Past - Future

I'm never going to be any better than I am right now. I'm never going to make more money or win the lottery or make money with the blog or YouTube or fixing cars. My father has the ability to sell things. I did not inherit this skill.

It has little to do with genetics or education. I'm plenty smart. It is the whole drive thing. I lack the basic get it done strength. This is the most damming thing in my life.

I'm never going to do that amazing thing that makes my life worth while. I'm not talking about supporting a family and raising a kid. I'm talking about flying higher, running faster, killing more game, conquering civilizations, write the novel that changes the world, bring piece to the middle east. God knows what else could have happened.

I may eat my weight in sweet tarts. I just might end up with ten thousand posts on my blog. Not much else comes to mind. I'll hold no records.

I will not stand out for good. I hope I will not stand out for bad. The world/universe/God has no plan for me I feel. Not sure how I feel about thtat. The older I get the less that thought scares me. That scares me.

Elle's Cricket

Elle walked up to me last night just before bed and said "You know that noisy cricket that was outside my window last week?"
"Yes." I answer slowly with a suspicious raised eyebrow.

She responds coyly "It's outside your window now." She did look a bit satisfied with that statement.

The cricket made some noise for a bit, but it was almost relaxing. I was woken up by the screen banging a bit from a front moving through right after midnight. The rain was comforting too.
Elle came to me an hour or so later with a rolly-polly crawling around her hand. She wanted to let it go outside.

I woke up an hour late as Nat came in and asked me "Are you going to work?" it turns out the alarm on my phone was set, but the ring tone was not set. I assume this is because of all the turmoil I've had with the ring tones lately.

made it to work on time thanks to Nat. I do enjoy dropping Elle off at school.

Notes:

Every family in the U. K. is paying 300 pounds to Lloids of London to bail it out.

Humans are the most successful animial at regulating it's body temperature. We can stand higher heat for longer and remain active and use less water doing it than many other animals. This is from The Naked Scientist. I wonder if that includes clothing and shelter? I doubt it.

Inspiring

Thanksgiving weekend Wining

The good stuff

Tried to do some homework. We had Thanksgiving dinner at my parents. That was awesome. Ate too much and crashed. Shot a video of Elle and my mother playing ball in the back yard. Natalie burned her hand and hair at Faire because of some drunk.

Homework

Before I left work, I had a task to do. I had to make a copy of a 16G image on to a flash drive. This osunds so easy. So, I'm the second to last one in the building on the day before Thanksgiving trying to

• Get a 4.5G file off our shit network.
• Decompress this file to a 16G image.
• Copy that image to a 16G flash card.

Well, the file failed off the network on the first try. Then the decompression failed on the second try. The file decompressed, but did not copy itself from the temp location for some reason. I ended up copying the file to my thumb drive, thank God I had used ext3 to format the the drive and not vfat for just this reason, and take it home to complete the job.

Got the file home and copied it off the thumb drive. It took four tries to get my home computer to mount the stupid thumb drive because what kind of idiot uses anything besides vfat to format a thumb drive? Then I try to decompress the file. It failed. Not in the same way as at work. This time it looks like corruption. Something did not jive on the trip from the office to home.

The box this card is for is supposed to ship tomorrow afternoon. It takes 2.5 hours to copy the image from the file to the 16/G drive. I failed. I really hope I do not cause the box to be late.

Video

I uploaded the video three full times now. This does not include the several attempts I made to upload the picture from my phone. Apparently, 6.6 megabytes is just too much for the nation wide T-Mobile infrastructure to handle. How amazing is that? We spent half the day looking for a cable that I could use to put the video on a computer over at my parent's place. I only meant for it to take a minute then give up and just wait until I got home. It had to become a whole thing.

When I goth home I uploaded the video and noticed YouTube said "error" so I uploaded it again. Only, YouTube went ahead and uploaded the video. It turns out this causes a duplicate. Once you have a duplicate, nothing works correctly. I could not tell which video was the duplicate because apparently the error video completed after the second video I uploaded so I managed to delete the wrong video. Since the other video was a "duplicate" It would not play or embed or anything. I had to delete it too. YouTube sucks.

Thank goodness for laziness because the video file was still on my hard drive. I copied it up and spent the next half hour trying to find the embed code to update the place where I put the video so it is not some gaping hole in my blog. I had to play the video and copy the embed code out of the little shell. I still cannot find the place to copy the embed code for videos that I have uploaded myself. I feel like I can embed anyone's video but my own.

Nat's burn adventure

So, I'm reading along on Facebook and come across a good friend of mine who says he had to take someone to the ER who got burned in a campfire out at Faire. I didn't even think about it and commented on the post saying he was a hell of a guy for doing that. Then I call Natalie and find out it was her.

Some fat drunk was acting a fool and swung his arms around and knocked her in to an open ground fire. She got some blisters on her hand and some singed hair. I think she will be fine. Have you ever tried to put on garb one handed.

Thank God, she seems OK. This was the last weekend of Faire for this year. I have a funny feeling about next year. Something will change. Maybe they will not allow camping by patrons. I'm just saying I feel strange about the whole idea. So many friends of mine are fed up with it.

Sleep

Well, I didn't get much sleep the whole weekend. I was worried that something would happen to my father's truck because Nat took it out to Faire for some reason. And the boom boom idiots were out in force Saturday evening.

Then I found this guy. He is the number one YouTuber in Canada I think and he is the number one car related site on YouTube even beating out corporate sponsored pages. I watched a hundred or more of his videos. He is crazy, and a drunk, and doesn't seem to have a proper respect for the fragility of human life, but I love his videos. He has a bunch of car crashing and joy riding and some interesting informative videos on how things work, specifically cars and engines.

Laptop

I updated my laptop to Ubuntu 9.10. I don't know why. I never use the damn thing. I've heard there were problems with things like disappearing wireless controllers. My wireless controller disappeared. Well, the device was there. It just didn't work.

It would just not recognize WEP. I jacked with it and jacked with it. I turned off WEP just for a moment to try it out and it worked fine. I changed the WEP key that was working fine before the upgrade because it didn't have enough letters vs numbers in it. I used a thumb drive to copy the key to make sure it was not a typo. I jacked with it some more. Did I mention that I did the update over the Wireless connector, so it worked.

This killed the better part of an entire afternoon. Then I power cycled the router and it started working. "JUNK!!!!!!" I'm surrounded by junk.

Hot chocolate

We are now and have all weekend been out of hot chocolate. BAH!!!

Conclusion

Well, I wish the frigging weekend would just end. I can't wait to get back to work.

Update 2009-11-29 21-26: Added the laptop section.

Too much fun for a pickup

These guys are having way too much fun with an old wreck of a Ford 4x4 diesel.

Update: It turns out there is a whole series on this guy and his truck. I have no idea what order everything goes in. Enjoy.

I think I have the order of those backwards. Oh, well. This guy videos himself doing all kinds of crazy shit. I need to subscribe to him.

That one is from the same guy. It isn't just the truck apparently. Who are 'tubers'? It must be a Canadian thing.

Fun with water in outer space

It sure would be nice to have an anti gravity device so I could try this at home. I noticed some of the same physics going on as were in a previous video I posted about water droplets a couple weeks ago.

Climategate

If you rely on the lavishly remunerated "climate correspondents" of the big newspapers and networks, you'll know nothing about the Climate Research Unit scandals - just the business-as-usual drivel about Boston being underwater by 2011. Indeed, even when a prominent media warm-monger addresses the issue, the newspaper prefers to reprint a month-old column predating the scandal. If you follow online analysis from obscure websites on the fringes of the map, you'll know what's going on. If you go to the convenience store and buy today's newspaper, you won't. That's the problem. The Corner

More and more people are coming out of the woodwork.I've spoken to people in private who said that they expected the science to fall apart at some point. The numbers just don't ad up and the people who have data are not allowing any one to scrutinize it. Now this list of emails and other corespondents comes out and it turns out to be even worse. Some people with a financial interest in the effort have suppressed apposing points of view and indeed sat on information that hurt their cause.

So, what is going to happen? Well, massive government wheels and trillions of dollars are in play. This behemoth will not just slam on the breaks. It will take several of these scandals to convince long time zealots of climate change that they have been duped. Only when this sort of data is available for peer review and open study by anyone will the walls come tumbling donw.

This is not official information. The word is that the information was either leaked or hacked out of university computers. The New York Times seems to think this makes it invalid, even though they have supported documents from this kind of source before with drive. It does plant the seed of decent. It does put a couple cracks in the wall. Hopefully the next time someone puts their head over that wall and says "I want to see your raw unmodified data so I my scrutinize it and maybe even disagree with you over the conclusions from that data." They will be given a fare listen and not be subjected to career shortening conspiracy of their peers.

People wonder how Hitler came to power. Hitler gave the people of his country a common enemy. In the case of Post WWI Germany antisemitism was ramped. I understand it was top on the list of pass times before WWI as well. Hitler simply took this focus and aimed it at his goals. He took the rains of an irrational hatred and used that blind faith to perpetuate his agenda.

Today, in the U. S. and Europe, about a billion people have signed on to doing whatever it takes to make the climate of the planet stabilize. This raw energy, inertia call it what you will, will distract most of the people or the world while a small number of people accomplish their goals. Do they know or care that climate change is unproven? Do they know or care that no one has had access to the numbers except the people trying to get their names in the headlines? Do they know or care that people who work for a living are footing the bill; people who do not have the time to hunt through blogs and find out what is really going on?

In early October, I covered a breaking story about evidence of corruption in the basic temperature records maintained by key scientific advocates of the theory of man-made global warming. Global warming "skeptics" had unearthed evidence that scientists at the Hadley Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia had cherry-picked data to manufacture a "hockey stick" graph showing a dramatic-but illusory-runaway warming trend in the late 20th century. But now newer and much broader evidence has emerged that looks like it will break that scandal wide open. Pundits have already named it "Climategate." A hacker-or possibly a disillusioned insider-has gathered thousands of e-mails and data from the CRU and made them available on the Web. Officials at the CRU have verified the breach of their system and acknowledged that the e-mails appear to be genuine. Yes, this is a theft of data-but the purpose of the theft was to blow the whistle on a much bigger, more brazen crime. The CRU has already called in the police to investigate the hacker. But now someone needs to call in the cops to investigate the CRU. ... This is an enormous case of organized scientific fraud, but it is not just scientific fraud. It is also a criminal act. Suborned by billions of taxpayer dollars devoted to climate research, dozens of prominent scientists have established a criminal racket in which they seek government money-Phil Jones has raked in a total of £13.7 million in grants from the British government-which they then use to falsify data and defraud the taxpayers. It's the most insidious kind of fraud: a fraud in which the culprits are lauded as public heroes. Judging from this cache of e-mails, they even manage to tell themselves that their manipulation of the data is intended to protect a bigger truth and prevent it from being "confused" by inconvenient facts and uncontrolled criticism. Real Clear Politics

Third world nations are already complaining that the checks written by first world nations in the name of climate change are bouncing. They are screaming bloody murder at the moment because this scandal called Climategate is showing the cracks in the foundation of the entire movement. I do not blame them for wanting to get the money now, while it is still available. I think they were never supposed to get paid. They were just supposed to follow the carrot for ever like a donkey pulling a cart. I wander if that is where the Democrat donkey comes from? I hope the donkey gets wise.

One Man's Take

Be careful taking this guy seriously. He is one of the right wing nuts every one is saying is out to get the people. He also happens to hit the points on this topic.

Entertaining Take

If you feel like crying, remember that human kind has survived worse.

Animal and Child Abuse in one Video

I like the jump the cant action. I wonder how long the cat vanished. The little girl just seems excited about being the center of attention. It was a great distraction for pulling out a baby tooth.

More videos

Towing a trailer full of crap through that kind of muck is pretty impressive.

People who drive Superduty Fords cuss alot. This one proves that olda addage "When in doubt, back up and floor it."

Come around a corner like this and the photographers scatter like cockroaches. Greasy side down buddy.

Thanksgiving Picsures and Videos

	This is Elle in her natural habitat. She is on my mother's laptop playing one of the many children's games that exist in the ether. I would get her computer at the house working, but it is hidden behind a pile of crap.
	This is another dimension of Elle's universe. I don't know where she got the wig. The camera on my phone does not do justice to the intense color of orange this wig
	My father made many of those canes. The man is amazing.
	My father and the dog (Sugar) both ate too much for Thanksgiving dinner. So did I, but my loyalty to my reader compelled me to stay conscious long enough to snap a couple photos.

I shot a video as well. It is really cute and 6.xx megabytes. This made it too being to push to YouTube via the phone or email. I can't figure out how to get the little card out of my phone and all the cameras my parents own do not take the 'standard' USB connector.  So, you lucky folks don't get to see it until today.

No editing. I cannot get the sound codec to work in my video editing software so all the sound goes away when I do any editing of video off my phone. This is due rights and the deliberate power hungry video codec owners, not to any technical difficulty. How wonderful all this modern technology is for all us users.

Anyway, it seemed like everyone had a good time. Happy Thanksgiving every one.

Rediculous

I can't put up a shed in my back yard and this guy has a homemade roller coaster. It just isn't fare.

Pictures

Services

I'm starting to think that Facebook is a bad place to put photos. as I wonder through my friend's pages and look at their galleries, I notice something that has a strange feel. I'm only seeing my friend's pictures. On other sites I find pictures from all kinds of people from all kinds of places all interlinked. With Facebook, I really only go to my friend's pages. It seems like a garden with very high walls.

Picasa gives you 1 gigabyte of space for free. You pay $5 a year for 20G and $20 for 80G and so on.  When I look at my server I use about 1G of space for my entire picture site. These are all the pictures I've felt the need to publish, the small versions, in the last seven or so years. I plan on checking out some other places like Flicker and others this weekend if I get around to it.

$5 a year is not bad for that kind of bandwidth and storage. I bet the barely covers the cost of keeping the power on light of  the servers.

Software

Photoshop is the Xerox of photo editors. It is the go to term for the idea of modifying photos. it is something like $600. I'm looking for a free editor that lets me put them up on my server, my display service and Facebook. it takes more than one tool to get this done.

For editing, many programs exist on linux, but onley one name is on top. GIMP is the PhotoShop of the linux universe at the moment. It is pretty full featured. Ubuntu does not include it on the raw install CD any more, but you simply install it after the fact. It is no PhotoShop, but it is on the same plane.It is also complex and has a high learning curve, even if you know PhotoShop.

GIMP is for high density editing. The real thing. What if you only want to rotate and color correct and crop and sharpen .. That kind of crap that 90% of photo editing is all about? Well, there are a thousand programs that do that. I use one. It is called F-Spot.

F-Spot has its problems. You have to import pictures before you can mess with them. That is highly annoying. You must then export them to get any use out of them. You can't just bring up a folder and modify the pictures in place. highly annoying. It does pretty much everything but make a web page for you and cut out faces of people you don't like. it will also export straight to Picasa and others. That is nice. It is quick to run through a list of pictures and edit all of them. It handles tags and captions. yadda yadda.

I tried using the Picasa software, but it sucks for Linux. It crashed and only kind of worked. The F-Spot software does similar stuff including upload to and make new folders under Picasa. There are a couple things that might be missing, but the Picasa software on Linux was jut not useful for me.

The Cubby

We have this lab at work. Actually, it is a closet with network connections. We call it the cubby. It is not wide enough for people to sit at the opposite facing tables without doing the bump every time someone moves.

It has become one of the more popular labs. Today there were four people in this tiny space trying to work on different things at the same time. It is the only lab with an internet connection. There are times that is required for work on computers. There is no phone and thus, someone in this lab has a very hard time hearing any announcements over the address systems. This may be a plus or a minus.

There is a rickety shelf in the cubby that contains everything electronic that is left over from hardware purchases. There are  a hundred cables of strange descriptions with a few notable exceptions. Power cords have their own box. Network cords are sorted and kept elsewhere. There are mice, keyboards, drive cables, face plates and any other kind of junk  that came with a computer and was not needed at that moment on this shelf that was about to fall over when it was first constructed. It looks like the shelf was assembled from miscellaneous bits.

The tables are folding tables for the most part. This is no big deal because all our tables are these folding tables. However, there is one of these folding tables, broken, leaning against one wall. This is to prevent anyone from putting weight on that table and killing one or more of our employees in the process.

The chairs in the cubby are the dregs left over from the rest of the building. One is old, orange, no wheels, looks like it came straight out of a cheep dentist's waiting room and smells funny. Another is lopsided and doesn't roll, or go up and down any more. Another is a perfectly serviceable  folding chair, which is bad enough on it's own.

A guy who no longer works at our company created the space to use for setting up workstations and servers. This was the primary use of the area. For about a year or more the area was used pretty much exclusively for this purpose. Now it falls under miscellaneous.

There is one other attribute that makes this lab a bit different than any other lab. It is open on one side to a large room. When there are computers running in the cubby, you naturally speak louder over the computers. This causes someone on the other side of the large room, or in one of the close offices to hear every whisper.

The cubby was made official when it was given an office designation in our computer database. This is an attempt to find things as they vanish following daily use by a developer.

Notes:

Writing on demand. I had a few minutes this afternoon while something was finishing up at work. I thought "I;ll put down some thoughts." Of course, nothing came to mind. It is not until things got right back to being busy as all get out that I thought of bullets that might be interesting. That really is the way of things. Life is what happens to you while you make other plans. Who said that?

In Briton, they predict an average run up to Christmas and a dismal beginning to next year for retail. I believe it. That kind of reflects our plans. I'm very worried about making ends meet this year.

Sunset from the work window. I really need to get Picassa or something working.

Notes:

Couple of pictures from the bus stop this morning. I can't put them on the blog because they are only available on FaceBook. I just need to set up Picassa or one of the other services. It was foggy. There were five of us waiting this morning. I'm not sure if any one else noticed the pretty scene across the street.

I'm out of practice. I had to clean a laptop of malware today. It took me the better part of the day. You have to boot in safe mode, download from another machine because this machine only gets on the network via wireless. Run the software, realize it didn't catch everything. This means you have to start over because the machine is reinfected. Now you reboot back in to safe mode after running the software. ... Give me a break. All the troubles I've had in Linux do not add up to one bad malware attack.

Our house stinks. It smell like cat shit all day every day. It cannot be healthy. I want to put up some pictures of the piles of junk everywhere. That cannot be healthy either. There is nowhere to put all this junk. Apparently, we can't part with it.

Joke

So, two atoms bump in to another. One says " I think I lost an electron."

The other asks "Are you sure?"

The first comes back "I'm positive."

Lifted from the Dinner Party Podcast.

More RC plane antics

I did a couple of flights before the cold weather sets in. In FPV the camera on the plane transmits video in real-time down to the pilot who flies through VR goggles. This allows you to go further and higher and closer to objects - sometimes too close :) LiveLeak

Finally, someone who knows what to do with one of these rigs.

Well told stories

This is the sort of thing I was talking about a couple days ago when I ranted about well told stories. This is a well told war story. It reminds me of my father and grandfather telling stories from their past.

Found here. This is like the third thing I've lifted from BlackFive recently. What can I say, they don't suck.

It isn't paranoia if they really are out to get you

They are calling this Global WarmingGate. That is a horrible name, but fitting.

Late on the night of of November 19, news broke on PJM and elsewhere that a large amount of data had been stolen from one of the major climate research institutions by an unknown hacker and made available on the Internet. The institution is the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, home institution for Dr Phil Jones and one of the world’s centers of research into anthropogenic global warming (AGW), or “climate change.” The hackers released about 172 megabytes of data, and we can be sure examining it closely will take some time. But after a few days, certain things are beginning to become clear. The data appears to be largely, perhaps entirely, authentic. The emails are incendiary. The implications shake the scientific basis for AIG, and the scientific reputations of some of AGW’s major proponents, to their roots Pajamas Media

This scandal looks more real than global warming. If it isn't peer reviewed, it isn't science. That needs to become the mantra of the American consumer.

What I'm getting out of this may be wrong. My take on this is that these scientists have been systematically producing findings and not backing them up with data. They have not been allowing any one who wants to see their data access. They have deleted data instead of complying with Freedom of Information Act requests. They have been ganging up on other scientists who question the results.

The emails suggest that the authors co-operated (perhaps the word is “conspired”) to prevent data from being made available to other researchers through either data archiving requests or through the Freedom of Information Acts of both the U.S. and the UK. (quoting) Pajamas Media

For a very long time I've wondered if the lack of peer reviewed data meant the whole global warming thing was fake. It just didn't make sence that people would say they had data and no one ever said please, review our data and let us know what you think.

Another thing that smelled bad is out and out hatred people who defend global warming seem to have for people who question their belief. I've called global warming a religion. I'm not the only one. People want to believe in global warming and the truth be damned. Sounds like a religion to me.

First, a real attempt by a small group of scientists to subvert the peer-review process and suppress dissenting voices. (For another look at this, by a respected climate scientist who was one of the targets, see these posts on Roger Pielke Sr.’s blog.)  This is at best massively unethical. Second, a willingness to manipulate the data to make a political case. This is certainly misconduct and possibly scientific fraud. This, if it proves true, should make these scientists subject to strong disciplinary action, even termination of their tenured positions. Third, what gives every appearance of an actual conspiracy to prevent data from being released as required by the Freedom of Information Acts in the US and UK. If this is proven true, that is a federal crime. (quoting) Pajamas Media

So, how much have governments and tax payers been spending on global warming over the years? If these guys are indeed responsible for the most colossal fraud perpetrated in the history of mankind, they should be made to pay for it.

Apologies to Pajamas Media for over quoting their wonderful post.

Domestic Sunday

I mowed and couldn't help but notice that the ants have moved in to my yard with a vengeance. I sprayed poison on specific mounds and those have dried up, but several new ones have sprung up. This means only one thing. I need to get several bags of that granular stuff and spread it every week until I run out. Not just on the mounds and in my yard, but also the neighboring patches of wilderness next to my property.

Those ants are a good thing really. It means the likelihood of us getting termites is lowered just a bit. That is what I heard anyway.

The house is a wreck.

Armor Skeet

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And missing the first shot just makes it that much more realistic. My favorite bit is the end where the guy in the tank just throws his head and hands back and laughs like a kid at christmas slash mad scientist with a new doomsday device.

Burn Notice goes to Iraq

One of the few shows that I will DVR is Burn Notice (the others are the Amazing Race and Castle).  I like Burn Notice because the main character describes how he actually goes about doing some of the super-cool spy stuff and the other characters are really great.  And then of course any show with Bruce Campbell is an automatic must-watch in my house... BlackFive

Bruce Campbell in the suck. Visit the link for a couple photos.

Short landing

It sounds like he slams the engines in reverse (thrust reversal) before the wheels touch the ground.

The Il-62 was the first long-range jet airliner to be put into service by several nations, and some retired examples have been converted into museums and other uses in countries such as the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Cuba and China (Thiel, 2001). The best known example was the Il-62 "DDR-SEG" from the former East German airline Interflug. On 23 October 1989, DDR-SEG was intentionally landed on a 900m short grass airfield of a hilltop Stölln/Rhinow in a potentially dangerous and dusty maneuver. Fire trucks and ambulance crews were positioned on hand for the landing but were not needed. The jet is used to commemorate the site of the fatal crash of Otto Lilienthal (1848–1896) at the Gollenberg hill. Nick-named "Lady Agnes"after Lilienthal's wife, it is now a museum with the fuselage divided between the Lilienthal collection and a popular wedding registry. Unknown source (Live Leak)

There is one thing I'm missing. ... Why?

DIY Belt Fed 12 Gage

Pretty slick. Apparently these folks made it themselves. It looks like it jams too much to be of real use, but it is still a good effort. Perfect for home defense.

The devil is in

Last night I went through the trouble of downloading a bunch of podcasts. I left my machine running over night so not to bit block Natalie because she was online after I went to bed. I got up this morning and checked the list. A couple had not finished so I kicked them off. I then I did a sync and put the podcasts on my USB drive. I walked through driving rain to work. I'm soaking from the thighs down at work I reach in my pocket and realize I never grabbed the drive out of he computer.

I'm not details oriented. That is disastrously in this modern age. Every one must be list driven and detail oriented to survive these days. Computers have not saved us from having to know the exact state of our surroundings at every moment. Computers are our competition, not our tools for our jobs. We, the dreamers and dancers of the world, simply cannot compete with the ability of a computer to keep track of all the little pieces of everything at every moment.

The mantra is "Automate, automate, automate." Do everything that is possible for the user, in the name of the user. The truth is we would love to cut the user out of the process. That day is coming rapidly. I predict that about the time I am of an age to retire, there will not be a human driven industry to retire from. Unless we start paying computers to do their job and program them with desires and irrational needs, we are not going to have a market for for goods and services that is not based on charity or taxation. There is not going to be any one left to buy anything.

Right now, the computers work for us. So we think anyway. At what point are people working for computers?

Notes:

Scientology has been declared a fraudulent organization that basically steels from it's members in France. France does not recognize it as a religion. It is an economic entity out to make money. Isn't that true for all religions?

There was a gay rights activist on one of the BBC podcasts who said something like "If you have a religion that teaches one group of people is less moral ..." He went on to describe his own persecution. His words made me think of environmentalists and how the persecute people who do not buy their opinions. The activist wanted to enter the educational system to promote tolerance. I say don't stop there. Make sure you are tolerant of people who don't believe in liberal ideals. I'm being oppressed!

What did people do before steel blades? How did humans bring down the big beasts? How did they plow tough ground?  The right kind of rocks, the right kind of heat, the right kind of banging and the right kind of sharpening will change your civilization for the better. The hungry may get fed. The naked may get clothed. For the sake of heated and polished rocks.

"I have a weakness for sanctimonious bilge. You must have known this." Heard on a film review from the BBC. Also mentioned in the same show "Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter." I never miss this review show.

I have homework. I need to copy 8 16G flash cards. It turns out my flash card reader doesn't do 16G cards so I only have one to use. It took two hours and thirty seven minutes to write one card image at work. Only seven more to go.

If earth had rings

What a beautiful idea. What a beautiful video. I wish I had an HD version.

UPDATE: This one may look better.

Lunch Conversation

• Programming and Santa Claus.
• Work conduct, inappropriate jokes and how it all relates to farts. Yes, there were all guys.
• Documentaries about monkeys that live their entire lives in trees and how the helicopters used to film the documentary were more interesting than the monkeys.
• Things you would and wouldn't eat if you saw someone else eat them first or not.
• "I wish they had hidden the extras on my laptop and not broken them out on the invoice."
• I did a cartwheel after we left the building. No one followed my lead. Sellouts.

The telling

How many people tell us stories? Some people never listen. They have none for themselves. Every morning while I walk to the bus stop I am past by a thousand cars or more. All of them have stories for every person who ever touched that car. I wonder what those stories are. Sometimes I make up quick stories while walking through the grass beside the road. It is never the same story twice. Every time it is the wrong story I suppose. What difference does that make? It is just a story.

When telling a story It really helps out the listener if there is a point. There are all these rules. Stay focused or you will loose your listener. Stay on topic, the less random information the better. Don't give up the plot too quickly. Hint and bring it home. Try to keep the facts and fiction straight. When you embellish, go lightly.

How many times have I had to sit through an anecdote fighting my eyes rolling. I've heard the same joke over and over. Where do people get the skill to tell a good joke or anecdote? Surely it comes from reading and chatting with others. Practice must be the answer.

Today at lunch I added one sentence to an ongoing conversation about a documentary that I had never seen. it was the regurgitation of a fact that I had in my brain somewhere. That is not a good telling of a story.

Once in a while I find a master. My grandfather was a master at telling a story. He told good jokes as well. He was not a good man. That just made his stories a bit more interesting. He didn't tell his stories often. He did repeat most of them toward the end of his life. That is about par for the course. He told stories of flying planes in WWII. He was  also on ships in WWII. I bet my father could tell me some stories about them man that would curl my mustaches.

My father is a good story teller too. He doesn't over indulge. He is a good salesman.

Adam is a good story teller, but he is better at fiction than reality. Not sure what that means. I've been listening to him for so many years that I can tell when he is full of shit and that doesn't make for good listening. It is better to be in the dark for entertainment purposes.

I am the worse of all. I spew facts in order of importance. I don't tell a story properly. I cannot lie to save my sole. I cannot bluff my way out of a paper bag. I'm no good at wooing women and I'm a bad communicator of emotion in general. You would think that I would not have a blog or Twitter feed, but I do. I've even had a few compliments. Most of the atta-boy's are from friends and family.

There are a hundred people in my life who I feel have never told me a story. That is a shame. I would love to hear them. Why is it awkward to ask someone for a story? villages uses to have story tellers. With the advent of the internet, you would think that the planet would be running over with people trying desperately to tell a story. Most of them just want to complain. I shouldn't complain.

Geeks at work

Conversation heard in my office this afternoon while running tests on a form of memory.

"Write a page and manually dirty it." says one.

Two responds "Done."

One continues "Is it in a fault state?"

Two responds "Yes,"

I'm thinking I would be in a fault state too if I were manually dirtied.

One of our customers at work uses openSUSE linux. They have openSUSE 11.1 and use a kernel that they update by hand. That is all well and good, but doing that can cause problems with maintaining your system via the standard repositories not to mention many other issues. One of the points of Enterprise linux distributions is to use a single kernel and only back port really important things as needed. This saves a colossal headache. This is how Microsoft, SUN, IBM, all of them do it for all their projects.

Supporting every kernel is a ridiculous exorcise in futility. There are a million of them and every one is using a different one. They all have their own issues and at any moment people will switch, thus screwing you for support. Technically, we do not support 'stock' kernels. We support the enterprise Linux distributions and the kernels they come with. I say technically because we will probably support anything someone is willing to pay us to support. I'm not sure what the limitations of that statement are.

We call a custom build for a customer to play with a one-off build. I do any way. No one else seems to have to deal with one-off support. Doing this for a flavor of SUSE is one thing, but this customer mentioned some strange linux that none of the people in my organization had ever heard of. That is odd because we are a company of geeks who pay very close attention to the world around linux. knowing the ins and outs of some obscure distribution is a matter of bragging rights around here. The name they gave was "bespoke linux".

OK, people in the U. K. may stop laughing any time now. the word "bespoke" means custom. A bespoke tailer makes custom cloths. We do not support bespoke linux.

Notes:

Why didn't the lifeguard save the nippy? Because he was too far out man.

Murdock says he is going to "cut Google off" by blocking the indexing spiders. This reminds me of an old headline from the 1500s or so that was printed in England. "Fog covers channel, Europe cut off" I wander if people in England back then thought their island was the same size or larger than Europe or even the rest of the world.I wander how many people think that about the U. S. or any other country today.

There is an inline HD radio for your iPhone for $80 available at Radio Shack (The Shack). Not sure it matters any more. Who the hell listens to terrestrial radio?

Notes:

It takes like two hours to rebuild the openssl source rpm. What the hell?

The minimum wage in Mexico is 55 pesos a day. That is like $4.25.

TRF Videos

A couple videos from The Texas Renaissance Festival 2009. These were both taken by Natalie a couple weekends ago.

Chris' daughter Raven being pured in to a corset by Dizzy. She is jail bait and her dad is a cop. This was taken out at the camp grounds preparing for a day inside the Faire.

Bouncy Midge. This looks like it was taken inside Faire.

PC Kills

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minster of the U. K., he is legally blind from an accident I believe. He has come a long way. Recently he misspelled a young soldier's name who sadly died in the line of duty for the country while writing a letter to the young man's mother.

My God, Gordon. I feel your pain. I know you would give your right arm to fix that. I hope it does not cost you much.

I didn't know Gordon Brown was blind in one eye and nearly blind in the other until a couple months ago. I'm sure the press thinks of it as a no-go area until something like this happens. Now, this issue has caused a problem. The problem may not have been an issue at all if Gordon Brown had 20/20 vision.

So, where must the line be drawn? Will lack of physical vision by the leader of the U. K. cause death or injury to people that would not have happened if he had 20/20 vision? Surely, no one would want a mentally disabled person running a country. So there are physical limitations that matter to the abilities of leadership.

I bet Gordon Brown has missed body language and facial expressions of people. He may not be able to catch a wink, smarmy smirk, or a downright go to hell glare from someone where that sort of thing matters.

I'm legally blind. I know these things matter and I know I miss them. It sounds like I have better vision than Gordon Brown to be honest. It doesn't matter. We are worse off than the totally blind when it comes to expectations. We try and try to make it all work, but we fail because we just cannot keep up with blind people, or the sighted. No one will higher me or Gordon Brown as a taxi driver, and for good reason. When we are dropped in to a situation where simple visual queues tell a sighted person what to do, we fail indiscriminately because some times we can see it and some times we cannot. A totally blind person would never be expected to catch the queue.

The guy who shot all those people in Fort Hood recently was a Muslim. He spoke of cutting people's heads off and puring oil down people's necks if they did things that did not agree with his version of Islam. He proselytized to his patients. People asked if he was going to be one of those people who would go on a shooting spree. He was assigned to Fort Hood because some of his superiors wanted to get rid of him because he was trouble.

No one felt like they could fire him. No one felt like they could cull him out away from every one else because he was dangerous. This would be seen by outsiders as singling out a Muslim. This idea of singling people out has received a bad name. Taking people on a case by case basis makes it easier to be prejudice based on someone's opinion. However, telling every one they are the same is just plane not right. Everyone is not the same. No one should get a pass to make violent threats regardless of their religion or any other attribute.

Political Correctness is getting people killed. It needs to stop. It has been a great couple of decades of every one feeling like they belong and feeling like they are empowered and capable, but now that we agree that PC kills, we need to stop it.

Golf

This guy is playing golf with his wife. He smacks the ball right on the other side of this barn.

The guy says, "You know what, I'm going to take a stroke and just play the ball."

His wide says "Are you nuts? Open the doors of the barn and hit the ball straight through."

Not being the kind of guy who stands up to his wife, he opens the doors on both sides of the little barn and sure enough it is a straight shot. With his wife standing next to him, he wallops the ball. Having never plaid through a building, the ball bounces off one thing then another and ricochets round the barn in one second covering opening in a web of blurry tracers only to come right back at the pare and smack his wife in the head killing her instantly.

The next year the guy is playing with his buddy and comes to the same hole. He manages to put the ball in the exact same spot.

Our widower says "I'm just going to take the drop and play through."

His buddy says "Are you nuts, That barn is empty. Open the door and play through."

The man says "No way. Last year I played the ball from that same spot and got a 5 on this hole."

The story the way I heard it

Houston (Heath and Nikki's child) comes running down a hill. He slips and bops his noggin. Nat runs to the trunk of the Carola where she keeps a 75 lb first, second and third aid kit. She grabs the kit and makes it back to Houston with an instant cold pack. Then she realizes she doesn't have her keys. They are now, in the trunk, where the 75 lb first, second and third aid kit used to be.

Heath, being Heath, came to the rescue and managed to open the door with skills learned as a piece officer, or perhaps despite them. Heck of a guy that Heath.

Hope Houston is OK.

Bugatti Vayron Splashdown

This is greatly convenient. That is a million plus dollar car hitting the drink and there just happens to be a vehicle filming it from the only available vantage point. This one makes me think the whole thing is some kind of setup.

On a separate note, I hope whomever filmed this went back and gave their name or they may be guilty of failure to render aid. That is a law in Texas that requires people to stop and render aid. It is accompanied by a couple good samaritan laws that prevent people from being sued if they stop and render aid in Texas.

Gun control gets it wrong

Thus, despite being "heavily fortified," Fort Hood had an unarmed population living under a deadly combination of a false sense of security and no means of self-defense. While soldiers should never have to worry about attacks from one of their own, forcing them to be unarmed makes them more vulnerable to traitors and saboteurs than the embattled enemy. Maj. Hasan knew this, and to maximize his evil plot he did not attack the armed MPs – he attacked dozens of soldiers and officers at the Soldier Readiness Center who he knew would be unarmed. And they were unarmed precisely because of the "gun-control" measures at Fort Hood. Our college campuses suffer from the same deadly "gun-control" policies. On April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho, armed with a pair of handguns, massacred 32 fellow students and faculty and injured 25. Even then, the anti-gun fanatics rose up and condemned the guns. But Virginia Tech's campus, like most colleges, was a so-called "gun-free zone" where students and faculty were not permitted to carry weapons. This made people on Virginia Tech's campus, like those on Fort Hood, an easy target for a lone, suicidal, gun-wielding murderer. WND

Forgive me while I bash my head against a wall. This guy knew exactly where to go in order to kill the most people possible. He went straight for the spot where the fewest people would have the tools to stop him. He went to a crowded room where many unarmed people would be standing in line.

There is an analogy in this article that says blaming guns for this past attack is like blaming planes for September eleventh. I like that analogy.

NGO

But as power abhors a vacuum, the influence — and enormous funding — that organizations like HRW and Amnesty International amassed attracted people with more specific agendas, especially a crew of ideologically-driven post-colonialists who had modern Western societies in the cross-hairs more than the authoritarian patriarchal societies that an organization like HRW was first established to monitor. And their target of choice in this politically-driven agenda, was Israel. People began to wake up to the problem over the course of the first decade of the 21st century, especially Israelis and and anyone who supported Israel, who began to see, especially in the wake of the demopathic Durban travesty, that the NGOs, with HRW in the lead, were involved in a campaign of assault on Israel that had no precedent among respectable organizations, and violated every principle of HRW’s self-proclaimed mission of defending human rights. ... This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s a concerted effort to make a dent on people who prefer to ignore anything that comes from the mirror other than, “you’re the fairest of them all.” That HRW would consider this a conspiracy is particularly interesting then for two reasons (at least). 1) When they feel they’re being ganged up on it, they cry “no fair,” like a playground bully taken by surprise with a punch to the nose. And 2) they immediately assume it’s unjustified and part of a cabal of secret and nefarious forces. I’ve written extensively about conspiracy theories, how dangerous they are to the social fabric, and how widely they’ve spread on the “left” since 9-11. This ready resort to conspiracy suggests precisely the presence of this kind of self-indulgent thinking. Augean Stables

The the term 'NGO' makes me want to spit. These entities really have gotten a pass over the last hundred years or so. The UN made them nearly ubiquitous. They are a way to produce influence and spread money and people around in places where military and other government influence would not be accepted. That is, they are a way for another government, usually a super power, to step in and control a much smaller government, usually one without oil natural resources.

NGOs are a way to meddle in another countries affairs without it being official. NGOs are like cookies on your machine. Most of the time they are a good thing that saves you the trouble of typing in you name and password between every click. They also allow companies to track your movements and even purchases online. They get this information for free more or less. Sometimes you have to click "Agree" to an incomprehensible EULA. Sometimes that is not the case.

Ring Tones

Remember, I blew away my ring tones. Well, I put Down with the Sickness as my primary ring tone. Then I used The first grunt of Blask and Proud by James Brown on as an alert sound.

I grabbed the MP3 files I wanted to use. I chopped the bits out that I wanted for the actual sounds that I wanted. I then exported them as ogg format. Yes, Android supports ogg format which is nice because ogg has no licensing problems.

I plugged my G1 in to the computer. The phone asked me if I wanted to mount the card. I clicked yes. The window popped up on my computer containing the files and folders. I dragged my edited files to some spot on the phone that already said media. Then I went to music player on the phone and clicked around until I got to a choice that said "Use as ring tone".

Now if only someone would call.

Bad first line

A Taliban suicide bomber struck for the third time in three days in Pakistan's volatile Northwest Frontier Province. The Long War Journal

Wait a minute. Either either these suicide bombers are very bad at their job, or very good. Well, that or the person writing the line should have written something like "A Taliban suicide bomber attack struck for the third time in three days ..." You know the gaff is bad when I'm trying to correct your writing.

Notes:

6 of the top 10 vehicles scrapped in the Cash for Clunkers were models (years) of the Ford Explorer.

NASA slammed a piece of space junk in to the moon and found water. Now they need to hit Mars with a couple bunker-busters and find out if water is just everywhere in our soler system. The term NASA used was 'significant' to describe the amount. I suppose that means there is enough there to mine for space exploration purposes.

Guift Idea

It's paid for

Friday the Thirteenth

There was something really bugging me about work last night. As i tried to wind down over the evening, I didn't let myself get mad about anything. There was nothing I could do about the issue from home and the people whose help I needed would not even be in until late in the morning.

Elle went to bed and Nat stayed up playing some game online. I went to bed. I laied there thinking about work and the problem. I preyed about it and slept like a baby. This morning I got ready, still worried. There is nothing I can do from home and I had a long commute in front of me before I even got to work.

When I got to work, I started messing with the problem. I still needed the help of others. I would be great if I could do it all myself and fix things without having to know the whole background and peripheral issues. that is not possible for mortals.

It was a boat load of effort to get things to a reasonable level of working. I thought for a second someone had sent something out that should not have gone out. Fortunately, that was something completely different. Everyone I asked for help, helped. Every one who had a hand in things did their jobs to the best of their abilities. No one tried to get in the way or be a Wally.

I got to work at 7:30. Around 11:30, I looked at my watch and it felt like I had only been at work about an hour. Lunch was late, but at least I got one. Things were working out pretty well until Nat called and said she was heading out to Faire tonight instead of tomorrow. She called around 14:30. It took the wind out of my sails. There was still plenty of work to do.

Notes:

There is a berger vending machine in Tokyo. It is not really a machine. It is front for a fast food joint. It does pretty much eliminate the need for human interaction. There is a vending machine for panties in Japan. I got a t-shirt out of a coke machine once. It was some kind of promotion.

There was a podcast by the BBC covering the minsters who Tweet. When do you tweet/not tweet? Who does a good job? When had you better not catch any of the tweeting? It was enlightening. I can't wait until it catches on here in the states.

I can't wait to hear about the Clinton tapes. There is a book out covering some of them. Surely, they are not nearly as flaming as the Nixon tapes. Take what you can get.

Phone Woes

I was trying to clean up my phone and managed to blow away all my ring tones. Fortunately, there is a default ring that at least makes noise. This is probably called the "dumbaass hidden ring tone". I also managed to blow away my gmail settings on the phone. It kept reading "No connection!" when I tried to look at my inbox. I could use the browser to view my gmail. This was annoying mainly because I had no time to look in to it. 

Work is killing me. I'm putting so much in to getting everything in the world done at work that I just don't have brain cycles left over after the work day is done. I bust my ass all day. Come home and try to take care of things as needed. The family and house suffer for it. I need a couple clones who don't eat much to make it all work.

This evening on the bus, I took the time to hunt down the settings for Manage Apps. You can not really do much with gmail on the google phone, but clear the data. Fortunately, that worked. As soon as I started the gmail app again it did a sync and I'm back to running. This phone really does remind me of my old 386.

Notes:

The Engines of our Ingenuity has gotten lame. They have done some episodes that don't seem like they are on the topics that match the theme of the show. Consumerism comes tom mind. It just seems to me like the series is trying tojump the shark.

Google just bought a company that is all about mobile advertising. Be prepared to get slammed with adds on your phone. This may be a great opportunity for Apple to come out and limit the amount of advertising on the iPhone. This would make the pool smaller and make each advertisement more precious and thus worth more. The Android (Google OS) platform for phones will be much more difficult to control the amount of advertisement so there is opportunity for abuse.

Everyone wants a letter shape for the financial recovery. We are promised a recovery. What if this is the new normal? People say the recover will be a "U" shape or an "L" or "W" or "V" shape. I have a bad feeling it will look more like a lumpy saw blade. That letter shape is important to many because it is easy to know what to do on the way down. Nothing. You sit and wait. When the line turns up, that is when things get tricky. When do you sell?

Half of the workers in the U. K. have left a job because their boss sucked. Most managers in the U. K. are accidental. They were a good worker who was handed the job of handling others. I imagine the numbers are not as far off in the U. S..

Stitcher coming soon for Android. YES!!!

I was using this app for Android called StreamRagious or something like that. It sucked. Not only did it crash every five minutes, but one of the 'updates' recently took the settings button off the menu. I guess they thought that was only for paying customers. I would never pay 6.99 for something that crashes like that app did. I get a warning on my phone this morning "Low on space". This stupid app had eaten most of the free space on my phone. JUNK!!! I ended up downloading another app that is called 'A Online Radio' It is free and looks like it is about fifteen times better than that other app. Come on Stitcher.

Next generatin Android phone.

Notes:

On the walk in today I was set upon by bugs. I walked in to a spider web and chased the spider for three minutes until I flicked him off. Thirty minutes later I found a huge chunk of web on my shoulder. I was eaten alive by mosquitoes. I killed many, but I'm only one man.

'Volatility" is the word that every one says when analyzing the markets. In other words, no one know what the hell is going to happen. Companies are cutting costs by cutting workers. All that savings is going straight to the bottom line. Workers get screwed. Productivity went up like 9%. More work on the back of each worker. No one can keep this up for long. That kind of jump is going to have some push back at some point.

From a book review on the BBC. "Personally, I like my olive oil well shagged."

I'm watching Last night's Heroes. I really need to stop watching this show. It does little more than piss me off. I want several of the lead characters to die off. I mean real pretend death where they don't come back because of some power or time travel. I mean off the show, pursue other opportunities kind of death.

Global Warming Pole

Numbers that came an NPR interview. This is a list of the six levels of giving a shit over global warming. Notice I didn't capitalize the name. I wonder where I fit in this list.

18% alarmed
33% concerned
19% cautious
12% disengaged
11% doubtful
7% dismissive

The big deal over this in the interview was the fact that people are wising up. Oh, I mean changing their mind on climate change. They were all upset that the press was paying more attention to the economy and the wars all over the world than they were paying to climate change. The biggest changes happened in the mid west. The disparity between Democrats and Republicans on the subject of climate change is as wide as the Grand Canyon.

I'm not on a fence here. I think the whole cap and trade thing is going to bankrupt our country if we buy in to this crap. China and India have politely bowed out of the agreement. They hate each other and they are about to agree on their own symbolic treaty or pact or whatever that pays lip service and little substance to climate change. The rest of the world, besides the U. S. and Europe, may join them just to keep the money in the family.

Notes:

It took me half an hour to go through my email this morning. that is abnormal for me. The trouble was not junk or tasks, but keeping information and putting details down in bugs and in my notes. It was a hassle to make sure that I had information that might come in handy in the future in a place it might be found.

No Flanking Position this week. It appears life is getting in the way. Honestly, I expected as much. Adam, the guy on the left, is stretched too thin to carry off a video podcast.

Elle had sentences to write for homework. She is not getting the concept of write sentences.

My God it was a rough day at work. I have no strength at all. I'm tore up from the floor up. I'm vegging in front of some TV and then headed to bed.

Attacking the Freedom of Speech

The government, all governments, do not want to listen to what you have to say unless your are rowing the boat in the direction they want. We would not need a constitution protecting speech if that speech offended no one.

News Busted

Most of the hits on this week's show are anti-political-correctness. There is a tied and it is turning. I have no idea what will replace it. Hope it is better than PC. Maybe the truth would work. Maybe just saying what you mean and following it up with, what was the word, ... yes, action.

Mallware = Child porn

Malware Can Download Child Porn To Your Computer from Slashdot by timothy 2 people liked this 2muchcoffeeman writes "The Associated Press tells the story of Michael Fiola, a former Massachusetts government employee who was arrested in 2007 after child porn was found on his state-issued laptop computer. He was eventually cleared of all charges after some digging by the defense found that the laptop was infected with malware that was 'programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute — an inhuman feat. While Fiola and his wife were out to dinner one night, someone logged on to the computer and porn flowed in for an hour and a half. Prosecutors performed another test and confirmed the defense findings. The charge was dropped — 11 months after it was filed.' The article also discusses the technical aspects of how it could happen and about similar cases in the United Kingdom in 2003." SlashDot

For goodness sake, run that Mallware program you hate so much. Really bad people might want to use your computer to propagate child porn. How evil is that?!?

I've warned people to lock their wireless routers because someone might use their connection without their knowledge. Some say "What do I care? I have an unlimited connection."

"What if they download child porn on your nickel?" was my retort.

Which would invariable be followed by "How do I lock that thing again?"

Longer than 10 minutes on YouTube

1) The first method is a way to use a standard YouTube account "Youtuber" in order to get longer than 10 minute videos on youtube. This is a custom embed script that stitches one video right up against the other in order to make it look like a longer video.

The following is out of date, but so cute, I had to put it up.

2) A very fun way to switch to a "director" account in order to upload longer videos. I'm not sure what other requirements are needed to obtain a director's account. There may be a minumum number of views, or followers. Someone please fill me in.

3) WAIT!!!! Apparently you can't get a director account any more. You have to sign up for some kind of Partnership account now. It looks to me like the RIAA has insisted that YouTube have enough information on people so they may be tracked down and sued if they violate some copyright.

Apparently you need 100,000 views of your videos or 300 subscribers. That is not as easy as it sounds. You have to be popular enough that YouTube can afford to keep an eye on you so you do not violate copyright laws. I cannot find a page that says "You need A, B, and C to become a partner." That would be very handy YouTube.

There is an exemption for non profits. YouTube comes right out and says you have to have a good sob story or they won't bother. That is good to know.

"Change in Plans" by Lance

Lance plays a beautiful volley of chords. Not sure if he wrote this or found it. Either way it is pretty. I want the full album.

Political party

"Mark Steyn’s right of left of right of center party"

Left of center

Center

left of right of center

right of left of right of center

right of center

This just had to be drawn out. When drawing a table of the people who are indicisive enough to call themselves 'center' one must understand that there is no center. You just have a bunch of people who refuse to commit. People who refuse to pick a side and stick with it. People who are fed up with things that exist and insist on not making a choice until forced.

Our educational system must teach people to be wishy-washy. No one wants to make a choice. Every one wants it all. Every one wants to bounce along with the herd until unprejudiced cliff comes and everyone very equally leaps to their deaths. All with smiles I'm sure. Only the ones willing to peal off and seperate from the croud will survive. That is not the way. Stay with the herd. The herd is safe. No one is killed in the herd.

I am among them.

We are here, we got nowhere else to go

This is a real commercial.

Steam Shovel

I could so not do this all day. I would have to do something creative to pass the time. That is also known as a distraction and I'm sure frowned upon by the people who own the equipment and those responsible for safety.

By the way, I found this while searching for "camera on cat". I saw a video a couple years ago that was shot by a camera mounted on a cat's collar. Someone was simply interested in what their outside cat was up to all day and strapped a camera on them. I found this instead.

Still looking.

I tried to watch V

Really, I tried. V didn't work out only because I feel that same dragging sensation. The trouble with LOST, Flash Forward and now V is a sence that the viewer is supposed to hurry up and wait for each revelation. Each revelation only bringing more questions. yadda yadda yadda. Heroes was the same way, but it has gotten so bad that I just don't feel anything. The plot has ground to a halt.

Besides, the first episode is character establishment. I have a feeling the characters are shallow and stereotypical. Few surprises. How long is this thing supposed to run?

I'm already sick of the mother figure. The tees who tag and get obsessed by the visitors do not register on my radar. The special effects are nice. They cannot carry the show. The visitors are annoying and give me the distinct impression that they are secretly evil with every camera angle. I have a really bad feeling about those guys.

You frigging deserved it

Horses have young themselves. Surely they have some built in responses. I hope the girl is OK, but she deserved it.

Hamas growing pains

Hamas is suffering for having won the war. Hamas has to run the place (Gaza) and life there sucks. Hamas is being blamed. The tunnels in the area used for smuggling are not working. Hamas is helping security. They shoot the bad people. Hamas is simply not ready to run a country. The people they rule are looking for bureaucrats to run things.This is one of those old stories. A group is good at revolution, but suck at getting clean water to homes and keeping trashed picked up.

After World War II, the Jews world wide were handed a homeland. Israel was born out of guilt that the Jews were so hated all over the world that they deserved to have a place of their own. A place they can call home. Somewhere where they will not be opressed or spit on, few dirty looks and sneers from round corners.

For a while it worked. Israel was catching hell from the locals, the people who would become Hamas one day. That is, until 1967 and the Six Day War. Israel kicked Egypt's ass in fifteen minutes of effort. Made Egypt look like shit in the process. the whole reason Israel existed had just been torn down and blown up. There was no longer a need to feel sorry for Jews having been slaughtered or Israel in general because they were able to take care of themselves. All the old hatred could come back. Just so long as it was covered in a tarp of politically correct speech.

it is politically incorrect to hate a people or a religion or a thought or something people say. The word 'hate' is politically incorrect. In the name of political correctness, some Muslims wants to outlaw critical speech of Islam. This is a direct assault on the most fundamental part of democracy, being able to bitch about things. This effort is being held in the United Nations.

Hamas is about to find out what it is like when it becomes OK to disagree, complain, criticize someone. Hamas has moved from rebels with a valid cause status to a very poor governing body rife with human rights violations status.

Hamas has many choices.

• Hamas can fall apart and remain a rebel group leaving a vacuum that will be filled by someone even worse.
• Hamas might lumber on as the governing body of Gaza for a while and thumb their nose at the rest of the world and their complaints of poor leadership.
• Hamas might straighten up and make a serious attempt to become a political party. This would require maturity, leadership, control of factions within the 'party'
• Hamas might be kicked out by the next rebel group.

I'm with the first. What other bullets should be on this list?

There is one thing that I'm sure of. When all is said and done regarding Israel and indeed the intire middle east and all decendence of those who were born there or care even a little bit about the subject, people will still hate each other for no good reason.

Notes:

Bloomberg's approach of spending his own money to win the spot of New York is too showy. It has become evil to be successful. To have earned money is evil. There have been so much evil and bad behavior associated with rock and roll and rap stars, sports stars, movie stars, They have just plane ruined the idea of having money and doing anything good with it for the American public.

A couple places in the U. S. are adding casinos to their tax base. They are trying to get in on the whole taxation of stupidity thing that Los Vegas has had a lock on for a while. Not sure if they have taken a look at the latest numbers from Los Vegas. Even stupid people go broke. The gaming industry (that means gambling) will take the toe hold.

I set up that 11x17 printer at work in someone else's office. The morning had been foggy and the view out the window showed the bluing affect in the distance very well because the sun was shining in from that direction. There were all kinds of sparkles in the distance that were cars driving around reflecting sunlight as they moved. the fog made the trees in the distance look like hills. it had quite a mystical feel. Made me think of that the wood fey. <stop, sniff rose, move on>

Notes:

In the U. S. we call old cars 'clunkers' many times. In the U. K. they say 'bangers'. Close, but no cigar. It is funny how close our sayings are. U. S. says 'hood', U. K. it is 'bonnet'. We are indeed separated by a common language.

The oldest dog according to the Guinness book is 20 years old. He resides in the U. K. somewhere. He is in relatively good health and is a mutt.

One of the podcasters said (from memory) "I have made excuses at the front of the last ten podcasts about how crazy things are. Tell you what. If things suddenly turn normal, I'll let you know." Sounds about right.

The Beatles have a huge box set that is a tiny USB apple. It looks like an apple because of Apple Records in the U. K.. Great. I wish they had made the USB drive look like a yellow submarine. That would have just made sense. You get movies and documentaries and documents and remastered music and blah blah blah. It costs more than the box set, but you get much more. All on a little USB drive. Still, I like the idea. it took the Beatles (Apple Records) a long time to get in to the digital age.