck of it, here is a slow motion video of bullets hitting common household items. My favorite is the 2 liter bottle of water. It shows the path the bullet takes nicely.
I was watching the MythBusters where they slam two semis together just for the hell of it. the little car they are putting in the middle, for effect, is a Fiat X-19. I learned how to drive a stick in an X-19. It kind of brings a tear to my eye.
My dad has a thing for Fiat sports cars. He used to have a spider that he jumped over railroad tracks in his wilder days.
I'm still watching the show. They are also doing some vodka myths. ... That did not go as planned. Another try. ... The little car got spat out the side of the wreck. It was flattened pretty well. No car would have survived that wreck.
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Many of you will recall that on July 8, 1947, just over 60 Years ago, witnesses claim that an unidentified flying object (UFO) with five aliens aboard crashed onto a sheep and cattle ranch just outside Roswell , New Mexico . This is a well-known incident that many say has long been covered up by the U.S . Air Force and other Federal Agencies and organizations. However, what you may NOT know is that in the month of March 1948, nine months after that historic day, the following people were born:
Yeah, and the Transistor was "invented" at Bell Labs in December of 47. And people think the aliens made it happen. "The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those
who have
not got it." - George Bernard Shaw From an Email
|
| Albert A. Gore, Jr. | born March 31, 1948 |
| Hillary Rodham | born October 26, 1947 |
| John F. Kerry | born December 11, 1943 |
| William J. Clinton | born August 19, 1946 |
| Howard Dean | born November 17, 1948 |
| Nancy Pelosi | born March 26, 1940 |
| Dianne Feinstein | born June 22, 1933 |
| Charles E. Schumer | born November 23, 1950 |
| Barbara Boxer | born November 11,
1940 |
| George Bernard Shaw | 26 July 1856–2
November 1950 |
| Transistor | 16 December 1947 |
Only Gore is an alien. Everybody knows that. Oh, and humans got
Transistors and fiber optic cable from alien technology. Oh, Krazy glue
and the internet also. I forget the rest.
So much for Cynicism. Wait a minute, the reason I looked up
all the dates is because I'm a cynic. So, this proves the power of
cynicism.
I just fisked an
email. I feel like a real
blogger.
I got a bit wet on the way in this morning. It was a pretty good day at work. Some things got fixed that needed fixing. Some things will still need fixing Monday. Same old stuff.
This week went by so quickly that it was a blur. I feel like i was
just sitting at my computer blogging last Friday.
I've heard a couple of news folks announce the death of the DVD as Apple announces the rental service for movies over iTunes. I hate to tell you, but people like to own something. I know it pisses me off every time Nat gets a new phone and starts buying the same ring tones she had on her old phone all over again. This has happened a couple times now. The same thing is coming down the pike with DVDs.
There will be something that is used for computer data. I predict it will be something based on the current flash media cards. I've already noticed some flash based drives coming down the line. There was a removable media disk that was like one inch across that held eighty gigs or something crazy.I don't know what the numbers are. They change daily.
A while back someone told me they bought a video camera that was a
DVD recorder. I thought it was kind of cool that you could take a
finished DVD straight from you camera to the player, but I though "DVDs
are going the way of the floppy disk some day." I remember one of the
very early digital cameras that saved to a floppy disk. Floppies were
already circling the bowl when it came out.
My shelf is packed with CD holders filled with CDs and DVDs. They
have every kind of data on them. Many years ago someone questioned the
value of DVD and CD as a backup tool. They based their claim on the
longevity of the medium. I thought when I read the article that
something else would have come along by then.
Honestly, I'm not worried about it.
Crazy Cat loves water.
Add to My Profile | More Videos
This video is from MySpace. I'm curious if people have a hard time viewing it.
This looks like fun. I remember a girl somewhere in South America who had to use something like this to get back and forth to school. Apparently she lived on the non-school side of a gorge. She had to carry her six year old sister in a sack because she was too young to make the trip herself.
A friend of mine is going camping this weekend. There was a time not long ago where I would have thought she was nuts. It is cold and wet this weekend. Who the hell wants to be out in that? Well, I almost wish we were going camping. Since hitting Faire so many times over the last couple years, I've become custom to the out of doors a bit more than I used to be. I'm no Grizzly Adams, but I do enjoy it conditions permitting.
The thing that gets me at Fair is the people, not the camping. The people are the reason I go. They are why I have fun. I think the same goes for Nat. She seems to enjoy hanging out with most folks. There are always abrasions between this group or that. Then there are specific people that piss others off. Then there are people who seem to piss every one off.
I really hope I'm not one of those people. I'm abrasive. I'm hard to deal with sometimes. I try to have good days too. Poor Nat has to deal with me every day. I've recently had a couple of people avoid me. I'm not sure of it. I'm not aware of any thing on my end besides my every day abrasiveness that may have caused the Kelly-dodge. I'll try to be better in all my remaining days than I have been today. Tomorrow, I will do the same.
There have been days where I cal Nat at lunch. She doesn't want to talk for whatever reason, so I call some friends. They don't have time. So, I call my mom. She likes talking to me. How bad do you have to be for your mom to snub you? I hope never to find out.
I have all the social networks. MySpece, Facebook, Yahoo, email, AIM, It never ends. It is a long list of people who would rather do their laundry than talk to me.
People come to my office to talk to Jake. I suppose it is a good thing that so few people come in to talk to me about just nothing. I should count my blessings. I used to hang out with people from my work more before I started working here. I"m trying to think if I have played DnD more than once with these guys since my first day.
Nat and I spoke of the feeling that we are getting cut off from our old social circle. I'm noticing there is a reshuffle going on. As people have kids, get married, get divorced, die (my goodness, people I know are starting to die off) it takes more and more effort to stay in touch. All those methods of staying in contact that I mentioned above just mean you don't try to stay up with what is going on in other people's worlds. Hey, you can just read their Facebook updates. Why bather talking to them? That is a sad, but true statement. Five hundred methods of communications seem to be diluting the communication that occurs.
I wonder if this blog servers as a surrogate for actually talking to me. I doubt it. I have no choice but to write this bloody thing. I need the outlet. Too bad it is not an inlet. People have the ability to leave comments, but no one does any more. It is due to the labyrinth of security questions and the quadratic equation one must solve with work shown to prove you are a human before the comment shows up. Then, I must check it as displayable. I only do that about every five times I leave a note here because I forget to look for the message on the dashboard of Blogger that tells me a person cares enough to lay their opinion down beside mine.
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Normally, I wouldn't repost the whole thing, but it is a joke so,
heck with it.
It does upset me completely when some people are so stupid as to ask this sort of question. I bet there really was someone asking asking this sort of thing during a press conference somewhere.
I would recommend shouting something shorter than this next time. Come up with a code like "Shoot! shoot! shoot!" or "Fire! fire! fire!", something. It just seems like it takes too long to shout that particular warning too me.
How cool is that? I'm surprised Heath doesn't have one. My father emailed me a couple of pictures of this Monday or so. I found a video on YouTube. Pretty cool. I wonder what the weight limit is.
I tried to take a couple of pictures this morning on my camera
phone. They were to warn Nat that the light next to my bus stop was out
.. again. The pictures are there really only because I get 400 text
messages and 400 media messages and a media message is not a text
message. I think 100 media messages and 700 text messages would do me
better. Or, $0.01 a text would do it. T-Mobile thinks highly of their
text messages.
Anyway, I forward the pictures to my email just to get a good look
at them. The quality is terrible. It is almost not worth having a
camera on my phone. That is not true. I would not take quick stupid
pictures at all. There are a couple of Elle that I'm glad I took. Her
beauty would show through regardless of medium, I'm sure. The camera on
the phone I have sucks. I don't want to get in to what brand it is
because they make better cameras for their phone. It is the one I chose
when I bought. Nat is still upset she didn't get another brand. I
should have listened to her. I wonder if I will next time.
So, will I look for a phone with no camera? No. Will I look for a
phone with a good camera? Not specifically, no. Will I look for a phone
with 'whatever' camera? No. I think it is still a non issue for me. I
do like having a camera on the phone that I can hit a couple buttons
and send it to my email and thus to my blog. I'm not sure I want a
phone that takes good pictures. Something about that frightens me. I
can't put my finger on it. It may be the idea of not wanting to carry a
real camera around. I remember a report on a 7 megapixel camera phone
in South Karia a couple years ago. Bastards. One of the high end phones
has a 5 megapixel camera. I don't remember how you got that one. The
iPhone camera has been criticized. Apple stuff is never quite good
enough it seems.
Written 2008-01-15
I've had to modify the arms of my glasses a bit. They
are squared
off a bit so they dug into my ear lobe where they touched. I used a
nail file to round the plastic off a bit to save my ear.
Now, the nose mount rubber things fell off. The glasses sit a bit low for the bifocals. It is a drag, but it could be worse. The metal that holds the nose mounts could rub the skin, but they don't. Yay me.
The first problem with the arms is a design flaw. The second problem with the nose mounts is a ware issue. This tells me two attributes to look for in my next set of glasses. Rounded legs and strong nose mounts, or no nose mounts.
Oh, I forgot that I had to glue the arms to the frame because they were trying to sip off. I'm starting to think I got a pare of bum specs.
I've heard that you can't get a drop of alcohol, but you can grow 100 hectares of marijuana and no one will give a crap.
I wondered how far off those CGI sand storms were in the movies. Not all that far according to this video. A wall of brown darkness.coming at you and there is not a damn thing you can do about it. It looks like the folks driving down the road just stop and wait it out. It looks like you can't see your hand in front of your face in that blog.
Is it me, or does that dispersal seem too uniform. It almost looks like you could just aim for the head of the snake so to speak. I wonder if that is the way they go off in combat or if they throw some randomness at it.
Yikes, I'm sick of listening to all the mainstream media rattle on
about the primaries, voting records, crying, experience vs change, and
any dozen other loads of crap. Yet, I listen. I follow the loads of
crap. I just can't help myself. No one has changed my mind yet. I still
feel like writing in the name John Robert Bolton. Though, I reserve the
right to be completely fickle.
The candidates all sound very concerned about my wallet. The media
seems highly concerned about the candidate's wallets. Who is what
race/sex and how is that going to affect how people vote? Who is the
raciest/sexist scum of America and how are they going to vote?
I've caught myself listening to John Pienaar on the BBC just to get
away from U. S. politics for a bit. Yes, I'm still not fulfilling my
fix on all this presidential mumbo-jumbo. It is ridiculous. My ears
should be bleeding. Yet, I can't get enough.
Liberal Guilt: Feel guilty when one cannot help someone else.
Conservative Guilt: Feel guilty when one cannot stop someone
from helping the wrong people for the wrong reasons while spending
one's tax dollars.
Notice Liberal Guilt doesn't take money or resources of any kind in
to account. Those are my interpretations by the way. You can't blame
any one else.
I really enjoy listening to the BBC and other interpretations of our
elections. I even like listening to CBS report on the foreign reporting
of the presidential race. And, why not? The U. S. economy pulls the
rest of the planet behind it. I wonder how much longer that will happen.
Bush thinks he is going to do something with the Middle East besides
buy her oil and leave her a bit more beat up than he found it seven
years ago. I doubt it. I kind of hope this is some kind or ruse to
shame the Palestinians in to stopping the rocket attacks on Israel. I
doubt that too. I really think Bush is that wrong.
The Palestinian conflict has two fronts. West Bank and Gaza are now
under the control of two different governments more or less. Who is
responsible for the rockets? The first thing I want is all parties to
agree to stop killing each other. Then, I want them to stick with it.
Neither of those are going to happen in the next year. Bush is nuts.
Bill Clinton did the same thing when he was in office. I remember a
video of Bill clowning around with the mass murdering, Tom and Jerry
watching Arafat. I was nearly sick then. I'm nearly sick now thinking
about it. I'm not against talking to these assholes. I'm against
thinking you can do something about the issues in the Middle East by
throwing a bunch of TV cameras at it and smiling. It pisses me off.
What is it going to take to fix the problems in the Middle East.
Well, cooperation, and a common goal of living aside one another
without killing each other. That or genocide/faithocide on a scale not
yet wrought on this planet. I'm for the former, but don't have much
faith in the current collection of shit-heads in charge of the world.
As it stands right now this world is hurtling toward the latter. I
don't want to live in that world.
I'm not sure it really matter who is president next. They are all
going to face the same set of problems plus some new ones. I bet things
are going toward a recession. I think people really want out of the war
in Iraq so badly that the next administration will be forced to pull
out before anything is properly achieved in Iraq. Not that anything
that looks like a win will ever be properly achieved there.
I woke up this morning and thought it was Monday morning. I was 7:30
am so I had time to make it to work if need be. I tried to think of a
way to tell what the date was without leaving the room. I was naked and
Elle is at home this weekend. Nat was asleep on the couch because she
watches movies all night.
I thought about my phone. It has a calender function. I wish I had
video of me trying to find the calendar through the maze of menus five
time before I found the calendar. Then, the color of the current day is
one shade of blue off from just every other day. So I had to stare at
it for a minute to tell.
I rolled over and got up at 11:30. I got dressed went to the living
room and crashed on the couch for a couple of hours.
What a wonderful Sunday.
| ... The point is this: (yes, I do have a point) a lot of the scars that I bear from my childhood are healing. They will always be there and will likely always be a factor in how I conduct my life. Situations, experiences and environment do NOT shape a person. How you CHOOSE to react to those external forces dictates what you become. However, as the hurt goes away, I don't always lean back on my cold, emotionless maturity to get me through. I don't feel like I always have to be the adult in any given circumstance. That side of me definitely still exists. But that defense mechanism is outdated and I don't much like that person. So if I want to stay up all night giggling inanely with a friend. Don't judge me. If I skip down the road because it makes me smile, don't judge me. If I want to dye my hair blue, spend some time without a job, drift through school, and be a child for once in my life... It is well within your right to say that I'm being childish, and that I'm still a kid and that I'm showing my age. And yeah... I'm ok with that. Kinda the point. |
I've always been the responsible one. I have a house, car. steady job.
I worked at my last job for nine years before leavening for another on
my terms. I pray for stability. I pray for normalcy.
I've never been much on freedom. I'm disabled and the walls around me are comforting. When you can't see the menu at a fast food place or the street signs without climbing a pole. When you can't read a map without a magnifying glass or tell a cop from a door man in a foreign place without asking, Traveling and getting lost in the freedom of the moment just looses it's appeal.
I've never been much on freedom. At least, the kind of freedom that people talk about when they are trying to get away from themselves. There is nothing wrong with that. I'm drinking a glass of wine as I type this. That is away to get away from myself too.
It sounds like you need a shake up to me.I hope you find it in a
safe recoverable manor. I hope you come back some day from your get
away. I hope you remember us when you settle down again. If you do. No
rush.
I've been told that I was never a child. I've been told that I was
more mature than my parents, even as a kid. My father once told me that
he learned how to save money from me. I don't miss it. I have felt once
in a while like I missed something. So what. I have what I have now and
that is all any one ever has. Family, friends, history, It is all a big
pile of Kelly. I'm good with that.
If you are a parent, you have got to listen to the A Prairie Home
Companion's News from Lake Woebegone from last week. I didn't hear
it
until today. It is so true. The tale is about a bus driver that smokes
and drinks. Well, it is about the difference between growing up fifty
years ago and today. Well, it is about life and change in general. Oh,
just go listen to it.
I'm old enough to know a bit about how things have changed when it
comes to raising kids. We have some friends who will not discipline
their kids. They already had one set of kids turn out a mess. Now,
hopefully the second set of kids turn out better somehow. It looks like
the no discipline path just doesn't work.
The people who do A Prairie Home
Companion are amazing. They are creative and talented. The movie was cool.
They are living the dream. Well, not as cool a dream as the MythBuster
guys. They got the dream wrapped up.
I don't know which of these links will fail after a while. Look for "News from Lake Woebegone".
Direct Link (mp3)
Heard something today. I was listening to a podcast called Tell Me More. They were rattling on whether race or gender was more of a destructive force to a person's career. I'm sitting here thinking it is every single attribute of a person that affects them.
The lady made a comment about a t-shirt she saw at a rally once that
read "Real Americans have Red Necks, White skin ..." And she couldn't
remember what the blue was. I'm guessing "Blue Collars." I don't agree
with either the t-shirt or the premise of the podcast.
The purpose of this podcasts is to compare the Clinton and Obama.
Who trumps the other.
I'm disabled. I'm not running for president. The president in the
thirties was on crutches. That was just before TV so he managed to hide
it when in front of a bunch of people. That would not happen today.
Gloria Steinem, the woman being interviewed, sounded intelligent.
She is a New York liberal. That means a lot more to me than the fact
that she is a woman. At the moment I'm writing this line, I have no
idea what race she is. I don't care.
I've said before that my most limiting attribute is pessimism.
I used to ware a watch every day. I felt naked without a watch.
These last several years, I've gotten out of the habit of waring a
watch. I find my phone serves as a pretty good pocket watch.
When I do not ware a watch, I look at my wrist a lot. I mean, every
couple of minutes I'm looking at my watch that may or may not be there.
You would think I would remember the time for five minutes.
It doesn't have anything to do with memory. When I glance at my
watch it is because I'm trying to make a decision on what to do, or
making plans and need to know my current location in time. There for,
the time is not important. The decision is. So, three minutes later,
when I am making a different decision, the time is not held in memory.
Thus, I have to look at my watch again.
I used to think this was just me until I heard George Carlin make
fun of himself doing the exact same thing.
I've considered a tattoo that says something like "You are not
warring a watch stupid!" That wouldn't stop me from looking at my wrist.
I like watches. I like the fashion of warring a watch. I like big
bulky heavy watches. I like watches that look like they would stop a
bullet. I like analog (dial) watches. I like the sweeping motion of the
hands to give me an emotional feel for time. I've blogged about that
before.
Once upon a time I complained that so many watches had no numbers.
Now I would prefer a diver's watch that has huge hands and blobs of
glowing areas in stead of numbers.
Elle likes watches too. I don't think she can tell time. She likes
all things that adults do right now. That will flip around eleven or so
I predict. Sad, but needed. Kids would never leave the nest I suppose.
Plane site Taser.
This is exactly the sort of thing they do not want you taking on airplanes. I would feel better if Nat had something like this to carry around. Hell, I would carry the black one. I'm not proud.
I hardly ever take breaks at work. Sometimes I'll grab some pop-tarts and wait for them to warm up before going back to my desk. Sometimes I'll attend this thing called tea-time where some folks get together and abs for ten minutes as a general break. Not often. I think the tea-time thing is a very effective way to recharge the batteries in the middle of the afternoon. I bet productivity goes up after a ten minute break amongst friends in the middle of the afternoon.
Today, I had a right-now task that was vexing me. It turns out there was a bug in the software I was trying to get to work. A file was the wrong version. It took me several tries and too much time to figure that out.
After that effort, I had to take a minute and relax my head. I
couldn't think for about fifteen minutes. Not about anything real
anyway. It was a time I wish I had internet. It would have been nice to
distract myself with something completely off topic. Wish in one hand
click with the other.
I was just walking around the parking garage and noticed this Jeep
parked on the fourth floor. It is a new one of course. I like these
Jeeps. I keep hearing Chrysler is going to come out with a diesel
version of Jeeps. I just don't know when. That would help on fuel
economy. I'm sure this would make a great combo family fun vehicle.
Is there someone out there with an old pickup that Nat and I can barrow about once a month? Something we can use to haul shelves and lawn bits around on a random weekend here and there. We will fill it up or something. Don't get me wrong, the Carola is a great family vehicle, but it is not pickup. I don't like the idea of owning a pickup that gets crappy economy. I don't like the idea of having more than one vehicle when only one of us can drive.
For example. Nat and I want to get a couple sets of shelves next month. The Carola might get the short shelves home, but not the full size shelves. We have to find a place to put them. Nat won't let me cut a hole in the back of the shelves to access light switches. Prude. We different views on decorating.
An old pickup might work better for Faire come to think of it. That is eight consecutive weekends. That is a bit much.
We were out numbered.
Nat offered to babysit a friend's daughters last night. Something about becoming a citizen. Anyway, Nat was running around like a jumping bean this morning trying to get all three kids ready. All girls. I ended up yelling at Elle because she was doing that moan crap when you tell her to do something. Nat didn't come and save her. Nat was just too busy with the other girls. It was great. Elle learned that she has to do what she is told some of the time, and she cant just gripe without consequences.
Elle survived. As a matter of fact, ten minutes later she was helping me put the youngest in her car seat and smiling.
Speaking of car seats, I had all kinds of trouble. I couldn't get one of them apart to get it mounted. The other refused to fit until Nat came and saved me. I felt useless.
I thought I was not handling the situation very well. Nat said I was more calm than she was. I think we were both stressed. I think with some practice and a larger vehicle, we could do it.
I ended up one minute in the red (late) at work and fired off an email to the proper person about why I was late. Once the reason was know there was no further need for explanation. My stress level lowered when I got to work. Hat saying that. It is true.
Live Leak is where I get many of my videos. It is not so PC as YouTube. I publish my videos on YouTube. Last night, I'm surfing the videos. Only one really seems publish worthy. Then I hit this video called "Dick-a-polt" or something like that. I had to check it out. You know those antennas on military vehicles? They are long and very bendable. This group of soldiers tied a tether from the end of one of these things that was bent double down in front of a fellow soldier. He had the other end of the tether down the front of his pants. He didn't want to do this. I have a feeling he lost a bet. They let the antenna go and "doing", the tether pulls tight. The look on his face was hilarious. Every including me laughed until they cried. It had some nudity, so I'm not going to publish it. It was not sexual nudity, but it was funny.
How board do you have to be to do this? They are not drunk as far as I can tell. Send the troops some video games for goodness sake.
Tell me these bridges don't have B movie written all over them. They are made of straw and aluminum siding and bits of old bridges that didn't make it for God's sake.
Nat and I had to rent a Tacoma while we had some work done on the
Carola. It was Awesome having a truck. Nat liked it. It fit in the
garage. We had the base model, yet it was still very nice to me. Nat
would have only wanted a couple of things including a key-less entry.
The truck felt good and would work for us.
The economy is not the best. Gas is predicted to hit $4 a gallon
before Summer. Perfect time to buy a pickup.
We cannot afford a new car by miles. The Carola is just going to
have to last for quite a bit yet.
One notable thing that occurred while Nat drove the truck was her
distance between our vehicle and the next. Nat left more room between
vehicles while behind the wheel of the truck. I think I know why.
First, she sit up much higher. That has the sort of effect that makes
one think things are supposed to be further away. For example, sitting
in a tree, someone standing ten feet away while you are in the tree
seems closer then when you are sitting on the ground. That person seems
right on top of you. Second. The angle of the hood on the Carola makes
it so that neither of us really see it at all when sitting comfortable
in the seats. I think this affects the angle the appearance of the
road. This means, there is an illusion of greater distance because you
see more road.
There may be some good reasons to get a taller vehicle. The
pickup was basically the same pickup my father has. It was gold and
though I meant to take a pictue at some point, I was just plane too
lazy.
We have the Carola back. I like it. She has new tires and breaks.
I was just watching another movie about New York City. Someone in
the movie was full of lament about how boring it was in New York
because everything and I mean just everything had already been done.
I'm board of New York. I'm tired of a city I have never set foot in.
I will have lived a full life whether or not I ever venture to the city
so nice they named it twice. I live in Houston.
Houston is technically the biggest city in Texas. It is not really
the biggest city because the metropolitan area that is Dallas Fort
Worth is actually bigger, but it is two cities that grew into one
another. Houston has the third largest port in the U. S.. Houston is
The Bayou City. We are named for our plumbing. Houston was built on a
swamp as an after thought. Named after a guy who was a real estate
speculator. I don't think any battles took place on Houston soil for
whatever reason.
People in Houston work. We Play. We live and die. All under a
sickening purple gray sky. We are famous for our roads and the high
water table. Footprints practically fill with water in Houston.
NASA is just south east of here. The only famous line we get in a
movie is all about problems. Our big stadium is named after the
electric company. Our other stadium is named after orange juice.
This city runs on two economies. Oil and landscaping. For the
billions of dollars spent annually on Houston landscaping, this city
will never get the Olympics because the city is just ugly. The skyline
is ragged. The ocean beside us is filthy. There are no hills that
belong to this city. The lakes are mud puddles. The rivers are fun if
you get away from Houston.
Houston is famous for freeways. The web of freeways. Half are built
taller than buildings just to keep from running in to each other. They
are like the bow tied around a garbage bag. A broken, leaking garbage
bag that no one wants to take out.
Houston has touched me. I've had a gun pulled on me on her streets.
I've been hit by cars. I've walked and choked on the black air. Some
say every third vehicle has a gun in it in Houston. Depending on what
neighborhood you are in, I believe it.
People do not know how to party in this town. Most concerts pass us
by because our venues suck. The one big concert hall we had, which was
a basketball stadium, is now a church. This is part of the bible belt.
I guess that's why Houston had no "don't touch" law for topless dancers
until recently. That is why Houston is famous for 'couch dancing'. That
is why Houston is where breast implants were invented.
Houston has oil, and chemicals and landscaping and restaurants and
NASA and hurricanes and hurricane refugees and mosquitoes and floods.
Houston has workers. Houston works. We are the no shit worker
capitol of the world. I don't know what that means exactly but it feels
like it is true. We work here.
I tripped over a homeless guy while bar hopping down town a
couple years ago. I just don't care. I'm one missed paycheck from
joining him. I can't care. It is not the city. It's me. If I were
somewhere else, I couldn't blame the city so easily. The heat and
humidity, the ugly that follows you around, the rank landscapers
following the money.
It is all Houston. We try to live. We try to love. We try to sing
and dance and fly free. We get drunk and drive home because there is no
other way to get home. We work. It is what we do. We do it and do it
and fall down. Get up and go back to work. My God we work.
Houston is a hard working city. That's our motto. Houston, The City
that Works.
No one is there. That is pretty much what you want the enemy saying after someone's head flies in to a million pieces.
Elle's morning went well. Today was her first day back at school for
over two weeks. She was up late many nights. The last couple nights,
Nat made sure Elle was in bed by nine pm. It helped, but when Elle got
off school this afternoon, I hear she crashed pretty hard.
The picture is Elle watching PBS while Nat and I are in the other
room watching the news. The sounds from the room were vibrant. Elle
participated by shouting at the screen. The disembodied voice would as
"Which is in grandma's bed?" Elle would say "That one!" I"m sure
pointing at the screen, and giggling.
Nat and I watched stores of a twelve year old boy
who murdered a toddler. Then there was a possible road
rage incident that ended in death right here in town. Then, a father
shot in a home invasion. Then the traffic and weather. I don't
remember those. I'm glad Elle was in the other room. Yeesh.
Many people in Mexico love Bill Clinton. I wish he would run Mexico for 8 years. I bet they wouldn't like him as much then. He has charisma. He is a blah leader.
Huckabee is
looking like a front runner. He is running his campaign
on the cheap too. He is the son of a fire fighter. He was a preacher
and the governor of Arkansas. He has a chance. I don't like the idea of
both the presidential candidates this fall making me think of preachers
and reminding me of Carter.
There are a bunch of shows (podcasts) trying to predict what kind of
news stuff is going to happen this year. The only one that I think will
come to pass is that stainless steel appliances will go out of stile.
Did I mention that I'm sick of politics? Yet, here I am blogging
about it all again. How messed up is this? Maybe there will be some
good videos to post this evening.
Elle is getting to that obstinate stage. She takes as long as possible to do every little thing when it is time for bed. That's normal stuff. She is so happy about it though. She is going to be one of those people who is all one emotion or the other. She is either happy to the point of being giddy or she is screaming and raving. She does have her even keel moments while she tries to make up her mind which way to fly that moment.
Tonight she decided to be all happy while defying our every attempt getting her in to bed. She is in there as I type laughing maniacally at one of the cats. She is supposed to be in bed. Must go be a dad.
Man,there is a lot of crap going on in the Middle East. There is so much going on that I want to stop reading that news and look for other stories because I'm afraid of missing something or someone sneaking some story by while all the crap is going on.
Then comes all the news of the presidential candidates jumping around the country looking for someone who thinks they are doing a good thing. I wonder what the carbon footprint of the caucus system looks like. I wonder what a charity could do with all that money and free advertising in the news. The blogs are spewing numbers and statistics and opinion. The news is no better. It is just plane hard to fallow and not worth the effort.
There is a story about an honer killing in Dallas Texas that I've only heard a single word about in the blogsphere. That's kind of scary. A double murder that just falls by the way side.
There is a new sniper rifle headed to Iraq. The M110 is semi auto and has an integrated silencer/flash inhibitor. I've heard that future weapons for the military would have integrated silencers. Video.
Britney finally lost it. It sounds like she had the breakdown she was looking for all this time. Maybe she will get some help. God knows she didn't have any help being raised.
So, I'm watching the Mythbusters where they experiment with Mentos and Diet coke to figure out why the reaction happens. I think, there has got to be something on YouTube about this. Well, There were like a million things. This is apparently the video because it was featured in the Mythbusters episode.
It turned out to be a combination of inheritance reacting with each other and the shape of the surface of the Mentos.
Contains nudity. And strong language. That's why I like it. Oh, it's funny too. I laughed, I saluted, I posted.
I'm not ashamed of this post. My mother reads this blog.
Remember all those oil field fires in Quate? (wrong kind of oil fire) This toy could give Boots and Coots a run for their money.
| #!/bin/sh # Open an HTML file using the Mozilla editor. # The editor wants the full path to the file, not relative. # 1) Only edits files that exist as HTML files all ready. # 2) Requires full path to target file. dataFile=$(cd `dirname $1` && pwd)/`basename $1` if [ ! -z $1 ];then if [ ! -f $dataFile ]; then touch $dataFile echo "<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN\">" >> $dataFile echo "<html>" >> $dataFile echo "<head>" >> $dataFile echo " <meta content=\"text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1\" http-equiv=\"Content-Type\">" >> $dataFile echo " <title>blog</title>" >> $dataFile echo "</head>" >> $dataFile echo "<body>" >> $dataFile echo "<br>" >> $dataFile echo "</body>" >> $dataFile echo "</html>" >> $dataFile fi else echo "usage me <html file to edit>" fi `which seamonkey` -edit $dataFile & |
I have to write a script to allow me to enter an HTML file name from the command line and edit it in the SeaMonkey editor. I like the SeaMonkey editor because it is very simple and makes simple code. This makes things easy to paste in to the fields for my blog and for forums.
It has some limitations. That is why it is so simple. SeaMonkey
Editor does not support CSS really. It doesn't do flash embedding or
any of the fancy stuff. I use a text editor for those posts. Sometimes
I will write the page and lay things our in SeaMonkey editor, then
simply paste the code into a preset spot before publishing.
SeaMonkey editor is part of SeaMonkey. That is a
whole browser suite. It is huge considering I only use the editor. I
bet the editor is less than 0.1% of the over all bulk of the
program.
In order to evoke the editor from the command line, there are some things you have to do. You must run SeaMonkey.
> seamonkey --edit
SeaMonkey editor (Composer) will not create a new file. It will
simply ignore the file name you put on the command line and title your
page "unknown". You have to do a save as and type the name in again.
That script at the top of this posts handles this issue with some bash
controlled mayhem. You can't just touch the file because SeaMonkey
editor will blow a gasket if you hand it an empty file.
The file you want to edit from the command line has to both exist,
and contain something resembling HTML code.
One other rule you must follow when evoking an editor from the
command line is the path. You must specify the full path to your file.
This means from the top of the OS or the '/' root folder all the way
down to your file. Otherwise you get the 'unknown' file name again.
This sort of thing happens in many programs. They just don't take the
system current folder in to account when trying to work.
These two rules tell me a couple things about the SeaMonkey Project.
Linux is not their primary concern. And - the command line operation is
on the back burner.
The above script is far from fool proof. It is just something that
gets the job done most of the time. This is one thing I really like
about Linux. There is still a highly robust command line. You can
easily script up some commands and feed the correct information to
where it needs to go in order to get something to happen. This is
difficult in MS and Mac because they design the OS from the ground up
with the GUI as the only way users are supposed to enter the sandbox to
get something done.
OK, killing a bunch of American's for no good reason is bad thing to do. I'm not saying it isn't. I'm saying that this really pisses me off.
| PARIS
| After 29 consecutive years of an epic event that saw drivers
enduring extreme heat and cold crossing the Sahara Desert, organizers
canceled the world’s biggest off-road race Friday after an
al-Qaida-linked group threatened the 5,760-mile Dakar Rally. ... In recent days, French intelligence officials had become increasingly concerned after al-Qaida in the Islamic Magreb, a northern African group, made explicit threats against the rally. The group was blamed for the murder the day before Christmas of a French family vacationing in Mauritania. Eight of the 15 days of the race were to take place in Mauritania. As it fights off a crackdown by North African authorities, the regional offshoot of al-Qaida increasingly has focused on international targets, hitting the U.N. headquarters in Algiers last month in one of a pair of bombings that left 37 people dead. ... Caprioli said the extremists want to show, “They can chase out the infidels. The cancellation was wise. But it gives the impression that the terrorists have won.” But organizers vowed Friday that next year the race would go on. “The Dakar is a symbol, and nothing can destroy symbols,” they said. “The cancellation of the 2008 edition does not endanger the future of the Dakar.” Kansas City |
But you are wrong. Symbols are the precise thing that can be destroyed. Faith can be broken, withered, lost, but not destroyed. You have no faith. Your symbols of whatever are just trinkets that can be smote to dust.
This is the sort of thing that makes me think the terrorists are winning. It is impossible to protect people in a race like this where contestants are slung across a three hundred kilometer or more leg. The racers are paying attention to flying across the terrain. They shouldn't have to dodge the odd sniper in the process. It might be interesting to have a race of armored vehicles, but I doubt any records would be broken.
There will be no clips of trucks barreling down a road that would take out a tank. The dune buggies that go 300 kph across ruts that you can barely walk across will not make me wince and cheer. The videos of vehicles flipping and continuing down the hard path made me smile every time.
Now it is all silent. I look forward to the new crash videos. I don't pay any attention to who wins. Just what happens during the race. I would have been even more angry if a terrorist action happened during the race. What are the jihadis doing to our world? What they want and what I am willing to live with are completely at odds with one another. They want their religious rules to govern every one in the world. I do not. The only way to please them is to let them win. The only way to live in piece with them is to live under their thumb.
How many people devote their lives and careers to this and other related races? What will the countries do without the money that comes in from the tourism? The Al Quida folks think it is just great that all that money is not going to the countries because the Al Quida folks are fighting the established governments. The less money the local governments have to spare, the less they can afford to fight Al Quida.
What's next? The Olympics sound like a great place to start. If I were Al Quida, I would think very hard of disrupting the games every single time they occur, no matter where they occur. Even an attack in parallel would steel a great deal of news time from the games. This has been done before. The Israeli athletes were slaughtered many years ago.
Why risk it? Al Quida simply has to phone up the French and say something like "Hey, we are going to do something you won't like if you have your little car race. So, surrender now and save us all a lot of time." They are phoning it in. Total cost to law abiding citizens, well, one hell of a lot. From multiple countries and from multiple walks of life. Cost to terrorists, a dime for the phone call. Sounds about right.
For all of you out there who complain about having to stop at a traffic light where it seems like no one is going the other way, I present this video. It shows the kind of crap people have to deal with in other countries where they don't have liability insurance and they don't believe in traffic lights.
I sat through a podcast today of a guy talking about the research he
is working on from Antarctica. They have a huge telescope down there
that is receiving microwaves from the <echo>"edge of the
universe"</echo>. Hey, that's great. They keep referring to the
light as very old. Fourteen billion years is the number that comes to
memory. If you cannot see anything from that far away because the light
deteriorates to the point you cannot accurately define it, isn't it
possible that you just can't 'see' any farther than that? Isn't it
possible that the universe is consistent to infinity, we just can't
tell because we don't know how to properly detect it?
This debate is one that I've griped about before too. The guy kept
saying 'dark matter' like a fact. He seemed to think looking as far out
as possible would answer the question. I'm skeptical.
It's getting to where I hate scientists. They are all full of crap
and themselves. This podcast was basically one scientist being
interviewed by another scientist terned journalist. The "who is paying
for this?" question at least came up. The answer sounded like it was
spewing from a politician. I could tell this guy was used to justifying
every penny. I suppose someone has to.
Why won't dark matter just DIE!!!?
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