Day

All day at work felt like we were the Omega employees. We were the only company open in the building that I noticed. At least the AC was switched on. Traffic was very light in the area. We don't get Memorial day off and our boss is an ex marine. It is strange.

Nat wanted to go to breakfast this morning. We tried to hit Denny's because it is on the way, but no one came out to meet us. The door was unlocked. We ended up at I-Hop. Good breakfast. Great service.

it was beautiful weather in the morning. The lady at I-Hop asked us if we were headed to the beach. Would have been nice, but no. I too have to work. the waitress was on until 15:00. That question made me wander about the beach the rest of the day. I have been to Galveston. I do not like swimming in a 24/7/365 oil slick. Still, it sounded better than work.

A friend of mine is a cop and gets holiday pay for days like today. That is not a bad idea at all.

By 09:30 at work we had 31 out of 89 people are absent from work. Two of those will probably come in later in the day. That is a lot for this company. This tells me that many of those folks are taking the day off as vacation. People have spouses and family with the day off. I bet if I ran down the list most of the people gone have kids.

Lunch conversation

• Morning traffic, what morning traffic? Best part of coming to work today by a long shot.
• Brisket, Matt brought in some brisket, taters and beans from a BBQ he had this past weekend. Aaron brought in some biscuits his wife made. This soured conversation about techniques for brisket and past experiences.
• Video games
• The lack of keyboard support on consoles inside games.
• Still can't play people on the PC side of things.
• The IR control systems on the Wii are a bit lacking.
• Climate change and the shutting down of industry after industry.
• Expiration of different products and do they mean anything. eradiated eggs. 
• Fans at the Arrows game shouting 'bitch' in Spanish when the other team's goalie made a kick.
• More stores are closed on Memorial Day than New Year's Day. (No proof of that statement, but sounds plosable.)

I thought for sure I was going to eat alone at lunch today. There was a pretty good turnout.

No More lightening

I tried to get video of lightning last night. When I got the camera back in to the house and hooked it up, I noticed the lightening that I caught was blurry and over exposed. This tells me that I'm going to have to take video of lightening during the day with that camera. It has few manual settings for video and does not, of course, adjust nearly fast enough to capture lightening. Honestly, I don't expect it to capture lightening. Just thought I would give it a shot.

Poolless party

Nat and I got invited to a party at a friend's place. He got a house recently. It kind of hits close to my home because it is not far from a major road and he has the ass end of a strip mall right behind him. Nat and I have a fish market and a bar right in front of us and a night club on the other side. He has a half price books. We win for shit circumstances.

The food was pretty good. He served up all kinds of barbecue, but also had several vegetable trays. You know those prebuilt ones. They were great.

We walked in kind of on the late side. Pretty much every one who was drinking was drunk. as I walked up, I got a warning to be careful because they were throwing people in the pool. I brought a water resistant case and swim trunks. Still, I just don't like being bodily thrown in a pool. So, I didn't go out back until well after dark and most others had left.

We watched a movie. We watched another movie. I got an Irish coffee. We ate some popcorn. We argued with a drunk guy.

Did I mention that this is one of our redneck friends. Most of his friends are rednecks. Nothing wrong with that. I have the occasion to be a redneck. 

I shot a bunch of video that all sucked. I ended up deleting the footage. I was hoping to get some waterborne footage, but it seems we were a bit late. Maybe if we had made it to the party before people started getting thrown in. Who knows.

Why exhaust manifolds are hot

This guy has another video of exhaust on a motorcycle engine running with no manifold at all. You can watch the valves spitting fire. Still, this is pretty cool in my book.

Some good news

Notes:

CV stands for Curriculum Vita. It is a resume.

VAT stands for Value Added Tax. It is a way to do sales tax. Supposedly, it is calculated as bits are created in pieces all over the place and brought together in a products. Really, it is a sales tax.

Why is the president of the United States in the news every day? This just seems like a bad thing to me. There is no way it can end well. Any slow day in the news gives the press time to dig up something bad to hold under every one's noeses.

I heard a shoe shine ad on the old time radio podcast. That is something you just don't hear any more. They were so proud of the fact that their polish was “brushless”. It has been over a year since I polished boots. I've put water proofing agents on boots more recently.

Video file indexing

YouTube bitched at me last night because I uploaded a video with the index at the end of the file. I understand why they want it at the front of the file. This is called 'flattening' the file.

When you render a video, you do not have the index information until the file is done. Thus, most software puts the data at the end of the file. This is fine if you double click a file on your system because the player can just jump to the end of the file and read the index info and play the file without trouble.

However, when streaming a video, you do not have the opportunity to just jump to the end of the file to retrieve the index. The index contains information that may come in handy for playing. Thus, YouTube has to mess with every file in order to ensure the index is in a good place for streaming.

Now, I have no idea how to do this in my software. I bet there is a setting ... somewhere. I hate that. Software is getting to the point you just can't figure out how to get things done because there are just so many settings for every little thing that you can't keep them all straight.

Apparently, if you upload a video in just the correct format with the correct settings to YouTube, you do not have to suffer through the delay that is built in. YouTube has an amazing mechanism in place for allowing people to upload all kinds of formats regardless of index placement and they just change the format after it is uploaded. I'm impressed by the effort. It must take a massive amount of energy and some pretty nifty programming. I'm glad it works. I'm sick of the delay.

The oil spill

I've heard it said that that that oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico would not be nearly as bad as it is if they had not deliberately sank the rig. By doing this, the oil is now gushing at the bottom of the ocean rather than burning off at the top. Who made the decision to sink the rig? I have not heard the answer to this. Then again, some say it collapsed without help.

Some of the chemicals they are using to help control the oil may be doing as much damage than the oil. Some of the employees who were on the rig used the word “detained” and “forced to sign wavers” to describe their treatment after being rescued after the initial explosion.

A bunch of people who live along the Gulf Coast are asking the question “What would be different if this had happened along the East Coast?” That is a fair question. Hasn't drilling been opened up along the East Coast recently? I'm sure more than a couple people along that side of the country are muttering the same question.

Elisabeth Burnbalm lost her job. I'm really not sure why they bothered. Who is going to taker her place? Will they do any better of a job. Who put her there? Are they going to loose their job? I think not.

This has been called an “Environmental Catastrophe” by execs at BP. Note, they took over a month to call it by that label.

I've lost track of how many things have been tried to stop the flow of oil out of the ground at the bottom of the ocean. They used a big box, a smaller box, shoving stuff down the hole, welding, and a bunch of other stuff. One expert said if nothing were done, there is enough oil under that hole to keep ejecting oil at the current rate for the rest of all our lives. Keep trying BP.

This is Obama's Katrina. People are pointing fingers at his administration and asking “Where the hell were the feds?” “What did the inspections show before this [insert big scary word]?” “Why weren't we prepared?”

There are words like “suspend” “cancel” and “moratorium” being thrown around when talking about offshore drilling. I know a lot of people who work in offshore. I hope they do not suffer.

How many cluster fucks does it take to loose confidence in a U. S. president? We have become too used to having a lackey upon whom to lash all our woes too large to deal with on our own. Cluster fucks happen.

Arguing with Elle

Well, not arguing so much as trying to keep her occupied long enough for Nat to make it out of the Restaurant. This is parenting at its finest. Well, it is parenting. Well, it is something that works. Well, it is something that kind of works. OK, it hardly ever works. It almost didn't work this time. Elle survived, as did Nat and myself.

Notes:

Some say there is evidence that North Korea is gearing up for war. I sincerely hope not. The Norks may lack enough food and energy to feed their own people, but they can make a mess and get millions killed in the process.

I called in on the grass along Westheimer where I walk .It is getting hard to walk through. I had to transfer through about seven people before I got to the guy who said “We started that section yesterday. It will take us a couple days to make it out to the county line. “ What timing.

I'm trying to think of something I learned today. There were a couple things. I had to order a bunch of 2 head KVMs today at work. They have gotten much cheaper than I member them. I also found a mouse/keyboard combo that would have been very handy for me a couple months ago.

Thank you Lord for the blank page. For, no page may be filled with life that is not born blank. May I scrawl pages to life?

Permanent is a not a state. Forever is not a goal or a measure. Eternity is more real because it has an end by definition.

You can measure distance in a straight line in Google Maps. It takes a bit of doing. We live 46 miles or so from the coast and 32 miles from the ship channel.

All of existence as of 17:45 this afternoon

Yes, my life is moving along through my sea of bullet points on my way to the final bullet point at the bottom of the master list labeled “Die'”. There is another page of notes and bullets after this, but the pages are stuck together and I cannot read anything by holding a light up behind the paper. I have faith there is more to do.

Increasingly I feel out of control of what is going on around me, to me, because of me. This is not a sense of loss, it is a sense of realization. It has always been this way, I'm just now noticing it. I call this pivot point in my existence “Turning 40”. It took a long time to follow the other pivot point in my teens where I realized I had control of myself and my environment to a point that I labeled “Puberty”.

Every one is out to get my information. There is value connecting people and what they pay money for. The next time someone asks me for my name, I'm going to ask them how much they are going to give me for it. Is it worth a 10% discount on whatever? My credit card company just hands over that information at point of sale. Sounds like I should have a chat with my Bank.

Notes:

It was hot and sticky outside at lunch. I walked around wandering just how much hotter, dustier and dryer it is in Iraq or Afghanistan in the height of Summer. this thought made me feel much better about walking around on the top floor of the parking garage. The concrete feels some how radiant with reflected heat from the sunshine. I can see a pool in the apartment complex behind the garage. It makes me want to go swimming.

Every one is so concerned over Iran's nuclear program. “Iran needs to reassure international entities about the peaceful nature if its nuclear activities.” No one who has the clout is going to stop Iran from achieving a bomb, or the means to deliver it.

Note:

Damn you blank page. Damn you to hell!!!!

I updated from Red Hat 5.4 to Red Hat 5.5 on my work machine. Things seemed to go well. That is, until I tried to drag and drop a file to the trash can. It would not let me. I tried hitting the delete key in the GUI and nothing. My user account is on the network. I had to change the rights to my .Trash file to 777 in order to move files to the trash can in Gnome. It worked before. What a drag. =]

Most of my day today was spent a) setting up a couple virtual build machines and b) finding hardware, mice and keyboards for people starting soon. Mainly I updated my spreadsheet every seven minutes. It is funny

Got the laptop kind of running. My laptop does not like the 2.6.32 kernel. I had to revert to the 2.6.31 to get it running in anything beyond low graphics mode. it is far better than nothing. That is for sure.

LOST

I knew it.

I'm not sure what to say beyond that. After the first season the forums were light up with people saying they were all dead and the island is really purgatory or some equivalent.

So, where was the line? I haven't read any of the synopses yet. I want to speculate on my own before reading other's opinions and conclusions. I may sound really stupid and inattentive, nothing new there.

The nuke worked. The time lines were split. In one time line, every one was dead and justhanging on to memories as they all cought up what was going on.

The other time line was the island. Every one dies. there is no 'now' here. Both time lines converged after death. No, not every one died at the same time, but every one met up at the end of it all as though all of life in all time lines happened in an instant.

In death, all the time lines you were in converge. There is no 'now' here. Even if you live ten thousand years in one of the billions of timelines you live through, you die at some point. There is only one of you in that place.

In at least one time line somewhere, Jack had a teenage son. In at least some time line somewhere, James was a cop.

There is no 'now' here. This is not a time line. This is something else.

Couple of videos for the day

Painfully slow crash

It almost looks like the wind was blowing this massive ship in to a peer. The two tugs just can't counter act the wind blowing. The description says no one got hurt. Thank God. jump to the end to get an idea of the size of that ship and how much wind there was blowing the correct direction to move this massive craft. Do you know how much those shipping containers are? There must be thousands of them on this ship above the deck line.

Painful IED attack

These guys are just tooling along, minding their own business, waving at the locals, then, bang. What a fucked up war we find ourselves in.

Missing video

There was a really graphic video of perhaps twelve people in the bed of a pickup that lost it going down a normal hill on a normal looking road and flipped. It looked like many people were injured.I would have posted it, accept for the "free energy" ads that the poster attached all over the video. looser.

The way they used to make anchors

Anchors the size of an aircraft. And by hand. Look at the size of the mechanical hammers. It gets me how those me just seem to fall in to a pattern of ten men hammering with sledgehammers in one spot.

Aluminium air tank making

Here you go boys and girls. This is how a diving tank is made.

Suicide

Not embedded here. Man decides to kill himself. He climbs up a bridge. He lights himself on fire. Sits there for a long time. Scoots out to the end of the decrative bird thing he is sititng on and falls to his death, flaming the whole way.

I can think of less painful ways of doing oneself in. Who am I to judge. The less painful methods won't get you on the internet I suppose.

Laptop issues

Ubuntu 10.04 and Xubuntu 10.04 bot die attempting to boot my laptop. It is a Ubuntu thing I suppose. It worked before. I'm telling you, there is only one way to express my feelings.

Fedora 13 doesn't come out for three more days. I may have to try that on my laptop to get me by. Why did I bother upgrading? I hadn't run that laptop in weeks. Why did i bother? At least now I know it is a failed effort.

Old Wireless Access Point

There was a wireless access point on my shelf for about the last six years. I finally broke down today and tried to set it up. I really wanted to update my laptop to the latest Ubuntu. I decided to do this first for some ridiculous reason. Well, I cannot get my current wireless router to work at all unless I completely disable encryption. The WEP standard is apparently not as standard as one would hope.

I break open the box. It is funny working on new equipment that is several years out of date. Everything was wrapped in plastic and had that new electronics smell. I'm sure it is carcinogenic. Still it is fun to play with some new piece of equipment to try to get it to work.

I plug the thing in to the wall and my current router. Remember, it is an access point, not a router itself.

It took me a while to find the stupid thing on the network and connect to the IP. The book said the access point had a static IP by default, but they were, as usual, full of crap. It was using DHCP by default. It is no wonder no one sets up these old access points correctly. It is like the engineers were out to get you. You have to know the precise length of a WEP key and get no help even for limiting you hitting wrong keys in the web page interface. I should have known I was in trouble when the instructions said "You can user Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape to configure your access point." Yikes.

Then came configuring wireless. I made the normal settings, but no dice. The computer would not even believe that the access point existed. After fenagling for an hour, I read the box to discover the description '802-11a' on the side of the box. I don't think my laptop supports 'a' at all. I think it is an '802-11b/g' receiver in the laptop.

So, I connected my laptop to the router using the 20 foot cable that came with the access point and chucked the rest of the ancient equipment.

's'

Remember me complaining about the 's' key on my server? Every time I hit the 's' key a specific program popped up. That was really annoying. Do you have any idea how many commands and words have an 's' in them?

I had to lop the head off Gnome and start over. If you go in to your home folder and remove .gconf and .gconfd folders, you effectively start your Gnome experience over again. This worked. I'm kin of pissed how many times I've had to do this in order to fix weird shit that just kind of happens in Gnome.

Cannes

Cannes has been highly documented. Here is some information you can only get from a participant.

A film critic name Mark Kermode explained the hierarchy of the card system. You need a card to enter the film showings.

• Yellow: Forget it
• Blue: Queue for an hour and a half, you might get in.
• Pink: Yes, you will probably get in.
• Pink Pastel: Yes, you will get in.
• White: How may we help you.

The crowds are like a football match scrum. Doors have been broken down and people have gotten hurt getting in to some films.

Why is white on top? No black card? No brown card? Racists!!!!

Notes:

Fare tax is a tax on purchased items. I've covered this. It keeps coming up. I love the idea because people who normally do not pay income tax will have to pay the national sales tax, or VAT tax or whatever form it takes. That is great. The idea of a fare tax means you eliminate income tax. Voters know that if we allow a fare tax, we will still have income taxes to pay. We are not stupid.

If our government wants the tax paying voters to trust them, then how about eliminating the income tax first. Then letting us vote on VAT or national sales tax or whatever you call it. Trust us, we will make the best decision for you, government. Don't worry, we know how

G. Gordon Liddy needs a letter from the interior minister of Canada to enter the country. He is a convicted felon after all. One time when his paperwork was messed up, he got formally deported five minutes after crossing the border. G. makes a phone cal lat 01:00 and the guard got his ass chewed. When asked if he had any spy equipment with hem G. produced a pare of binoculars. The guard had to let him in anyway. Heard on the G. Gordon Liddy podcast.

The first ATM went in to business in 1966 in London.

3 terabyte drives on their way this year. You will need a 64 bit OS to use it it seems. I thought the partitions were the limiting factor, not the drive. Here we are again with OS limits on drive size. Remember the two megabyte limit? Me either.

My G1 phone will not handle Android 2.1 and beyond. This blows. They say in another year or so there will be perhaps hundreds of Android models on the market, half of them not able to support OS updates. What is with this crap?

Came home and straight mowed the yard. Lowered the mower for Summer. It works much better with a sharpened blade. Didn't weed eat. 

Korea war 2.0?

Let's hope not. Link

SEOUL, South Korea -- Tensions deepened Thursday on the Korean peninsula as South Korea accused North Korea of firing a torpedo that sank a naval warship, killing 46 sailors in the country's worst military disaster since the Korean War. President Lee Myung-bak vowed "stern action" for the provocation following the release of long-awaited results from a multinational investigation into the March 26 sinking near the Koreas' tense maritime border. North Korea, reacting swiftly, called the results a fabrication, and warned that any retaliation would trigger war. It continued to deny involvement in the sinking of the warship Cheonan. ... An international civilian-military investigation team said evidence overwhelmingly proves a North Korean submarine fired a homing torpedo that caused a massive underwater blast that tore the Cheonan apart. Fifty-eight sailors were rescued from the frigid Yellow Sea waters, but 46 perished. ... "Our Korean People's Army was not founded for the purpose of attacking others. We have no intention to strike others first," Col. Pak, the naval spokesman, told APTN in the North Korean capital. "So why should we attack a ship like the Cheonan which has no relation with us, no need to strike it and we have no significance in doing so." North Korea's powerful National Defense Commission warned the South against provocative acts near their border, and urged the U.S. and Japan to "act with discretion," the state-run Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch monitored in Seoul. North Korea has waged a slew of attacks on South Korea since the 1950-53 fighting ended, including the 1987 downing of a South Korean airliner that killed all 115 people on board. Pyongyang has never owned up to the attacks. Military.com

My dad helped rebuild part of South Korea after the First Korean War during his military service. 

M. A. S. H. was based on the First Korean War.

It was the first real jet fighter war.

The U. S. should really send a massive bill to China and the Russians for all the provocation and help they supplied. I suppose they say the same about us.

It could have been worse

This is a place called More Oklahoma. This is from May 10 2010.

Open Source Documentation

Found in the manual page for a command named mkswap.

-f Force - go ahead even if the command is stupid. This allows the creation of a swap area larger than the file or partition it resides on. On SPARC, force creation of the swap area. Without this option mkswap will refuse to create a v0 swap on a device with a valid SPARC superblock, as that probably means one is going to erase the partition table.

Makes sense to me. I've put a couple of these up. There are some real gems in the manual pages in Linux in general. It is to do with open source and lack of committee oversight. this is good thing.

Notes:

Yesterday, I took off from work a bit early so we could go get a bed from Nat's grandmother. I tried to video some highlights, but it sucked so bad that I just blew it away. Sometimes you cannot edit the bad out of a video.

The $10 mouse that I ordered showed up. Funny how a real mouse is cheaper than a plastic computer mouse. It is wonderful to have a mouse that is qualified. It is optical so it will not get dirty as easily as an old ball mouse. The middle mouse button that doubles as a scroll wheel works just fine on both tasks. This is not always true for my old, more expensive mice. The biggest thing is that Elle is off my back because she has her mouse back.

lightning

I got home last night and started weed eating. I tried to cut down the one green thing in my front flower bed that looks like a tree. It is actually a tall weed. I could not find my saw and tried to use my pocket knife. It didn't work out.

No sooner do I get done than the storms start rolling in. In the beginning of the storm, we had close and powerful lightning. I walked out to the garage, opened it and stood there with the water resistant case I got recently and just aimed it at the sky.

I captured two or three staggering strikes on video. I was a bit excited and made some stupid cometary. The rain came down sideways and blew in the garage. I gave up as I got soaked. As aiming the camera at the garage door and walking to the button to close the door, I accidentally captured the crazy lightning that simply obscured the entire garage door with light. this is toward the end of the video. Those are water drops on the waterproof case's lens. I don't think you can make this frame out on the YouTube version of the video.

Once inside the house the power blinked a couple of times. The power pole out back made a really loud “gzzzzzzzt!!!!” noise during one of the blinks. I thought for sure something caught on fire, but I noticed no damage later and the electricity was on the whole night.

Elle was following me around with four very scared stuffed animals in her arms. “Can hail break the glass in the windows?” she asked.

“It can Sweety.” I answered. “Let's hope it doesn't.”

She was quite concerned with electricity coming through the wires and killing the electronics. She is pretty smart because she explained how lightening can hit a wire outside and come through to the Microwave and TV.

No sooner did I get the video ready to upload than the second round of storms rolled in and I had to kill it and turn off the computers and went to bed. Fortunately, the second round didn't seem as intense as the first. Still a great deal of energy in the air.

Notes:

The kids in Hawaii have every other Friday off because the sate does not have enough money to keep the doors open. I remember having every other Friday off. It sucks to work every day. It was nice having time on one week day every couple weeks to get week day stuff done. Tomorrow, I have to take off work to go get a bed for goodness sake. This should e a feature, not a bug.

Arianna Huffington is tired of the 'statuesque' from the Obama Administration. Arianna is a crushing San Francisco liberal. If Obama has lost Arianna, he has lost much much more than a noisy yes-blogger. It is a rare day when I find myself agreeing with anything she says. I'm quite sure Arianna and I would agree that we would like Obama to move, but in opposite directions.

Politicians are just happy to blame the world's banking system for all the financial woes lately. What are the politicians planning to reform the political system that has gotten us in so much trouble?

The Sunday BBQ video was not on the blog until lunchtime today. I took time to embed the video while I waited for the water to boil. It didn't take but a couple moments. Should have done it last night, but I was dog tired from getting home late and editing the video.

Walked in the door at the house, turned around and hit the yard with the weed whacker. Tried to cut down the huge weed masquerading as a tree in my flowerbeds, but I couldn't find my saw. Got half way through with my pocket knife and had to quit on account of rain. Elle wouldn't let me eat before I carried in her new shelves. Guess she didn't notice the other two sets that have been sitting there for two years in the garage..

Lunch Conversation

• My vision

• One of the guy's wives is in optometry school.

• video games

• Which video game has the best music?

• “How much do you want for your PlayStation?”

• What games were really worth the money from a playtime and enjoyment perspective?

• Arizona's new immigration law

• What the law says.

• As far as I can tell - Once you come under the scrutiny of law enforcement, if there is any reason to believe you are not a legal citizen, the officer must apply and follow through with federal immigration laws.

• Who is raising a stink?

• As far as any of us could tell, a bunch of New York, LA, Austin liberals who are far more concerned with votes than rights are the ones blowing a gasket on this law.

• What will happen differently when a cop stops you regardless of citizenship?

• Pets and cleaning up after them

• Puppies pooing

• Cats puking

• Music and who plays what instruments. We have some guys at my work who have a jam session every so often. I want to go get some YouTube footage one of these days.

Pleasant Sunday

What an awesome Sunday.BBQ with the family.

New Dr Who

We can't get some of the episodes in the U. S. yet, but here are a couple shots. These are shots through what appears to be a clear plastic dinner plat. The following are through a Dalek's eye.

Old Dalek

New Dalek

Going up against Daleks with a sonic screwdriver. That's balls.

D-Drive Transmission

This is very interesting. I thought for sure someone would come up with a non friction based zero shift system for transmissions. Even if this does not turn out to be a game changer, this is exactly the kind of enterprising sort of self reliance and self worth we should be teaching in school. 

I would also like it noted for the record that this guy is a plumber. I'm telling you, people who do plumbing for a long time and really udnerstand it, are smarter and more creative than any one gives them credit for. Plumbers must have a grasp of space, matter, forces, problem solving, and just plain sense to be any good at what they do.

Frigging Ubuntu

I had to delete and recreate my Gnome panel to get rid of an app/icon/whatever you call them that had no "remove from panel" choice. This is a symptom of upgrading. This only takes about five minutes, but it shouldn't happen at all. There have been a couple of things that have broken with the upgrade to 10.04. This kind of crap piled on top of the mouse pointer issues I've experienced make me second guess recommending Ubuntu in the future. They may sound trivial, but added up, they amount to a pain in the ass.

Date

It would be so easy for me to loose myself in time. I understand how people let years slip by. I need to have the present day's date written near me. I would loose track of everything if I let it go.

This makes me like blogs and computers in general because everything that happens on a computer has a date/time associated with it. This is important because copmuters, like people and all of existence, exist in the 'now'. Things that do not have a date/time associated with them are not properly kept track of.

There was a time when only the end product of documents, the final cut was important. Now every keystroke and mouse move has a log entry that links it back to who did it and when. Why may be coming to a log near you soon.

In politics, this feature is more and more important. The 23 minutes of blank tape come to mind from Nixon's audio log. He thought he was doing a good thing by keeping an audio log. To this day, I wander if he and the nation would have been better off if had not. That horse has left the barn.

The technology is there to make everyone carry some kind of black box in their pocket that records every utterance. I'm quite sure someone somewhere has to ware one to fulfill their job requirements. Not sure off the top of my head who might. I'm thinking firefighters in a nuclear facility. Cops have dash cams and I believe many police radios have a black box feature along with some kind of location awareness. It is all a rich tapestry.

What was I blogging about? Oh, the date.

I figured out how to get the correct date format in Google Docs. You put a tick, also know as a high comma, inverted comma or apostrophe at the beginning of a cell in the spreadsheet cell and the auto fuckup correct is disabled for that cell. The apostrophe is not displayed.

This is great, but I had to find this out by having the same problem in Open Office and pooring through the help there. I then tried the same thing in Google Docs and had luck. The fix is probably in the help for Google Docs, but I didn't find it. 

Looks like I won't be bothering with Microsoft Office Live.

To use Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta, your computer must meet one of the following requirements: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 running on Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista. You can download Internet Explorer from the Internet Explorer page. Mozilla Firefox running on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, or Mac OS X 10.2.x and later. You can download Firefox from the Firefox download page.    Safari 3 and 4 on Mac OS X 10.2.x and later. Microsoft

Learning CPR

I'm off to my new CPR class. Yes, I know I've been taking CPR classes for years. Can you blame me?

Notes:

2010-05-14

I said it was boring at work in my video yesterday. I misspoke. It is highly stressful and very busy. It is not boring so much as a dead end hurry up and figure out the problem so you can hurry up and figure out the next problem kind of job. It is not boring. I'm trying to think of just the right word to describe it. The repetitive nature of the cycle of problems and fixes make the job feel like a rut. Even though I'm hitting new stuff and learning new things all the time.

The Brits are besides themselves. They have a coalition of a couple of parties that are normally at each other's throats, dividing up responsibilities and duties like spoils of war. The word 'extraordinary' is being tossed about like rice at a wedding. It is quite cozy how quickly a coalition has been made between the two current factions running things. How convenient for the people of Great Briton.

I tried to print something landscape out of Open Office. When trying to set landscape at print time, It just plane didn't do it. I had to go in to 'Page Preview' and select landscape from there. That worked. What causes this is the settings in Open Office overriding the printer settings. The printer set up is the system and the page preview is Open Office. That's all. This is a feature, not a bug.

Obama says, as so many have before, that we must stop depending on foreign oil. The first step apparently is to kill domestic oil production. Not in so many words. No, it takes allowing BP to be sued by every one in the world for not preventing an oil spill. At what point does it become cheaper to simply pull out of the U. S. market?

There is a part of each of us that makes us human. There are other parts that do not contribute to our humanity. There are parts of us that show themselves when we are pushed. These parts harken back far in our past as mammals. We forget our past. We forget where and what we came from. We forget that we are all capable of killing and participating in fowl tasks beyond our civil duties and obligations.

Thank you!

I don't have the drive to say this. I like it being said. I like it being said with this much passion.

Work today

I finally managed to catch the UPS guys in the Target parking lot next to our work. I've had pictures up on Facebook for a while. I'm not the only one who has noticed this phenomena. Now I have video evidence of what is going on. They are swapping packages for the afternoon delivery schedule. I was hoping for so much more.

There was an earth mover in front of our building, right next to the building, with a jack hammer attachment. It banged away on that side of the building all day. “tak tak tak TAK TAK TAK tak tak tak tak!” Pause ... repeat. Did I mention it was all day? Thank God I'm on the other side of the building. We only have people raising and lowering roof repair bits past our windows a couple times a day.

The mover reminded me of Mars Attacks where the aliens aim this monstrous ray gun at the old lady's head. It was the “tak tak”, I'm sure of it. Hope no one's head explodes.

This is my first attempt of adding a little intro to the video. This almost qualifies as a vlog, but not quite. I'll work on it.

Notes:

My skin likes 40% to 60% humidity. Anything below or above that range and my skin starts to crack like mad. Thank Goodness i live in a place that probably averages 80%. That just makes life interesting.

By default, Facebook releases all your data to the entire internet with the exception of your birth date.. You have to go change everything to say something like “only friends” or whatever it is. Facebook has no Google credo like “do no evil”. They are really starting to piss me off. I use Facebook to contact with friends and even get hold of their new data when things change. The price may be too high.

When a man offers to sell you a bar of gold, do not reach for your billfold, except to make sure you still have it. While listening to one of the old time radio shows they were talking about gold costing $35 U. S. per Troy ounce. Gold just topped $1220 earlier this week on one exchange.

Abu Dhabi is a country. Abu Dooby is a drug dealer.

Money means something

“The Euro Zone is rickety.” This from financial people watching what is going on in Europe recently. “We will defend the Euro whatever it takes.”

The risk is being spread around. If the guarantee from governments does not prop up the Euro, the Euro is doomed to failing. It is all based on a promise. There is a currency swap in place which allows investors to leave the Euro now more easily. This is something you do when you are worried about people writing off their losses.

“The UK is not Grease.” Things heard on financial radiio shows. “We don't have the leadership now that we had.” mentioned moments after the previous statement.

The debate is really about who runs Europe. There is no European government. It is all treaties and agreements led by officials from member nations, but not any one who is elected by the whole of Europe. There is no Fed or central bank. There is no one who can drop a fist on a table and pint to who is responsible and who must do what needs to be done. The EU lacks leadership with teeth.

Not one country in the EU is keeping their deficit increase under 3% of GDP. Not one. This is a mandate for being a member of the EU. This is a rule that no one follows. This is a rule that is very important for stability. This is proof that the nanny state, better known as socialism, does not work. It is human nature that if you can get something for free, you will not work hard for it.

It was not that long ago when I heard someone say that Greece may go bankrupt. Well, Greece was bailed out before they pulled the trigger on bankruptcy. Now some in Briton worry that the pound will become volatile Some will make money off this unbalance, but most normal people will suffer. The fact is that Briton cannot spend 1.30 pounds for every 1.00 pounds they bring in. That is all There is no more to say on the matter. The rest of that conversation needs to bring those two numbers closer together.

Same bottom line goes for the U. S. whether or not the current administration likes it.

Note:

Great. They say it will be a bad hurricane season this year. We just don't need any hurricanes this year. No year for that matter. The place where we had water get in last time has been fixed, hopefully. Still, we just don't need any hurricanes.

I like Science Friday from NPR. They have a liberal political bend and would deny it because they do not know where center is, but fact abound none the less. I've learned things from this show that I carry with me.

Will someone please tell my boss to stop making me put Windows XP on laptops. It is too old. No one updates the drivers for hardware that has drivers and new laptops have hardware that is just plane not supported under Windows XP and never will be. It is a nightmare on some systems. I have to grind up the internet and poor it through a siv to find drivers. Sometimes I come up empty. Ubuntu seems to work fine. Can I use that? It's free. The boss man just glares.

I still need to call the dentist in the building where I work. I need some work done. I wonder if Nat will like him too.

Old Trucks

While walking around at lunch I remembered two friends. They both bought old oil field trucks. They were both old Ford f150 straight 6 trucks. One was a long bed and the other was a short bed. One guy bought the truck that was running and had a paint job. The other bought the truck with a dead transmission and was beat to death..

The running truck cost $2000 or so and ran for about six months before some real problems showed up. He had to scrap it after deciding the expense was too much. He was like me and did not know much about hands on fixing things on vehicles.

The non running truck cost $1 and about $100 for a stick transmission and some other parts from a junk yard to get running. The second truck ran for years, getting more and more rusty every time I ran in to the guy. I don't think he ever did much work on that truck beyond maintenance.

It never fails to amaze me how much it pays to understand things like home and vehicle repair. It is worth the effort of learning and practicing. I know this in my conscious mind, but I just don't bather doing it. What is wrong with me? The opportunity cost is negligible. The result is my paying too much for people who do learn to come out and fix things. Is this just the way of things?

Those Brits

The only thing in the British media over the last couple weeks has been the elections. No the only thing is the British media is the surprise cluster-fuck results. No one won a majority. This means the politicians are going to have to work together to get anything done. Good luck with that.

Some say that if one party had won, the result would have been that this party would not have won again for a generation because of the massive cuts that are going to have to be made to the budget and public services to prevent Briton from pulling a Greece.. It looks like the responsibility and blame are going to be spread around.

Both parties want a change in the way the Brits do elections. I don't think either of the parties are happy with the results that basically are a draw. The people are basically not being asked. Sounds like the U. S. in that case. However, some are using the word “stalemate” to describe the situation. That just doesn't sound good at all.

This entire planet is in a state where the ruling class is not listening to the people they rule. In the past this would have eventually lead to revolution. We have become far to civilized for this to happen today. Well, let's hope. No, I think something far more interesting just might happen because of this disconnect. The people, not just in the U. S., but all over the world, just might start paying attention and reading the news. This would be disastrous to our current generation of leaders. They depend on ignorance and apathy to get what they think will keep them and their peers in power for another election cycle.

Yes, I believe there is a ruling class of people. They reside next door to the celebrity class of people. These in turn employ the working class. I do not think this is a good thing. This is an old idea that people will simply fall in to their place either by birth or will as society shakes out. These layers are promoted as a good thing in some countries and ignored in a few. They are always there it seems. Maybe it is simply the way human relationships on mass work

Beware any alterations to rules governing the ability of the people to know what is going on and become an informed citizenry. Obama has already complained that he cannot control the message on the internet. He used it to win and now he plays the victim of information and communication. This is just one example.

Am I the only one who feels this disconnect?

From the author: I originally called this “Bloody Brits”. I intended to be very negative, but it didn't really work out that way so I changed the title. this whole story started with the phrase “Briton pulling a Greece”.

First couple hits are free

Keywords: internet business model content

I think I have stumbled on a business model that just might work for online content of a timely nature like news and hype items. I call this the little guy plays, big guy pays model.

Use an embed script that lets people embed stuff on their page. Don't charge for the first two hundred or so hits on day one. When someone goes over the limit, kill the content unless they have an account. The more hits they want on day one, the more it costs them. After a day or maybe two of sliding hit cost, make it available. It would depend on the content and context. Every business or industry will have t to find their sweet spot.

The little guy blogger is not the person you want to piss off. They may not have the eyeballs you are looking for, but if all of them bitch you out, it shows up on mass. The little guy blogger has a little guy (broke) attitude. I get a dozen hits a day on this blog. I'm not the wallet you are looking for. This blog is spillage.

You can charge the big guy blogger because they have the money and the big guy attitude that they do not want dead content turning up on their page.

I really think this might work if someone is willing to try it out. I'm not sure it is technically doable. Not sure how much effort it would take to count each embedded story hits and keep track of people's accounts. That sound like a piece of cake for a company like Amazon or Google to solve.

What do I want?

I felt depressed over the weekend. My work is genuinely trying to kill me. The bills are piling up. The house is a wreck. Money is a nightmare. We have no plans for vacation or fun. We have no money left over at the end of the month. The list of things that have been getting to me is endless.

My life has boiled down to a list of items that are responsibilities to someone else.

• Bills

• Insurance

• Life

• House

• health

• car

• Energy

• Gas

• Electricity

• Food

• Taxes

• Income Tax

• Property Tax

• Sales Tax

• Family

• School fund raisers

• Every week it is a new pare of shoes with this kid. She is growing like a weed.

• Dentistry

• Medical bills.

• Entertainment

• What entertainment? We don't even have cable.

• A date night every once in a while.

• Internet.

• Home

• Yard

• Cutting grass

• Landscaping

• Weeding

• Picking up other people's trash in my yard.

• Repairs

• The carpet in the living room needs replacement.

• Mold where the walls got wet in the hurricane a couple years ago.

• Maintenance

• Cleaning

• Vacuuming

• Dishes

• Laundry

• Work

• There is another list three times this long just for work.

What does one prey for in this case? I have asked God to tell me what to prey for. Money is never the answer. Some one time thing like saving the world is fleeting. A super power is unlikely to do any good. I thought about it for a long time. I've been at it since I was about twelve. I think I found something that makes sense and I just might get if I prey hard enough.

I want to have my shit together.

I want to be on top of things. Shit happens and when it does, I want to be the guy who had his together. No miracles really. No putting any one else out of joint. I want the knowing, the preparing and the doing all to point to me having my shit together.

Of mice and water resistant camera cases

Remember me complaining about my mouse wheel not working. Well, I had to order a mouse from Amazon. Nat and I went to Best Buy, but they only ha cheap wireless mice. Screw having to mess with batteries. All the wired ones started at $35. Can you believe that? There was a huge roller stairway blocking the mice. If I were a seller of mice, I would be pissed at that fact alone.

I was able to order a $10 mouse on Amazon that will work fine and spend the other $25 on a water resistant camera case that will work on most of the small cameras in the house and may let me do something I've wanted to do for a long time. I want to shoot pictures and video in the rain.

Most of the video I've watched shot with one of the water resistant cases suck, but I think it will be better than trying to shoot without one. I have always wandered how many cameras have been lost shooting some truck slogging through the mud or a horse trotting through a mud puddle. The idea of a camera condom has crossed my mind.

Notes:

No one is buying the fat-finger excuse for the stock market bottom out last Wednesday. Some say it is the banks flexing their muscles. Some say it is foreign influence. The stock market is just a big pile of bets and IOUs. I've called a constant flaming house of cards. being built on one end and burned on the other. I still say that is accurate.

There is a federal bill that just might make banks charge no more than $0.50 for an ATM fee between banks. I just don't see it happening. Nice idea though. Where is the one that makes publishers charge pennies for a CD or phone companies stop charging for long distance, or ISPs have to stop lying about throttling or capping based on content?

You know the financial world is in trouble when economists pronounce that “There is more to life than happiness.” These people really are just out of touch with reality.

A lady in the elevator told me my backpack was unzipped. Sure enough, I made it all the way to work with an unzipped backpack. I checked for the expensive camera and stuff. That stuff was there. In situations like this, I think my guardian angle.

One of the SciFi podcasts I've been listening to for a while is raving about Chuck. The first couple seasons blew. They seem to think it has gotten better. I may have to check it ou.

Day

Nat got some middle eastern food for dinner last night. The spicy lamb nearly did me in. Not while I was eating it. No, This morning. I nearly didn't make it to work. I worked like mad, but still had time to jot down a bunch of notes for today's blog. Then I left them at work

Kick Ass

Spoiler alert! I don't know if I'm going to say anything about the plot or not, I do this just in case I do, you are on your own.

Went and saw Kick Ass Now I'm depressed. The guy in the movie goes after his dream. I've never done this. I never will. Now I'm depressed. It makes it difficult to go to bed tonight, get up in the morning and go to work again. Then, do it again tomorrow. Then again the day after. I haven't seen a movie in a while. Now I watch this one and it depresses me.

This guy decides he is not going to put up with people's shit any more and decides to get involved. He gets his ass handed to him a couple of times. Other people bail him out. The old adage "Nothing trumps treachery" comes in to play and some friends die because of his fuckups. Not everything works out in the end.

It isn't that I want people to loose. I'm sick of teenagers in movies. Maybe that is it. I liked Falling Down. That was all about a guy who has his ass kicked by fate and then looses it. He ends up killing himself, but until then he is empowered and taking control of his destiny. Isn't that what you are supposed to do? Isn't that what all the self help books say?

Nat would not stop talking during the movie. The BLT at Alamo was half the size it used to be. Less fries too. It turns out we had some friends of our sitting right behind us the whole movie. It was a good movie. I would recommend watching it. I kind of wish I had waited for it to hit the home theater. I may never go to a movie again.

Saturday

We went to visit Nat Mom yesterday at the hospital. I wasn't supposed to go originally, but I did. Every time she needed to get out of bed for a procedure or to take a bath, I wouldexcuse myself and walk around the area taking pictures. I filmed the ride in, and a few other random things. Noting worth writing home about. I guess I'll blog it if it kills me.

The videos I shot are mostly terrible. I may not put one up. Well, maybe something very short and cut to ribbons. I'm not going to cross post it to Facebook and Twitter. Well, maybe. We will have to find out after I cut the video.

This little adventure took the entire day. We went to a place called Texas Roadhouse. The food was 95% salt. My heart is beating funny today because of the Salt Palace. The waiter was a little too friendly. I felt like I was going to slip and bust my ass on the peanut shells all over the floor for the ambiance. Fresh veggies are more than broccoli and carrots. A Cesar salad is more than letos cheese and half a bottle of dressing. Should have gone to Denny's. 

Quick Video (don't watch it. It is boring)

Pictures

The pictures are not half bad. 

Link

Map of the campus

View Larger Map

Note the cement culvert running down the East side of the area. That is one of the pictures in the bundle.

Notes:

The stock market is a flaming house of cards. That is how investors like it because they can get away with murder while the powers that be fight to keep the flaming house erect. So, $15,000,000 and $15,000,000,000 sound quite similar when you say them. Well, I will take aether one you have spare, thank you. This is just the latest debacle. What is going to bring the house down?

My mouse at the house is dying. I don't think I have anything other than old crappy mechanical (ball) mice at the house. I'm going to have to pick up some cheap mouse to tide me over until I get a new computer in five or six years. The wheel has stopped working for scrolling and now the middle click, obtained by pushing on the wheel, is going. You use the middle mouse button in Linux all the time.

Natalie's mother is very ill. Please prey for her.

I listened to an old time radio podcast that was about people taking a cruse across the Atlantic from the U. S. to England. They had given themselves six months to have adventures in England and points west. When they go to England, they took their time and did one thing a day as far as I could tell from the story. It was about betrayal and murder. The story was calming picturing the things people were doing between the plot points.

There was a police stop in the parking lot across from my office.. There were five cop cars, some of which may have been K9 units. it was like something out of a movie. The funny thing was the tow trucks. There were at least 5 trucks all sitting drivers' windows together talking to each other. waiting for the moment to get a job. The cops ended up letting the car go. I wander how many times they have to show up to get a paying job. It sounds like a hard way to make a buck. Of course it was breaking up just as I reached for my camera.

If Greece is not allowed to go bankrupt, the Euro is not a stable reliable currency. There is a simple fact that every one seems to miss. Countries should not be allowed to spend money they do not have. Their debt should be no better because they are a state.

Lunch Conversation

Photography, One of the guys went on vacation to a really photogenic park. He brought back a bunch of pictures. This sparked a conversation about fear of heights as well as photography. This lead to talking about when people got their first digital camera. This lead to me bragging about my Canon 940. Someone asked what was so special about the Flip. I told them it was cool and had the little switch blade USB thing. Other than that, it is lacking in features.

Sweet Potatoes. On of the guys brought a sweet potato casserole He and his wife are headed on vacation tomorrow and he just wanted it not to go bad without having a chance to be eaten. I had a big plate. Not sure if any one else did. It was really good. This sparked a conversation about one of the guys who had a bad experience with sweet potatoes when he was a kid and he is off them ever since. Someone said their wife had something similar happen with blueberries.

Stephen Hawking came up. One of the guys saw Stephen Hawkins at a lecture in the nineties at his university. The conversation quickly deteriorated to the MC Hawking web page and all the music that came out in that electronic voice that Hawking seems to have made famous.

My day

Got up this morning at 05-30.

Left the house at about 06-30.

Got to work at about 07-30

Worked like an honest man all day. You would think I was a stolen mule.

Left work at 19-17.

Got on the bus at 19-55.

Got off the bus at 20-17.

Walked in the door at 20-55.

in an hour and five minutes I get to start all over again.

Note:

Some very smart people who have their head wrapped around the technical world are saying that Flash is against the ropes. Adobe says they are going to give all their employees a Flash friendly Android phone to encourage development in that area. Sites every day turn up with HTML5. It is going to be a bumpy ride for developers.

In London, thieves stole 20 lb of copper from a voltage regulator for the copper. This caused a huge power surge and blew out appliances and computers all over town. Someone said they might have received ten pounds for the raw materials, if they can find someone who would not turn them in.

There are so many unwanted new homes in Ireland that they are starting to tare down whole estates (neighborhoods) So many are abandon that they came up with a term “Ghost Estate”. Some say every one in Ireland will end up evicted.

Oil in the Gulf

Why did it take 8 days for Obama to react to the oil platform issue in the Gulf of Mexico? Where are all the people who bitched about Bush reacting to the Katrina disaster? Bush is still blamed for every frigging problem in the Gulf region. The justice department is sending lawyers. Yay. So BP will get sued. Yay.

I bet the plan is not to put people to work cleaning up the mess. I be the plan is to sue BP for lost time for fishing crews, and whomever else has skin in the game. Then sue them again for cleaning up the mess. That is how Obama thinks. Don't fix the problem, sue people and get them to fix the problem for you. Then, when they do an unsatisfactory job, sue them again.

This is called a bullshit fix. You can bullshit your way out of a financial system failing when the financial system ends up fixing itself. It is more difficult to bullshit your way out of oil washing up on a beach and killing sea life.

Is the U. S. government sending any one to the gulf who will roll their sleeves up and help clean up the mess? I just haven't heard of this happening yet. Am I just missing the announcement? do they expect BP to take care of the details like, Oh, wiping up rocks and clearing off dead creatures?

Exxon fought lawsuits from the Valdez accident for 20 plus years. The law suites cost far more than the clean up. Same is going to happen here.

Euro Woes

Greece is calling the bailout a European bailout. Every one else is calling a Greece bailout. I wander if the next countries that go to join the Euro will have to put up some kind of deposit. Several experts say, even with the enormous bailout, Greece has no choice but to default. No idea when, but it will have to happen.

The Germans are pissed. Lets face it, the Euro is a polished German Mark. There have been whispers if kicking Greece out of the Euro, if not Europe all together. Sounds like a plan to me.

This is quite an advantage for Europe. I've tried to find out of California can be kicked out of the United States and come up blank. I'm not sure it is possible. Surely it would only take a 2/3ds vote somewhere. If not California, some other state will be the first to go insolvent. Is there a plan for such a thing. I doubt it.

I'm having a hard time feeling sympathy for Greece, Germany or Europe in general. The reason they all ganged up with the Euro was to bully the world with a huge powerful currency. They were out to counter China and the U. S. and associated currency policies. Now things have blown up with one piss ant country and the whole house of credit cards is tumbling down.

Colors make a difference

There is a high contrast dark scheme/theme on almost all computers. They all suck. I've complained about these before. it would be great to use them. My eyes don't have to try to focus as much using a dark background with lighter text. It never fails that some graphic or text is black on really dark blue and impossible to read. Why do I keep trying?

In Open Office the background of tables do not change, but the color of the text does change. This can make for very hard to read sections and design problems. Who cares? I'll flip back and forth to get things done as needed.

I remember the days of DOS and MS Word on DOS. It only worked with gray text on a blue background. It was impossible to read, even for people with perfect vision for the long term. A later version of Word for DOS allowed for a different color scheme. If memory serves, there were no tables. Just a note how old that platform was.

Publishing Bullshit

One of the podcasts I listen to predicts a book publishing crash coming within about the next year based on ebook and all the new software out there. The per unit print price will skyrocket and ebooks are easy to publish and promote. Authors may want to take the challenge on themselves instead of using a publisher more often than happens now. Authors are already saying “If I sell 10,000 copies of this ebook, I'll write a equal.” Basically, the whole process is being handed to authors. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

It looks like e-pub is the dominate file format. There are a tone of devices out there. Even the Apple-happy liberals say that Apple is an eight hundred pound gorilla and there needs to be competition. Sony, Microsoft and even Google are getting in to the whole ebook reader device world.

I just don't need another device. Make it work on my existing phone. Scratch that. Let my phone read it to me. I'm all for that. I'm legally blind and need an audio reader. I'm willing to sue for the functionality. I might even pay for content. Maybe. As apposed to public domain content of course.

Notes:

I spent a couple hours this morning jut trying to figure out what prerequisites we need for an install. It cracks me up how difficult it is to figure out what a package depends on to work. There are dozens of tools for this.

Old Time Radio has an episode of <dun dun dun!> “The Green Hornet!”. Love it. These are awesome. There are ads for “War Jobs” and “War Bonds.” Cool stuff.

The sliders sucked the first time around. I hear there is another show coming out. It is an interesting idea. I can't believe it will be better than the first attempt. The Coen Brothers are remaking True Grit.

Every single podcast that mentions Apple griping about Flash says it is the pot calling the settle black. Every single one.

So, I'm not nuts

It turns out the trouble I am experiencing with the mouse pointer in Ubuntu 10.04 on both of my machines is indeed real. There is some crazy manual X configuration work around that looks like more trouble than it is worth. Any time you have to use a CLI to fix your GUI you are in trouble.

There is hope. If it is a bug, there is a chance it will get fixed. I was considering creating a login just to bring up the whole accessibility thing, but someone beat me to it. "Who/'s power cord do you have to trip over to get this bumped?" Argh! The best laid planes.

Here is hoping it just turns up fixed after a couple of aptitude full-upgrades.

Notes:

Many times through my life I have wished I could draw. There are so many things that could be even slightly helped by being able to draw an idea down. I'm not a visual thinker to be honest. I would call myself a word thinker. That is not entirely correct I am a spacial construct thinker. Then again, I'm a daydreamer. Maybe a just distracted. When is thinking daydreaming? When is daydreaming meditating? When is meditating epilepsy?

Monday Morning Heat

It was a cool calm blue sky walk in this morning. I even noticed a hot air balloon in the sky right as I got to the bus stop. I'd say it was pleasant. Then I got to work. The AC was off and it was like a sauna. It felt strange because it is normally a deep freeze.

Well, the AC was chugging, but the chiller was on half duty because the water got worked on over the weekend. Thankfully, we didn't have to work through that. No water and no AC makes Kelly a grumpy old fart. At least at work.

I did get to shut down an entire lab of computers. It was more annoying than it sounds. I hit my head. There is more than hitting a couple buttons. We had to pull the plug on one box full of hard drives. I'm not sure if I've ever witnessed any one using that box, ever. I ran through the other boxes trying to shut them down as painfully as possible.

Turning things on was not nearly as much of a pain. I figure I'll sweep the lab for machines that are still turned off at the end of the week and make note for retasking, removal or recycling. When you are handed lemons, make lemon aid.

It amazes me how much work got done without the lab boxes. Scary.

Ubuntu upgrade

I upgraded from Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.04. Everything  Most stuff seems to work. One thing that is just plane not working is the mouse pointer. I cannot change the mouse pointer. Normaly, I put a mouse pointer up that lets me blow the pinter up a bit so it is easier to spot as it zips across the screen. I can't do that any more. I'm sure this is an upgrade problem. I bet it works just fine from a straight install.

Pretty much everything else I've tried has worked. Including Samba. Normally, I have to go fight configuration battles in and around smb.conf to get the ability to share files easily between my two computers. Not this time. That is a huge plus. There are usually other things that break as well, but it has been over a day and both computers seem in tip top.

As soon as I get the mouse pointer thing figured out, I'll blog it. It is either the need to remove an old configuration or theme seed file. That must be what is causing the trouble. 

I did have to reset the audio settings in KDENlive. I had to set them back to 'auto', the default setting. No it works just as well/poorly as it did before. Still have to pre-render all the audio to mp3. Life could suck worse.

Mud Bug party

We got there a bit late. The first round was already on the tables. Not such a bad thing. I got to walk in and start eating. This group of people is an extended family to me. I started hanging out with them long before I started working at the same company. We have shared good and bad times. It has been fun and crazy. This is one of the more calm times we shared.

Some things I learned yesterday

• Two of the guys dated the same crazy chick in the same year a couple of years ago.
• Little girls are meaner than little boys.
• Sponge Bob brings out the stand on your throat, laugh and gloat maniac in me.
• I really miss the cool parts of cable TV. History, Cartoon, Military, and SyFy channels come to mind.
• MinPin dogs are escape artists.

I have a question. Is a keg in your passenger seat considered an open container? We almost found out last night.

Pics

Burned up Bike

This one is for all those motorcycle riders in my village of friends and family.

This is what happens to a motorcycle when it catches on fire. Watch, or jump to the end. The last couple seconds of the video shows what was left. I wander why the first extinguisher did not help put out the fire. I wonder if the firefighters have extinguishers with a different mix specifically for car fires.