2010

Here is to thinking better of the year.

Here is to feeling better about the year.

Here is to drinking more wine and less soda.

Here is to eating more cherries and fewer fries.

Let go the year behind. She is done and pass the baton.

Let go the year behind. She did her best and will not cry.

Let go the year behind. She thought us plenty.

Let go the year behind. She only took what she needed.

Here is to rolling with the punches.

Here is to helping and hurting those who needed it.

Here is to getting enough sleep.

Here is to making truth out of dreams.

Happy New year.

Coffee

Nat got me some flavored coffee for Christmas. It turns out I have been making the coffee far too strong. Of course, I only learn this on the last package. Jack Daniels was the best. I've seen these packages before. I don't think I've evr had one. The Irish Cream one was pretty good as well. The other two were eh.

I keep hearing conflicting information about caffeine. One minute it helps your pancreas and other bits.the next minute it jacks up your blood pressure. No one knows whether it is a good thing or bad.

The thought crossed my mind to try to kick the habit over this week plus that I have had off. It is getting old to wake up every weekend with a headache. Just a soda will kick the shakes most of the time. I like coffee. I like caffeine. It is my vice. It is my addiction. I can kick any time I want to. I just don't want to DAMN IT!!!

Sorry, that is the caffeine talking. God! I love that stuff.

Optical illusions

The first is crazy refraction.

The second is digging out a piece of wood and and painting it.

They both work very well.

Iran Riots

Warning: Violent!

This is about the worst (most graphic) video I've seen come out of Iran. There was one where some cops ran over people who were protesting and just kept going. There were some where the cops just gunned some people down. There have been many of people getting the snot beaten out of them for speaking their mind.

I worry that this kind of thing will start happening in the U. S.. I worry because with every new rule that comes up where U. S. citizens cannot speak their mind without fear of our government further limiting our freedoms and retaliating against people who speak out, the closer we get to blowing a gasket and resorting to violence. Recently the Tea Party protests that were all piecful as far as I could tel have been called "right wing extremist" and worse by people who disagree with their outlook.

Since when does it matter if the people in the news papers and TV news agree with people? Since when do they have the right to pick who gets to execute their freedom of speech and the right to gather or the right to complain. It is all in the adjectives. You cannot get a degree in journalism unless you are miserably left and proud of it. You cannot get tenure at a university unless you drink the liberal left coolaid. Prove me wrong.

The Democrats will not be in power for ever. The Republicans were not in power for ever. Ramming health care down our throats is going to last forever. Giving illegal aliens another amnisty is going to last forever. Ignoring Iran and playing games with terrorists instead of killing them and making sure every one in the world knows they lost is going to last forever. I feel a split coming. I do not know where the fissure lies. I do not know what side is what or when. I fear that this country that I love will end up a broken third world shit hole where we have to drag our leaders out in to the street and hang them weeks after every election.

I really want to be wrong.

Drowning Kittens

I'm ashamed to say it, but this is the funnies thing I've seen in a while.

Found while searching on "Drowning Kittens". Seems appropriate.

Sing it!

Now it's stuck in my head.

Jet boat crash

It doesn't look like anyone gets hurt.

You know, I'm starting to wonder if they should put up some kind of barrier around the whole damn track so one of these things does not end up in the next county when it takes a bad turn. It looks like this guy clipped a muddy spot and just went sailing. OK, bad pun.

How I rate YouTube videos

I don't rate most of the time. If it is a crash video or someone getting hurt, I don't bather. If it doesn't grab me or is just a one off video I wasn't really looking for I don't bother very often. I typically rate videos when I do a goofy search and get goofy results. I typically only rate videos from people and not from organizations.

There are some rules that I seem to follow most of the time. The truth be told, it is entirely an emotional response to the video. If I feel good or accomplished for watching it, it gets a better rating. If I feel tricked or upset, the rating goes down.

Things that move rating up

• Real people doing real things that ended up getting caught on video.
• Laughing at funny things.
• Happy endings. Nothing makes me want to rate a video with 5 stars like triumph. Someone trying something difficult and then achieving it with a "Hazah!" from the crowd.
  
• I love it when I learn things. I like instructional videos even if all I learn is "I never want to do this." or even if they are boring. Just as long as I learned something.
• Action. Do something that made the time and effort of breaking out the video camera worth it.
  

Things that move rating down

• Rap Music. I don't like rap music much. It is appropriate on some videos. It has to really fit the video though before it will not count against the ratting.
  
• Quality counts.
• Too dark or light or hard to make things out.
• Laughing over the sound.
  
• Bad aspect ratio.
• Mobile phone sound and 1.5 frames a second. Why bother?
  
• Bad zooming. Some people should have their thumb taped to their palm when handed a video camera.
  
• Putting people's lives in danger without good reason.
  
• Laughing at people getting hurt or humiliated. I watch crash videos. I do not like laughing at them or others doing so. If someone is caught with their pants down (it is an expression) and laughs along with the video, I don't have a problem with it.
  
• The video doesn't really match the search.
• Advertisements. I'm glad YouTube and people make a living on the service. I'm not talking about deliberate advertising. I hate being sucked in to a video that I thought was cool and it turned out to be an ad. That pisses me off.
• Aftermath videos. I want the action, not the aftermath of action. Sometimes they teach you something so that is good.
• Talking heads bore me for the most part. Put it in a blog or something. This is why I do not watch Sunday morning talk shows or the evening news. The professionals bore me.
• Shaky camera. I know I'm the worse one at this. Still, it counts.
  

Other things that matter

• People I know typically get better ratings regardless of quality. I like being invited in to their world for a moment.
  
• Filming your response by flipping the camera around is on most every video it seems. I know it is common. I have a hard time with it. Some people are good at it and others are terrible. This action does elicit a response from me good or bad. When someone films themselves laughing at something I didn't think was funny, like someone getting hurt, I want to punch them in the face.
  
• Cute animals or animals being animals. Sometimes this gets to me. It does the job of tugging at my heart strings and other times it just turns me cold. Not sure why.
  

Example:

I'm on vacation this week and I'm up at 5:00 watching YouTube videos for no good reason. I typed in the search words "dirt bike snow" and I got the following video on like the third screen of choices. I had been rating videos all the way along tonight. The vast majority of my ratings had been 3 stars or "eh!' The following video got a full 5 stars because I laughed along with the rider. It looked like fun. Heck, I even left a comment. It is the exception, it violates several of the rules, that proves the rules. Besides ... I want a ride!

Stuff you read at 03:30 on vacation

I did the math a couple of years ago and came up with the following statement. The Earth travels through it's own diameter around the sun about every six and a half minutes. Well, according to Wikipedia (under section 'Orbit') It is closer to seven minutes. So, I wasn't that far off.

Funny what you look up at 03:30 on a Wednesday morning on vacation. I think I would do well in retirement.

The orbital speed of the Earth averages about 30 km/s (108,000 km/h), which is fast enough to cover the planet's diameter (about 12,600 km) in seven minutes, and the distance to the Moon (384,000 km) in four hours.[8] Wikipedia

The more I read these numbers, the more I realize the speed of light is damn slow. I feel like I'm stuck in a universe filled with molasses.

Bucket of eyes

Photovoltaic Eye Implant Could Give Sight To the Blind on Tuesday December 29, @02:27PM MikeChino writes with this snippet from Inhabitat: "Researchers at Stanford University recently announced that they have developed a new artificial retina implant that uses photovoltaic power and could help the blind see. The problem with previous implants was that there was no way send power to the chip in order to process light and data inside the eye, so the new device uses miniature photovoltaic cells to provide power the chip as well as to transmit data through the eye to the brain. The new device has great promise to help people afflicted by the loss of photoreceptor cells by using the power of the sun." SlashDot

Amazing news. I cannot wait until I can chose a wide angle or tellaphoto focus and record things with my eye implant. Of course, I'll need a nice microphone somewhere as well. Get to work on that one you crazy scientists.

In Blade Runner, the scientist who did the eyes made me cringe.

New Rules

Adobe Flash To Be Top Hacker Target In 2010 An anonymous reader writes "Adobe Systems' Flash and Acrobat Reader products will become the preferred targets for criminal hackers [pdf] in 2010, surpassing Microsoft Office applications, a security vendor predicted this week. 'Cybercriminals have long picked on Microsoft products due to their popularity. In 2010, we anticipate Adobe software, especially Acrobat Reader and Flash, will take the top spot,' security vendor McAfee said in its '2010 Threat Predictions' report (PDF). 'We have absolutely seen an increase in the number of attacks, around Reader in particular and also Flash Player to some extent,' CTO Kevin Lynch told reporters at the Adobe Max conference in October. 'We're working to decrease the amount of time between when we know about a problem and when we release a fix. That used to be a couple of months; now it's within two weeks for critical issues.'" SlashDot

Enough with Mr. Nice Guy. I say there must be a measured response to these attacks. Regardless of method or even reason, when someone uses their knowledge of software to harm others, it should be treated with the same set of rules that is used when someone steels money or murders someone across international lines. If it were not for Microsoft's ineptitude in dealing with people who use their products for evil, people would not be so ready to surrender their time and resources when they get hacked.

If it were not Adobe, it would be someone else. What company is laxed in keeping up on the latest terroristic technique for wrestling control of computers away from their users is immaterial. The fact that it happens every day needs to become the focus. Enforcement of existing laws, new laws that make sense, and perhaps some good old fashion retaliation are in order.

Peep Show

My God. I could do better than this. This is what Brit TV has come to. I'm disgusted.

The entire series is a collection of one uncomfortable situation followed by an even more uncomfortable situation. It sounds like U. S. TV except it is some how even worse. That is saying a lot. At least they cuss. I mean, that is the one thing that thickens the fourth wall with U. S. TV. No one cusses properly.

I give absolutely zero shit about any of the characters. I wish them all harm. I enjoy when they hurt. I do not like enjoying with someone hurts. TV should not make me feel dirty. Even if they are cussing a blue streak.

Kelly's Law

Existence is greater than all that is written.

Or.

Existence is greater than all that is imagined.

No, The first one. I can imagine existence, complete or not and define it as "The Universe" or "The Cosmos" or come up with some sort of googolplex word to define it. but I cannot describe it completely in words or media of any kind. I cannot lay down a trail of frozen bits of reality, words or media, that will do justice to the complexities of existence. For, once written down, they become part of existence and must be described.

Tactics

A little urban tactics primmer while on vacation. I've read stories about the one point harness vs two point harness. It is nice to have someone demonstrate it. I would love to go though something like this if I were not legally blind. I have a feeling that I would like paint ball. Alas, vision is typically a requirement in such endeavors. Maybe in my next life.

Kelly 2.0.

Household computers

Ted gave Elle his old laptop. It is a dell with XP. It is not an old computer, but it has some issues. That is completely normal for an old laptop. That is just a symptom of having everything in one package. Not everything is going to work forever. My mother's old laptop has a bad USB port. No bit deal. Ted's old laptop, having traveled all over the place with him, has a couple lines running up the screen and no battery. That is par for the course. No big deal.

However, the OS on the system is broken. Ted said something about "Disable the handicap setting." I have no idea what he meant.

The symptom is the keyboard does not work when the login screen comes up until a beep is heard. Well, it doesn't work even after that. It is not just the keyboard on the laptop, any keyboard fails. The laptop keyboard and external keyboard work fine to get in to and around in the BIOS.

Ted, what did you do?

I booted the laptop up on Linux and everything seems to work as expected. It is a setting in XP. I do not have an XP key so I cannot just reinstall the OS. That would be illegal. Elle wants to play a bunch of Windows games so there is no point on installing Linux. The laptop is kind of just sitting there for now until I can get some tools from work and run the repair scripts on it. That will not happen until after next Monday if I remember.

One good thing that happened out of this is that Elle cleaned up her computer area. We filled two huge boxes of junk and got them out of the house. Elle does not know this, but we intend to throw most of the crap out. Some will go to the kid's resell shop down the street. The clearing allowed me to put my father's old computer in the place of the broken computer. It still has a copy of XP on it and runs pretty well. Elle can play her games.

Eventually I'm going to have to get some nanny software on that box so we can get Elle online. Her school has a login to some web page they want her to use to run some program for teaching.  I do not understand what they are after. If you ask me, first through third grade should be pencil and paper topics only. What do I know?

Pyrites win again

MOGADISHU, Somalia - A band of Somali pirates split a $4 million ransom to release a Chinese cargo ship and 25 sailors after two months in captivity, one of the hijackers said Monday. The EU Naval Force said the bulk carrier De Xin Hai was released outside of Hobyo, Somalia, on Sunday. The crew and ship are in good condition, the force said. China's official Xinhua News Agency said the ship and crew were now under the protection of a Chinese naval fleet after an early morning rescue. It did not give further details about the rescue. The De Xin Hai was the first Chinese vessel to be hijacked since China deployed a three-ship squadron to the Gulf of Aden last year, joining Britain, India, Iran, the U.S., France and other countries in anti-piracy patrols. ... Pirate attacks in the area nearly doubled in 2009 over a year earlier, despite the deployment in December 2008 of the European Union Naval Force - the first international force specifically to counter Somali pirates. A Somali man who said he was a pirate told The Associated Press that pirates were paid $4 million to release the ship and crew. "We have been given the ransom money, checked it, counted it and shared it among ourselves," said the self-proclaimed pirate, who gave his name as Ahmed Afweyne. Somali pirates have been paid more than $100 million in ransom over the last two years. After the release of the Chinese vessel, Somali pirates hold eight vessels and 213 crew, the EU Naval Force said. Military Dot Com

Stop paying these bastards. Start killing more of them. What other industry in that part of the world pays $400,000,000 in a couple years and as far as I can tell just doesn't kill that many people.

It is going to take two stacks of corpses to stop this. One stack of dead crewmen and one huge stack of pyrites.

Killing Ants

It is the middle of winter here in Houston. It is a bit chilly, but not so you would notice. I need to mow and weed whack, but I need to kill me a bunch of ants first. I have about ten huge ant piles in my front and back yard.

My property is built up about two feet from the base land. I assume this is for drainage. The ants love the soft soil and build mounds clear to the hard clay beneath. I have to stab down with that prybar to the deepest depths I can and spray poison as deep as it will go. Then stomp the hole I made shut so the fumes will travel through the mound.

The poison I'm using is called Triazicide. It claims to kill just about anything that crawls or slithers. It is about the most poisonous stuff a home owner can get.

Am I evil for imagining the ants screaming and little ant air raid sirens going off as they speak in dubbed Japanese while fleeing Kellyzilla? I think not.

Rabies

On average, 55,000 people worldwide die from rabies every year, but only two or three of those cases happen in the United States, thanks to widespread vaccination of domestic animals and availability of post-bite treatment for humans. Today, when Americans die of rabies, it's usually because they didn't realize they'd been bitten until it was too late—which is to say, when they first noticed symptoms. See, we know how to prevent rabies, but we have absolutely no idea how to cure it. In fact, we don't even really know how it kills people. Despite (and, perhaps, because of) its status as one of the first viruses to be tamed by a vaccine, rabies remains a little-understood disease. It's a mystery that makes doctors understandably nervous. Just a week before I found my bat, some friends of mine in St. Paul had woken up to find a bat in their bedroom. Being asleep is one of those times when tiny bat teeth could bite you without you being aware of it. My friends had to get post-exposure prophylaxis, a treatment designed to neutralize any rabies virus in your system before it has a chance to reach your brain and develop into a full-blown infection. BoingBoing

Hmmm. Maybe I should have gone to the doctor when I got bit by that dog a couple years ago. Sounds like I was/am quite blessed. Thanks God. You are aces.

YouTube Subscriptions

When I subscribe to someone's video repository, I get their new posts put up in my subscription area. I can even get an email sent to me if I wish that will alert me that there are new videos. Hey, that's great. There is no way that I can tell to remove them from the subscription list except to click on the new videos from the subscription list.

If I am logged in and watch them organically, they are not counted off. If I click on them from the email they are not counted off even if I'm logged in.  If I go to the person's profile page and watch the video it is not counted as watched. Now, all that is bad enough. However, the videos I have watched from the subscription page and had knocked off the queue have shown back up kind of randomly. I have to click on them and start the video and then kill it to get the video knocked off the list.

This appears to count as a view for the person which is not so bad I suppose. It is, however, not a real view and the advertisers may like to know that some of those numbers are just people trying to clean up their subscriptions.

As I Google my way around looking for information on YouTube statistics, I get nothing but people complaining and trying to complain inelegantly about the mystical YouTube back end database. There are questions as to how YouTube counts video views after a video hits certain milestones. Apparently, videos stop counting at some point and then leap forward in the numbers after some maintenance mechanism plays catch-up. It has something to do with load balancing and world wide distribution mechanisms.

Over all, it seems to work.

When pictures are legal

I've been trying to figure out when someone can force you to take a picture or video down off the net. Every one has an opinion, but no one has the facts. Here is what it sounds like to me after a couple hours Googling.

• If the person has an expectation of privacy, they can sue you to get the media taken down.
• If the person has no expectation of privacy, they can sue you to get the media taken down.

Clear as mud?

Here are some details that may or may not be true. I can't figure it out.

• If your feet are on public property like a public road or sidewalk you can snap or film away. People have little to say about what is visible from the road or other public access.
• If you use some kind of technology to, for example, look through walls then you are violating the rules.
• If you take excessive media of someone that may be harassment even if it is by the letter of the law.
  
• Bridges and some public transportation are illegal because of terrorism laws.
• If you are on private property (like TRF)
• The property owner has to post signs telling you clearly what you can and cannot take media of. The precedent of letting and indeed encouraging people to take pictures has been set. I would imagine the camp grounds and internal portions of the park are considered public accessible land for purposes of media.
• The Patron's camping and the inside of every shop is a matter of posting signs and individual shop rules.
• Inside a closed up tent or car is about as much expectation of privacy as one can get out there.
  

Like I said, don't take any of this as gospel. I have no idea how close I am to the truth. It doesn't matter what you do, if someone gets pissed at you about media you post, you will either have to give in or get a lawyer.

Nothing like hot chocolate

I wonder if the international meetings where hot chocolate is served if more peaceful decisions are made.

If the chocolate and milk are mixed correctly, anything is possible. It even symbolizes the balance between three universes. Milk, chocolate and heat combine to make an elixir of pleasant The world will never know something this simple that is any better at making a bad day in to a good one.

Some might like marshmallows. Some like coffee creamer. Some prefer chocolate milk cold. Some, Elle, like white coco mix that has no chocolate in it. No milk for that matter, but it ocupies the same space in existence.

How long has humankind heated food, or obtained milk from whatever animal? How long have we had chocolate?

Perhaps, hot chocolate is the pinnacle of human achievement. What have we done that is better? I mean think about it for a while then answer.

RC plane and fireworks

OK, there is a good use for fireworks yet. Whomever came up with the idea to shoot fireworks at an RC plane and get a POV movie should get an award. This is just too cool. Appologies for the aspect ratio problems. I blame LiveLeak.

Is any one else out there impressed with the whole RC plane with a camera thing or is it just me?

Afghanistan Christmas

Nothing I can say would top that. Please pass it along.

Our Enemy

How can we best help them, these angry young Muslim imbeciles who want us all dead, but are too thick to do anything about it? Abdul Farouk Umar Abdullah, a Nigerian, is the “syringe bomber” who attempted to detonate a device on an aeroplane above Detroit on Boxing Day, but succeeded only in setting his balls on fire. Goodness, gracious, etc. You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain, etc. Hopefully he will end up sharing a cell with the fabulously cretinous “Shoebomber”, Richard Reid, who forgot to take a lighter with him and anyway couldn’t find his fuse. Or those doctors who spent year upon year planning to blow up Glasgow Airport but couldn’t even drive through the front doors. Or the other doctors who left a bomb in a car outside a nightclub in London but forgot to set it off. Christ alive. If Armageddon really is coming and we are headed towards the final prophesied conflagration, whose side would you rather be on? The side represented by the Palestinian Authority, the Sudanese government, Abdul, Richard and those doctors – or the Israeli army? The remarkable thing is that time after time these half-wits are foiled not by government driven security measures, or the perspicacity of our secret agents, but by their own forlorn IQs. Or might it be that Allah is trying to tell them something? Spectator

It is true that most of these folks are idiots. They are heading off to kill themselves because someone told them to do so. It makes me wonder how they got away with September Eleventh. God help us and keep our enemies stupid.

Iran on the brink

I don't know if I should pose that title as a question or statement. Iran is a strange entity. 

The Jawa Report has a post gathering several videos on violence being committed against people protesting for their rights to govern themselves. That link has graphic videos. The idea here is to separate the government from the people in your mind. The government of Iran is the beast pursuing nuclear weapons. The people of Iran are fighting the government for the right to Starbucks and European cigarettes.

That argument came up ten years ago. Ten years ago I remember making that same combination of statements. The only thing that has changed is the number of YouTube videos comeing out of the country. There was no channel, forgive the choice of words, by which people inside Iran could reliably and on mass export the realities of their situation.

As much as I do not want Iran to get hold of nukes, I am deeply troubled by the way Iran is being smacked around by the rest of the world. Don't get me wrong. This is a good thing. The method worries me. Europe and the countries in Europe, The U. S., China, Russia and others are all ganging up on one country. The fact that that many previous enemies can gang together to do something that will save the Jews in Israel scares the hell out of me. I don't want this coalition to gang up against me. I don't like the idea of that much power all ganging together to do anything.

I prefer when all of these powerful entities are at each other's throats. They are each smart enough not to start a real fight. Things are settled with diplomatic treachery.When they disagree, I feel more safe than when they agree.

Links

Voice of America

New York Times

Washington Post

Wall Street Journal

Los Angeles Times

Times Online

Links shamelessly lifted from The Long War Journal

iTunes

Natalie is complaining about iTunes and the fact that you have to hunt for the link that takes you to the index. The browse functionality is all but hiden. It makes sence that they want you to have to sift through the river of advertisements to get to what you want in the hopes of you buying a bunch of other stuff along the way. 

This is the same reason that bread and milk are on opposite sides of the grocery store.

Bastards.

We have become a society of places to buy thins that the last thing they want to do is just sell it to you. You have to twist someone's arm to just buy what you want and leave. I am tired of being held hostage in order for someone selling something to use up my time trying to shove a bunch of crap down my throat that I just don't want or need.

People love Apple for this. There are borne suckers er consumers who just can't get enough of the shell game that is trying to find products you want to buy and get out. They want the thrill of being fleeced or something. I don't get it. I'm not a real consumer. I'm a person who consumes. They all hate that. I seem to gum up the works by being efficient and getting out of the way. Their world is geared to taking advantage.

I try to pay off my credit card every month too. The banks go ape-shit over that one. Congress had to pass a law saying credit card companies coud not drop people for doing the smart thing and paying off their balance every month.

Bastards.

No more flying

TSA Wants You To Keep Your Seat, and Your Hands In Sight from Slashdot by timothy An anonymous reader excerpts from an AP story as carried by Yahoo News about changes stemming from yesterday's foiled bombing attempt of a Northwest Airlines flight: "Some airlines were telling passengers on Saturday that new government security regulations prohibit them from leaving their seats beginning an hour before landing. The regulations are a response to a suspected terrorism incident on Christmas Day. Air Canada said in a statement that new rules imposed by the Transportation Security Administration limit on-board activities by passengers and crew in US airspace. ... Flight attendants on some domestic flights are informing passengers of similar rules. Passengers on a flight from New York to Tampa Saturday morning were also told they must remain in their seats and couldn't have items in their laps, including laptops and pillows." The TSA's list of prohibited items doesn't seem to have changed in the last day, though. SlashDot

Guy tries to blow up a plane with his shoes and fails. -> X-Rayed shoes

Bunch of guys try to blow up a plane with bottles of fluid. -> No more fluids.

Guy tries to blow up a plane with a bomb in his underwear. -> No one is aloud to move in the last hour of a flight? That makes sense.

This getting out of hand. We have the terrorists telling us how to live our lives. Notice something with all of those "attempted" acts of terrorism? They all failed, yet they all caused pasengers to have to jump through hoops to get on a plane. They don't have to blow up a plane to win. They just have to make flying that bit more ridiculous. This is all they are after.

The running joke is that people will have to fly naked. This last attempt at making people not have anything on their laps during the last hour of flight is just plane useless. It sould not have stopped the guy who caused the stupid rule to be imposed. If he knew he could not do it in the last hour, he would have done it at some other point in the flight. He didn't have a laptop or toy game in his lap. He had a blanket.

What is to stop someone from saying they are diabetic and must give themselves a test and an injection or they will die? What if they put the self same powder under their skin and the shot they give themselves is the trigger? I don't want to be a diabetic in the air for the next couple months.

Subtitles

Subtitles are death to me. I have the ability to read, but at about half the speed of a slow reader. When I attempt to read subtitles, I get about half way through most sentences before they flip to the next line. It is unacceptable.

If I pause in Hulu too many times, I get the browser in a state where it just doesn't respond properly. Eventually, the browser hangs and refuses to start playing the video again. This problem doesn't happen on other sites. I really thing Hulu has a problem with their system related to a great deal of use.

The pausing issue doesn't seem to happen as much in the early hours of the morning. My machine and browser have been up all day. The difference seems to be the number of people using Hulu at the same time I'm attempting to do so.

I've never been able to keep up with subtitles  when my friends are watching videos with me. TV night was always a challenge if we watched something that had them. I work off of sound and dialogue to tell what is going on in a show for the most part. I miss visual queues all the time. I've learned to just smooth them over and get on with the show. When a film is all subtitles, I might as well be staring at a wall.

I don't do TV night much any more. I suppose it is for the best.

When I watch a movie with subtitles on my computer or even on my TV I can usually pause the video and read. It gets old even when I'm the only one watching. It is just not a natural thing.

What I want is a way for the computer to read, in a very mechanical voice, the subtitles out loud over the show. I don't care if I lose some of the nuance of the show. At least I will get something out of it. If the video software can take a text file and pop the dialogue on the rendered video at a specific time, surely it can feed the text to a text to speech engine at the same time. I could just crank the volume up for the TTS loud enough to over run the audio of the video.

This sound doable. Where is Coy when I need him? This sound like something he would be good at.

Saturday Evening

The boom boom is going full force behind our house. I've been asked to take down a video for no good reason.

I'm listening to Japanese Animation with subtitles. I do not speak a word of Japanese so I have no idea what they are saying because I'm not watching it. The show is titled "Full Metal Alchemist". It sounds interesting. I cannot keep up on Hulu. The video goes by far too quickly for me to tread.

Nat is asleep on the couch. She is downloading something for her new iPod.

Elle is off with her dad. I hope she is having a better time that I am.

I feel blissfully depressed. It feels like the whole world is out to get me. They are. The government wants taxes and taxes and taxes. Insurance companies now have a mandate to charge whatever they want to everyone at any time. The cost of absolutely everything is going through the roof at the same time that general inflation is on the rise and my wages are frozen in place. I guess it is better than going down.

Oh, it could always be worse. Then again it could always be better.

No one is going to save me. No one is going to help. I have no will to make it better. I am broken. I am tired.

Life Sucks

This world isn't fun any more. I don't want to be part of it. I don't know how to get off. There is no reset button. There is no way to tell people to leave you alone.

I should become a monk. I should take a vow of poverty and actually live the life. Then no one will want anything from me because I will have nothing worth taking.

If I never did anything, no one would want me to stop. If I never did anything no one would want me to do more.

It is impossible to live in this world without killing other things. I'm 40. I feel like I've lived and eaten and breathed enough for ten people.

There is no quiet left. There is not enough peace to go around. There is no where and no when left to stop and smell the roses. Even on vacation I have people beating a path to my door to pay them money and to take my will and drive away from me. They want too much.

They can only take everything, then there is no more. Yet they come. Yet they want more. They do not believe me. Until I am a pile of worthless bones picked over they will continue to come and continue to take.

I am broken. I am tired. I am conscious of my mortality. There is nothing left but the bones. Yet, they come for more.

The truth about Fuel

Yes, this is the guy who crashes old clunkers on his farm in Canada. Turns out the guy is pretty knowledgeable about cars. You have to be to keep the running on that farm.

This video goes in to fuel and how different systems work. I need the primmer. I know little about fuels. I know diesel is heaver, but I didn't thing of 20% heaver. I wonder if fuel were sold by the kilogram if the extra energy in diesel would come out in the wash.

For Jake

We have a ting at work. We pay rock bottom prices for candy and crap at the candy shelf. One of the goodies is Pop Tarts. Jake hates strawberry Pop Tarts. Normally when you buy a box of Pop Tarts at Sam's Club, you get a mix of 1/3 strawberry and 1/3 blueberry 1/3 Cinnamon. This was insufficient for Jake. Cinnamon is my favorite too. I saw this at Sam's and thought of my buddy Jake. He would be in heaven if Santa brought him the whole pallet.

90% fraudulent activity

You have got to be kidding me.

In a statement released last week, the Europol police agency said Europe's cap-and-trade system has been the victim of organized crime during the past 18 months, resulting in losses of roughly $7.4 billion. The agency, headquartered in the Netherlands, estimated that in some countries up to 90 percent of the entire market volume was caused by fraudulent activities. ... In a statement released last week, the Europol police agency said Europe's cap-and-trade system has been the victim of organized crime during the past 18 months, resulting in losses of roughly $7.4 billion. The agency, headquartered in the Netherlands, estimated that in some countries up to 90 percent of the entire market volume was caused by fraudulent activities. ... It's a lesson to be learned, critics of cap-and-trade say. Creating such a system in the United States would invite "corruption, illegality and criminal activity," much as it has in Europe, said Max Schulz, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. "This is the problem with politicians trying to create a market for something that the free market otherwise doesn't value," Schulz said. "An emissions trading market is an artificially, politically-created market.... "If we pass a system like Europe has, we're going to get all the problems Europe has experienced," he said. "You're asking for a lot of problems." ... Diana Furchtgott-Roth, the former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor and now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said she was concerned with political favoritism as much as outright fraud if a cap-and-trade system is implemented. "Depending on how many emission allowances you have to purchase and how many emission allowances you are given, you can be a winner or a loser," she said. "It'll be an opportunity for corruption, not by tax avoidance but by political corruption, both on the state level and the national level." Fox News

This is one of the oldest games in the book. Charge people a tax and then never pay the tax. it happens every day at convenience stores. It happened to a friend of mine on her payroll taxes many years ago.

The really depressing part of all this is that the IRS or other tax agency usually goes after the people who have already paid their taxes and not the bad guys who knew enough to cover their tracks. I mean, honest people are the easiest to convict.

Terrorist attack

Reporting from Reporting From - In what was described as an act of terrorism, a Nigerian passenger attempted to ignite an incendiary device aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Friday as the plane began its approach for landing, federal officials said. Other passengers overpowered the man and the plane landed safely. The suspect, identified as Abdul Mudallab, 23, suffered severe burns as the result of his attempt, and two of the other 277 passengers reported minor injuries, authorities said. FBI agents were investigating the incident, which a White House official said was believed to be terrorism. "He was trying to ignite some kind of incendiary device," said a federal anti-terrorism official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. "He lit himself on fire and he's suffered some burns." The device, which mixed power and liquid, was said to be less powerful than a bomb. .... Syed Jafri, a U.S. citizen who had flown from the United Arab Emirates, said the incident occurred during the plane's descent, according to the Associated Press. Jafri said he was seated three rows behind the passenger and said he saw a glow and smelled smoke. Then, he said, "a young man behind me jumped on him." "Next thing you know, there was a lot of panic," Jafri said. Peter Smith, another passenger, told WJBK Fox 2 in Detroit that one man saw the flames and leaped across the aisle to help extinguish them. "He jumped over all the other people and he took care of it, so the fire went out," Smith said. That passenger was not publicly identified Friday. LA Times

So it comes down to passengers to save the plane again. I hope the 'passenger' turns out to really have been a sky martial.

Boredom

I wish I could go back to work. I'm so board. All the blogs say they are taking a hiatus over the holiday. I can't even find any news to read. If I wanted to attack the U. S. it wuld be done over the holidays. No one has any time to pay attention to what is going on around them because they have all got to find the Cabbage Patch Kid of our day to shut their kid up.

I have the added loveliness of having a fireworks stand 200 feet from my home. People buy fireworks and walk across the street, right next to my house, and start popping them because, why the hell not.

I live in hell. This is hell. When all I want to do is work to get the fuck away from home, it is hell.

Update on Christmas haul

The flashlight that I got It has a shorter battery life, but will use the odd battery that is lying around.

The first one is the one I got.

Pocket knife. Nice. It has a safety, but can still be opened with one one hand.

Christmas Eve

In a nut shell.

Got up. Surfed the net while the rest of the family got ready. Headed over to my parent's place. Turned around and headed back for something we forgot. Got to parent's place. Opened presents. Had a great meal. Watched TV and fell asleep. 

Got a pocket knife, that I already cut myself with, and a flash light. I got some cloths that I needed.

Nat got an iPod Touch. She is filling it up as I type.

Elle got a bunch of toys. She got a flashlight that she just told me "Works in the dark." Good thing to know.

One of my coworkers thanked me for coming in and working two days this week when I was scheduled to be on vacation. It is one thing to hear it from people in management, but I consider this guy a peer.

Swedish chef syndrome

I'm surfing the net minding my own business, watching car chases like I do every waking moment, when I catch one from Sweden. The person giving the blow by blow is completely serious and kind of sounds like every person narrating a car chase ever. The only trouble is, I can only see the Swedish Chef from the Muppets, hat and all, forming every sentence. It was so distracting that I ended up not watching the video.

I'm ruined for life and I don't mind.

Proverbs

1. On the other hand, you have different fingers. 2. Life isn’t like a box of chocolates. It’s more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow. 3. 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot. 4. 99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name. 5. Remember, half the people you know are below average. 6. He who laughs last, thinks slowest. 7. Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm. 8. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese in the trap. 9. Support bacteria. They’re the only culture most people have.. 10. A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory. 11. OK, so what’s the speed of dark? 12. When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane. 13. Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now. 14. How much deeper would the ocean be without sponges? 15. Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines. 16. Inside every older person is a younger person wondering, ‘What the f*ck happened?’ 17. Just remember — if the world didn’t suck, we would all fall off. 18. Light travels faster than sound. That’s why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. 19. Why do drive-in ATMs have braille? 20. Why do Kamikaze pilots wear helmets? Augean Stables

Pet video of the decade

I'm not much on best of the decade stuff or top tens or whatever. I like this one. He is a cute little guy.

oops!

This is should be filed under A) Enough with the stupid text in a video that explains itself. and B) When to say when.

Christmas Spirit

I am a cynic. This message speaks to me. It says "You have been right on the subject of Christmas and commercialization all this time Kelly. Good job." I was kind of down in the dumps about the whole Christmas thing. I saw this and I smiled and feel much better about the whole mess.

This is from 2007, but is just as applicable today, and has "gay" in the tags. I do not know why they put the word "gay" in the tags. It has nothing to do with sexual preference. I do not care if the guy in the video is gay or straight. It is funny and made me smile. The tag just kind of caught me off guard because it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the video.

New Year's Resolution

It is a bit early so I'll make this quick. My new year's resolution is to have no resolutions, no ultimates, no absolutes. I am officially flexible and malleable. I will be firm on all things that matter, but not unbendable. No will still mean no. I will just put thought in to it first. Even if it does not show.

I tend to stick to my new year's resolutions. Resolution, result. Hey, I'm impressed.

I'm satisfied with my eating habits. Well, not satisfied. I'm at peace with my eating habits. The only change I want to make is to eat far fewer fried foods. My body just doesn't handle them like it used to. I might want to eat a bit less over all as well. I'm at that age where my materialism becomes more conservative.

I do not want ot be a Republican or Democrat for the sake of being one or the other. I align more so with Republicans than Democrats.

I'm tired of getting screwed by repair and sales people. There really are no honest people left in the world. The choice here may be to become more devious. I don't like that at all.

I've already brought my anger under control more than I ever thought I would. I've even learned to use that energy for good. This is not perfect by any measure. I have worked on it and worked on it and I am finally in a position where I feel comfortable feeling anger. I can feel anger without getting upset. I can want to be anger without blowing my top. It really is better to use that energy to fix the problem. The blog helps too. This is because I can channel that energy through the blog. Now with Facebook and Twitter, eyes are diluted. and I feel funny putting thing on the blog because I know no one bothers to read personal blogs any more.

Last minute

Have I complained lately that I was supposed to start my vacation last Friday? I had to go in Monday and Tuesday this week. There was work that needed doing and I needed to do it. The company would have lost money if I hadn't done it.

Today, I was working on the thing that I was supposed to be working on. That thing is no secret. I do a bunch of the IT work at my job and we needed to replace several computers with new ones to declare the old computers no longer in use. This allows the company to take a deduction on the dead boxes.

Several computers had been replaced. I had to add three video cards to some computers because Dell is putting five year old video cards on the mother boards. They are ridiculous. I actually got a happy dance from one of the employees. That made it all worth while. The last thing I had to do was ge one of the computers back from one of the guys. He was waiting on a call from AutoDesk. I mentioned that in the notes. He will have to keep his old computer in a form that he can read a file off of, but we can still mark it as not being used.

"Cool I'm out of here." I shout. I pack my crap and start saying good buy and Merry Christmas to people.

Then I hear the big boss mention that they are moving some monitors around. I find out that three people get dual-headed monitors added to their computers. Why didn't I leave ten minutes ago? Hey, that's great. They have half hight slots and old crummy computers. I asked Wade if it needed to get done today and he shot me this look like I was nuts. "No." Was all he said.

I decided to not wait another second and just bailed.

Earlier that day I complained to someone who was already on vacation that I was being handed new tasks. I had to build a release and set up new machines that were not on my origonal list. There were other fixes I had to deal with. So few people seemed in anything resembling Christmas spirit.

He said "You have to say 'No.'"

He was right of course. I had been approved vacation. blah blah. It is all hopefully done now. Ther eare a couple things left for January, but there are always things left for tomorrow or next week.

I did get a thank you from someone I respect and a happy dance. I'm hanging on to those.

Screen hot keys in Gnome

I'm not sure it is Gnome or X or what, but there are some useful key strokes to remember on Linux. At least Ubuntu 9.10 has them working. I haven't haad a chance to try them on Red Hat at work. You have to have special effects turned on in Linux for these to work.

The above is inverted. It is very difficult for me to read blue on white. Hitting Windows-N for one program or Windows-M for all programs causes the display, including pictures and video to invert. This makes blue text on a white background appear tan on black. This is much easer to

This is normal for comparison.

The above is 'Windows-E'. Linux has multiple desktops available by default. You can click on the screens and move things from one dekstop to another by dragging.

Notes:

Many services have teared charge rates for off peak usage. So do server farms. It turns out one of the big customers lately have been just buying up all the really off peak processor power they can lay their hands on. Ate least some of these customers are people running malware and spammers. The server farm owners don't seem to care for the most part.

They had to pass a federal law to force television stations to make commercials the same volume level as the show. The technology to make commercials louder has been in place since I was a kid. All my life I've had to put up with this. I'm not sure what to think. I mean, God forbid TV do something that makes their customers happy without Congress getting involved.

I sat at work today waiting on someone to give me their old computer so I could go home and start my vacation. He was waiting on a phone call from Autodesk <http://usa.autodesk.com/> . I was thinking "My goodness, I'm looking forward to this much time off. I don't care if I did get screwed out of a couple days." I'll blog and maybe get something done around the house. Who know, I might write a really short fiction post.

I had a berger from SmashBerger near my work. They are pretty good. I like SmashBerger better than Becks really only because they have onion rings. That is, they have string type onion rings they call stacked onions or something. They aren't bad. Plus, I don't have to cross Westheimer to get there. SmashBerger is still over priced.

Notes:

So my first day of my first ever two week vacation went well. It felt pretty normal. That might be because I worked. I have to come in tomorrow as well. Some vacation I have here.

Trying to not complain any more about working on vacation days.

You have to click on your subscribed videos in YouTube and not from the email they send you. This is because they will not be marked as 'viewed' in YouTube. You will get the same videos in hte email over and over if you don't.

Not one post to Facebook all day. I just don't feel like I have anything to say. I post to Twitter. I still feel like I have nothing to say, but I don't care.

No news on the third episode of Flanking Position. I wander if there was not enough footage to stitch together in to a coherent show. The making of footage is still available below.

Video worth watching

Yes, it is another mashup that takes advantage of my generation's habits and history.

Manipulation for a good cause

Facebook Campaign Decides UK Christmas Music Charts from Slashdot by kdawson 33 people liked this uglyduckling writes "A grassroots Facebook campaign has pushed the 1990s Rage Against the Machine song 'Killing in the Name Of' to the top of the British music charts for Christmas. The campaign was planned to prevent the X-Factor winner from charting Christmas number one, as has been the case for the past four years. It was supposedly a kick against the commercialism of Christmas and commercial dominance in the music scene, although Rage and the X-Factor winner Joe McElderry were actually signed to the same label. Despite this minor detail, it's interesting to note that this is the first song to reach the number one spot through downloads alone in the UK, and is a testament to the organizational power of social networking sites like Facebook. The Facebook group also asked for donations to charity, and has raised £70,000 for the homeless charity Shelter." SlashDot

Will someone please think of the children!

I like the idea of knocking a TV show off the rating control leaver. I'm getting more and more upset with Facebook. They are turning in to Microsoft as the hours tick by. Still, Idle sucks and I just love haring them getting bumped. Now, let's have an independent band win next year. Someone who has never signed with an official label, or Apple.

Boring video of the new fridge showing up

It is boring, but this one is for my parents. They bought ups the new fridge for Christmas. Nat is off to Sam's to fille her up.

Levy

2009-12-19_levy

These are some pictures of a levy near my home. it is much bigger than people think. Most folks seem to think it is just a few yards across. They forget to look to the side when they cross over one of the many bridges that go over it.

And a shabby video.

I tried. Forgive the goofy comments.

Then there is a map reference. This was across the street from Smoke and Stuff. Never been in there.

View Larger Map

The Piper's Tale

*THE BAGPIPER’s TALE; a Personal Testimony* As a bagpiper, I’m often called upon to play at weddings, military events, and funerals. Recently I was asked by a funeral director to play at a grave side service for a homeless man. The man had no family or friends, so the service was set at the county pauper’s cemetery in the Kentucky back woods. I was not familiar with the backwoods and soon found myself lost. Being a typical man I didn’t stop to ask for directions. I finally arrived an hour late – the staff from the funeral home was long gone and the hearse was nowhere in sight. There were only the diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch. I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late. I went to the side of the grave and looked down. The vault lid was already in place. I didn’t know what else to do, so I started to play…. The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends. I played like I’ve never played before for this homeless man. And as I played ‘Amazing Grace,’ the workers began to weep. They wept. I wept. We all wept together. When I finished I packed up my bagpipes and started for my car. Though my head hung low my heart was full. As I opened the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, “I never seen nothin’ like that before and I’ve been putting in septic tanks for twenty years." HT The Anchress

I wept with tears of laughter. Got me.

SF go get'em

• SF is for Special Forces, not science fiction in this case.
• Flying around the desert and stopping everything that moves to figure out on a case by case basis if it is on our side or not just might be an effective plan.
  
• "Fitting in with the locals." I think not.
• Snatch and grab works for many things.
• Not many places out in the middle of BFA (Bum-F@!*-Afghanistan) to hide ay Mr Taliban.
• I like the bald+beard look. May have to look in to that.
• Black Hawk, the other off road vehicle.
• I wonder what music plaid at very high volume would be most effective in this situation.
• Sometimes hearts and minds are best splattered all over a desert. (OK, that one is bad. I'm leaving it in.)
  

Cool Party Tricks

Please try these at home.

Oh, and this is my 4001st post. Yay me! I've been at this a while.

The Making of Flanking Position episode 3

OK, this is just some video clips I threw together between counting off minutes for the folks in the shot. I missed the dog steeling the show.

I had to mute part of the video. I used KDEnLive. I could not get Avidemx to stitch several clips together without messing up. There is no one program on Linux that works for video editing. The 264 codec in KDEnLive is still broken, but I was able to get the MPEG4 codec to work which is close enough for YouTube.

Getting the better editor to work was a good thing because I needed to mute part of the audio. This was far more difficult than it sounds because KDEnLive will not play video. I had to render the video, play it, identify static visual queues to identify where to start and stop the muted section.  "He put his hand up on the table, He dropped his head a little bit." It was highly annoying.

The solution here is to buy a Mac. That just wouldn't be challenging. I bet the software for editing video on a Mac actually does what it says on the box. That is the biggest problem I have with all the software I've used. It is useless. If they work at all, they have a couple of functions that work and several things that just plane dont. And the list of stuff that works and doesn't work changes with every version and every version of the other libraries they depend on. If I had a choice, I would dedicate a box to editing video, learn how the OS and video editing software work together and then isolate the box and never up date it until the need out weighed the usefulness. What is the point in that? That is double the cost for hardware. I'm back to the Mac solution.

Trying to edit video in Linux blows and probably always will for the reasons mentioned above.

Australia changes their minds

Earlier this month, we discussed news that Sega's new Aliens vs. Predator video game had been refused classification in Australia, effectively banning it. After a scathing response from the developer saying they wouldn't censor the game, and later news that the classification scheme may be updated to include an R18+ rating, it now seems that the Classification Board has seen fit to give the game a green light after all. Sega's Darren Macbeth told Kotaku, "We are particularly proud that the game will be released in its original entirety, with no content altered or removed whatsoever. This is a big win for Australian gamers. We applaud the Classification Review Board on making a decision that clearly considers the context of the game, and is in line with the modern expectations of reasonable Australians." SlashDot

This is too cool. Adults in Australia will be allowed to make their own decisions. This is a country that calls itself a democracy. What a novel idea.

Tiger Eats Arm

The best video from last night's searching on the interwebs was as follows. Video of a tiger's cage with blood running down from the bars. Then a tiger gnawing on a human arm. Then the guy, having survived to this point covered in blood with a pressure bandage, semiconscious, being packed up for the emergency room. No news if they got any par of the arm back or what happened to the tiger. No word on fixing the cage either.

I did not post this video because it was gory and hideous. I have still not heard the last of that "Watch your hands" video that I did not post all those years ago. Natalie tracked the video down and was able to watch it. She gives me no end of grief over this. Thus, I'm not even leaving a trail of bread crumbs to follow this time.

Notes:

I rewatched Munich. I forgot how good a movie this is. I forgot it was made in 2005. I would have guessed it was made in 1995 or something.

How to make head cheese

The term head cheese is enough to make me say no thank you. Watching it being made seals the deal.

Good Dog

Day

It doesn't matter how much work I put in to making something. If it doesn't do exactly the same thing the old thing did, I"m screwed.

I'm crazy busy at work. I have all kinds of work to do and the big boss comes in to my office and gets me to install a bunch of monitors in people's offices. That is something I do, but it is getting in the way of getting all the other stuff done that needs to be completed before the end of the year. I do it and get back to work. Some new computers came in today.  I busted my ass all day. They got their money out of me.

We did go to the Christmas lunch today. It was good food in a restaurant I had been in before. The chicken was good. The cheese cake was good. I missed Natalie. I wish we could have brought spouses. There were some couples. We have several at the company. That is scary. I'm not sure I like the idea of both incomes in the same basket. I suppose that is about where we are, Nat and I have one income in one basket.

By the end of the day, I was just plane broken. I could stay after 18:00 and maybe get something done, but my brain is fried. My will is gone. I was lucky to make it home without stumbling in to another universe where there are no computers or printers or engineer tinkers. Tomorrow I get to come back and do it all again. My home life is suffering. My family has to suffer me.

I was supposed to take two weeks off. There is no way I can do that now. My record of taking no two week vacations is still in tact. I'm too tired to think or do anything that might be misconstrued as creative. Everything has been milked from me.

Sick

Some guy was dying on the bus a couple days ago. he had bronchitis and was coughing like a dying man. Every one wondered to the back of the bus like that was going to help. The AC was running so it didn't matter where you were because you were going to be exposed.

Now I'm coughing. I can feel my throat tightening up. It feels like bronchitis. I'm going to get sick. No one on that bus ride was safe.

I was going on two weeks of vacation. I'm going to have this the whole time. I guarantee it. I will have it the first couple weeks of January.

This is not helping my will to live. I'm already making plans to just come in next week and get some work done while I'm sick. Why waist vacation on being sick?

Notes:

I like Dr Karl. He is a medical doctor who has gone all scientific. He has a podcast and a blog and all that. I like how explains things and i like that when people catch him making a mistake he congratulates them. He has a bunch of books too.

There was this guy on the bus las night who had a horrible cough. It sounded bad. he had one of those coughing fits where you just can't stop. The bus was crowded and nearly every one who was up front near him had moved to standing room only in the back. i tried to get a video on my phone, but of course he stopped just as I hit the record button.

 There is a story in the U. K. about collage graduates are being charged to get work experience. It kind of reminds me of making security guards buy their uniforms from one person and automatically deducting it from their pay.

 $600 to the plumber today. I'd say I'm in the wrong business, but I could not be a plumber. I'm not centered. To be a plumber one must be a full, intelligent, balanced human being. If you are not, you will not last. They wanted $180 to replace the toilet kit in the tank of the commode that costs like $22 at Lewes. Bastards. It turns out the pipe leading in to the slab was cracked. I have no idea how to fix that. I can bullshit my way through the toilet kit.

 I listened to a podcasts about The Six Million Dollar Man. The footage where the plane crashes in the intro is real. That plane was a lift body craft and crashed at Edwards Air Force base in the sixties.

We have this Christmas lunch thing coming up at work. I didn't want to go because I do not feel comfortable at fancy resturants. Ever since prom, I just hate the whole feeling of having to act like someone I'm not. It really stirs emotional trama. So, I said "No thanks." The brand new HR person we have gets one of my friends to bully me in to going. Now let me tell you, that really settles my stomach and makes me feel at eas. Thanks HR.

Next month's safety video

One person been declared dead upon arrival to the hospital, one is in critical condition, and five have been injured after an accident involving a lifeboat in the offshore industry in an unnamed Middle East nation in June. "This is definitely worth including in any delegates OH&S or training courses and may be worth showing at the monthly meeting," said Garry Keane, MUA, Port Kembla. "We kn More..ow our members have been advised not to ride the lifeboats but this may help prevent any complacency setting in." According to the accident description report on June 09, at around 1400 hrs in calm seas, AD22 launched its starboard lifeboat with seven crew on board for a sea trial test. The lifeboat was successfully launched and sailed for 20 minutes. At the conclusion of the test, it was re-connected to the davit pendant lines for recovery and stowing. After a short load test out of the water, the boat was winched / hoisted by the crew. But when the lifeboat was approximately 2 feet from stowing position, the aft pendant hook released, swinging the lifeboat onto the foreword pendant, before falling 65 feet into the ocean. LiveLeak

Vista

Wonder OS powers ... Activate!! Shape of a retarded sloth. Form of a bucket of forgotten dreams.

 Installed vista on a box today. Activated it online. It downloaded over half a gigabyte of updates. It took over two and a half hours to get them installed. it did only take a second or two to get the machine activated.

 Vista is not that bad. I have not had to use it for a long time. I've only set it up and handed it off to others to suffer through. The only real complaint I have is the default color scheme. I cannot frigging read white on blue. How often do I need to complain about that on this blog? When you use the high contrast color schemes, Explorer and other programs automatically kick their graphics in to high contrast mode. I suppose you can turn that off, but it makes the Internet useless.

 With Linux, I can completely upgrade from one version to another online. I've done it many times and complained about it on this blog. It is a one or two command thing. It does take a long time, but it is relatively fire and forget. With that amount of updates to Vista, one might as well download an entire new OS and install it. It is an operation that takes several steps the way it is and you have to babysit the installs. "You could walk away and go get a sandwich or something but you have to agree to are ridiculous EULA half way through everything so sit down and enjoy the unresponsive progress bars you victim of the monopolistic machine!!!"

 The first round of updates went quickly. One emergency update to Vista and then reboot. The second batch took an over an hour to download and install. Reboot. Then came Vista service pack 2. While service pack 2 was installing, I was thinking how log it has been since service pack 2 came out and wondering how may more updates have been implemented since then. Reset. There was only one more round of updates thankfully.

The install ended up being 24 gigabytes after installing a few basic programs. 24 frigging gigabytes for an OS and OpenOffice. What the hell? I kicked off a Ghost image as I walked out the door. Hopefully the other eleven machines I need to set up like this one will be a bit less stressful.

Shoot foot. Aim at other foot

So, the Fed tels the banks to loan more money to small businesses.

Banks say "But with the economy the way it is, many people do not have the credit rating to get a loan."

The Fed says "But we want you to lend them more money."

The banks say "But people are not asking for loans. The small companies are gun shy. They want to wait for things to get better before they pull the trigger."

The Fed, snorting in amazement says "But we need people to go on credit fueled spending sprees. The government won't make any money on taxes if no one is buying anything and no one is employed to afford things."

Someone writes a political cartoon that has a banker and a regulator holding guns to the head of the U. S. tax payer one both saying in tandem "Barrow money and spend like a drunken sailer!!"

Pandorum

Pandorum

SPOILER ALERT!!! If you have not seen the film STOP NOW!

This is a pretty awesome movie. It is a zombie flick in space. Except they are super zombies who are not only fast, but have heightened senses and strength. I liked the ending to be honest. I got very tired of hand to hand combat.

Then comes the science. I got tired of people walking in normal gravity on a round ship clearly designed to use centripetal force to fake gravity. It was distracting. The first frigging thing people would have noticed when they woke up is "Hey, why the hell is down the wrong way?" The crashed ship was even at an angle nose down so why were people standing up straight and not leaning towards the stern?

The ship is round. Everything is designed from the get go to have 'down' equal 'out' or away from the stationary center of the ship.. I noticed something wrong when they were near the bridge and they had, wait for it, gravity along the inside axis of the ship. "Only the hub of the ship should have gravity" I said to myself. What an enormous gaping canyon in the plot.

Did they explain this away in the film? Did I miss the "Any old BS will do." science fiction answer? There was one time when the guy was in the Geoffry's Tubes crawling arouind and he says "I'm at an angle." as he watches beads of sweat fall off his nose.

It pisses me off when I notice stuff like this. I wish I could just sit and wait for the plot to play out. I cannot.

The crazy guy's battle with himself was just plane distracting.

Social Media Overload

I have considered quitting Twitter all together. I don't like spamming Facebook. I am slowly sliding back to writing on my blog instead of putting momentary bullets on my different points of interest on the web.

Twitter is to blogging as masturbation is to making love. Twitter is content masturbation. Yes, I Tweeted that.

Not long ago a blogger I respect gave up the ghost because he said the short quick form of blogging was hurting his long slow detailed research stile of writing books. I think the same thing is happening whith me and Twitter. As I tweet one line crap to Twitter, the act of putting that information somewhere makes it "done" and thus I will not elaborate. I will not go in to far more detail.

Surely most people can handle all of it. Many may only be able to put content up one way or another. I prefer the blog stile for the moment. The satisfaction of tweeting is fleeting. (humph) The desire of writing is not satisfied at all. Blogging is about as close as I will get to making something in writing that is good.

Only a few people read the blog. That isn't really the reason I do it. I know that dozens of people read my Facebook comments and a couple get to my tweets. That is the reason I do Facebook and Twitter. To be seen. It is a bit shameful I know. Maybe no shame is the new shame.

Eagle catches small deer

Survival of the fittest. In this video the descendant of a carnivorous dinosaur captures and apparently kills a small mammal resembling a deer. Just don't wonder where your shiatsu dissapeard to under mysterious circumstances in the sealed back yard.

ClimateGate and Hockey Sticks

Have you heard about the hockey stick shaped graph that people keep talking about when it comes to climate change? I've had it shoved down my throat for the last couple weeks. I did not hear about it until recently when the ClimateGate scandal came to light.

There is nothing like a graph and a bunch of numbers to make people shut up and let you talk. It is like religion where it says "It is written ..." So what? Show me the data. I can't understand it, but I can post it and bitch and maybe someone who can wrap their head around that data will stick their head above the wall and fire a volley of sense at it.

It looks like someone is doing just that.

So let’s look at some ice. I’m looking at the temperature record as read from this central Greenland ice core. It gives us about as close as we can come to a direct, experimental measurement of temperature at that one spot for the past 50,000 years.  As far as I know, the data are not adjusted according to any fancy computer climate model or anything else like that. ... In other words, we’re pretty lucky to be here during this rare, warm period in climate history.  But the broader lesson is, climate doesn’t stand still.  It doesn’t even stay on the relatively constrained range of the last 10,000 years for more than about 10,000 years at a time. ... For climate science it means that the Hockey Team climatologists’ insistence that human-emitted CO2 is the only thing that could account for the recent warming trend is probably poppycock. What's up with that?

It is very worth going and looking at the graphs. When you pick your favorite hockey stick shaped graph, you get an alarming trend. When you look at the data over a much broader length of time, you get something much more scary. The Earth's climate is all over the frigging place and has been since, forever. It is not humans who did anything about any of it. It is just good old mother nature. We did not have the power then and do not have the power now to do anything but attempt to survive.

I think I've seen these graphs before. I vaguely remember watching a NOVA or something talking about past ice ages. Their point was that our current trend of relative nice weather is the exception and far from the rule of history. Someone had an argument of the accuracy of ice core temperature measurement 

There is a group of elites who run out world who are trying to siphon off a huge chunk of the world's wealth and indeed ability to generate wealth in order to do something. I have no idea what that is. This reminds me of several movies where it turns out there was a huge island in the south Pacific, for example, where this enormous complex mechanism had been built for some reason, something that sounds ridiculous like changing the Earth's orbit or constructing a global shield. The amount of resources required were so high that a global catastrophe had to be faked in order to fund such a juggernaut. After all, something like that would take focusing the effort and abilities of the entire world under one direction.

My science fiction example is a bit crazy sounding, but so is destroying the economy of the U. S. and indeed entire planet for the same of a few degrees in temprature change over the next couple of generations. It is starting to sound like it would be cheaper to react and adapt as the shit very slowly hits the fan over this time period.