Very Local News

Irrational Fact

Greenpeace just pisses me off.

Geek Stuff

We only have OpenOffice 2.3 at work. It is annoying. They hadn't worked out the whole editing a stand alone web page mechanism yet in that version. This is no big deal. I don't have much need to edit web pages much,but I like to keep notes in HTML format for posterity. OO 3.0 seems to have worked the kinks out for the most part. The email system was down this morning and that made me have to go back to the OO. Ah, I may have to go package OO 3 for our internal network. It is a huge step forward and Red Hat 5 just needs to catch up. After email came back and I was able to stop using OO, I lamented for a quieter time.

For some reason, the podcast software I use stopped downloading a bunch of streams. I have to go in and tell the episodes, marked for download to ... download. I hate that. It is an obvious bug that should get fixed. I have to wait for that bug to be fixed by the people writing the software and then wait for Ubuntu to include the fix in its repositories. I refuse to maintain it myself. That leads to another barrel of trouble.

Someone has patent on podcasting. There is prior art to kill their patent. No one has challenged yet. A lawyer name Ernest Grumbles (with a podcast) says they may use it to bully people in to doing business with them instead of others. I bet I could get a patent on making fire from rubbing a couple sticks together and then make all internal combustion, electricity generated from anything to do with heat,  and tobacco pay me a fortune.\

Inductive Coupling May be the way you charge everything in the future. You will use them in in tandem with new capacitors instead of batteries. You might have a lightening rod on top of your house that pulls electricity out of the air in form of lightening to charge your home salt battery below your foundation.

Non-Geek-Vernen News

Leeann comes on Facebook and says "RIP Unix".

I asked her "What is RIP?" thinking it is a program or something.

She answers "Rest in piece."

I came back with "Long live Linux."

She hit me with "Do you know what Unix is?"

I decided to be curious rather than mad and responded with "I guess not." Who know what she will come back with.

She said "An old computer data system. We are replacing it with SAP. Does that help?"

If only she new I work every day in Linux. I use Linux as my home OS. I've used VMS for years before I left the company that had it running. I find myself having to make HP/OS work soon and other flavors of both Linux and Unix. I do this every day. It is what I do. It is all I do.

I did not respond. I let it go.

Weather

It poured rain at lunch today. I went to McDonald's a few steps away from our building. As I walked back the clouds came from the North it seemed and no sooner did I get back to my desk than rumblings told me of impending damp streets. We need the rain.

It has been very dry this year. It is scary dry. It worries me about the hurricane season. People say a dry summer leads to more hurricanes. Not sure how. Just something I've heard more than once. The heat is breaking records here and in places like Washington state. People are complaining that no one has an AC unit. They are selling like ... hotcakes. Some friends in the East and places like Colorado complain about the cool weather not feeling like Summer.

Once the cloud past, the ground baked in the sun. I do not envy people walking around in the steam.

I'de rather be in the Merc

My father sent me a picture via email of a Smart car squashed between two dump trucks. There was nothing left but a stain on the two trucks. I thought for a moment that any car would have been smashed in that situation. I've heard Smarts are pretty good in crash tests, even against heaver cars.

Don't take my word for it.

AT&T tribulations

Tried to call AT&T to get my password reset. It kept asking me questions I had never given it. If I ever make a movie about Superman, the first thirty minutes will be him dealing with the phone company and getting passed around from one menu to another. This would prove that even Superman is powerless against the might of the phone company. They have us over a barrel and they know it.

I ended up getting a wrong number from the ignorant American on the other end of the line and trying the online to give it another try. I prefer knowledgeable people on the other end of the phone regardless of where they sit. This woman sounded like a Mexican American. She kept trying to get me to log in to my AT&T email account. I kept trying to tell her I wanted to pay my bill. The number not working after she disconnected with me was priceless.

It turns out, if you enter the wrong information five times, you get prompted to use an email to bounce the temporary password. Who knew. I now know my AT&T password and I can go in and reset my stupid security questions. They will get written down in a top secret place this time.

I don't like AT&T. I have to use them for internet because we do not have cable and the cost would kill us if we tried to go that rout. We still have a phone mainly for 911 and hurricane coverage. It was nice to have a land line this past weekend to pay my frigging bill. It freaks me out when I think how hard it is to get in and pay your bill when things get even a half millimeter off the standard one size fits all mold that is their login page. I had  to clock out at work because their phone support is only open from 07:00 to 19:00. I'm on the road or at work that whole window.

Very Local News

The bus was packed this morning. Not sure wheat the deal was. Are Thursdays attended more than any other day or something?

There is another version of Stargate coming called Stargate Universe. It is a group of people who get stranded in another universe or something. People are calling it Stargate Voyager because it has that quest to get back home feel. yawn.

SLES has a broken Subversion setup on its x86_64 SDK DVD. You have to hand build Neon to get Subversion to install and function properly. It took me the better part of a morning to figure this out. Several people have it wrong on the forums. Well, not wrong. They have found other ways to do the same thing without using the SLES RPMs or instructions.

Sun tanning beds should be as regulated as cigarettes as far as cancer protection goes. Some study in Europe came up with this. The nanny state strikes again. some research says they are more dangerous than sitting in the sun. The sun bed industry is bitching and probably heiring the same law firm that keeps tobacco going to this day. Vitamin-D is in the mix.

What is with the Astros? It would be nice if they hired a pitcher and didn't just ask for volunteers before the tame.

Microsoft lost money this past quarter and so did Amazon. Is Microsoft's glory days over? It is all over the podcasts as having peeked. They are all about the OS and Office. Apple has a lock on premium desktops/laptops.  I just don't care.

Ants at bus stop

When I was sitting at the bus stop this morning, surfing the net on my phone,  I felt an itch on my arm. I noticed one kind of ant chasing another kind of ant across my skin. I had to kill both and stand in the heat.

The sun was behind a bunch of clouds.It didn't seem to matter. The humidity is the killer. I had just walked the one and a half or so miles from my house to the stop. There was a time this nearly killed me. Now, I take it in stride. I hardly feel it except for the soaking shirt and the drips down my face. I have seriously considered getting one of those three legged camp folding stools  Not sure it would be light enough to carry on the pack. Not sure it would be strong enough to hold me and the pack while I waited.

I wonder what the story behind the ants was all about. Did the chasing ant have orders that could not be disobeyed? Was the leading ant, larger of the two, simply less aggressive and too a wrong turn? Movies have been made for the life and times of ants and other bugs.

Tomorrow, Amdro.

Almost, A Red Hat laptop for work

2009-07-28

Someone came to me today asking for a Red Hat laptop for a trip. I just installed Linux on my home laptop. Time not waisted because now I know what kind of speed bumps there are for such an adventure.

Ubuntu is good about installing on laptops and supporting a bunch of the hardware that is typical. The wireless connector on my home laptop is some goofy HP crap and requires a kernel patch in order to work. When the kernel updates I suppose you have to patch and build and install all over again. None of those steps is simple. One of the USB connectors is dead so hooking a wireless USB dongle is an option, but makes me worry for the health of the remaining USB plugs.

From all the forums I hit while trying to fix my laptop issues, I noticed the three top issues with Linux on Laptops. Sound, video and wireless. Functioning X11 is all we are worried about on the work laptop. Wireless and sound can take a hike if need be. I'd be pissed if all three just work out of the box in Red Hat on some random work left over laptop.

Alas, no dice. No laptop could be scrounged that did not have a higher priority purpose stamped upon its destiny. I was looking forward to it for a little bit. It would have made a fine experiment and a half decent blog post.

Very Local News

Saw a guy on the bus with a mowhawk this morning. Hadn't seen that in a while. He was a student by the binder he carried. He was a fagot by the way he walked. I really should have just kept surfing the net on my phone on the bus this morning.

Tried a place called Smash Berger today. I had the Texas Berger. It was greasy. It could have used jalapeños. I bet I could have had some if I asked. They had no where to stand and wait on a berger for a to go order. I had to fight people in line, people getting drinks and people sitting down. That was a bit annoying. I didn't get the basket because I didn't want fries.

The fed got something like 27 billion dollars. Considering it is a private organization, that is pretty good. Now, all of a sudden, the FED says "The rescission is easing." Well, no shit. If I got 27 billion dollars I would say things were great too. I'm too big to fail dammit!

Have you ever had toilet paper rip long ways and just keep ripping long ways in to a useless ribbon? I have raised my fist to the heavens and cursed "It wouldn't do it if I tried." So, I tried today and you know what? It still ripped long ways just fine. It is a conspiracy I tels ya!!

There is an article touting the death of hand writing. I say "good riddance". I've never been able to write cursive. I never will. I will print everything everywhere or type it. that is just the way it is. I like it this way.

2009-07-28

For some reason I found myself envying the guys doing the lawn at work this morning. It was hot and muggy outside. It was not glamorous or fun. I just wanted to be outside for some reason. Hands on. I do not get that often.

When Barrings went under int the 1800s the Barring family was ruined. They lost homes and everything that people could see. This made the people who lost their money not hate the banking system so much. Other banks were pretty much immune unless Barrings owed them money. In which case, they might get a couch in payment.

Tazer shards are up after announcing a three shot model. I haven't seen it, but they did have a rapid replacement module on one model. Another had a camera so you could capture the moment for giggles later. The full-auto model is in the works I bet.

My watch is on  my right wrist this morning. I have to switch hands every so often because it drives me nuts if it is on one wrist for more than a couple weeks. I take it off every night, but it doesn't matter. Sometimes I just can't ware a watch for a while. I have always been like this. My wedding ring has the same effect. I tried warring my ring on my right hand in the past, but was told this is a symbol that homosexual couples use to differentiate themselves. So, I just take the ring off for a couple days at a time.

Czars are big at the moment. Czars are great because they imply authority and no consequences. Regine started the whole czar thing in the U. S. for drugs and something else. Ever since, there has been a czar for everything that is a difficult task. Health Czar. Parking Czar. it seems to be a way to scapegoat someone without ruining their career in the process. I say we need to hold their feet to the fire and treat them more like an appointee, which they are if you think about it. The Drug Political Appointee Scapegoat doesn't have the same ring to it.

Combat

It never ends. This is a machine gunner's POV helmet cam. video of a battle in Afghanistan. "Tree line!" I didn't see a fucking twig sticking up out of the ground. It is a desert. You wouldn't think there were that many places to hide.

I heard one soldier quoted as saying this is a different fight than Iraq. They would shoot and run away in Iraq. In Afghanistan, they stick around and manoeuvre on you. How many world powers have had their hat handed to them by Afghanistan? Oh, yes. Soviet Union, England (back in the day) , China doesn't try it. No one else in the regionpicks a fight with those crazy bastards. It is the Fifth Ward/Compton of the whole Middle East for God's sake. Good luck Obama. Thicker spines than yours have been broken fighting land wars in Asia.

Boom Boom

Relatively quite boom boom last night. I only heard it after I woke up to go to the bath room. I had gone to bed around 19:30 or so to get sleep before they got loud. Then, they didn't get loud. Bastards. I was able to sleep like a baby. What happened? I looked up how to find a lawyer on the net. Now that I have done that, I find friends with Lawyer relatives coming out of the woodwork.We will find out how it goes over the long term.

Here is what I picture is going on. The owner of the property is being threatened by a bunch of drug dealers. They party and use the empty space of the center as a place to cut drugs for distribution. Someone found the owner and mentioned a lawsuit over the noise and traffic late at night. The owner told the drug dealers. They almost care because they don't want to make a stink over the noise and get some Dudley Doright sniffing around. Honest cops have got to be the biggest fear of drug dealers.

Very Local News

One of the podcasts was talking about Swine flue in Briton. The numbers are still going up, but there will be a dip before flue season kicks in and things get bad. They guy said "figures" and I swear I heard "piggers". It woke me up first thing in the morning.

There are people who are intelligent, yet refuse to believe in natural selection. This thought makes me cringe. The human race is doomed to a forever existence of ignorance. We will never move on mass forward until there is a divergence of genetics and something different, beyond humans makes the move. We must evolve past our present form to evolve.

The compass application on my G1 phone (Android) has suddenly gotten much more reliable after two close updates in the last week or so. One said something about reverting the library. That turned out to be a good thing. The next seemed to make it even better. The sensor in the phone sucks, but the little app seems to make up for it in software. The compass in the speedometer program still blows. They need a GPS heading mechanism instead of or along side a magnetic reading. maybe that is in the pay version. I'm strictly on the free path for the moment. 

With the ways my eyes work, I watched a sealing fan flicker in the spoon in my glass of tea. No one else can say they see it the way I do. After I stare for a moment the world fads and all around goes grey. The only thing in the world is the sealing fan in the spoon.

I'm impressed

I can't walk a straight line without following over. This guy should get an award. Wait a minute. Those women who walk around with whole harvests on their heads and water buckets on each arm with fifteen kids hanging off them should get the awards. Never mind.

Finding a Lawyer

Figured out how to find a lawyer. What pisses me off is the adds in the Yellow Pages and the lawyer web pages say nothing about this. I had to track down a site in Kentucky I think it was that told me to look up my local bar association, for Harris County, and they would direct me to a lawyer. I have no idea if this is a scan like the Better Business Bureau or not.

So, now what? Will Kelly go through with calling and finding a lawyer? Will Kelly chicken out and wait for months? will Kelly lie to himself and say he can sleep through the boom boom? Will Kelly get a lawyer just to say he has one and feel that littlbe bit mor cool than he does right now?

Only the readers of this blog will know.

Lawyer

So, I'm listening to the noise building behind us. I need a lawyer so I can get some sleep. Where does one begin? I looked in the yellow pages and there are all kinds of categories. I have no idea what I'm looking for. I do not even know what kind of layer to talk to. Maybe I'll look in to one of the legal clinics.

Someone needs to write a how to that tells people (me) how to get a lawyer without getting screwed in the process.

How not to get your ass kicked by police

This is funny, because it is true.

Texans in Heaven

Texans in Heaven Gabriel went to the Lord and said, "I have to talk to you. We have some Texans up here who are causing problems... They're swinging on the Pearly Gates, my horn is missing, and they are wearing T-shirts instead of their robes; there's barbecue sauce and picante sauce all over everything, especially  their T-shirts; their dogs are riding in the chariots and chasing the sheep; they are wearing baseball caps and cowboy hats instead of their halos. They refuse to keep the stairway to Heaven clean, and their boots are marking and scuffing up the halls of Wisdom.  There are watermelon seeds and tortilla chip crumbs all over the place. Some of them are walking around with just one wing; and they insist on bringing their horses with them." The Lord said, "Texans are Texans, Gabriel.  Heaven is home to all of my children. If you want to know about real problems, call the Devil." So Gabriel calls the Devil who answers the phone and says, "Hello--- hold on a minute." When he returns to the phone the Devil says, "O.K., I'm back. What can I do for  you? Gabriel replied, "I just want to know what kinds of problems you are having down there with the Texans." The Devil said, "Hold on again. I need to check on something." After about 5 minutes the Devil returned to the phone and said. "I'm back. Now what was the question?" Gabriel said, "What kind of problems are you having down there with the Texans?" The Devil said, "Man, I don't believe this...hold on." This time the Devil was gone 15 minutes and when he returns he says, "I'm sorry Gabriel, I can't talk right now. Red Adair has put out the fire and Brown and Root is installing air conditioning. "

I like that one. Worthy of the blog.

Obama's non-apology

No comment. Our president is picking a fight with the law enforcement of this country. The president has his own army of secret service. Maybe the next time he needs a freeway shut down and the local cops to run block on all the on and off ramps, they just wont. "Pay us off-duty pay and some equipment for the job, or we won't show up." How much does the president of this country depend on local cops?

Hopefully, this situation will lead to the education of our president. Hopefully it will not require the alteration of how our law enforcement community thinks of the president.

Classic

I could have caught this scene three times a week my entire school career. No one had video cameras back then. I want to be a kid again with all today's technology. I was never athletic. There is so much more to do inside these days. I spent a youth board off my duff. I could have been surfing the net and learning things. I could have had my computer reading books to me. I'm in the wrong time is all.

Of course, there is much more nanny-statism these days. I carried a knife in my pocket every day. I've been over that one. Now, you have to fit the mold or be cast out. It was far more free in my day. If you don't pass the standardized tests, you are rat-holed with some politically correct label and sent to play in the rounded corner room. It just doesn't seem like people try to ... I don't want to be a kid. It is too much work.

Cops want an apology. I would too.

This is going to get worse before it gets better. We have the President of the United States telling a cop he did a shitty job.

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I had to throw away a pare of boots. It is funny how attached I get to boots. These boots were newer than one's my parents bought me for my birthday many years ago. I had gotten divorced the previous year and my parents took me to Academy and got me a new pare of boots.I still have those boots. I was not able to save the boot laces because they were too worn. the rubber sole was coming apart on both boots in the same way. Never noticed that before.

The bus was crowded for a Friday. Every one who got on seemed to have an attitude. The bus driver kept hitting the gas and then hitting the break hard. Every stop was an adventure. I prefer boring bus rides.

My Phone needs to be rebooted about every three or four days to loose the attitude. It is slow and doesn't run a lot of stuff online. It reminds me of a i286. That was the level of machine that was old and crappy when the whole internet thing started rolling.

Some of my Facebook contacts are getting axed. I'm tired of spam from some people. The mobile settings do not allow for blocked lists. Off they go. Don't get me wrong. I love people talking about things they are interested in. I hate getting 2500 SuperPoke invites and the like.

I'm listening to this short story, science fiction, about a planet with speaking animals. They had no real economy until the "angles" (humans) showed up. Now they have global turmoil. money is the root of all evil.

All the hoopla over Twitter would cost them $48,000,000 a month. Someone put together a spreadsheet. I have to say that I'm getting sick of all the buzz. You are probably getting sick of me complaining about all the buzz over Twitter.

Obama said the cops acted 'stupidly' for arresting a black man. The cops basically say "You didn't go through the door with me so step back Mr. President." This could end in tears

Back in the day, I thought Mac computers were two expensive because they cost twice as much for about the same capability. Now it is three times. Maybe four if you look at netbooks. Apple needs to bring the prices down if they want to compete.  Maybe they are happy with the premium consumer niche.

A friend of mine lost his mother to cancer. He is a coworker. He is a friend.  He is a great guy. He is a family man. He and his wife make a cute couple. May he be strong. May he feel the agony of the loss and survive.

Very Local News

Can you believe Bill Gates is trying to control the weather? Isn't that the first sign of mad-scientist-ism? It goes Weather control, then comes doomsday machines. Anti-gravity is in there somewhere. I'm just pissed he beat me to it.

The inverter of WD40 died the other day at 84. He was a WWII vet who came up with the rust resistant solvent for the space program. It is in 80% of U. S. households. The pearly gates never opened so smoothly.

Well, Google failed me. I even tried Bing. I'm looking for a variant of the P38 that had a second cockpit over the left engine. I vaguely remember seeing something like this once a million years ago and heard it mentioned again recently in a podcast. I must find a frigging picture. I had no idea there were 500 different kinds of p38. There was even a real working double p51.

One of the initial production P-38s had its turbochargers removed, with a secondary cockpit placed in one of the booms to examine how flightcrew would respond to such an "asymmetric" cockpit layout. One P-38E was fitted with an extended central nacelles to accommodate a tandem-seat cockpit with dual controls, and was later fitted with a "laminar-flow" wing. faqs.org

Ate least I know the damn thing really existed. Every one mentions a variant with two cockpits. No one has a photo. Drat!

Twitter Buzz

Every one is all crazy about Twitter. I think it is a fad unto itself. I remember the days of chat software on computers. People would log on long enough to find out who was there and then log off, thus defeating the purpose of having the chat software. With the advent of mobile phones people have their chat software (SMS) in their pocket. Twitter was born. It is a way to message every one at once more or less.

The trouble is, people only use SMS because it is there all the time and easy. As soon as other methods of messaging become available and easy, think no 140 character limit, people will migrate to that. Hopefully, Twitter will evolve, but history tells me Twitter will try to sue the replacement company out of business or its own customers for leaving.

It is sad that the business model mechanism is broken. Is it possible for a new IBM or ... what other companies have been around and viable for over a hundred years besides Ford? Anyway, Is it possible for a new IBM to be started right now? Wal-Mart loves the new health care laws that are coming because it kills mom and pop businesses. It makes it all but impossible for a small business to become middle sized business which is what leads to large businesses. Have we become a society reliant on immense corporations for our daily existence?

Someone on one of the podcasts said that $12 a gallon gas will lead to the death of places like Wal-Mart and Cost Co. No one will be willing to use a car to travel to the store. I guess we will use wheelbarrows, or carts to get groceries to our homes. The idea is that local stores in people's neighborhoods will come back to live.  People will have to live closer to work and city centers to survive. That or drop off the the grid and grow their own food.

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Mick Jagger went to London School of Economics many moons ago.

Mead is the world's oldest fermented beverage. It is mixed at one gallon water per one pound honny. That may  be where those measurements came from.

Server Upgrade

I walked in to the bus stop this morning with a feeling of impending doom. We had updated a server the previous evening that would affect all the Linux machines on our network. It was a simple fix. The /ets/fstab must be touched (figuratively, not the 'touch' command) and the machine rebooted to get back to normal. No, I do not have a script that just takes care of the problem. Several people asked me that. I do not have a magic wand either.

The bus was moving under my feet as I got on. Before that, the mosquitoes were our. My sweat beaded and ran down my face in to my contacts. The contacts hadn't gone in this morning without a fight. Oh, At 03:30 or so, a road crew had started work outside our house banging away with a brand new jack hammer. I thought it was the racers and was ready to go investigate with a pistol in my pocket. I took my phone instead. Couldn't Get back to sleep. Fought with poor Nat. Woke up Elle in the process.

On the bus, I notice every one else is doing the same thing I'm doing. We are all tapping on our phones and not speaking to one another. The city all around seems bustling, but, I notice an energy beam whisk by several meters off the ground. I looked ahead and noticed a thin column of smoke leading off to the south west. The column was coming ... No ... It was coming from the building where I work. No one else seemed to notice or care.

As we approached the building, people got about their normal activities and there were no fire trucks or police. Not a news helicopter. This was no spectacle to be gawked upon slack jawed. I could see activity amongst the broken windows. Ever more clearly as we closed distance, The cause and conflict of the situation laid itself before my eyes.

It was the Farrell Death-Bot horde against the Chuds.They battled noisily as stray ordinance showered down on unaware citizens.After a few moments I noticed that a Death-Bots could take Chud one on one with no trouble, but the Bots seemed to bicker amongst their ranks. The Chuds it turns out were organized and fought in trained units. The Chuds' most effective weapon may be an Allan wrench. This battle would last the day at least.

After exiting the bus and dodging the heavy bits of a desk that had been blown from the floor above that hit the side walk, I dashed for the door. No one in the lobby seamed upset for all the noise as RPG fire dashed across the atrium between two wings of the building. No other floor was damaged save a broken window or two. People were just getting on with their day. Was I the only one seeing this? Am I imagining the whole thing. As I enter the elevator and lean in to press my floor's button, I pause for just a moment to read the little warning sign taped next to it with a bloody fingerprint in the middle that reads "Thar be dragons here!" It is going to be one of those days.

Updated Countdown

#!/bin/env python import sys import time import subprocess backspace="\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b" def SecToWdhms(seconds):   m,s = divmod(int(seconds), 60)   h,m = divmod(m, 60)   #d,h = divmod(h, 24)   #w,d = divmod(d, 7)   hms=str(str(h)+":"+str(m)+":"+str(s))   return hms def Usage():   print ""   print "Description:"   print "Count down to 0 and execute a command."   print "Usage:"   print sys.argv[0]+" <seconds> <command and parameters no quotes>"   print "seconds may be expressed as <hr>:<mn>:<sc>"   print "" def ErrorOut(errorText=""):   if len(errorText) > 0:       print str(errorText)   Usage()   sys.exit() # verify we got some arguments if len(sys.argv) < 3:   ErrorOut() seconds=sys.argv[1] command=sys.argv[2] # Check integrity of the first parameter (time) if str(seconds).find(":") > 0:   # Convert x:x:x to a large number of seconds   seconds=str(seconds).split(":")   if len(seconds) < 3:       ErrorOut()   seconds=int(int(seconds[0])*3600+int(seconds[1])*60+int(seconds[2])) elif not seconds.isdigit():   ErrorOut() # count down startTime=int(time.time()) currentTime=startTime endTime=int(int(startTime)+int(seconds)) while currentTime <= endTime:   oldCurrentTime=currentTime   print backspace,   sys.stdout.flush()   secondsLeft=SecToWdhms(str(endTime - currentTime))   print "Time left -> "+str(secondsLeft)+" ",   sys.stdout.flush()   while oldCurrentTime == currentTime:       time.sleep(0.1)       currentTime=int(time.time()) print backspace, print "Running command -> "+command # Put the rest of the command line after the command. arguments=[command] if len(sys.argv) > 3:   arguments+=sys.argv[3:] # Execute the command subprocess.call(arguments) # dummy print to get the command line to come back after the above command runs. print ""

This is the same stupid script I wrote to count down and then run a command. Someone (Adam) asked why I don't use cron. Because cron sucks! Down with cron.

The only thing better about this script is the counter. Instead of a sleep, I actually count seconds. The old script lost about four or six seconds an hour. This one adds about a quarter of a second per run regardless of amount of time it is set for.

Regardless of any use this script gets, it is fun practice.

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It's funny, we are getting ten minute long down poors once in a while. The normal Summer pattern is rain every day at 15:30 or so. That is kind of getting back to order.

I downloaded a bunch of podcasts last night. I put them on my thumb drive to bring to work this morning. I slept like crap due to the boom boom behind us from the after hours club. I got up this morning and attempted to load my downloaded podcasts on my thumb drive again and noticed the system was turned off. I ended up leaving my thumb drive on my desk.

In order for for the health care plan up for debate for the next five minutes to work, a price is going to have to be put on a human life. There Is little other way to say it.

The guy in the above video seems to me come very close to loosing a finger a couple times. Is he going for speed? That is a bad thing around band saws.

So, one of the guys decided to change the hierarchy on our internal FTP site just for the hell of it. Now I get to go fix 45 machines or they will break. Thanks Mat. I'm so glad you prefer i386 to x86 that much.

Emma Watson

Nice wheels

I'm not talking about the white car from a convicted drug dealer. I want one of those Jackals. Just for tooling around our shitty neighbourhood. Running off the racers. That sort of chore.

Maybe a Jackal 2. I'd post some more videos, but they are all from video games. That is a heck of an endorsement says I.

Resist trip on Air Foce 1

Apparently you had to be black to take this trip on AF1.

When a Republican asked a question? "... blew him off."

Helpful Link

Had a buddy call me looking for instructions on how to make Windows 2000 long in automatically. Find them here. I have not had a chance to try them.

Saturday afternoon

I got up earlier than perhaps I should have this morning. I have been so tired when I get home this week. I have just been dead. The stress at work has been squeezing me. I have sent myself some Dilbert prints to put up on the walls where I work. Maybe that will take the stress down a notch.

Bill came by and picked up Elle. They went to Bill's son's house so Bill could give Elle a swimming lesson. Nat and I were going to go, but Nat was not up to it. Then, Nat started to feel better. Off we went. I'm pretty sure we all had a ball.

Elle can dog paddle. She is still afraid to step off the diving board. She has done it a couple times before. I wonder if it was my being there. She was bribed with the offer of a shake at lunch and taunted until my throat was sore, but no dice. She wouldn't go off the board.

When we got home, Nat and Elle sat down to watch a movie. I of course got on the computer. I have political blogs reading in my left ear. The right one was hurting after swimming so I put some hydrogen peroxide in my ear first then some alcohol. It is feeling much better.

It is finally raining. It even waited for us to go swimming. How awesome. It is not enough to make the yard green. It may be enough to keep it from dying straight out. I don't have to mow as often, but I would trade it for a healthy lawn.

This is a test video. I'm testing OpenOffice. OpenOffice is not in OpenOffice's spell checker by the way. I want to use OO for writing my blog entries and other web based writings. It need to know how it is going to work with things like embedded objects like videos though. This is a test.

Well, it places the video object, but it looks like garbage in the editor. I can live with that as long as it doesn't mess with the code. Lets go take a look. ... Well, it looks good after switching modes. Let's close the application and open it up again and find if there are any upsetting reformats of the code at that point. BRB. ... Well, that doesn't look half bad either. The real test will come of course when I publish and look at the final document.

If I can use OpenOffice, it will save me from installing the entire Seamonkey suite to get the little editor that I like. It upsets me that I have to resort to this on some distros. Anyway, here goes the post. Wish me luck.

UPDATE

Google Docs does not let me import an HTML file with an embedded object. The code just goes away. You know, Google docs sucks. I have to say that every time I turn around, some feature of Google Docs pisses me off. If they had just made it a drive that let me save files on the web and edit them on multiple systems, I would get better service out of it. Come on. At least let me save the code. I suppose that is too much to ask.

This little scirpt simply counts down andthen executes a command.

#!/bin/env python import sys import time import subprocess backspace="\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b" def SecToWdhms(seconds):   m,s = divmod(int(seconds), 60)   h,m = divmod(m, 60)   #d,h = divmod(h, 24)   #w,d = divmod(d, 7)   hms=str(str(h)+":"+str(m)+":"+str(s))   return hms def Usage():   print ""   print "Description:"   print "Count down to 0 and execute a command."   print "Usage:"   print sys.argv[0]+" <seconds> <command and parameters no quotes>"   print "seconds may be expressed as <hr>:<mn>:<sc>"   print "" def ErrorOut(errorText=""):   if len(errorText) > 0:       print str(errorText)   Usage()   sys.exit() # verify we got some arguments if len(sys.argv) < 3:   ErrorOut() seconds=sys.argv[1] command=sys.argv[2] # Check integrity of the first parameter (time) if str(seconds).find(":") > 0:   # Convert x:x:x to a large number of seconds   seconds=str(seconds).split(":")   if len(seconds) < 3:       ErrorOut()   seconds=int(int(seconds[0])*3600+int(seconds[1])*60+int(seconds[2])) elif not seconds.isdigit():   ErrorOut() # count down for second in range(0, int(seconds)):   print backspace,   sys.stdout.flush()   secondsLeft=SecToWdhms(str(int(seconds) - int(second)))   print "Time left -> "+str(secondsLeft),   sys.stdout.flush()   time.sleep(1) print backspace, print "Running command "+command # Put the rest of the command line after the command. arguments=[command] if len(sys.argv) > 3:   arguments+=sys.argv[3:] # Execute the command subprocess.call(arguments) # dummy print to get the command line to come back after the above command runs. print ""

Very Local News

I don't care that Google is coming out with their own OS. I don't care how much better it will fill a niche of netbooks. I don't care how much I hate Microsoft and hope Google brings some genuine competition to the OS world. I don't care.

A bunch of back-end stuff at the U. S. Post Office and other countries governmental organizations are converting to Linux. Several universities are converting over to Linux. The U. S. military caught a bunch of crap for a windows server meltdown that required a ship to be towed to harbor a couple years ago. The thing is, Linux is much cheaper than Windows. With the economy the way it is, People are willing to try something new if it does the same thing. It is not that Linux is better. It is cheaper. Will the trend continue past the impending recovery? Probably. Bean counters will be bean counters for ever.

The videos sucked today. There was one of a baby and a pug dog. It was stupid. There was another about Obama getting stiffed by a Russian diplomat who wouldn't shake his hand. Boring. Yet another was just some annoying announcer yapping about a car crash. Another video about a guy charged a faketillion bucks for a pack of cigarettes. That one was all over he news. One of the Baja 1000 crashes that was almost interesting, but only showed people almost getting hit next to a jump. There was another one titled "cruel prank" that I didn't even watch.

This is a different trophy truck flip and burn.

Philosophy of nothing

I had a theory pop in to my head today. The thought that all matter is simply a presents of force. I was walking down the hallway and a couple people were standing there talking about some non-work stuff. Two atoms have attracting forces and opposing forces. We have never seen a wall. We have only detected the existence of limits to probing. What if nothing is there to hit, only the force between two spaces.

Think about two magnates pushing each other apart or attracting one another. Then think of the force of the magnetic field being there without a metal brick. What if all matter is like that. Matter does not exist. There are simply opposing forces pushing and pulling one one another through space. Energy is ever present. What we call matter is simply opaque wrinkles in space and time.

This is called string theory I believe. This must be what they are talking about. This is why you need um-teen dimensions for the numbers to work out. This is why so much gravity in the universe is unexplainable. If you pull a sheet taut on a bed, the wrinkles go away. If you make two wrinkles run in to one another, you get one wrinkle.

If all of space has a slight wrinkled look to it from this prospective, it would explain why there is so much energy in, nothing. It would explain why space seems to have mass when you look at the big picture.

Very Local News

We have this barbecue place next to our work. Today, about thirty of the people from our company showed up in about four groups. It was semi-random. It seemed like half the company was there. We should have gotten a group discount.

"When the levee breaks" The drums were played at the bottom of a stairwell and the microphone was three stories up. think about that the next time you listen to that song.

No, those guys were not stoned out of their minds every frigging moment. Not Led Zeppelin.

I had a good day at work today. I was very busy. I worked hard. I got some things done. I got some help when I needed it. Hopefully I gave good help when someone else needed it. It was a full day. I forgot to do my time tracking. DAMMIT!!!!

Elle had swimming lessons again today. She says she doggy-paddled. The way she said that I cannot possibly spell.

Can't speak your mind

I have to agree to a point. It isn't just one race. It is all people who identify themselves by their race or religion or whatever. I like the world to have differences. Hell, our current government seems to want th ewhole world to be grey atheists. I'm not down with that.

Python madness

I'm converting several old scripts to Python for grins. If you run the following script without a try command you get an error upon ending espeak with a ctrl-c.

#!/bin/env python
import sys, subprocess
command=["espeak", "-s", "280"]
if len(sys.argv) > 0:
    command+= sys.argv[1:]
try:
    subprocess.call(command)          # <- Run the espak program
    print "Exiting espeak. (ctrl-d)"
except:
    print "Exiting espeak. (ctrl-c)"

All this script does is run the software that reads to me called espeak. Once you run espeak the only way to get out of it is to hit ctrl-d or ctrl-c. The difference between those two is an error message. The two keys mean different things. ctrl-d is "end of file" and ctrl-c is "break".

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "say", line 8, in ?
    subprocess.call(command)     <- The real error
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/subprocess.py", line 412, in call
    return Popen(*args, **kwargs).wait()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/subprocess.py", line 1007, in wait
    pid, sts = os.waitpid(self.pid, 0)

That is ugly so I gave two minutes of effort to get rid of it. Now, I could hit ctrl-d and not get the error, but I use bash, at the house which hitting ctrl-d at the prompt exits bash. That is a pain in the ass and I don't always look before I hit keys so I need to CMA.

When you run the script now, if you hit ctrl-c an error happens at the espeak command so you never get to the print right below it, only the print after the 'except' is executed. If you hit ctrl-d there is no error and the print straight below the espeak command is executed and the 'except' section is ignored.

No more ugly message.

Hiding in the open

So I'm turning the internet upside down looking for the Red Hat EL kernel source. I need the kernel*.src.rpm. It is not on the DVD. I'm afraid to use the CentOS one. There is no reference to the source RPMs on the main Red Hat site that I can find. I start Googling and come up empty on the first couple of tries. Then I find the magic Forum somewhere that says it is in the most obvious place right out in the open. (If you are a developer, this should be obvious to you.)

ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/4/en/os/x86_64/SRPMS/

Quoting Rosanne Rosanne-a-Danna, "Oh,  Well,that's different. ... Never mind."

Then I couldn't get it to build properly.

For those of you who do not know Gilda Radner's work.

Very Local News

Advanta bank went from 6% on loans to 35% over night. Advanta had a 20% default rate. Can you blame people? The Fed forced them to give back 35 million dollars and dropped the FDIC insurance. Advanta corp can only pay off old investors by attracting new investors. The investment advice is "Run for the exits."

There was an interview with a Belgian who worked at a GM plant there. He wasn't too worried about loosing his job because they have a safety net for such things. "I'll go find another job." That does sound nice. The libertarian in me laughs and says "How long can that last?" then walks off to have a beer with the syndic. The bleeding heart liberal in me is just silent because she was traded to the gypsies many years ago for a snickers bar.

There may be a new system in place in a few years that will completely replace the social security numbering system. The days of having a number you memorize is coming to an end. You just might have to have the replacement tattooed somewhere to keep it handy. Good luck getting Christians to do that. The trouble is,some graduate students cracked the formula from death reports and are able to guess SSNs based on place and time of birth without too much effort.

I"m in a violent mood

So, you get to suffer. These are all violent videos.

Don't smoke weed and drive. This is a real commercial.

Fake commercial that still contains violence.

They really are just a bunch of barbarians in Europe. When are they going to outlaw this insanity?

Hope you enjoined this little interlude. I'm here all week.

So Tired

I'm so tired.

Tired of blogging.

Tired of blogging about cra-a-ap.

Red Hat 8

I was tasked with setting up a Red Hat 8 box at work. We don't really have the timely hardware, circa 2002, so i tried one of our standard boxes. The CD would not boot because the new box has all SATA drive connections. No go on Red Hat 8. There might be a driver out there, but come on.

I moved to another box that had both IDE connections and PCI Express. I tried installing on the existing SATA drives because they installer found the drives, so why not. Well, the OS goes through the install process, but hangs on the fist boot at the 'mount local fs' message. Great. I had to go to our graveyard at work and track down a high quality IDE hard drive. I got the OS installed on that drive and found that the OS would not boot because the drive was not master or something like that. So, I had to unplug the CD drive and use only the drive.

Soon after the first boot, I noticed the Ethernet device did not show up. A quick look at Belkin's site and I simply tracked down a stand alone PCI NIC. That worked. The OS will not recognize a thumb drive, the network device, or the CD drive. How the hell do you get something on that box? Well you boot with Ubuntu or Knopix CD and copy files from the USB key. I didn't have to resort to that.

Red Hat 8 does have security and I was able to get the box on our network well enough to log in and mount the network. There has bot be some way to do it or you will never get the box up.

The QLogic drivers just built and worked. Kick ass. You owe me one Adam.

Linux distributions for kids

Sugar (One Laptop Per Child)

EdUbuntu for older kids.

oops

Couple of trucks nearly turn over. The one kind of does, then rolls back.

Very Local News

Well, the USB sound card works, but the volume and mute and other buttons do nothing. So much for the extra $5 for the nice one. It does hiss less. It is better constructed. Not sure it was worth it.
...
After playing with it for a while I have to say that it is better. The sound quality is much better and the volume is more responsive, though you still only get the bottom 10% of range before loosing your ear drums.

Natalie and I are looking for a lawyer. For some reason the people behind us insist on booming their music from dusk till dawn. It was bad enough on weekend, but now it is on week nights. I prefer it be never. If the county will not enforce laws, then they can pay to move us to somewhere where laws are enforced.

www.twitter.com gets the Bbritish Monarchy this has gone too far.

The budget for the first nine months of this physical year tops one trillion dollars for the first time. I refer to a previous post where I already mentioned that this administration and legislature have lost what a dollar means.

I screwed something up at work. I hate that. Fortunately, it won't kill any one. Still. This was a couple weeks ago and it is only now coming up. I hate that.

Sunday so far

Well, I have the laptop set up more or less. Now I need a reason to use it. I still haven't figured out the wireless stuff. ]It is there, I think. Haven't looked. I need to turn on my wireless router and try to connect to it with the laptop.

... The wireless stuff is not going to work because whatever device the HP assholes used will not come up as a wireless device. It comes up as an Ethernet connector, but the OS does not know it is a wireless device. I'm screwed.

The bills need paying. I have a stack of bills and a check book sitting on my desk. I have a pen and a computer for checking the balance of the accounts. Everything I need except the will to perform.

... Paid the bills. Need to mail them tomorrow.

The yard still needs mowing. I heard someone out there earlier weed-eating in the blazing heat. I have everything I need to do the job except the will.

... Probably not going to mow today. I hurt too much.

I have a killer headache. I'm consuming the normal suspects. I have taken some Tylenol sinus. and I'm drinking a soda with caffeine in it. 

... Hours later even after paying the bills and what not. Head still hurts. Nothing works.

UPDATE: 2009-07-12 20:01

Weed-whacked the yard. So, I at least tried to do most of the stuff on my list. That is more productive than I have been in a while.

Bryan on the job

This is a budy of mine named Bryan. He is the one on the computer. He works for NASA as a photographer. This image is also available on the NASA web page. Hope no one is bothered by my posting it.

Test Link from Picassa

From Blogger Pictures

This is a test of a link from Picassa (blogger Pictures) If the above picture of my logo hawk vanishes, let me know.

Thanks.

Very Local News

I had to stop listening to the news this morning. I listened to the news for a while and all I got was pissed off. The fact about the White House spending 18 million dollars on a web page stuck in my side. I had to listen to music for a couple hours while working just to stay focused. I have just about had it. Not that there is anything I can do besides complain on my 20 hits a week blog.

My dad has been on sick leave from work for a while. He would appreciate your prayers. He is already feeling much better. He is doing some work from home. He is working on a work laptop, his personal laptop an dhis personal desktop. He has his desk all set up. He wants to work from home more. Don't we all?

Never call in to a conservative talk show.

never call in to a liberal talk show.

The music stations in The Check Republic are better than the music stations in Houston. It turns out commercials in a language I do not understand don't bug me as much as the ones I do understand.

Note to my grandchildren

The White House plans on spending 18 million dollars on a new web site. On a web site. I have a free blog. I know they could get a top notch web site for a hundred grand. E-Bay may have spent 18 million dollars on their web site. What are their plans for this web site?

The spokesman had the balls to say it isn't much when you consider the amount of money going out the door. Our executive and legislative branch of government of our country has lost the value of a dollar. They would like nothing better than to bring the legislative branch in to the fold.

Have you heard about the stimulus 2.0? Yes, that is right, Our spendthrift government wants to throw another trillion dollars down a hole. light it and dance around the flames while chanting "Yes we can!".

My grand kids are going to look me in the eye and bitch about the one world government holding them by the short hairs. "Why didn't you stand up for yourselves when you had the chance Grandpa?" Where were the people who had spirit? Why did you all just lie down and let the rich roll over you and make you live by their rules?

I was too broke to pay for my house. I was working hard and still worried about loosing my job. There were so many voices on the internet and all media droning on about Michael Jackson's death and legacy. Some football player who had been killed by his girlfriend. A bunch of other celebrities who had been dying in a mysterious cluster lately. Paris Hilton made a movie so bad she was getting sued by the investors. Obama was caught checking out some chick's ass in Europe. Harry Potter 23 comes out next week. Wimbledon is on TV. Hey, they have a new stadium with a roof. About time. I need to tweet that.

The fact that our government just threw pissed away a year's worth of money a month ago and now, wants to do it again and will probably want to do it again after that just doesn't make it through the buzz. Sorry grand kids. I hope y'all don't fall down on the job of being an attentive citizen. Hope y'all keep your eye on the ball. I genuinely hope you are not forced to live under the same set of rules as the entire world and that you will have somewhere to run if you don't like the way things are going..

Sorry for sticking you with the bill. I'm off to listen to some music.

Trillions of dollars worth of bullshit

The stimulus package is being spent on the standard bills of states, not making jobs, not starting projects. Most of thee stimulus money given to the states has gone to making current payroll. It is making the situation worse because the states are getting on the federal tit. Now, our government is about to authorize another useless mass payment to the states that will fix nothing.

The Left loves the term 'green'. The stimulus will create X new green jobs. For every green job created you loose two brown jobs. I cannot back these numbers up. I just pulled them out of my ass.  i would like to know the real numbers. I would like to know if any one knows the numbers and how they were tabulated. Then again, I would like to know how all the numbers associated with cult of environmentalism are tabulated. I have a feeling I'm not the only non-scientist pulling numbers out of my ass on the subject.

Obama's numbers are in the toilet. His popularity numbers that is. I hate it when that is the story. I fear it is going to become OK to blame him for every thing wrong in America. Again, we will have a president who is mocked and made fun of by Americans and the rest of the world. Jobless rate up. The old stimulus was focused on jobs and created basically none. Now they want trillions more focused on, wait for it, jobs. Will one new job be created? How quickly they fall from grace.

Fox News is all about "loosing the faith in Obama." One of the things sticking in people's craw is the fact that a bunch of multi thousand page bills have been passed lately and representatives coming right out and saying they didn't read anything past the PowerPoint bullets. I say the people are the ones in charge of this country. We have just forgotten that fact. The government representatives are our employees. They need to work for a living and skip a couple galas and mall openings.

Stop talking about global warming and work on our economy. Get out of Europe and get back to the U. S.. Take care of home. The is not Europe. our ancestors left for a reason long ago. Europe has always been a nanny stat. Many of the countries that constructed the European Union were nanny states before joining.

Be serious about Nuclear weapons, fine, You have your convictions. That's cool. Be serious about Iran getting nuclear weapons. Iran will chew your ear off (talking) while oppressing their own people and rushing head long in to nuclear statehood. Please do not be fooled by the smiling puppet calling himself the president.

Very Local News

There is a promotion on several of the online radio stations where the company has a promotional free trial. The secret code to get the free trial is "free trial". Don't forget that code "free trial". They even cut the audio funny so it sounds like a computer dropping in the secret code.

We got some guy's Black Bury from UPS. I hope he didn't get the $2 leather case or $9 USB sound card with volume control. Nat tracked the guy down and is getting him back his phone.

Way too close

Warning! real Combat footage. Bad guys die.

Combat. Taliban taken down with prejudice.

I'm not sure I like this whole helmet cam trend that I've noticed. Even the news media is in on the act. It makes the killing seem too much like a video game. Maybe that is what the military wants. I just don't like it myself. I will still post the videos and watch even more.

Micro Fiction

Slow Transit

"It ain't nothing but a game." Puck said to his little sister Tammy.  "You play a game. You win some you loose some.The trick is to get back out there and play twice as hard the next time regardless of winning or loosing."

Tammy was only half listening. She heard this speech from her coach. Come to think of it, he was Puck's coach a couple years ago. "When are you leaving for collage?" She thought to herself and turned to glare through the window.

Their mom was driving the minivan and remained silent. Her friend Kathy sat in the passenger seat chatting up a storm, but no one was listening. No one was listening to any one. Puck turned and looked out the window after noticing Tammy's wandering eyes.

Tammy wasn't really upset at loosing a hockey match. She was tired of dealing with the game and the people and the hours of practice. She had recently discovered hanging out with some of the weired kids at school. They never did anything except rag on other people at the school, but Tammy was working on a way to make a career out of it and was expecting a breakthrough any day now.

Puck suggested pizza and mom shot him down. Kathy started in on her vegetarian message. She had the same tired speech about health and animals. Tammy consciously resisted sticking her fingers in her ears. "What does mom see in this woman?" she thought while rolling her eyes back out the window.

They passed the street to Tammy's school. They passed the street to the neighborhood where most of her friend's lived. The friends who had mobile phones and could text each other endlessly. "You don't need a phone." "We live miles from all my friends." "Call them on the phone." "A mobile phone would be cheaper than a line in my room." "You don't need a phone." "What if I get a job and pay for it myself." "You need to concentrate on school." "Can I quit hockey?" "No. hockey is good for you." Blah Blah.

Puck elbowed Tammy in the arm. "What!" she turned to smack him in the arm but pulled the punch when she realized he was just trying to bring her back to Earth. Puck pointed to the driver's seat. "Yes mom?" Tammy said with the most grace she could muster having just aborted fratricide.

"When we get home I need you to ..." Tammy's mother rattled off a list of tasks. Nothing out of the ordinary. Quite the opposite.

It only takes ten minutes to get from the game to the house. It is the only house Tammy has ever lived in. This is her small town. She has never lived anywhere else for longer than a couple days. "Will I ever get out of this jerk-water berg?" She mutters under her breath.

Google vs Microsoft

Google is finally coming out with their own operating system. It is about time. The Chrome browser will tun in to the Chrome OS. Good for Google. This means it doesn't matter if you come out with the OS first or start offering web services first, it all boils right back down to one company offering one set of solutions to encompass everything and milk the world for every last dime.

GooSoft, Microogle. Neither has a ring to it.

The only place in the computer manufacturing industry that is making a nickel at the moment is netbooks. Chrome will be aimed straight at that market. I wander how much of the os will come from Android and how much will come from say Linux or some other open operating system.

Not that I care much. I'm almost happy with my G1 phone that runs the Android OS. It needs flash big time. If it gets Flash, then the phone will be complete. I know there are alternatives to Flash, but no one uses them, so they don't count.

If you have been reading the blog, you know that I have little love for Microsoft. I use Google online stuff like the docs, email, and maps and such. Microsoft has software for all those needs, but you have to start with their operating system. Nothing from Microsoft works without their starting point. Will Google continue to offer open solutions that work on more or less any operating systems? Only time will tell.

Am I putting all my eggs in one basket? Well, kind of. I worry about that. I trust Google further than Microsoft to give me a way to copy everything down to a local backup that I can use with another bit of software. That is almost good enough to make me not worry. Not quite.

Very Local News

I find myself not having anything to tweet about. Nothing seems worth blabbing to the universe. I have about a thousand posts on Twitter. They are mostly boring as hell. It really is an 'in the moment' kind of thing. If the tweets are taken out of context, things just look normal. The one person who does a great job of tweeting talks about her love life, coworkers, friends and family. I don't know how she doesn't get busted.

When is my sound card going to show up? I miss my podcasts. It is not the news I miss. I get that with streaming through my phone. It is the fiction podcasts I miss. I'm going to have to ge through them on the blog some time. There is a lot of great fiction available out there. Not all of it is science fiction either.

The power earphone splitter showed up. I paid $5 for it plus shipping. The regular earphone jack does not work. The USB looking earphone plug does work. I can indeed plug charge the phone while listing to online radio. Sweet. This rocks. I can now listen to online radio all day at work. The extended battery only lasted about 5 or 6 hours on a full charge. This is the battery that lasted twice as long as the stock battery.

I hate the Taliban

All my life I've tried very hard not to wish bad things on people. I do wish the people who race up and down the street by my house would crash sometimes, but I'm not too serious about it. I'm acting out of frustration. Today I red on CNN that the Taliban may be buying children to use as suicide bombers. I very calmly and quietly preyed that these people would be defeated in the near future.

There was not enough reason to hate them I suppose. I hereby declare my hatred of another human being. That human is all members of the Taliban. It warms my heart to know that I hate someone who is truly evil. They are the Hitler and Nazis of our time.

If I have the name wrong or the wrong group, let me know. I want to make sure I have the correct target in mind when I prey for their destruction.

Very Local News

• The BBC says some places in China are just rounding up protesters and herding them off to points unknown. Some people are missing with no knowledge of what happened to them. There are reports of office workers going head to head with riot police with bits of wood against machine guns. Hundreds may have been killed in the last week over the protests.
  
• It rained this morning. I made it to the bus stop without getting rained on, but had to dawn the poncho to go from the bus to the building. I'll take it. I'm happy for the rain. You know we need it when I don't complain having to walk in the rain. I hope the house gets a fare amount.
  
• Went to Randal's for stamps at lunch. Waited in line for ten minutes behind some guy trying to cash a check. I got two little books of stamps for $20. It was $17.xx, but that is all of a twenty dollar bill. Didn't a book of stamps used to be less than $5? When I think about it, I wonder how they deliver mail for 44 cents a pop. No wonder they loose money even though they are not taxed.
  
• I called Nat at lunch today and her phone was working. Hopefully, that is the end of the missing weekend. The holiday with no communication.
  
• I'm listening to talk radio. Every frigging ad is financial assistance, or credit relief. "Get your share of stimulus money." Every frigging ad. The only other thing they plaid today is the Jackson memorial thing in Calli.
  
• Jackson's coffin was not even off stage when I saw a news story go by that LA wants to be compensated for the hoopla. I cannot blame them. I would want some of that bling too. Every one else is cashing in.
• I'm a SuperPoke Pets Widower.

UPS Pow-wow

Radio Blues

I triple checked my mobile phone account and I have an unlimited data transfer rate. I'm sure it will still come back to bite me in the ass, but I tried to make sure I wasn't getting screwed too badly.

For a very long time I have had no internet connection at work. This is not that big a deal, We use intent machines in public areas. It is all to prevent distraction at work. Honestly, it hinders me getting my work done because I could just turn around and look things up without even thinking about it.

The one thing I miss from my old job is listening to internet radio. Now, I can listen to internet radio on my phone. This app called StreamSomething works like a charm. It even let's me listen to my old favourite music station Radio Paradise. I still cannot listen to BBC 5 Live, but who is counting? They won't let half their content out of the U. K. any way. Loosers.

There is one serious problem with listening to radio on my phone. The extended battery, the one that lasts twice as long as the stock battery, with a full charge, dies just after lunch. I ordered a splitter that may let me hook up a charger and headphones to the phone at the same time. This means I'll only have to commute on battery. That will work out nicely.

This situation drips with irony because My parent's just gave me a Laptop. Half the use of that laptop was going to be internet radio at work. The other half was going to be DnD and traveling around. Well, the phone thing works even better than the computer to be honest. I'll still get use out of the laptop, worry not.

As I was typing the paragraph above the order conformation came in for the splitter. Creepy.

Satellite radio is all but dead. They are trying to get in to the online radio thing. It may be too late. Radio stations will not transmit radio signals soon. They will all go to online streams. That is the only model that makes any sense.

I remember looking for a high definition FM radio. They do not make a hand held radio that i could find. The pickings are slim for any kind of HD radio. Right now it is a big thing for cars to come with Satellite radio. A friend's car has it. How much longer will it last?

There were a couple of appliances that hooked you in to online radio without much trouble. Not sure how they worked. I don't think they sold very well. With the advent of smart phones you don't need anything else. It is going to kill a dozen industries.

Firing up the grill

This is my father. A griller of great burgers. We had a post-Independence Day cook out.

Let me know if you have trouble.

365 photo blog

A friend of mine named Cynthia now has a 365 photo blog. The idea is you take a picture every day and upload it. You comment on the picture and others can log in and comment back if they have an account. Sounds very interesting. I would love to do something similar, but I want to do it on this blog. I might go sign up just so I can poke fun comment on her pictures.

Too bad I'm so dang lazy.

T-Mobile

I  can't find anything online,but Nat's and my phones both went dead Friday at some point. Neither of us could make a call or send a text Saturday either. I called in today 2009-07-05 on the land line and was able to fill out a ticket. The guy on the phone was more than helpful and kind. He did make it sound like we were the only one's having trouble. Surely, that isn't the case. There is a slim chance we are the first to call in. After three days, I can't imagine any one putting up with that besides my lazy ass.

The symptoms were sporadic. The 3G sign and signal were strong, but you couldn't get to a web page, make a call, or text. Nat's phone is 3G and the settings for forcing it to a lower gear are hidden. She can still not make a call or communicate because the 3G network thinks it is alive. My G1 has a manual setting that lets me down-shift.

I thought the phone network was separate from 3G. It turns out if you use 3G all calls, texts and data go over the 3G network. Guess this little adventure taught me something.

Besides, I have been trying to get the text function to read to me all weekend. I had to download the library for text to speech. Got it this morning. Works great. Sounds exactly like the reader on linux I use called espeak. They must use the same engine. There is a text reader that lets you read whatever you paste in. Need to find that one.

Memory

I've been forgetting thins more than makes me comfortable lately. I just walked in to the kitchen to fix myself a glass of cool-aid and found one sitting on the counter. Once I saw it, I remembered making it just before I went out to mow. Not sure if that counts as absent-mindedness or early senility.

Lately I go to a new browser tab and forgot what I was looking for by the time the frigging thing loads Google. Just ask Natalie about me never remembering our plans.

The thing is, I've never been able to remember things. I've always had trouble. That is why I make notes at work .That is why I make lists. It might be why I like having a blog.

Hopped up Cop Car

I saw this somewhere a while back.

CNN is finally getting around to showing a potential cop car. It automatically reads license plates as cars pas. Face Recognition in cop's sunglasses are coming too.

Happy 4th

Remember; safety glasses are not for dorks. they are for dorks who still have their eyesight.

Update: 2009-07-04 13:08

All the blogs are obscure quotes about U. S. independence, bitching about the state of our government, Palin's resignation, or safety glasses. What is the blogsphere coming too?

Happy Forth

These are fireworks I can get in to. The only thing hurt are your cholesterol levels.

The old adage proven again

If at first you don't succeed, back up and floor it.

Nat's Games

Natalie has these games she plays on Facebook and MySpace. She doesn't seem to realize it, but it is the interaction with other people she likes. I can tell by the way she talks about the game. "So and so said this." or "This girl wants to trade blah for yadda. can you believe that?"

Yoville, Farmville, SuperPoke Pets, and GardenSpot are the games of the moment. Nat won't fall in to the trap of second life though. She has gotten Elle sucked in too. I simply refuse to partisipate. I have enough people sapping my time in a 24 hour period.

We are going to get her a gamer-chair.

No, not that one. Something she can sit on in front of he TV without arching her back so much. Right now she sits on a foot stool and bends funny. That needs to change. She gave up using her desk a long time ago. Actually it was the day we go the TV. Our TV takes VGA straight on. I never watch TV any more. So, Nat uses the TV as her monitor.

The Cult of Environmentalism

The fact tat our government simply bands scientists that do not make for good PR or agree with the status quo, has convinced me that the environmental movement has become a massive world wide cult. I live in Texas and there are just not that many people who are militantly enforcing petty environmental rules, but they exist. Most people I know are Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, or some other tax defered religious affiliation. Now, there is another religion to add to the list. Environmentalism. The word has been used in my presence and I didn't even notice it's ascendancy to a religion.

The really important aspect the Global Warming story isn’t the subject matter — whether or not humans are heating the Earth to death — but the process through which the findings are reached. It goes right to the heart of what it means to know something. Whatever one may think about AGW, ’science’ that excludes views on the basis of not being “helpful” looks suspiciously like a process of fitting the evidence to the desired conclusion. It should be the other way around. When this fundamental is abandoned, knowledge is replaced by belief and science is supplanted by theology. Belmont Club

Richard Fernandez is an amazing blogger. He gets it. He is intelligent and on occasion eloquent.

That said, I've been waiting for someone to call Environmentalism a cult. The article does nearly that. I do it here. Green is great, but if you call yourself an atheist and you think All Gore is cooler than Jesus, you are the blissful member of a cult. Get out of it, or get over it.

Bitching

Feel free to skip this post. I only wrote it to get things out of my system. It has been a shit couple days.

Left work yesterday at around 14:00. Had a dentist appointment at 16:00. I took the bus from work to Dairy Ashford where I immediately missed one bus. The next bus blew right by me. I caught the third bus and nearly passed out running across the street to the office. My vision was hazy as I ran from the median to the far side of the street.

It was not a bad dentist visit. I got three fillings. It hurt. My jaw is left aching today. The dentist commented on my death grip on the arms of the chair. I think I stressed him out. He suggested I ask for the gas in the future.

On the way home on the bus I felt my heart beat in my teeth. I felt faint and a bit ill. I was light headed and got on the wrong bus. Nearly ended up over  by the new Dow building.

Nat picked me up at the mall so I didn't have to walk. I don't think I would have made it.

When I got home I crashed. I tried to. People were setting off fireworks right behind our house. There is nothing I can do about it. Not one goddamn thing.

I got up and tried to get my server up and running. It took me a while to get vnc working. Ubuntu has some issues with settings. Nothing new apparently. The last several versions of Ubuntu have had the same problems. It has been years. I guess they don't want vnc to work out of the box. Works now.  Then came getting smb working. Same thing. I was unable to get smb to support a login. I had to leave world read and write. If I had a domain server It would work. I give up. I can't get nfs working on Ubuntu. I just don't know where it is. Surely it is there somewhere.

My back was killing me. I'm not taking the cholesterol medicine any more. I tried to call my doctor and they wanted some number I don't have because they were samples. My back hurt so bad that I could not stand up after a couple hours of sleep. It locked up at one point when I tried to stand up from the computer and I ended up on my knees. I felt better this morning after not taking the medicine.

Natalie's mouse died. Elle was very upset. Nat is worried that she messed something up and killed the poor little thing. Those little mice just die. Our house is loaded with mold. Who knows?

Forgot my podcasts and USB drive at home this morning. My jaw still aches. My back still hurts. My evening sucked last night. Got no sleep. Tired. $650 on dentist for three lousy fillings (clean and x-rays) that we do not have. Left my hat on the bus yesterday. Kelly is not a happy camper.

Very Local News

Written 2009-06-30

Work

The network thing did not go through .The one rain storm we have had in the last three months blew out a UPS and killed a copy that prevented us from upgrading. Our frigging luck. One of the guys came up to work at midnight to check on the copy. I didn't read the note on the front door that warned of the failure because the door opens out and I was afraid someone would open the door straight in to my face while I was reading it.

I'm warring a bright red shirt today. I am Lieutenant Smith. "Let me take care of that Captain. One side."

Listened to BBC 5-Live podcast. They are all about sitting and joking while the games are going on. It is much more entertaining when it is about them cracking jokes than it is watching tennis. "So And So is the sixty-ninth highest rated player in the world ..."

Envy, or not

One of the tweeters I listen to keeps going out and partying on week nights. I keep messing with the server and systems at the house. We are both tired, but she has interesting memories to help her recover. I do not envy her the hang over.

Rain

Not only did the rain blow out a UPS, but it awoke the grass. For weeks, the grass on the way in has been dying and laying over. It was bright green and erect this morning on the walk in. There was mud in the construction area. I knew better, but took that rout anyway. So, for the first time in a couple months, I had to ware my work shoes and park the muddy boots.

Now that the grass is standing up, it will be easier to mow. Well, it will be more effectively mowed.Had I mowed this weekend, I would have kicked up a bunch of dust and clipped five weeds. Now, I get the grass.

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