Too much fun

Yes, I know it is an advertisement, but it is well played.

Bills

I'm sitting here staring at pile of gills. I even have a stack in my email. They are all due. Thank God I have the money to pay them.

Some thing are looking up. Some things are not. My family is healthy. Elle has a cold. Nat's mom is very ill. My father has some kidney issues he is fighting.

How many times Have I heard that I should not fret any problem that can be solved with money. That is a nice thought. 

Lunch Rant

I just plane had to go haller at the pigeons in the parking garage today. There are too many people pulling in too many directions at work. I'm not the only one who fees this way. Shit is getting deep. Many people have been under a great deal of stress over a long period of time. There is no end in sight.

It is always like this. This company is still running like a start up and it is something like thirty years old.

I say there is no end in sight, but we do have an HR person now. I don't know what is going on with this company. I know I will never get any money out of it. I honestly think I am the cut off for stock options. Not that I would have the money to buy them.

New Camera

My parents are going to buy me a new camera. The one I want is another PowerShot from Canon. It takes 12.1 MP pictures and 720p video. I can't wait to get it. They are calling this a birthday present.

This is a wonderful thing for my parent's to do for me. I use cameras one way or another nearly every day. I used my phone today at work tot capture an error message and email it to myself.

The only down side to this camera that I'm looking at that people mention in the forums is poor low light performance. I know. The lens is little bitty. If it has no light amplification, it is not going to take pictures well in low light. All snapshot cameras have trouble with low light.

I've had a Canon PowerShot for years and it has given me excellent service. It takes fantastic pictures (the old one) at 5 megapixel. The only thing I'm going to loose when giving up this camera is the same battery used for all three of my cameras. The new camera is half the size of the old one.

I looked around our house and realized how much stuff was from my parents.

• Refrigerator.
• The bed in the master bedroom.
• The dresser I use.
• Both couches.
• The TV in the living room.
• My laptop.
• Weed Eater.

That is just what I can think of off the top of my head. My parent's would say "Happy to do it." I know. Still.

Geek Rant

I had to download open suse. It comes in DVD ISO files. That's great. The files are 4.1 gigabytes each. No big deal except the 16 gig USB drive is formated FAT32. The biggest file you can have in this antique FS is one full byte short of 4 gigabytes.

Piece of cake. just format the USB drive in NTFS and go. ... but Windows XP will not let me do such a useful thing. It is just not available in the list of FS types. As a matter of fact, only FAT32 is in the 'list'. Is that a list? Is it a choice if you have the choice of This or nothing?

Two minutes after booting a box up using the Ubuntu 9.something CD I'm formating my USB key as a 16 gigabyte NTFS drive. At least Windows XP will mount the USB drive using NTFS. They are not that inept.

Take the ten minutes to copy the two files over to the USB drive. Have to use Ubuntu again to copy them off. Takes half an hour to get the files on the network and then back on to the machine I'm going to use to burn it. Burn it. Boot it. and corruption.

Something is wrong with the image. BAH!!!!!!!

Punted to the IT department. You try it.

Notes:

They have screws for holding bones together that will dissolve over time and allow bone material to fill in the gap. There is some glue or filler that looks like tooth paste that helps stitch bones as well.

There is a jell coming that you will put in your tires instead of air that will not leak out if you get a puncture. Good for bicycles as well. The difference is, this stuff bounces like air and is very light. The foam and jells up to now have been heavy and eaten the tires on the inside. Some still required air in the tire. The concept of air in tires may be on the way out.

There is a new battle cry for military and collages. It is "Whoop!" Every one seems to be doing it. I have a problem with it. It sounds stupid when people do it on mass. They sound like a bunch of toddlers.

Smurfs movie. BAH!!!

Sunday

Mowed front lawn. Cleaned out garage. Sprayed a couple gallons of weed killer all over the place. Didn't even look at the back yard.

So, Awesome Sunday. For the first time in a long time I feel like I relaxed over a weekend. Not sure why exactly. I did get like 14 hours of sleep last night. Maybe that is it. 

I'm about to head off to bed in a few minutes. I'm not sure how to say this, but I'm not so much ready for work as I am prepared. Does that make sense to any one? There are so manything that I have to do at work. Many of them depend on other people. All of it is stressful. All of it is due last week. All of it is in dispute on how other people want things done. All of it is a coordinated cluster-fuck. Did I mention stressful? Hence the reason I cannot say I am ready for work.

Here is hoping for a good night's sleep and a productive day/week/month/live. It never ends until it all ends. I'll relax in the grave.

Clean Garage Day

I tried to do a timelaps kind of quick video thing, but KDEnLive doesn't do that without compiling the code along with the library for rendering. Bastards. I also managed to blow away the clip of me pushing the car out of the garage with the gear in reverse instead of neutral. This took three hours including cleaning the garage. Nearly melted the Flip. You get this, love it or lump it.

Hey, it isn't yard work.

Flip Fail

I have the Flip Mino HD. I tried to film something earlier today and the camera over heated. It also ran out of record time and the battery was nearly drained. This camera is awesome to throw in you pocket and go, but it needs replaceable batteries, a wider angel lens out of the factory, and it needs to take SD cards like every other camera in the universe.

By over heating I mean the camera turns off and complains about being too hot if you turn it back on. You have to let it cool before you can do anything beyond pulling stuff off the camera. The temperature was below 80 degrees Fahrenheit in the garage. I was pounding like mad for over 50 minutes building a shelving unit and the camera was not warm to the touch. The little warning message came up about heat and the camera shut it self off.

I may consult with Nat over purchasing a replacement. I have no idea what will work better. The Flip takes relatively good video and very good audio for my two cents. I fear trying to identify what camera will keep up with the performance and give me the features I listed above.

This guy!

Pat Condell is something else. I've listened to his rants over a couple years no I should think. He has strong opinions and I'm so very glad he has put them somewhere I can find them.

I do not agree with everything he rants about. I do not check his facts. I respect his opinion only as far as I am too lazy to look things up. I've heard the argument that the Catholic church should be blamed for Jew hatred. In a small way, I agree.

What was the conflict before Jesus came along? I blame Usury. I've ranted on this myself before. I've been told that Jews were aloud to charge interest on loaned money and others were not. That is the sort of thing that would cause people to hate one another. I do not know enough to be sure.

Pat, please keep ranting. Everyone please keep ranting. Stand on the highest web page and shout to the universe. Let all with bandwidth hear and listen. Get your facts straight. Do the homework and math. Be prepared to be Fisked.

Best video in a long time

I embed many videos. Most of them suck. This one is very cool. It is a ride around the conveyor belt at sushi restaurant. It is a small slice of raw humanity. What is those guys' buill going to be? Their plates were stacked fifteen high. I don't like eating anything that is not cooked if only to kill the germs. My only real problem with sushi is the cost.

"He doesn't care. He/s Mexican." HA!

Weekend plans:

• Yard work
  
• Weed-whack
• Poison weeds
• Poison ants
  
• Dishes
  
• Laundry
• Film something, no more yard work videos for a while.

Watching a process run in BASH

Once you get the process ID you can watch the process with the ps command and do whatever you want in the loop. Most of the time I am waiting for something to complete or looking for a specific thing to happen. Typically you want to do this in order to report progress or enforce a timeout. You cannot trap errors this way, well, you loose track of the error channel. It is all a balance of needs and capabilities.

#!/bin/bash 
sleep 10 # Just kick off a process and wait 10 seconds
processID=$! # Gives you the last backgrounded process ID 
echo -n "running"
while [ -n "`ps -ef | egrep \" $processID \"`" ]; do 
    echo -n "." 
    sleep 1 
done
echo ""
echo "ID was $processID"

It was so much fun playing around with this and trying to get this basic idea to work in a far more complex script that I missed a meeting. That was kind of cool. Not that I missed the meeting, but hat I was that focused on one task. I get pulled in so many directions at work these days that It was nice to work on one thing for half a day or so.

Banned or taxed?

The FDA is actually talking about banning indoor tanning. About frigging time if you ask me. The evidence is there that says it is just plane bad for you.  There are lots of these things that come to mind. Things that should either be banned and shoved to a black market or taxed out of prosperity.

• Mono sodium glutamate
• Nicotine
  
• High fructose corn syrup
  
• International remittances
  
• Marijuana
• 3D movies
  

Wait a minute, marijuana is already banned. You know, being banned was actually a boon for marijuana. The hemp promotion people called the fact that marijuana was illegal a subsidy. Now that California is seriously looking at making it a legal commodity, not only can they tax the crap out of it, but the drug cartels in Mexico will have to find some other way of making money as well. Win win.

Banning behavior is a slippery slope. We must have bans on murder, rape, assault and a huge number of things that bring direct harm between people. There are all kinds of activities that are banned that do not have direct harm, like fraud and identity theft as well that should be banned. What about riding a bicycle naked, teaching your kid to be an acrobat?

Notes:

crusade + jihad - cruhad, jisade, crusadihad ??? too politically incorrect to contemplate?

Lots of companies are backing away from Google to keep China happy. The money is just too much to pass on. Share holders are screaming. Apparently evil is required to make money in big business. Who knew?

It's funny because it's true

I got this in an email. I have not checked these facts, sounds good to me.

If George W. Bush had been the first President to need a teleprompter installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?  If George W. Bush had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take Laura Bush to a play in NYC, would you have approved?  If George W. Bush had reduced your retirement plan's holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved?  If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?  If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?  If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?  If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?  If George W. Bush had visited  Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?  If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current in their income taxes, would you have approved?  If George W. Bush had stated that there were 57 states in the  United States , would you have said that he is clueless. If George W. Bush would have flown all the way to  Denmark to make a five minute speech about how the Olympics would benefit him walking out his front door in  Texas , would you have thought he was a self important, conceded, egotistical prick. If George W. Bush had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to "Cinco de Cuatro" in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, would you have winced in embarrassment?  If George W. Bush had mis-spelled the word "advice" would you have hammered him for it for years like Dan Quayle and potatoe as proof of what a dunce he is?  If George W. Bush had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he's a hypocrite?  If George W. Bush's administration had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown  Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually  get what happened on 9-11?  If George W. Bush had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in    New Orleans , would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence?  If George W. Bush had created the position of 32 Czars who report directly to him, bypassing the House and Senate on much of what is happening in  America , would you have approved.  If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?  If George W. Bush had proposed to double the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?  If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?  So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive? Can't think of anything? Don't worry. He's done all this in 10 months -- so you'll have three years and two months to come up with an answer.

Notes:

Why do octopuses have such large brains? Problem solving.

Hear I go again setting up a Windows XP machine. This time is even worse because it is a laptop. Every single piece of equipment on the system needs to be touched to make it work. Drivers, updates, updates and more updates. We can't put a more recent vintage of Windows on the system because of license. I noted that Ubuntu worked on it just fine. it takes a day just to run all the updates. Dell did not have XP as a supported OS, but I was eventually able to get links to drivers through a forum somewhere.

I cannot fathom running in to a burning building.

Rain of the day

It rained most of the day yesterday. We were in Richmond visiting the tax guy when the rain started. The drops were these little stinging pins. The roads were amazingly slick. It rained most of the night.

This morning, the roads were slick. Apparently, the rain stopped fifteen minutes before the rush hour started. I had to cross the street and walk in the street on the north side of Westheimer. The on coming traffic as I head in to town on the outbound side of the road is relativity light that time in the morning. Still, most people in the far right lane (their right) moved over for me. I was blinking my flashlight on my coat to be seen. A couple people just plane don't care and try to pass in that lane. 

When I got to work, I noticed my pant legs had gone down below my heal. That is one way to keep the mud off my boots. My boots were roughly clean. I had been walking on the street most of the time. Those big waste deep holes are still there.

By the time I walked in to work, the sky was clear from sized to side. The ground was saturated as the sun came up. The smell was of wet dirt.

By lunch, however, the wind was blowing cold in the shade. One of the guys was in shorts because "I want it to be Summer so bad!" He refuses to believe it is as chilly as it is in late March. This is Huston after all. It is supposed to be hot and humid.

Sugar vs Hight Fructose Corn Syrup

"Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests," said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. "When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight." ... In the 40 years since the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup as a cost-effective sweetener in the American diet, rates of obesity in the U.S. have skyrocketed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1970, around 15 percent of the U.S. population met the definition for obesity; today, roughly one-third of the American adults are considered obese, the CDC reported. High-fructose corn syrup is found in a wide range of foods and beverages, including fruit juice, soda, cereal, bread, yogurt, ketchup and mayonnaise. On average, Americans consume 60 pounds of the sweetener per person every year.  "Our findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic," Avena said.  The new research complements previous work led by Hoebel and Avena demonstrating that sucrose can be addictive, having effects on the brain similar to some drugs of abuse.   In the future, the team intends to explore how the animals respond to the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in conjunction with a high-fat diet -- the equivalent of a typical fast-food meal containing a hamburger, fries and soda -- and whether excessive high-fructose corn syrup consumption contributes to the diseases associated with obesity. Another step will be to study how fructose affects brain function in the control of appetite.  The research was supported by the U.S. Public Health Service. Princton

The emphases above is mine. High Fructose Corn Syrup I don't feel the need to define sugar. That should say something right there.

I get free sodas at work. I may as the our HR person to look in to charging for the sodas that have corn syrup in them to make it easier for me to walk past them every day. I may be a paria, but I will be skinnier and able to out run those tubby complainers.

I'm getting tired of being lied to by corporations. For the last couple years I've had a pretty good idea that there was something wrong with HFC because so many huge corporations were telling me it was fine. If what you are doing is hurting people, then stop doing it. Do something else that is not hurting people. Do not hide it. Do not deny it after there is proof. Do not lobby your troubles away with cheap politicians. Fix the problem.

We need a tax on lobbying by non living citizens. If you are a corporation or a foreign national, you should have to pay a tax relative to how much money you are going to make by lobbying for some rule or law change.

Notes:

There are schools in really shitty areas who have gotten a grant from our government to give food to the kids to take home to feed their families. You cannot learn on an empty stomach.

I was listening to a podcast of a financial show. They used Lady Gaga as a segway.  I thought the song didn't fit the show. Then I thought something far more disturbing. I could identify a Lady Gaga song by the beat, no words. ... sigh.

Four Square is the new Twitter. I am not posting where I am at all times. Deal with it. I think it would be far more interesting to post where I am not at any given time. I should tweet what is not going on or how much fun I'm not having. I'm sure people would find that as interesting as my current fare of meal contents and complaining. Maybe that is complaining.

Some states, like Ohio, have different colored license plats for people who have been convicted of drunk driving. I like that idea.

There is no legal definition of white as in a race. No binding definition anyway. for the most part there have been definitions of black and white was mostly what was left over. A hundred and fifty years ago Irish were not white. A hundred years ago Italians and Jews were not white. Is that some crazy stuff? I'm sick of being lumped in with those evil greedy controlling freaks. I want to be able to chose 'other' on all the forms and just write 'You tell me' in the line provided.

Internet Explorer 9

Windows XP will not be supported for Internet Explorer 9. "So what?" many say. Well, that is a big deal when we have a mandate at work to keep our machines as high security as possible and all our internet machines are running XP. The cost of upgrading would be prohibitive.  We don't even have that many computers on the internet at my company.

The most likely outcome is to finally buy computers with a more recent vintage of Windows for internet boxes and not just cull the dregs, slap XP on them and plug them in to the net. "Is that old lab machine on fire? Then slap XP on it and use it as an internet machine." Well, maybe not.

As much as I hate being told to upgrade and better, forced to do so, I agree with Microsoft on this one. Windows XP came out in 2002 I believe. That makes it eight years old. That is like 40 in computer years. Ancient! It needs to just die and make room for DRM laden OSes that have built in death dates like Vista and Windows 7.

There comes a time where a software company can just plane not support old crap any longer. There is a reason security updates only come out every so often. It costs money to maintain software. It is also very annoying and frustrating for programmers to work on relics. It is not like Windows XP is a classic and deserves to be restored to original parts.

Internet explorer 9 will not support Linux either. No one seems worried about that.

Vlogging

I'm starting to get over the vlogging idea. I've been watching tons of vlogs. OK, like ten. It got old pretty quick. There are like two I really started to like the people and wanted to know more about them. Thee are a couple of YouTube channels that I like that are not vlogs.

Charles Trippy

This guy is just hyper. He has the most understanding fiancée of all time. His dad used to play in a band in the early eighties. He met Cher when he was like one. He seems to have some connections and is indignantly able to afford to do things all the time like travel and have cool things to vlog about.

BreakingNYC

This guys has three or four channels. I wonder if he and Meekakitty are involved. Not worried about it. This is his personal channel. He films quite often while doing the dishes. His other chanels are for reviewing viral videos and skits. I like the personal channel by far the best. I would watch it even if the other two vanished.

Shaytard

Poppatard, Mommatard, and all the little tards. This is a family from the Midwest now living in LA and doing the whole LA thing. The quality seems to have gone down hill after their one year anniversary. It seems like they are in the middle of some huge project and now they phone in the vlog. Sad.

They recently had a vlog about a slip and slide. The dad had more fun than anyone else including the kids. That is so middle America. Love it.

Meekakitty

She is hyper and kind of nuts. She won $100,000 bucks from her vlog a while back. She is using it for college. I follow her on Twitter. Recently she recorded 45 minutes of video only to realize she never hit record. Ouch. I've done that. Always look for that little red light. Never remember that one.

David's Farm

Not a vlog. This is not a how to channel either. This is the guy I've blogged about before. He has jumps and race tracks they set up on his farm. This is the guy with the black farm truck that he abuses and rebuilds and abuses some more.

Crazy British Bloke

This guys is about as close to a match for what I envision my vlog being like. He has a day job where he hardly ever videos anything. He has a wife who almost never ends up in the videos. He hangs out with friends and gets trashed while recording the ridiculous shit they do. He hangs with the folks at David's Farm quite a bit. Not a bad thing. No shortage of maniacal happenings to video.

Vlogbrothers

This is a couple of brothers who send videos back and forth to each other. Well, sort of. They are doing everything for entertainment purposes. They have charity work going on of some kind. I'm not sure what. I don't follow up on anything, typical consumer that I am.

PhilipDeFranco

I don't know why I follow this guy. I can't stand him. It is like watching a train wreck.

Notes:

Someone in one of the podcasts was trying to compare the big bang to a hand grenade.The problem is that there was no outside of the hand grenade. It was just an explosion with no reason or so the stories go. You would have had to observe the big bang from inside the grenade.

Facebook past Google as the number one visited site in the U. S.. Pretty cool. 14% of all U. S. page visits over a week period. That is just frightening. I don't even like Facebook.

My mother got a guitar. She got an acoustic electric. It is awesome. The little practice amp she got is very quiet. There is no hiss at all. The feel of the instrument is tight. It has a built in tuner. How cool is that? it makes me nostalgic for the days I attempted to play a guitar. Too bad I was so horrible at it.

Got this from CNN headline news.

"Google staying in China but will no longer censor Chinese searches, redirecting users there to its Hong Kong servers." - CNN (email news alert)

I don't get it. How does sending people from China to Taiwan's servers mean you are staying in China without censorship? Doesn't this mean China will block the hits to Google Taiwan?

In honor of Marine Lance Cpl Garrett W. Gamble

Nat happened by this last week on her way back from the tax guy. Funny how things work out. I thought she did a beautiful job of putting the music over the precession. I thought she did a great job of choosing the music as well. Good job Sweety.

Thank you Garrett. We thank you for our freedom. We wish all whom you touched well.

Saturday

Rain, cold and all, I got some yard related work done. My father offered to help me change the oil and sharpen the blade of my mower. We also got an air filter and looked at the spark plug. The pug was cherry, but the filter looked like a blue bird's nest.

Then, we messed around with an old anvil he found somewhere. It took some effort to clean off the rust, but it was worth it. It looks like the anvil is from a company in Erie U. S. and has paten pending dates of 1912/1914 Pretty good find.

I'm calling this Saturday a win. Had fun hanging out with the parents. Until, that is, he bought my dream camera. humph. I did get to lick all the new video cameras at Fry's. Again, a win of a Saturday.

My Life

Life has been pretty good to me. That is, God has been good to me. Or fortune. Whatever you believe in.  Things are not that bad if I'm honest. Things are boring, but stable in a way. They are unstable at the same time. I do not claim to have a roller coaster life. I don't want one. 

if I had to play a song that was my life it would be chamber music. Something on a harpsichord that no one in the room has ever heard before. There is no rock and roll in my life. That's fine. Not sure that is worth wanting. There is no metal or swing. There is little classical. There is some bluegrass and some country. I like that. Not too much.

If my life were a food it would be a roast beef sandwich with chips and a soda. The sandwich has pickles, but no jalapeños. That would be nice, to have some jalapeños.or some Tabasco. What do I know about a good roast beef sandwich?

My life could not be a TV show. There is not nearly enough adventure or drama in my life for that. The script would not make it past the first intern. I like it that way.

If I were a Dungeons and Dragons character I would be a farmer or a cow-poke. I would be honest and hard working. I would be out of the way in a boring place where the orks don't bother. I prefer it that way.

If my life were a car, it would be a small four -banger pickup. Good for some things and not so much for others, efficient. That is probably best.

If my life were a day, it would be a day where you worked, played, ate, drank only soft drinks and never really stopped to count your blessings. It would be a clear day, not really memorable as a day, only for the things that happened.

If my life were a tool, I would be a medium sized crescent wrench, the tool you reach for for all the time without realizing it, the tool that you use for medium stress tasks. There are better tools for just about everything, but that is the one you grab.

If my life were a blog entry, it would be this one.

"Was that light green?"

FAIL!

This is that Houston Bus vs Houston Light Rail collision a week or two ago. It sucks I have to go to a sight located in the UK to find the video.

Lunch Conversation

• "This is lunch. Talk about video games." said to someone talking shop.
• One of the coworkers' husbands is taking the kids to Alaska this summer. Even though she will be working, she kind of feels like she will be the one on vacation.
• Multimedia
• Video editing and that the hard part is deciding what to edit, not what program works better or any of the technical crap.
• USB sound cards under Linux.
• How music carries around the office from one place to the other.
• Gangster rap at the office and in line for jury duty.
• Video games, finally.
• First Edition DnD and how there is something broken in Fourth Edition. No one knows how to fix it.

Oil in the sand

Canada has scads of oil in the tar-sand form near Alberta. Canada is a democracy. There for, the lawsuits have started. In third world countries, people are simply told to shut up and deal with it. That is the end of the argument. In first world countries the cost of digging up identical oil is tripled by the lawsuits and legislation and unions and environmental impact studies and the second layer of environmental impact studies because the first set didn't say what someone wanted them to say, and tie-dying t-shirts for the protesters. 

Apparently, the amount of oil in this field rivals that of Saudi Arabia. This is convienly located in the sovereign territory of a stanch ali of the U. S.. They are pretty laid back folks on top of that.

The gripe is that the oil obtained this way produces either 15% more or 3 times as much green house gas, depending on whom you listen to, to make it to market.

The process also takes three barrels of water to get one barrel of oil. You have to feed live baby seals in to the pipes for some reason. trekkies and brown coats living together, ANARCHY!!!!

How do I get in on this?

U. S. vs China money

The U. S. is telling China to let their currency appreciate while the U. S. dollar depreciates. the Chinese are displeased.. They call that protectionism. That makes me feel a bit better about our current administration. I know consciously that protectionism is not always a good thing. It makes me feel better though. It is an emotional reaction.

What is the big deal? If China keeps their curacy low, Chinese built stuff is cheaper. This makes people want to buy Chinese goods and services. As the difference between Chinese currency and the U. S. currency, is less, the price of Chinese goods and services goes up when a person in the U. S. buys it. This makes it more likely that someone else will come along with a competitively priced product.

Google

Google is taking over every corner of the web. These are the bullets I can think of off the top of my head.

• Online Applications
• YouTube
• Maps
• Search
• Web
• Product
• Video
• Books
• Everything
• Blogging (blogspot)
• Phone with Google Voice
• voice mail
• text
• VOIP
• TV. Apparently Google will buy a troubled satellite TV company.

Notes:

Today I had to add some settings to a configuration file and rebuild an RPM. Then I needed to Apply that change to a computer and make an image. What freaks me out is how long this took and how much frigging work was involved. I was able to describe that in general terms in two simple sentences and it took me half a day.

i was using a software on my phone called ChompSMS. It worked pretty darn well. Trouble started today after an update. They started taking up half the screen with ads. I reverted to using the default messaging software. It lacks one feature that makes me think they are deliberately leaving it out. The default software does not tell you how many characters you have typed or have left in a message as you type. Handy for things like Twitter and such. Drag.

Lunch Conversation

Lunch conversation have been sparse lately. Today was rainy so I ended up eating int the lunch room. I was only in the lunch room for a couple minutes.

When you go shopping for groceries, do you go down every isle or target specific areas an hit those?

A bunch of the software guys (men) were talking about who was going on a date and who was full of crap.

Stocks, but not much about sports that I heard. Maybe I just missed that conversation.

How the rain is messing with a couple people's plans. I tried to mention that I needed to mow and couldn't , but missed my opportunity.

Planting a tree

I'm bad at this. I filmed Nat and I planting a tree in our back yard. Not only can you not tell what we are doing half the time, but I didn't think to show the final product before it got dark. FAIL! Well, fail on the filming. The tree will hopefully be fine.

It is a Mandarin Orange tree. Should grow to 15 feet or so.

That is a piece of crumpled up siding or roofing material I pull out of my back yard. It looks like they just piled dirt on top of the garbage that was there when they built the house. That is very promising for the foundation.

It as fun planting a tree with Nat. How long have she and I been married? Listen to us? God, I look, sound and act like my old man.

Sunday Afternoon

We are taking care of a friend's birds. They refused to talk for a bit. Then they wouldn't shut up.

I was still under the weather this weekend so not much else got done.

Update:

Left out the whole day so here is an update.

• Got up way too early.
  
• Finished a book I've been reading.
• Read a bunch of blogs and learned just about nothing.
• Learned it was daylight savings time switch last night.
• Griped about daylight savings time.
• Ate ... something.
• Had some bad coffee. The coffee maker has seen better days.
• Didn't plant tree because I'm still a bit ill.
• Fed birds and filmed it for no good reason.
• Went to Wal-Mart and got a mop, fish food, and a new coffee maker. 
• Cut, uploaded bird video. God I'm bad at this. This was the highlight of my day. I enjoy editing without deadlines, regardless of quality.
• Typed this blog entry. Realized I left a bunch of crap out and updated it.

Whose vs Which

Sometimes the phrase of which is used as the possessive of which:Chicago is a city of which the attractions are many or Chicago is a city the attractions of which are many. The use of this phrase can often seem awkward or pretentious, whereas whose sounds more idiomatic:Chicago is a city whose attractions are many. Diccomtionary

Usage Note: It has sometimes been claimed that whose is properly used only as the possessive form of who and thus should be restricted to animate antecedents, as in a man whose power has greatly eroded. But there is extensive literary precedent for the use of whose with inanimate antecedents, as in The play, whose style is rigidly formal, is typical of the period. In an earlier survey this example was acceptable to a large majority of the Usage Panel. Those who avoid this usage employ of which: The play, the style of which is rigidly formal, is typical of the period. But as this example demonstrates, substituting of which may produce a stilted sentence. See Usage Notes at else, which, who. The free web dictionary

I've noticed in so many places the WRONG usage of 'whose' that it makes me sick. I do not know why, but it sticks out to me like a sore thumb. If you are talking about a thing in a way that dos not personify it, use 'that's' or rephrase the sentence.

This happens all over the place. I find it on blogs, newspapers, people seem to say it all the time. It is one of those things like 'paramount'. So many people have gotten it wrong for so long that they just change the definition because, why not. Who cars really? I mean what difference will it make in a hundred years when people speak a whole different language and try to decipher what the hell we were talking about in the ancient history of 1.5 lifetimes.

I know, I know. I'm the last one who should bitch about grammar. Both of the learned web institutions are wrong. You do not use 'whose' for a that or a which. GODDAMMIT!!!

Mother Nature

We are but part of the world, not the world.

Hunters were combing the snowy brush around Chignik Lake, Alaska, on Friday in an attempt to hunt down up to four wolves that killed a 32-year-old special education teacher in the first known fatal wolf attack in the U.S. in modern times. ... Candice Berner, a special education teacher who traveled among several rural schools on the Alaska Peninsula, 475 miles southwest of Anchorage, was attacked while jogging and listening to her iPod Monday evening on the deserted, 3-mile-long road that leads out from the village to its small airstrip. The Los Angeles Times

Why was she not armed? Will people travel that stretch of the woods unarmed in the near future? Will the cops give anyone crap for being armed outside of town for the next couple years?

I've never paid attention to the state of Alaskan weather until this moment. Some news reports from Alaska blame weather for heightened wold activity closer to towns. The wolves are not as able to bring down prey and stay fed this spring. People in rural areas have lost bets and livestock to wolves in greater numbers this year than recent years.

So, there was some hint in the news of greater danger. That is no excuse. I believe that if the wolves present a threat to humans that threat needs to be addressed with absolute precision. If that means moving the wolves several thousand miles, which I fear might not work, or a cull, then so be it.

This pings too close to home. Thursday afternoon, Bill brought Elle home from school.  They went for a walk up the street because Elle didn't want to be cooped up all afternoon. I was home sick and heard a story about a stray dog that frightened them. The dog did not seem friendly. They came home unharmed, but now I want to patrol the neighborhood looking for stray dogs.

Video: Wolves attack dogs in Alaska (2007)

This is old footage from late 2007. The snow came late and the wolves had trouble hunting.

Video: Women nearly attacked by wolves in Alaska (2007)

Very Scary stuff. I live how many thousands of miles from Alaska and the hair goes up on the back of my neck hearing her description of the attack.

Bad mood

Wow, I'm in a bad mood. I guess it is a good thing I didn't go to the game night thing.

Spring Break

Why are so many people I know who are out of school so happy about Spring Break? Did they have that good of a time on Spring Breaks in the past? Is the memory of their exploits or adventures carrying over to present? Are their lives so mundane now that they have to latch on to something from their past?

Do they have connections do actually go do something fun? Do they seek new people to share the experiences with or do they hunt down old comrades?

I never did anything fun on a Spring Break. I usually sat at home and caught up on work. Now, I work straight through without a skip. The magic week is nothing more than another week to me. It used to be that way long ago. I've really missed something here. Not sure I care.

Notes:

I walked in to work today and got started on a day and a half of crap that I would have been doing anyway. It turns out people missed me. That is a good thing right? My stomach started acting up. I do not have the run down feeling like I did before. I'm still not 100% though.

I'm working with tons of USB based storage at work. Some of the CF cards are mounted through SATA devices. I'm not aware how similar USB and SATA are.

It is so very difficult to be 'on' when you feel sick. It wares on you and worries you on top of the day.

This must be shared

Poem about Obama.

Notes:

Job security is now the number one concern in a career search of new graduates of collage. It is just an economic necessity.

Al Gore is asking India to take a vow of poverty and give him and his cronies the money. No wonder India is not so much on board with the whole cap and trade and global warming payoff. I for one would be far more likely to buy this whole global warming thing if the people yelling the loudest were not making a killing.

The whole flu thing peaked last fall. Not only have we had a light flue season, we have had a very light flue season. Even the regular flue season is light. Now people are worried that next flue season, people won't listen.

Obama told teachers they should be fired if they under perform. Obama just went up a notch in my book. This puts him at -261

Had to come home sick. It is a stomach thing. No abdominal cramping. That is weird. Normally I get all kinds of cramping with the rest of these symptoms.

I got spoofed

Someone swiped my name and email off the net. I don't put it up on my sites except in Facebook and on the work page. I imagine they have no trouble figuring out what aria code I live in. They started spamming my work email like mad, used my work email to spoof other people at work (with "get your Russian bride ..." emails) and left me a voice mail about a "very important document." My personal number is not on the net, but I'm in the book.

I am required to put my work email which contains my full name on the work web page. We tried to design the code of it so bots would not pick it up, but humans can read it.

The phone call kind of pisses me off. The person on the other end had a really thick accent. I'm not sure, but it sounded far eastern. The man's lack of enthusiasm for what he was doing still came through. He just didn't sound like he was in to it. That or he had been on shift for a couple days. The background was fascinating. It sounded like people with the same accent speaking French and English.

The emails are blatantly spam. The phone call was blatantly spam. The scary things are the new phishing scams. The bastards use documents and graphics from the web page of the bank they are spoofing. They have gotten smart. It is getting to the point the fake emails look more convincing than the real ones.

For a minute I was worried they hacked my email, but you can put anything in the "from" field. I'm relieved to be honest that is is just some spammer as apposed to some serious identity thief. Surely I am not hack proof. I try to make it annoying for hackers. It is a bit like The Club that people used to put on cars. They were just there to make thieves look at the car next to yours.

Lunch

Today at lunch I went to McD's for a couple $1 sandwiches with no mayo. I normally grab a canned drink before I go to save money. I get sodas free at work for the time being. Might as well milk it while it is still there. That is one of those things I can picture leaving the scene in these difficult times.

Most of the time I put the unopened can in my back pocket, order food and go eat on the roof of the parking garage. I don't want to walk in to any place that serves food with a soda in plane sight. It is just bad form.

Well, for some reason, I opened the can on the way down the elevator today. I decided "I'll just drink half the can before I get to McD's and put it in my back pocket anyway." Can you tell what is coming? Yes, I ended up walking back to work after lunch with a wet bum.

If it had been any other pocket there would have been damage. My phone, USB key, wallet take up all the other pockets. My keys and some coins shared the picket with the can of Mt Dew. No real damage done.

Yup, I'm counting my blessings.

Video

Today I feel pretty good about getting some media online over the weekend. I know it is not particularly good media, but it is something and it is practice. Eventually, I'll get the editing thing down. There is a time for jumps and a time for fades. There is a time for audio and a time for text.There is a time for sampling and a time to make a face.

Transitions, a fade or wipe or whatever, from one scene to another has become unnecessary on the internet. Having a jump from one sentence or sentence fragment to another is the norm. For goodness sake, cut out the boring bits and just leave it so it looks edited. It is an honest 'normal' thing to do. If you use transitions in media intended for the internet and not something that is supposed to be a professional production, people think you are trying to hide something. It seems that timeliness is more important that spending a long time editing. Get the Vlog up and people will watch it.

A vlog entry is expected to be free flowing thought with the boring bits cut out. A production is expected to be edited and full of transitions.

Text is a real conundrum. I hate text because I hate reading it in a video. Nothing pisses me off like a bunch of text over the action, a bunch of text put up on blue screens between scenes with some opinion or explanation that breaks up the action. Credits are cool. When well done, it can help set things up and even help the flow of the action. Most of the time it is just in the way. It should be used sparingly and only after practice.

Logos are a pain in the ass online. Movies and TV shows play a logo of several production companies at the beginning of shows and they carry this over to the internet. Big mistake. Play them at the end. Make them appropriate to the content. FailBlog does a good job.

You can now annotate your videos. This is a pain in the ass too. They are great for pointing out what part of the screen to watch for some action or to correct a misspoken fact. They are annoying when used to beg for 5 stars or thumbs up in the rating system or to poke fun at someone in the video. Again, these functions should be used sparingly and with practice.

You can now put links on your videos. Please allow me to say this with the sarcasm knob turned to 11. "yay." This step was inevitable and at the moment only applies to YouTube. I'm already sick of hosts pointing out the quarter of the screen to click on to go to some page they are hocking. This feature has not even been fully implemented and I'm already sick of it. I much prefer links in the "dooblydoo" (This is the sidebar that is now below and to the right of the video screen on YouTube.).

There is an automatic translator with subtitles choice on many videos. This is awesome. I have not gotten it to work yet because it is not available on the videos I wanted to try it out on. That will change soon. YouTube says this feature will be on all videos some time soon. There is now a way to add subtitles to your videos. You can put up a text file that contains what is said and the auto time feature will automatically time the words to the spoken bits of the video. Nice, if it works as well as advertised. I haven't tried it.

There is a reason they have 49 takes of every scene in movies. In real life it is all first take. Second takes really suck and they go down hill quickly in quality from there. The quality curve here is a cliff. Asking someone to hold that thought while you dig for your video camera is death. Spontaneous video needs to be spontaneous. The solution is to shoot everything and take care of it in the cutting room.

Special effects can  be really cool. they can more than get in the way of things. Recently a vlogger used a green screen to add a dinosaur in the background of just some random shot where they found a green wall. This was while the group was just playing around in a theme park.That was a fun example. The addition was obvious. It is much easier to get people to imagine the special effect and far more difficult to fool people. It really has gotten to the point where you can do some very interesting effects with free software on a notebook. That doesn't mean go nuts, but have fun.

Practice, practice, practice. I need more practice. Expect some text soon. I know I complain about it, but it is an important tool and I want to get some practice.

Door Knob

Elle helped me put a new door knob in the front door. I pulled the knob off the door headed to work one day last week. It was a cheap knob. The new one is a step up. Elle was a big help. Mainly her enthusiasm to do stuff helped me stay focused. Now, if only I could get my self to sit down and pay the bills.

Purple helmets

A different kind of stunt driving. NSFW!!!

??? What the hell did I just watch?

Ergo Proxy

Ergo Proxy showed up on hulu at some point. It is all about ending slavery and nature vs nurture. It has that loss of identity thing that so many science fiction stories have. The omnipotent government and the ability of the government control reality because they can control the news, data feeds and even the testimony of robots in court.

It is a non post apocalyptic story. The world survived some kind of environmental trouble and now lives in a dome city or cities. The subsuviant robots catch a virus that makes them self aware. Some super power killer is avenging something by killing humans. I'm not sure.

The animation looks funny. I'm not sure why. It reminds me a little of Batman cartoon series in the dark painted look. It looks like a black and white move in many respects. They did have that cliché scene with a baby carriage slowly rolling down a flight of stairs as the mother is murdered, unable to help. It doesn't look like a lot of thought went in to the plot. Style was the most important consideration in this series.

I give it a 5 out of 10.  Good visuals. Just confusing enough to keep you interested. The dubbing was good as far as I could tell. At least they used actors.

Yard work

I'm this desperate for something to put up on YouTube. I filmed myself doing some yard a work. I'm so ashamed.

To do list

• Yard work
• Weed Whack
• Mow
• Spray weed killer
• Go after the ants again
• Plant Tree
  
• Pay Bills
• Install door knob, though Nat will probably beat me to it.
  
• Laundry
  
• Film something

Notes:

Some artist from the scene in New York in the late sixties said you could work in a book store and be an artist in that period in New York and survive. You cannot do that any more. The city is friendly to the art, but not the artist. The price of survival is just too high in the city.

Spent 10 minutes looking for for a work USB drive. Found it in my shirt pocket. I'm trying to think of the last time I wore a shirt with a pocket. it has been a while. Need to get on that laundry.

Equipment failure

It's the little things that when they break, make for large problems. There is no Wal-Mart or Auto-zone to pick up a replacement windshield wiper motor.

Surely, there is a wrecked car lying off the side of the road with a serviceable part you might ... find.

Luck or skill

Last night I tried something that had great probability of failing and destroying every bit of data on my computer. I played with my partisans on my computer. The computer has two drives. The system drive and the other one. The swap was on the other drive and was not being mounted on boot properly. I tried some things and they did not work. Then I decided to try messing with the partisans.

The program I used is called gparted. It is on the Ubuntu live CD. I hope that is one they never pull. I use the Ubuntu live CD all the time for that program. You can do it all from the command line, but with all the moving and shrinking and numbers that all start looking the same after a while, I really like using the graphical interface to keep things straight.

• System drive
• Shrink partisan by a couple gigabytes.
• Move to the front of the drive.
• Create a swap partisan at the end of the drive.
• Other drive
• Remove the partisan for swap from this drive.
• Grow the data partisan.

It worked. The machine booted. Everything seems to be working. I'm not sue what to make of that.

When I was leaving the house this morning, the doorknob came off in my hand. One of the damn racers had driven through our yard. I did make it to work, but I'm trying to figure out if that is a good or bad thing in itself.

Random comments on my video

This is the video

This is the comment.

osiriz88 has made a comment on Kenko Flip Mino HD test indoors: No offence, but why does your living room look like a junkyard? Sell some of all that junk and buy a vacuum cleaner.

"No offence, but you live in a shit hole and I hope you die. Why aren't you a clean freak like the rest of society?" Fuck you osiriz88. Walk a mile in my shoes, which I do every day to get to the bus stop.

Quantum Questions

When a human observes something, the reality collapses in to a state of being. I have a couple questions. I'm sure I have this completely wrong. Am I missing the idea of the suspension loop collapsing? There is probably a set of rules somewhere, but I have not found them yet.

• When you video something (any media), does the video collapse or the real thing when someone observes the video?
• Are there multiple levels of collapse? Heard of, believe deeply, see/hear/touch/smell,taste, work with for a lifetime.
• Proxy
  
• If I touch something with a stick while not looking or listening, does its reality collapse, or just the stick?
  
• When a train is going down a track when do the tracks exist vs not exist?
• Is "exist" the wrong word to use when speaking of the wave collapse?
  
• Does the whole Earth and everything on it collapse all the time.
  

Basically, I have no idea what is going on with Quantum. I need a Quantum for Dummies book. Gift idea that one.

Lunch Hour

I didn't even take a full hour. The weather was wonderful outside today at lunch. I didn't know this until I had already walked down stairs waring my jacket. I ended up carrying it. As I got off the bus this morning, the breeze was blowing rather cold. It threw me off.

Today was one of those days I didn't eat. I walked around in the sun and just absorbed the bright warm goodness. Cherry Coke is a Spring kind of drink it turns out.

From my vantage of the seventh floor of a parking garage I noticed how hazy it was this afternoon. Not sure why. The wind was blowing only yesterday. One day of still air is not usually enough to cause that kind of haze. Perhaps there was another reason for it.

I've heard of a piece of software that takes a video and makes a panoramic 360 degree picture out of it. I want to find this and take several shots from the useless places I hang out at lunch. I wander if all you have to do is spin on a heal in a circle to get a good source file for the software to work from.

Blog/Vlog Podcast/Vidcast

I've added so many podcasts that I'm going to have to pare them down. This is a good position to be in. I went through and removed a couple podcasts that consistently gave me errors download. I pulled a couple more that had not updated in a while. I did not go check out the web pages to find out if there was a new feed or if they had an excuse. I just dropped them.

There are a tone of fiction podcasts out there. There are a tone of geek type news podcasts as well. The MSN news podcasts tend to be recordings of shows. This is fine I guess, but they definitely do not have that personal feeling of the podcast specific recordings. Not sure how to quantify that.

A blog is written. A vlog is video. they are both ways of keeping a journal online. They tend to be personal or at least keep a personal feel. This is less and less true for blogs and probably vlogs soon as every company screams that they are missing the latest wave of grabbing eyeballs from the web.

A podcasts is audio. A vidcast is video. They are both ways of recording a show and putting the content online. These are all over the place. I tried to be part of Flanking Position which was a vidcast of sorts. The only trouble with it was the length. They insist on keeping it at around 30 minutes. I thought it should have been 8 or 10 minuets after the boring bits are cut out.

I cannot make myself do a daily or even weekly vlog. I'm not pretty or interesting.  You need one of those things to make a successful vlog. I will continue down my current path of attempting to make content that works. I haven't in over a week. I'll get back on the stick here shortly.

Urine Observation

This is going to be TMI for most people. Read at your one risk.

I've noticed that when I am on antibiotics, my urine has a specific smell. I've noticed it several times and with a couple different antibiotics I've been on over my life. Sometimes it does not happen. This makes me wonder if those antibiotics were placebos. Anyway. There is a purpose to telling you this.

This smell has only occurred one other time. Consistently, I've noticed the same smell after eating beef from McDonald's and some barbecue places. If I have pork or chicken, I do not seem to notice the smell.

Am I nuts? Is it some kind of coincidence? Is it not the antibiotics causing the smell?

Normal programming resumes now. Aren't you glad I don't have a vlog?

Morning Rain

Right before I walked out the door, the weather was almost clear. The weather shill said the storms were on their way. By the time I walked out the door, the rain was poring. The walk in was sloshy and wet.

The traffic was nuts. Right after  I got on the bus, someone ran a very red light in order to cut off the bus. They were turning right and so was the bus. The bus driver honked. Nearly the same thing happened right in front of my work. Moments before I got of the bus, someone cut off the bus and mad the driver hit the breaks. This prompted another honk. The conditions were slippery. People just have no idea how much danger they are placing on the people riding the bus.

Not ten minutes after I walked in the door, the rain stopped. People who came in right after me said shit like "I thought it was supposed to rain this morning." Most of the day my legs were wet and socks, from dripping down my leg, felt damp.

eh.

Notes:

This morning I had someone ask me how many pages a document had. I looked and said "Seventy pages." I looked again and it had 69 pages. I just automatically round 69 up to 70 without even thinking about it. Scary.

One thing social media (Facebook and Twitter ...) has shown me is how close many of the people I know are to the edge of climbing a tower and throwing rocks at people. In a morbid sort of way, it makes me feel much better about my life.

I'm trying a bunch of new podcasts that I found this weekend. Some of them really suck. That is, they do not appeal to me. I will not go in to names. You have to sift a lit of dirt to find a diamond.

I have the g1 phone. It has a built in keyboard. The new OS for it has a setting to make the whole phone flip from horizontal to versicle. This is mainly for phones that have no keyboard. The default for the G1 is to turn that off and use the keyboard exposure to determine if the phone orients itself. Well, I thought it was cool and turned it on. Now, I'm amazed how often I look at my phone, turn away, look back and the orientation has flipped. OK, it can be annoying.

There was an awesome rainbow at work today. Lance called me from his office to get a picture. I took my phone. I should have taken my camera. The phone would not focus correctly. Pictures sucked.