Plastic Kelly: 2009-06

2009-06-29

Click Click Boom

Why is going out to the woods and shooting a bunch of shit with machine guns so much fun? Can't get enough. No that is not me. Darn-it.

As a kid I hated Wimbledon. It came on in the middle of Summer and kicked all my TV shows (cartoons and daytime TV) off the air long enough to piss me off. Wimbledon lasts like two weeks. The neighborhood pool didn't open for business until Wimbledon was under way for that two weeks. Remember this is in the day when there were three channels. We got cable late in the game.

Tennis was particularly on my shit list because I could not play any ball sport due to my vision. Still, I would have hated it just for the TV thing.

Now, I download podcasts from the BBC. Those folks are simply mad for Wimbledon. I'm not sure I get it. It was only this year that there is a cover over the stadium. Every year, the thing got rained out on an hourly basis. People seemed to enjoy taking it in stride and carrying on. Now, they comment on the sunny hot weather and joke the roof will remain open for the duration. figures.

2009-06-28

Sunday

I weed-whacked today. I'll have to mow tomorrow. I'm headed out to the front yard in a minute to water the tree and the plants near the front wall. I've heard that dirt can move away from the slab causing problems if you don't water near the concrete.

I'm downloading a DEB repo for work. It has been running for three days. I fear it will not complete by tomorrow. This will allow us to run Ubuntu from Work on the internal network. We need this for some of our customers. I'm all for it. I like Debain distributions. They seem to work better than Red Hat from a user point of view.

Ubuntu still rocks. I tried the 'tree' command. No dice. Ubuntu came out and gave me a cut and paste command that installed the 'tree' command. It is a simple command. It generates output liike the following.

This may not look like much to someone who does not work from the command line on a daily basis,but it kicks ass when you needed it. Everything is included in the Ubuntu repositories. I know. I'm downloading them.

Police Chase in Canada (joke)

I have nothing ot add.

2009-06-27

Gold and Contact Lenses by the gram

A gold-dispensing automatic teller machine (ATM) was on display at Frankfurt's main railway station for a one-day marketing test yesterday.
A one-gram (0.0353 ounce) piece of gold, the size of a child's little fingernail and about as thin, cost 31 Euros ($42.25) -- a 30 percent premium to the spot market price

BusinessDay

Contact lense weight is about 0.06 grams.

A one gram sliver of gold is 31 Euros, or 43 dollars at the moment I typed this.

A new box of contact lenses costs me about (140/4) about $35 each. Six lenses in a box makes it a bit less than $6 per lens.

At 0.06 grams each, that is about 16 lenses per gram. At $6 each, that is $96 a gram for contact lenses.

This means, I'm paying over 2 times the cost of gold for my contacts. Three times the heavily marked up cost of gold in a vending machine and in a fancy little guift box.

I heard this story a week ago or more. It has stuck with me. I tried to think of something that I use that costs as much as gold. It dawned on me that contact lenses must cost more than their weight in gold. and I sat down this afternoon to do the math.

My math is not perfect. If you find different numbers please let me know. I would like to wine about this for a long time and I need to make sure the numbers add up. It all hinges on the mas of the contact lens. If you find a better measurement for lenses on average, than my link above please let me know and I can recalculate with better numbers..

Today's Lesson

I like the little screw up inj the middle. This is still not as difficult as it can be. Ask my father about Ruger Marc II .22 pistols.

Local Time

So, I sat there and checked the time on my watch to the time on my computer at work. They both update on the same nuclear clock in Colorado The methods they use to check are miles apart. One checks through firewalls and thousands of miles of cables. The other checks through some spotty radio transmission from the source that is only receivable next to a window at night, if it is not raining.

I typed in the 'date' command and waited to hit enter as the minute rolled over on my watch. I figured if they were less than 30 seconds off I would be greatly pleased. ... They were dead on. Not even a full second as far as I could tell separates the two time pieces.

Nice.

Ubuntu second impression

It just keeps getting better. Not only was espeak already installed and working right out of the box, but many plugins for Firefox just drop in place. Hulu, LiveLeak, YouTube all work normally.

Then one thing happened that I will remember and brag about to people who ask me what Linux distribution to use. When I double clicked a DiVx movie for the first time, the movie player simply downloaded the proper bits and the movie started playing. This light came from above and angles sang in harmony.

I made the right decision in dumping Fedora. Now I have to update my server. I wander if Deluge is available for Ubuntu through the stander software repositories.

Ubuntu at Work

We have some European customers who want to use Ubuntu. Hey, I'm all for it. I've read some articles a while back that said Ubuntu was not ready for the enterprise. I must say, I think they are wrong. Red Hat kicks as in the enterprise and is kind of blah in the user interface. The user interface is difficult because making one that doesn't suck takes time and trial and error. You have to be willing to use what works and try new stuff that you can then give up and go back to what worked before.

In order to install Ubuntu you really need to have access to a full repo to get the whole experience and usability from the OS. It is required to be honest. I'm in charge of this sort of thing at work. We will not use Ubuntu for full development, but I intend to have our network set up to support builds testing at the least. This means I have to mirror a software repository on our internal network.

With Yum you go to the correct file share, download the piles of RPMs that you need, and run 'createrepo' command on the folders. Then you point your clients to those files created by the command and you are pretty much done.

With Debain (father of Ubuntu) based distributions, you must first download the text files that are really a database that point to all the correct DEB files on another share. All the DEB files from all version and fixes and updates and whatever are all piled together in one place, so the whole repo is something like 300 gigabytes. Either you dissect the text based database (not even XML for goodness sake) to get the files you need and just download those files. Then regenerate the database with some command. Or, you use a command called 'debmirror' that kind of does that for you, but you must have a Ubuntu or DEB based machine on the Internet to perform the task of downloading.

The DEB download is running as I type at the house. I checked this morning and it was at 13% after 8 hours. Not promising. How am I going to get it to work?

Speed vs Quality, Philosophy

One of the reasons people like Debain based distributions of Linux is because they are rock soled. One of the reasons people hate the Debain distributions is because they don't sit on the bleeding edge and have the latest software. These are mutually exclusive relative to the amount of time effort and money you spend to keep the distributions moving and well tested.

Ubuntu is pretty solid, pretty up to date, and well supported. The community has done a great job of explaining things in terms that nearly anyone can follow to get things done. The community support is nothing short of fantastic for Ubuntu. Fedora has a place where a community can discuss things and come up with instructions, but it just doesn't work. Mainly, people complain that Red Hat contributes so little to the Fedora project. Half the time I was using Fedora, I used the instructions from the Ubuntu forums to get things done.

In the days of making everything work by hand, I would say that I wanted speed over quality because things would break in a major way every time the developers opened their mouths. You had to jump through ten hoops to be able to edit a text file. you had to hunt down an obscure C library and link it in an offhand way to get a mouse pointer that didn't disappear when it moved left. Why not go hog wild and get the latest stuff?

Things have changed. I'm 40. My priorities are different. I have a family to pay attention to. I have a full time plus job that knows it is a crap economy and that we have few options. I want things that work.

Complaining

Over the last couple weeks, I found myself asking the question "Why am I not using Windows at home?" The stress of trying to keep Fedora running had drained my faith in open source. It can work. It might kill you, but it can work.

So many things do not work with open source.Flash, a non-free closed source collection of machine consuming crap that brings your half the content on the web, but shouldn't, only kind of works on open source platforms. There are no killer games.

When someone says "You can use a computer to ..." They mane Windows or Mac. People pay a fortune to Microsoft so Microsoft may advertise back to them so they will buy more Microsoft products. I suppose that is how capitalisms works. I'm not a communist. People should get paid for what they do. Companies should not be able to rule the roost. International corporations are not even living beings and have more freedom to make money and control people's lives than any living breathing human.

Always happens in 3's 4's

Farra Fawcett was relegated to the back burner. At least David Carradine and Ed McMahon had their five minute blurbs on the nightly news. Now the news of the spike in internet traffic after the Jackson announcement bumps Farra's headline. NBC came right out and said "While we were putting together a story on Farra, we got news about Michael Jackson." That is messed up.

I never really liked Michael Jackson's music. Some of his early stuff was definitely toe tapping, but I never understood the hype. The last ten years or so have just been scary regarding Mike. I wander how much different he and his fame would be if he had never done plastic surgery. He may not have become so famous, but would that have been so bad?

Where are the lawsuits? Who is going to come forth with Jackson's baby? Who is going to want a slice of the pie? What films, testimonies, witnesses are going to come forward with allegations? What is Mckuly Kulkin going to have to say now about his time in Never Land?

I felt bad for Farra's passing. She was a hell of a gal. Michael, I felt a loss, more of an icon than someone I respected. Same for Ed. With David, I felt like someone I knew died because I loved his shows as a kid and I respected him as an actor.

2009-06-25

Ubuntu kind of freaked me out

I've used Ubuntu before. It still uses Gnome so the interface is similar. Worry not, there is a Kubuntu for the KDE fans out there. I hear it doesn't suck The user experience is not what freaked me out last night when I was converting my data over from one system to another.

First of all, there is not much conversion needed because most of my data files are OpenOffice. Ubuntu supports OO just fine. Not sure of versions. I'll have to deal with as I go.

No, what freaked me out is that I really only have one program left that I have to save a data file from in order to transfer straight across. This is Gpodder. It exports an OPML file that is the list of podcast information that allows me to keep track of my news. I put the file on my second drive, which I have not hooked back up yet. I install OSes with only the install drive hooked up because Linux in general freak out and put partitions all over the place if you don't go in and do thing by hand. So, I haven't verified that the OPML file works to save all my likes. I'm sure I'll blog it if things blow up in my face. I have the links saved in gdocs in a spreadsheet.

That's it. There are some OpenOffice docs, but everything else is in the cloud. That is, I use gdocs for most of my blog stuff. I use gdocs for most of my personal documents. Formatting sucks. I've tried tried to print anything yet. It is a for prophet company, so if it goes belly up I might just loose everything. I use it none the less.

This makes me wonder why people pay so frigging much for MS Windows on their desktop. What do people really use their computers for anyway? My phone does many tasks today that I used to need a computer to get done. Next week the iPhone Car Wash app will come out and you will be able to sit in the shade and sip a mi-ti while it labors over a sudsy fender. ... Maybe not.

I use Google Reader for a feed reader or agrigator. This keeps track of what I have and have not read in the wonderful world of blogs.

Come to think of it, I haven't looked for espeak, the software that reds aloud to me. There are dozens of packages that do this, but I like espeak because it is simply drag and drop command line driven text reading. All the packages try to go beyond this and screw things up with complexity. There must be something that will work. I have also not tried playing the Divix movies. I remember getting them to work in Ubuntu the last time I used it so my confidence level is high on this one.

What did work right out of the box was Flash. I was able to watch YouTube and Hulu videos with the click of a mouse. All my old Firefox plugins just plane worked. Ubuntu has standard repositories for software that do not just jump forward to the bleeding edge of package versions. They wait for a bit to let some of the bugs get shaken out of the system. These are the "Not 1.0" repos. These are the one's I have hooked up at the moment. If it comes right down to it, I'm tired of things that don't work.

I got home at around 22:00 last night and went to bed around 0:45. It took me three tries to get the system installed because I had to convince myself to pull the second drive

it is my opinion that Fedora is a failed experiment.

Very Local News

Coffee

Some of the folks at work insist on a decent cup of coffee. I have to say that the name brand we have at work, purchased at Sam's every so often, is not bad. They just need to pay three times as much to feel better about themselves. I must say that I feel like they are pussies for buying the higher priced coffee. There is bad coffee, good coffee and over priced coffee. I still drink it. I still say thank you.

Flight

If I ever do fly anywhere in my life again, I think I will show up in boxers and flip flops with my passport in hand. The airlines are charging a fee if you don't pay the additional bag fee before you show up at the counter.

Swinging Dicks

What is with all the politicians admitting they have been unfaithful? I suppose the New York guy loosing his job has made all the other politicians want to air out dirty laundry, but it shouldn't make the frigging news any more that politicians think the rules are for other people and not themselves. come on. Plane crashes and floods people.

What do people expect to learn from this news? I'm not sure you can find an honest, faithful politician because people have to be ruthless and sometimes crewel to survive in the political universe. Kind, honest, stand up people don't seem to make it to the top in politics. It is a shame, but that is the world we have voted for all these generations. I doubt politicians in other kinds of governesses fare much better. Perhaps it is simply destiny that right assholes will end up being the ones in charge of the rest of us.

Is Fedora Still Relevant?

No.

Red Hat vomits a new version of Fedora every so often that breaks everything and no one goes and fixes this bugs. Screw Fedora. I'm going Ubuntu all the way.

I've been with Fedora because we use Red Hat at work so much. Red Hat linux is awesome, stable, capable, rugged, robust. Fedora ends up never working long enough get anything done. It breaks between updates and it breaks on updates. They use beta software in the official updates. The two distributions don't match any more. The free version of Red Hat is CentOS. Red Hat claims they use Fedora for testing new technologies, but they should say it is a frigging alpha release.

What really pisses me off is that Flash ran fine on 10. I updated and I cannot play videos on all the relevant pages without problems or at all. It is not Flash because it is the self same object files that I had before in the updated browser and OS.

Belt

I have a real problem. I realized just how pudgy I was several months ago and decided to stop eating fries. I have eaten ten times my weight in fries so I can do without to be honest. I gave up most junk that I eat. Not all. I drink a soda or two a day.I drink a lot more water. I don't take cream in my coffee any more. Sometimes regular milk.

I bought a belt right before I started all this. Of course, I got the one that would let me get bigger. Now, my pants are falling off. I need to cut some new notches. I don't think we have a leather punch. My parents have dozens.

The pants I wore over the weekend were falling off. The pants I'm warring right now are falling off. I know I had no pants that were falling off before I started this little experiment. This experiment needs to go longterm if not permanent.

I know. "Bitch bitch bitch."

2009-06-22

Petrol and springs

I lost the frigging spring to the weed whacker yesterday. I got all of a bout ten feet of side walk done and the string hung up. I had to pull the spindle and work a knot loose. Of course, I lost the spring that is really a lynch pin for the entire weed-whacking industry. The fate of our time line was at stake for the sake of a $0.20 spring that is still lying in my grass somewhere, never take it's presents know again. Until, that is, it is thrown my the lawn mower through one of the front windows.

Do you have any idea how much mayhem one could cause with the right knowledge and a large enough gift card from Home depot? Is that me laughing and ringing my hands?

I also picked up a gas can. Get this. It is full of gasoline, has "keep out of the reach of children." written all over it, and has this child proof handle thing that requires flipping a switch and holding a leaver while pouring. What is the point. I only wanted a container that had a functioning spout that let me poor without spilling. I guess this will work.

The gas can I was using had a broken lid from day three or so. I had been using duct tape to keep dust out of the gas. I used it for two-stroke gas because it was one gallon. Trouble is, it is more than a gallon, or the new one is less than a gallon because I poured the contents of the old in the new and had gas left over. This means the measure of two-stroke oil is off either in the old container, not enough oil, or in the new container, too much oil. I would rather ere on the side of too much to be honest.

Home Depot had the part I needed. I had t buy the spindle and spring. No biggy. It seems to work. They of course had anti-plant-based-alien weed-whacking accessories as well. Ah, that helicopter blade thing looked handy.

Very Local News

Burning down the house

The firecracker bin is back in the parking lot across the street. I try so very hard to not wish bad things on people. I do wish very bad things on the people making money off that firecracker bin. As dry as it is, there is going to be a fire.

FYI, I will have the cops on speed dial if I catch any one popping firecrackers within X number of feet of that frigging box. I'm not giving in. I will video it and find out who to complain to and get the owner of the property fined if I can. I'm sick of this crap.

Technology

Next month you will be able to get 128GB thumb drive. Yes, 128GB on a key sized drive. This is nuts. I just bought a 16G for moving data around. I feel gypped. When the 128GB comes out the 16GB will half in price. What's next, sliced bread?

I don't think you can get a USB 3.0 device yet, but Ubuntu will have support for it in the next sub release coming out next month or the month after. Cool beans. Yet another reason to convert my home systems to Ubuntu. Fedora blows huge green donkey balls.

Money

Microsoft Money is dead. Quicken has won the battle of the financial software. I read a couple years ago that Microsoft Money had never made a dime. There will be no more support or updates.

I use a spreadsheet to keep track of expenses. It is not extremely useful. It lets me know where the money goes. I probably should use something like Quicken. I'm far to lazy to keep it up. I've used Quicken. I've never used used Microsoft Money.

Father's day sucks

Father's day is a made up load of bollix to fleece the public and fill a small card-holiday gap after Mother's day. Men don't seem to care if they get cards. If they do, other men worry about them.

I had a really shitty Father's Day. I don't want to get in to it. Let's just say that Natalie understood and was quite patient with me.that means a lot to me.

This is one problem with social media like Facebook. Every third post is "Happy Father's Day every one!" and I want to respond with "Fuck you and Father's day!" I try to hold it in. Poor Nat has to take the brunt.

At least I have a blog on which to wine and complain. At least I know Father's day means something to me. At lest I know I miss the little girl in my life.

Happy Father's day to my dad. He is a hell of a guy. I've learned very much from him.

2009-06-21

Should have stayed in bed

Woke up. Got pissed at all the evil in the universe by reading news. Tried to be a father on Father's day. Elle called. Then I tried to weed-whack. Spilled a bunch of gas. Lost the spring. Broke the shelves. Slammed the garage door so hard that the wall moved and the house creaked. Got mad taking out my contacts and threw my backpack in to the sealing fan. Bent one of the blades. Used pissed off super power to bend it back. Wobbles. Wrote a not to God. No answer. Neither computer works after upgrade. No hope. No end. No relief. Going to bed.

2009-06-20

Father's Day

Ted swooped in and snatched Elle. He is an airborne dad all right. He lands, does a bunch of fun stuff, then leaves for months without so much as a phone call. I'm sure he is busy. Busy being something other than Elle's dad.

What sucks is Elle won't get this until she is thirty. After she has a kid or two and some portion of their lives is effected by her relationships, she will not understand the hell we go through for her. That's OK. It is the plight we have and the plight dealt to us.

What father's day?

Drain

typed in a random word in YouTube and this is what you get. Not too shabby.

Iran comment

I like one of the quotes I heard on a podcast from the BBC. From memory "[the government] is used to making threats and having them obeyed." That statement is highly telling. People are clogging the streets. The 'Supreme Leader' is pissed about the lack of conformity.

Who is the Supreme Leader anyway? Why are we not calling him the president of the country? Why is Obama not talking to this asshole? It sounds like the Iranian president is the secretary of state and the Supreme Leader is the dictator to me. The rule is to negotiate with the one calling the shots. It starting to look like the people of Iran will call at least some of the shots for a while.

There are stories of government agents shooting at satellite dishes on buildings. Phone lines are being cut. all kinds of internet filtering is going on. Someone mentioned that the news organizations are using satellite phones to get news out. Don't those have data connections as well? Might be worth investigation. I wonder if they make burner satellite phones.

Very Local News

I've only been to Idaho once in my life. We were on our way to Yellow Stone and stopped for lunch. The only thing I remember is the Nazi symbols and white supremacist crap in the bathroom. I just heard a story on the Podcasts from the BBC about African refugees settling in Boise.
The German's have a vending machine in one of the airports that sells gold. I'm not kidding. You can buy a single gram of gold in a little present box. It is over priced, but then everything is over priced from vending machines.
There was a ruling by some judge that bloggers have no right to anonymity. The suit was brought by a news paper. Why won't they just die and give it up? Papers are a bunch of zombies that are ruining every one's rights on the way to the grave.
That plane that the pilot died on kept it quiet from the passengers. I completely understand. Nat said some people got text messages about a pilot dying in a mid air flight that sounded much like their own. There are times one may be too connected. The pilot was 60.
Third time is a charm for a project build. Getting tired of deleting tags in subversion.

2009-06-18

Ignorance Revolution

Even Obama has warned people that there is little difference and no real choice between the current president of Iran and the guy that so many people are clambering for. The current guy is an open blatant prick. The other guys is a slippery shyster type. They both work for the same people.

Nothing is going to come of this turmoil. Iran is still on it's way to nuclear weapons. Women still do not have equal rights in Iran. Taxes are nuts. Unemployment is high. The oil is running out. They got troubles.

The whole issue of people using the internet to get information out of Iran will change soon. There are already signs of the Iranian government setting up a tunneled network that can be far more tightly controlled and filtered in the future. This will make it more like China and some other countries that seem to have gone quiet in the last couple years.

I have a bad feeling that people across the globe are about to get very oppressed. In developed countries, companies and organizations like RIAA will have us paying them not to sue us and censor our ability to complain about said tax by copy writing it in to oblivion. Backward countries are going to get very smart about controlling their citizen's abilities to communicate with the rest of the world. The MSM is going to loose the ability to afford to send reporters to research and track people down thus catching the stories of corruption.

The Ignorance revolution is upon us and we can blame our own absence of the will to listen.

It is a very good thing that we have videos like the one below. It is good to have this communication. I feer it will vanish from the world scene as countries, governments, and those in control learn how to pervay evil in ever more effective hidden ways. The least free people are those who only think they are free. The evil kind of leader is the one who thinks he is good, but is really evil and just can't come to grips with that.

Very Local News

There are times I just want something to put down for the blog. One good place to start is to think about what is pissing me off at the moment. This is a good supply most of the time, but I find myself lately having to stop myself from blogging about many of the same old things. This tells me that I'm not fixing my problems. I'm just complaining about them. Bad Kelly.

Contact Lenses

I've been waring my contacts again lately and have all the same old trouble. I'm much more calm about it though. I'm using the new fluid, the bubbly kind. Works great. This tells me the it is not the contacts or fluid. I'm just not longed for warring hem. I've had them in every day since Monday. Nothing too horrible yet. I may come back to this subject later.

Since my contacts are for astigmatism as well as near-sightedness, they must sit a specific way on my eye to work. If they get off, center, they do more harm than good to my vision. They get off center constantly. The blinking of the eye is supposed to put them back in sync. When they get off center, the first and last thing you do, which is also the most difficult, is nothing. Look at something far away, blink and try to think of something else. Something distracting. It never works, but it keeps you from sticking your finger in your eye and really messing things up.

There may be a better brand of contacts to use for every day. It said something about occasional ware on my prescription. Maybe I need to talk to my eye doctor about it. You can't just email your doctor and ask a question. Damn it.

Lunch

I'm tired of not eating lunch. I'm getting used to it, but that is not really a good thing. I should eat. I have high cholesterol so I don't eat the Ramen noodles any more. I don't have much money, so I don't go out very often. I've cut back on the junk and sodas. I feel like my blood sugar has benefited from my thin wallet.

Music

I have not heard much new music in a long time. I can't stand radio. All the good sites charge or bitch for donations. Where is this information revolution I've heard so much about? My taxes pay for the infrastructure. There are tons of ads. Now they want straight up money for content. I give up. I'm going to stick to making my own content. Since no one will ever pay for it, it remains free. Enjoy.

Broke

Man, I'm sick of being broke. The car is paid off and we managed to put some money in the savings account this month. Not much, but something. About frigging time. Nat has been really good about not giving me crap about being broke. I even bought a watch recently and she has only given me grief fifty or sixty times. What a peach.

Work Music

I'm sitting at work and working my ass off. Some jazz drips from my earphones and calms me down. The day doesn't seem so harsh. The world doesn't seem so hot or angry. The jazz sounded a little bit like the Peanuts music. That is not such a bad thing.

Tori Amos came on after that. It was soulful, and sharp She was pleading for something to happen. Icicles hiding from Spring. Some of her stuff is very abrasive and ghostly.

Next Rage against the Machine came on pounding and pissed off at everything. They are like shaving with a dull chainsaw. You are supposed to listen to the lyrics and get a message out of it, but you have to wade through the refuse of a life spent traveling from one angry place to another. I can't get enough.

Loreena McKennitt - The Gates of Istanbul came next. It reminds me of a ring tone on my phone, only much better. Slow and swooping, the song has gravity and mass. it is thick and rich. It moves and lives. Then it is over.

Then a punk song came on called "Death rides a pale cow." Nice break from serious music. This one would fit right in on Doctor Demento. Then again, most of the Dead Milkmen's music would.

Then this song called "all you need is love" came on. I use lower case because the song is so laid back as to not need capital letters. It has become a cliche.

A friend of mine tried to work for King's X a million years ago. He met the singer at a club in Houston back in the early 90s. Said the guy was strange, but in a good way. The job never panned out. Not sure what he was supposed to do. I only believe him because he never made anything else up the entire time I knew him.

Later in the day, when I needed it, Metallica "One" came on. I forgot how much I like that song. It reminds me that songs can tell a story, expose a plight.

2009-06-17

Iran and Twitter

It really upsets me that the story of protests in Iran is all but overshadowed by the story that Facebook and Twitter are being used to report all the unrest. Frigging people are so selfish.

"Oh, look. People in Iran are using Twitter. I use Twitter. Isn't that coo?!?" as posted on Twitter. I'm ill.

It is not enough to make me stop using Twitter. I am addicted after all. The swirl of people talking about Twitter does make me wonder if I'm doing something wrong. Twitter has become too main stream. I hear it on interviews every day. Not every celebrity has a feed, but it seems like it. They are all proud of them too.

People are dieing, defending their rights to elect some one who will not kill them for speaking their mind, well, one step closer to that any way. They are desperate for freedom. They are desperate to speak out against the people screwing them out of a country. The leaders of Iran are holding the people of the country hostage.

Isn't it so cool that they are using the same tools we in the west use for recording the contents of our breakfast to plea for help? Yes. that sounds balanced. That sounds appropriate. God forbid the citizens of Iran have real outlet that people take seriously like CNN, BBC or the New York Times with which to bring their tale of woe to the world. The MSM has been criticized for taking too long to get round to the Iran story. It is perceived by many that the MSM did not realize there was a story until after the videos showed up on YouTube and Twitter feeds made their way to the top of the buzz.

Remember, the leaders of Iran are the one's a hair's breath from nuclear weaponry.Can't wait for that headline. Who is going to be left to Twitter from ground zero?

DAB

All radio in the UK will be switched to digital by 2015. No more FM. No more AM. New cars are not going to be forced to have updated radios until 2013. The commentator suggested there will be tiny DAB (Digital Audio Band) boxes you plug in to your car's power and it will transmit digital radio on a local FM band to your car's old crappy radio to cover the gap.

I wish we had some kind of DAB in the U. S.. It is far better quality. We have some kind of HD FM here, but there are no hand held receivers that I can find. It wont matter soon because my phone has some music capabilities and I hear that some real choice is on the horizon that will look something like satellite radio only much cheaper. Bring it on.

2009-06-16

300G or not

One of the engineers needed a Windows Server 2003 32 bit system with at least 300 gigabyte free spare for a particular requirement. This doesn't sound like too much to ask. I didn't think so anyway.

I was handed a Dell 2950. These are capable servers. They have multiple drive bays in the front. The drives can be hot-swapped, but this design requires a special drive rail system that leasts the drives pop out without screws or taking anything apart. You don't even have to slide the server out of a rack. Nice design. It has but one flaw. You need the rails. There are no drives available so I get two 160G drives. That adds up to 300G, right?

After turning the company up side down and and shaking vigorously, there were no rails that would fit my needs. I found out later some rails may have been tossed last week. figures.

I get another box that hadn't been turned on in a year. This should be a good use of old equipment. It has two drives in it. It has a bunch of drive bays. It even has the version of the OS I need. But no. It only has two SATA connections on the motherboard. This means I must put the two 160G drives in the system, partition 10G for the OS and the rest for the software.

One more day in the life of IT. Something that should take an hour takes all day. By the way, a 1TB (1000G) drive is around $100 and readily available just about anywhere. Par for the course.

Exit the DVD

Hot removing an IDE DVD drive from Linux box looks something like the following in the /var/log/messages file.

...
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: hdb: ATAPI reset complete
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: hdb: status error: status=0x00 { }
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: ide: failed opcode was: unknown
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: hdb: status error: status=0x00 { }
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: ide: failed opcode was: unknown
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: hdb: status error: status=0x00 { }
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: ide: failed opcode was: unknown
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: hdb: status error: status=0x00 { }
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: ide: failed opcode was: unknown
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: hdb: ATAPI reset complete
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: hdb: status error: status=0x00 { }
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: ide: failed opcode was: unknown
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: hdb: status error: status=0x00 { }
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: ide: failed opcode was: unknown
Jun 16 14:15:09 <system_name> kernel: hdb: status error: status=0x00 { }

And then the mouse is choppy. The system tries to poll the IDE buss and find the drive that is no longer there. There is some kind of IRQ magic going zapping the system in the background.

Still had to reboot.

Phone RFID

Some day soon you may be able to talk to your phone and it will do things for you. This already happens. It is getting better every day. People don't want to sit there and hold a conversation with their phones, but this will change too as old farts die off and are replaced by more potent geeks.

RFID allows a reader device to tell every unique ID as it passes near the reader. This is how Wal-Mart wants all their vendors to do things so product tracking is a snap. It is great for inventory or attaching a database's data to a physical item. You can get some of the same functionality out of bar-codes, but there is one task bar codes are not up to.

When the RFID reader is in the phone, you can put a small piece of tape on items around you. Then you can turn around and ask the phone where you left things. "Where are my car keys?" "Where did I park the car?"

This functionality will be followed shortly by the virus that makes the phone add the words "..you idiot." after it's answer to your queries. I will write this virus. All phone users will be under my thumb. ... I've said too much.

U. S. finance

The world is slowing down on lending the U. S. money. Long term U. S. debt is no longer selling in foreign markets. China, Russia and others are simply not loaning the U. S. government money at the same rate they were before. The price of the bonds drops which means less money in the U. S. wallet. If this trend continues, there are two options for raising money. Taxes, which we can't afford ourselves, and printing money which causes inflation. We are not going to be able to pay the interest on the money we owe over the next fifty years.

All it would take to fix this problem is to cut budgets, tighten belts, stop spending more than we take in. Wait a minute. The politicians are running the country. We are doomed. The U. S. is going to look like Haiti in fifty years at this rate.

UK finance

For the first time in history, the number of young people in the UK who want to own a home rather than rent has dropped. Some young people just have no want to own their home. People want to invest in their retirement rather than a house. There has been a boom over the last ten or so years in the UK. This may be a downward adjustment after the boom. I bet something similar is happening in the U. S.. The young folks at my work don't have the drive for a house like every one used to.

The Paris Air Show Started Monday. The global flight industry is in the toilet. no one wants to be seen in a corporate jet these days. Companies and countries are making due with what is on hand and canceling orders for new equipment when they can. I vowed not to fly because of the hassle a long time ago. An expert came on from the UK saying the flight infrastructure is needed for national security/defense. I can buy that.

2009-06-15

Weekend

Sunday, we met my parents for lunch after their church. They took Elle for Saturday and were now dropping her off. The brought over a kitchen table and the whole family put it together upside down on the kitchen floor. We had tamales at my parent's favourite hole in the wall over by our house. Good stuff, but I can't eat it very often.

I mowed the yard after 17:00 and it nearly killed me. The heat was crazy. I was fine, and still fine, still fine, then I was not fine. I started stumbling in the back yard which is a sun oven at that time of day. I ran round to the front and doused my head and feet with water to cool off. I just sat there watching cars go by and people inside the cool enclosed vehicles give me funny looks sitting in a rapidly drying wet spot in the middle of my now shaded driveway. The yard got mowed. I survived.

When i got back to work I noticed that a bunch of people had blah weekends. The theme was "got nothing done". Not a bad thing.

Nothing creative was written. Nothing was researched. The Fedora upgrade took it out of me. Damn shame that. I finished a book that was an official Star Wars post-qual. It was a story about all the characters. It is interesting reading a book that dives straight in to plot without any character development what so ever. The author dives straight in assuming you know every one by heard. Which, I do.

Iran had elections last week and a weekend, beginning of the week for them, of protests. It hurts watching the people rally, cry for freedom, challenge the police, get shot by police, and come back for more. Someone said that the votes were never looked at. The supreme leader simply wrote down the name and the percentage next to it. It is all over the internet. Twitter delayed system maintenance to make sure people had a way to communicate what was going on in Iran.

Fedora 11 upgrade continued

There have been several hiccups. I'm glad I had Opera installed to take up the slack for the beta version of Firefox. All in all it went pretty smoothly. I only had a couple conflicts. I did have to run an update from yum that had 1900 rpms listed as update or install. That is a bit harsh. It took the better part of a day to download and install. They just haven't gotten the whole upgrade thing down. Fedora intends people to cut clean and install fresh.

I'm telling you, I'm going to switch to Ubuntu. They just do a better job realizing there are humans using their software and act accordingly.

It is a hustle to upgrade in the first place. i want to stay as up to date as possible. It helps with online of course, but I am a geek after all and want to be on the edge. Well, not the edge. I want to be on the blade somewhere and not so far behind that I get forgotten.

The 3.5xxb version of Firefox that came with Fedora 11 seems to have trouble with Flash. The sound just stops on pages when it does load at all. I have no idea how to fix it because it works just fine in Opera and I don't want to break that.

2009-06-14

Video Choices

The issues I'm having with my browser since I upgraded from Fedora 10 to Fedora 11 require I use Opera instead of Firefox to view videos because the beta version of Firefox 3.5 is on Fedora 11. I bitched in Fedora 5 when they took ages to upgrade from Firefox 1.5 to 2.0 and no I'm being bitten in the ass the other way round.

That is OK to be honest because the video pickings are slim.

1: Police officer scuffles with a paramedic.

2-6: Unrest in Iran after the elections. Apparently it is their tern to perceive someone as having stolen the election and to despise their current leader.

7: 747 super-tanker dropping water on a runway.

8: Guy dying while acting driving like a maniac on a motorcycle.

9: Naked bike ride full of ugly people.

10: Burning Ferrari.

11: Police officer macing someone who ran from him and then being fatally shot. (the police officer)

12: Float plane nearly taking out the camera person and crashing. ... I think I'll put that one up.

13: Storm footage from somewhere.

14: Korean military parade.

15: Ahmadinejad being a dick about some reporter.

16: Scatters vs security guard.

What a load of crap. The pickings have really gone done hill. I'm not sure what triggered this trend to inferior videos making to the list of featured fare on Live Leak. Whomever picks those videos either ha less to choose from or is on vacation lately.

2009-06-13

Fedora 11 upgrade

They ship Fedora 11 with a beta version olf Firefox again. I've lost the ability to use one of the add-ons that I use every day called extended copy menu. Remember a couple days ago I said I don't use Opera because it doesn't have any way to copy as html? Well, now neither does Firefox.

Thanks Fedora. You assholes just made my life miserable again.

When am I going to wise up and switch permanently to Ubuntu? They handle upgrade far more gracefully. I guess I'll never learn.

That and

Flash no longer works so no flash. No YouTube, no nothing. Thanks Fedora.

Update:

So later, I decide to do an update of the system to make sure I captured all the changes. I'm starting to wonder if nothing actually updated because there are now 1900+ updates loading. This will take all night. It will probably not work. I made a backup of my personal files. Most stuff is on the internet anyway. This is ridiculous. It should not take an entire weekend to upgrade a computer regardless of OS.

Teach your children to believe or else

This old racist whit guy walks in to the Holocaust Museum and starts shooting. Security, that opened the door for him, stopped him at the front door and one man died defending the patrons of the facility.

I don't know what to say. I cannot wrap my head around this. This is an atrocity.

A man was killed recently for performing "late term" abortions in Kansas. The suspect believed in something and killed another human because of it.

A man walked in to a place with the intent to kill people because he believed in something.

A few years ago several men took control of some jets and flew them in to buildings, killing many people, to make a statement about what they believed was an affront to their religion.

Belief is at the root of all wars. Disputes over resources boil down to who believes they have a right to the resources.

If we don't teach children what to believe in, they will find something to believe in.

There are problems with this theory. Most of the people above had their parent's pass down at least some of the structure that shaped their beliefs. Still, pay attention to your kids. Know what they believe. Help them understand the world, people, religion and government. Oh, and themselves.

Very Local News

The Iranian candidates complained about press lying to the people in order to get the person they wanted to win put in a better light. It sounds like a bunch of Iranians just want to "throw the bastards out". Maybe we are not that different after all.
My God! What happened in Ireland. The Catholic church went nuts three. The allegations of child abuse and the stories are heart wrenching. (Riane Report)
I use a combination of Linux and Windows systems all day. At times, this combination causes me to get kicked off the network due to my inability to consistently type in a word that is nonsense characters and not based on a real word seventy or eighty times a day. Our network kicks me out for a while and I have to wait. I can still do some things, but not others. No email, Windows shares, Pretty much kaput for a half hour. This is pretty standard across the industry.
There are a million seeds in a bail of cotton. Whitney's jinn sucked. A guy named Holmes invented a much better one that people used.
Cockroaches were around before dinosaurs. They competed with Trilobites.
A bunch of the guys did their Friday thing and headed over to Beck's for lunch. I did not go. I spoke with Nat on the phone. She ended up calling Home Depot about the storm door. You know, I would have rather spoke to Nat than gone to Beck's.
It wasn't that long ago when I said I didn't want a phone that had a camera. Now I catch myself saying I won't buy another phone without a flash.

2009-06-11

Skills

A couple video posts today involving skills. The first is for smoking.

I don't care how long your practice, that is impressive.

Now, we have something a bit more don't-try-at-home-ish.

Both of these videos required someone with some pretence of skills to practice and fail, persevere and succeed. I like that. They are both about triumph.

President of Iran

I don't know how to spell the current president of Iran's name. I'm not going to try. he always comes off as a used care salesman to me in interviews.

The people of Iran say they are tired of being cut off from the rest of the world. They want cable TV and European cigarettes. The people do not control the country in Iran. This elections is crap. Whomever wins the so called election is a puppet of the imams, so what is the point?

Iran will still pursue nuclear weapons. Iran will still run out of oil in less than a generation. Iran will still be involved in every one else's business in the middle east.

Personally, I believe that people have the right to govern themselves at some levels. You cannot yell fire in a theater, but you should be aloud to bitch to your heart's content about nearly anything. This may be in me for no better reason than the drilling I received as a child at school and home and by the media.

2009-06-10

Random ports and encrypted streams

I use this torrent software called deluge. It had some new features come on line recently.

It all started a year or so ago when some state brought on a law that will make people pay the equivalent sales tax to a comparable product. This is all RIAA's doing. Some say the idea behind the sales tax is to be able to throw people in jail for copying or sharing music files.

This coupled with ISPs being asked to police people's traffic for illegally downloaded copyrighted materials is an attempt to criminalize copyright infringement. The music, movie and now book industries want the ability to throw people in jail. They want to have enforcement powers. What is next?

RIAA is the Gestapo of the 21st century. They are a bunch of frigging hard line money grubbing Fascists.

So, the extra features on the software I use for torrents randomize ports and encrypt both up and down streams. Adapt and survive.

Star Trek Movie

Finally went to the new Star Trek movie. I have to say that I really liked it. There were holes, like the two dimensional singularity. Just because Stargate has one, doesn't mean Star Trek needs one too. Whatever.

The AC was dead in the theatre. I'll take that over some jerk the row behind us cussing people out and talking through the whole movie.

Day

There are labors broken and labors mended.
People warship your path behind and spit ahead.

Tours are built and fall.
Somewhere, someone is making a stained glass window.

Horns blowing all around a city, and industry lying still.
Holding hands and snuggling on the couch.

Our masters are thinking of something else.
We are left to our selves for a while.

My Bad

I blew up a motherboard at work. I was replacing the heat sync on one of the processors and managed to kick the processor loose. While re-seating it, I bent a pin and did not notice. The system never powered on again.

Come to think if it, I've never set a processor that ended up working. I think that from now on, I'll track down someone else to seat those things for me. I mean, that is not a bad limitation if I'm honest. It only takes a second and a steady hand.

It really upsets me that I did this. Somehow, I should have known about this in advance and asked someone for help. Motherboards and processors cost money.

Then I fixed a bunch of stuff and then I fixed a bunch more stuff. I should not let this hold me back to be honest.

2009-06-09

Generic Motivation

Marketplace, one of the podcasts I listen to on a pretty regular basis, had a short blurb that said basically "Bribery works in education. Kids are more likely to learn if they are paid in some way." I hate to burst your bubble, but any motivation helps, positive or negative. The part that works is following through on promises and threats. And a real correlation between actions and consequences.

That is the magic bullet. It isn't rocket science. It is not science at all. It is so basic that it should be a given in nearly every situation. Plants respond to motivation. That is why they grow up toward the sun. Falling rocks respond to motivation. That is why they tend to stop when they hit the ground.

How much of my tax money was spent finding out for the ten thousandth time that people need motivation to do things? I'm sick of this.Something has got to give. Read the Bible, Koran, Torah, any text written in the last couple thousand years. They are chucked full of stories about people responding to motivation.

Stop waisting my money.

Just not creative

The only thing that scars a writer of fiction is a blank page. It is terrifying. I refuse to call myself a writer. I will never write anything substantial at this rate. I write at the speed of a blank page. Then, I bitch about it on my blog. Not productive.

I'm not blocked. I have no ideas or direction. I have little motivation. The only satisfaction I get from my very little bit of writing is putting i t up on my blog and having it available to the world to critique.

It is not that I lack creativity. I lack motivation. One must be wary of asking for motivation. Some of the best motivation is negative motivation. There may be sacrifices involved. This makes me want to write a more generic blog entry on motivation.

2009-06-08

Very Local News

In the UK, the top bracket went up to 50%. The number of people who qualify for this bracket is estimated to drop by enough people to result in a net loss for the government.
Had some Pu fans go bad at work. It reminds me how paranoid you can make a geek when you ask them if their CPU fans are turning. Sometimes the answer is no.
I ordered a new 22 inch monitor. It is Dell brand name. It was under $200. it even has a DVI connector. I'm not in to wonderful graphics, but I cannot bring myself to survive with a still plunking-away 17 inch 4x5 monitor. I officially need a wide 16x9 screen. I've gotten used to it.
Delphi (a huge GM parts supplier) will be forcibly bought out by an equity firm being funded by American taxpayer money. It would have been cheaper to nationalize GM and all their dying suppliers.
Someone interviewing a recent graduate asked what being in so much debt was all about. The answer was something like "It must be like smoking in the 1940s, before all those reports came out telling how bad it was."
Watched Friday the 13th part whatever, made in 3d in 2009. It was the same frigging movie again. I should have passed.
Nat is busy taking and making her own "How well do you know me?" test across the room . Whatever keeps her off the streets I suppose.

2009-06-07

Not PC

Strong Language!

"Blind, bald bloggin'-ass-nigga."

Pricy Bird

This is a bird strike on an f16. Noe, they only have one engine. This has been listed among the limmitations of the f16 in the past. Now you know why.

If it doesn't restart on the third try, plant the fucker.

Firefox vs Opera

I can't really compare the two right now because the Firefox available in Fedora 10 at the moment has a real problem. After the machine has been up for several hours it grinds to a hault and hangs. I have to power off and back on because I never manage to catch it befe it is too late.

Opera on the other hand runs for hours and hours and does most everything I as of it. I do get an error message every 4 YouTube vieeos, but it works after a refreash. I can live with that over a system hang. Trust me.

Opera is growing on me. I like the tabs and I like the layout. It seems faster than Firefox. It is more stable too. I don't know if it is justthe Firefox in Fedora 10 or all of Linuxdom. Fedora 11 comes out soon and I hope they have a new version of fedora. I wish they would include Opera as an option in Yum, supported directly by the Fedora project. Give us options guys. This one is worth it.

Firefox has a few plugins like the one that lets me copy as HTML or text from the context menu. That I'll miss if this hiades keeps up.

2009-06-06

Google vs Bing

I'm not much on search engines that find the same thing. Both pages return good results. Not the same results. I have to give the nod to Google for getting me where I want to go. That may be due to my knowing how to get what I want out of Google.

One thing I really have to give Bing over Google is the graphics. Bing had a D-Day theme today, 2009-06-06. Google had some ridiculous Tetras. theme up today. That pisses me off. Nothing for 9/11. Nothing for any American special day. I'm sure Bing puts up a different front page for every market. Google should do the same. Patronize me. That is all I want.

I'll still use Google for the time being, but Bing just might make it in to my vocabulary.

Burn Notice

Link

Looks stupid. I've only seen one episode. This show will set spy game back 100 years. Miami will not survive either. The only redeeming feature of this show is Bruce Campbell. Not that he helps the story along much. I'm just glad he as the work.

I do like the little fake nuggets of information that come round while bouncing from scene to scene. It makes me think of a book that has been converted to a movie.

The show deserves a B.

OS

Fedora 11 comes out in three days. Not that I think anything cool is coming in 11. At least nothing flashy. It sounds like an incramental upgrade.

Currently, I use Fedora 10 on both my machines. Fedora 10 is hanging after being up for a long time. It reminds me of Windows. I've sounded like a broken record lately. "Fedora reminds me of Windows." I hate saying that. I hate that it is true. I want to use Linux because it is reliable and stable and gets the job done. I do not know if the Linux world is in some sort of transit, or if people are just trying to get too many features in the next release without fixing the old bugs.

The end of the home computer is nigh. So many people who might just know something about the tech world come round to thinking that the future holds mobile phones as the device of choice for communicating and getting anything productive done. I don't know how the tiny monitor problem will be fixed. I believe it will be fixed at some point.

When I say phone I mean mobile or cell phone. The term has changed. Now, if I mean the kind of phone you plug in to a copper wire, I say land line or home phone.

My desktop will have a computer on if for the foreseeable future. There is a long list of bullets I need addressed before I'll give up the hot box under my desk. Even if it is a notebook.

With my past couple of experiences with Fedora upgrading from 7 to 8 to 9 to 10, I may backup, format and start over this time around. I'm getting sick of strange shit breaking for no good reason after an upgrade. Stupid stuff fails. Only once has the machine broken resulting in loss of data. That had something to do with Grub failing. Once Grub blows a gasket the machine is typically a paperweight.

The U. S. Army finally upgrades to Vista, now that Windows 7 is coming out. They will be an OS behind again. Apparently, a seven year turn around is just too fast for the Military to keep up with. They are waiting for the good MS OS to come out (Windows 7 has some good reviews from tech types) to upgrade to the shitty one.

It used to be huge for an OS upgrade to come around. Now it is no big deal..Computers do 95% of what we need right now. The other 5% is covered by phones and just not done.

The next Android phone is out soon. There is more than one. I've heard tell there is a version that looks exactly like an iPhone with no keyboard. There are plans for netboos as well. Though it appears Android may not be the primary OS on those boxes. It may be a pre-boot OS for obtaining information or making a call without waiting for the computer (Windows) to boot.

My current desktop computer will hold me for a while yet baring failures. Don't know how log that will hod true. It is 32 bit, not that it matters on a desktop system. I don't play games so the limitations are not that big a deal. Maybe I'll get a better computer the next time our company gives away old boxes. We just recycled a bunch of computers that are the same hardware I have now. The next round of boxes will be superior. Not that I can rely on this.

The fact that I do not have to pay for my OS all over again when I upgrade is wonderful. Linux is free.

Google docs is starting to piss me off

You have to put a space after titles or the spell checker things the last word of the tittle and the first word of the first paragraph are joined and marks them as misspelled.
"Normal" style looks exactly like no style at all. Normal has paragraph marks around paragraphs so your HTML looks correct when you put it on a page. You can't tell in Google Docs which paragraph has paragraph marks around it or not. You end up re-assigning paragraphs with Normal over and over. It is a time waist. If you make a style sheet that puts in a space between paragraphs, it works but you have to put it in every frigging document by hand, or open an old document and save it out as the new document. I'm sure I've lost some content doing it this way.
Once you use the google docs application on the G1, your documents are destroyed. You loose special characters and there is no hint of formatting on the G1 app.

Google is dropping the ball. They are so worried about taking on Microsoft they forget to make there stuff better than Microsoft.

I'm not looking for a lot. I just want some templates dammit. google docs is supposed to be a professional grade office productivity too. Not until some of this chicken shit stuff is handled I say.

This is my CSS page. Not very complex, I agree. Imagine having to type it in before you can use a document.

p {
margin-top: 8px;
margin-bottom: 8px;
}

Monitor Died

Well, the large beautiful monitor died. I can replace it for about $200 or so. It is just too bad I don't really have it. There are so many thing I would rather spend $200 on like a storm dor in the back or to have someone who knows what they are doing look at the yard. It sucks being broke. Life in America is so much more fun when you have money. I'm using an old shit monitor from work. The big bos got a hair up his butt one day and just started handing them out. Hey, it works.

There is a long list of how inferior this monitor is than the other. There is no point in elaborating. I'm going to sulk off in the corner and not do anything. Between downgrading the monitor and a sore throat, I'm not in the mood to participate in reality today.

2009-06-05

Why they call it a burnout

Not sure if they put something on the tires to make them act like this or not. Who knows.That is a highly modified Jeep. I hope Jeep as a brand survives all the current financial troubles of Chrysler. I have a soft spot for them. I'm sure it is just the WWII movies I watched as a kid. Still, it is there.

2009-06-04

Very Local News

Me

There is a European company offering some employees five years of time off at one third pay. That could come in handy. I would go find a job somewhere else, or write a book. I couldn't afford to live on 95% of my current salary. We would loose the house. Still, would be fun I bet.

Many people in the bad spots of Mexico drive around at night with their interior lights on so the drug traffickers will not mistake them for any one else and shoot them. The Guatemalan drug dealers complain that the Mexican drug dealers are giving them a bad name.

The king of Saudi Arabia promises to reform government. Give women the right to drive and vote, not hold office or anything. Oh, women's testimony in court will still count as half that of a man. Rape victims would still have to prove they were rapped or be punished severely for bringing it up. We wouldn't want to go nuts. His motto is "Yes we can." "Change takes time." Yup.

Podcast Learnings

One of the most influential technological advances affecting warfare was canned food.

Hunter Gatherer peoples worked about two days a week or so. Farmers work 6 to 7 days a week. They also lived longer. Farming made it easier to feed an army and support a larger population, but it caused disease and shorter life spans.

Carrots were yellow or purple back in the day. Orange carrots were selectively bred for the Earl of Orange.

The Air France flight that went down recently used some sort of text message technology through satellites to transmit errors to the maintenance people as systems failed. I don't know about you, but I do not want to monitor the Twitter feed of the plane I'm flying in. "Shit! My left engine is about to catch on fire. I'm so screwed."

More people are run over by trains than die in airline crashes. It is more dangerous for a pilot to drive to the airport than fly the plane.

2009-06-03

The Matrix

Gmail has a nice interface for keeping contact information. I can keep tabs on people. I can attach a limitless amount of phone numbers or email addresses. I can keep notes and link them to Google Chat. Soon, I will be able to use Google Wave and attach blogs, Twitter, pictures, documents, calendars, all cross linked and indexed for searching. That sounds like one stop shopping for the proper authorities with a warrant.
Facebook runs software to recognize faces in pictures. You can link a square of space in an uploaded pic to someone's profile. A story came out a while back that iTunes found a face in a pan of cookies, so it is not perfect by any measure. Still, this technology is the holy grail of data mining advocates.
In London and other parts of Briton, the cameras follow people everywhere. As a matter of fact, they can follow someone backwards. Once a crime is viewed on camera, operators can fallow a person forward or backward through the city. I've heard that clicking on spots in a frozen image can lead you to other cameras in the database that might have a better view of that spot. the time line can be moved back and forth with eas displaying a frozen snapshot of the city at a moment in time from any number of angles all linked and indexed for searching.
Add to this the location data contained in phones. The two databases can then be linked to one another and a bubble appears above every one's head as they walk around with their name and any flags that might be pertinent to the viewers. Ad to this the ID card and driver's license data, relatives, taxes and the data people leave behind when they travel. Oh, and don't forget any criminal history. Of course, that makes a difference. A flick of a switch displays that information next to every one in view of the cameras.
Now, add look over time and link known relationships between people who have spent time in the same residence or work place. People may have been on the same bus together, or flight, or passed one another on the street. Maybe they spent the night an arm's length apart many nights in a row. Which church, synagogue, mausq do they frequent?
Now, add credit card information. Add where they went to school, what they studied, professor and teacher comments, discipline issues, credits, awards.
Add employment history. Add exposure to knowledge like how to make two devices communicate and how to remotely control electronics. Add chemicals they have used and know how to use. Do they know how to fly a plane, navigate a suer, sky dive, scuba dive, scale a flat surface, can they swim?

Android 1.5 first impression

I approve. ... Cary on.

Oh, more? Fine.

Keyboard

They should have had an on-screen keyboard the whole time. I'm not sure who made the decision on leaving the keyboard to external developers and rely solely on the mechanical device, but they are stupid and should not be listened to in the future on similar decisions.
The mechanical keyboard is easier for me to type with. It is faster for longer sentences. When I have more than a few strokes to type in, I use the mechanical keyboard. To be hones, 90% of what I type on the phone so far is one sentence, and a phone SMS sentence at that. The on screen keyboard is a smidge better at simbols and the extra stuff. I hear there is one of emoticons Haven't found that one yet.

Camera

The camera now works. Before, the camera was slow. When you pressed the button all the way to take a picture, ti went blank for a full send before it forze the image and made that the picture. Now, the image freezes and that is the picture. In other words, you are not blind for the last second before the camera snaps the shot. It helps me hod the camera still which is very important because the camera still desperately needs a flash. That is in the next software upgrade right?
The camera now takes video. That is awesome. The quality is still phone level. I'm not upset about that. I like the choice. The old app you had to install was so buggy it was not usable. The integrated video camera is far better. Now I know why no one wrote a good app for video all this time.

SMS and mail

This is the complex one. I loaded an app called ChompSMS. It was very cool and included the same on-screen keyboard that was just included in the 1.5 update. I got a preview and fell in love. Anyway, I had to uninstall the pre-cupcake (the name of the software package) version of ChompSMS and liked how it handled messages and threads, so even after getting the Android update, I tried Chomp. It crashed, and crashed again. Crap. Stupid me, I had to uninstall the old one and go find the new post-1.5 update version.
Something very magical happened at this point. I noticed that the post-1.5 update of ChompSMS has a spell checker. Yes, my Tweets will have a shot at being spelled at least somewhat correctly. I'm not the only one who as complained about not being able to check myself. It also has a little counter to tell you how many characters you have used. That should required by law regarding SMS software.
Gmail on the G1 still has NO spell checker that I can find. There are plenty of library apps and one off spelling mechanisms on the G1. I know it can be done. Either I'm missing it, or Google is behind the curve on their own device. Come Google., chop chop.

Google Docs

Still sucks on the G1. Google just came out with this whole 'wave' thing and it will not work on the G1 for the known future. No spell-checker and your characters are all messed up when you sync a doc back to google docs. Someone does not get it. New stuff is great, but it has to work with the old stuff.

Other junk

The graphical security trace thing that pops up when the phone wakes up looks tranparent. It is more difficult to read in the sun shine. It might be adjustable.
That is about it. I haven't noticed anything else yet. I still need the extended battery. That bit hasn't changed. I'm sure if anything pisses me off, you will hear about it here.

Feeling Oppressed in the U. S.

I'm white in case you didn't know. I happen to be male. I a ma white male. The blame of everything wrong in the world rides on my shoulders. Who knew?

We have a supreme court justice nominee who will be put in place I feel who openly says her race and sex makes her better than white men. This is not a step forward. This is a step sideways.

This is not justice. This is not pay back. This is bad. She will be placed in power because the party that won the last election want it to happen and will dare any one to get in their way.

"Out and proud." "Black power." "Girl power." Those slogans and hundreds of others are just fine with the establishment. They promote victimization. They say "I agree to be a victim of circumstances and allow my political masters to use me as a pulpit for their own benefit."

This has become a mantra of late. To leap from cause to cause, riding the wave each time, climbing a ladder, using people and their situations as stepping stones to further political means is the goal. There is no end game. There is no win. Once you have won, you are supposed to stop. The last thing politicians want is to win a cause or cure their chosen disease. That means they have to start over again or find a new poster victim.

I'm not proud of being white. I didn't choose to be white. I didn't choose to be legally blind. I didn't choose to be male. I didn't choose to be a dumbass who can't graduate collage. I didn't choose to be born in the U. S., but I am proud of her because she chooses to be better than the rest of the world and makes it happen.

2009-06-01

Money

I listen to a podcast called Marketplace. It has been ridiculously depressing the last several months. They give plenty of good advice and ideas. Every one is broke. Everyone has a crisis going on. The bottom line is people and relationships. Money is state sanctioned trust. You trust the state (country) to honer the paper more than you trust your neighbor to not swindle you over a bushel of oats.

There is an application available for the G1 called ChompSMS. It has a tone of features. One I like, it breaks up twitter SMS by user name so you get a thread interface. I love that. That one feature is worth the price. ChompSMS is free. Basically it takes the time to install it. It also comes with an on-screen keyboard. Nice. Still needs a spell checker.

This evening I'm going straight home and paying bills. I'm going to try to take the same amount of money I paid to the car in to the savings account. We just might be able to pull it off.

I bought some safety glasses online. Wal-Mart wants six bucks a pare. Sam's doesn't normally carry over-glasses kinds of safety glasses. Home Depot wants ten bucks a pare for a single pare or six bucks for the same pare of safety glasses and one set of earplugs and a face mask. Still haven't figured that one out. I payed $2.50 each for 12 pare online. I also picked up another pare of fit-over sunglasses (safety glasses) for $6.95 as apposed to $11 at Wal-Mart for basically the same thing. Froogle, right? I use safety glasses for yard work and anything in the garage.

There is a new movie out called "Drag me to Hell". It is about a mortgage broker who says no one too many times. Something about an old woman cursing the broker when she is made homeless. It is refreshing to get a movie about someone besides a cop, lawyer, scientist, doctor, politician or writer.

Money, what money? It has become trendy to be broke. It is about time. It has been trendy to buy too much and get in to insane debt for most of my life. I've tried, and sometimes failed, to avoid that trend. I like and encourage living within one's means.

My brand new monitor is going out at the house. It is limping along annoyingly. I have another monitor to use when it dies completely. Right now I have to turn it on and off several times to let it warm up before it decides to work. It makes me think of all those old tube TVs we had that did something similar after several years of reliable use. This one is like nine months old. Maybe we will replace it and maybe not. I don't know how it will go.

[end]

2009-06-29

2009-06-28

2009-06-27

Ubuntu at Work

Speed vs Quality, Philosophy

Complaining

2009-06-25

Coffee

Flight

Swinging Dicks

Is Fedora Still Relevant?

Belt

2009-06-22

Burning down the house

Technology

Money

2009-06-21

2009-06-20

2009-06-18

Contact Lenses

Lunch

Music

Broke

2009-06-17

2009-06-16

2009-06-15

2009-06-14

2009-06-13

2009-06-11

2009-06-10

2009-06-09

2009-06-08

2009-06-07

2009-06-06

2009-06-05

2009-06-04

Me

Podcast Learnings

2009-06-03

Keyboard

Camera

SMS and mail

Google Docs

Other junk

2009-06-01

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