Super Tucano A29 (27)

For some reason, I like this plane. It is a turbo prop fighter. It made in Brazil. I hear tell the U. S. is looking in to some of these, or planes like them for light support of ground troupes.

Wikipedia

The EMB 314 "Super Tucano" (also "A-29") represents a locally-produced Brazilian aircraft product falling under the then-government run EMBRAER banner. The aircraft is a turboprop-powered light attack, reconnaissance and surveillance platform that comes in two distinct flavors - a single-seat and twin-seat model. Though both can be armed to suit the operators needs, the twin-seat Super Tucano can also serve as an advanced trainer. The Tucano pedigree has proven itself to be one of the best in the world and the Super Tucano looks to continue this level of excellence in a more modernized and capable fashion.

The EMB-314 came about as EMBRAER was looking into a more powerful and armed version of its existing EMB-312 Tucano trainers in the late 1980s to be used in anti-smuggling and counter-insugency roles. By 1994, Embraer was no longer a government-sponsored entity and was now forced to compete for its lively hood. The new feasibility study spawned two EMB-312H "Super Tucano" prototypes and was subsequently pitted against the Raytheon-modified Pilatus PC-9 (Texan 2) in the joint United States Air Force / United States Navy JPATS (Joint Primary Aircraft Training System) program competition. Though Raytheon ultimately won out over the EMBRAER submission, the Super Tucano idea as a whole was not dead and its evaluation by the American military proved the system promising enough

...

Super Tucano can make use of a munitions capacity on its five hardpoints (four wing and one centerline). Standard armament options include a 20mm cannon pod mounted under the fuselage and 2 x 12.7mm FN Herstal M3P heavy machine guns in the wings (200 rounds to a gun). Optional and mission-specific ordnance can include 4 x 70mm rocket launcher pods for explosive air-to-surface strikes, conventional bombs and guided smart bombs. One of the primary roles the Super Tucano is called to tackle is that of intercepting low-flying/low-speed aircraft (fixed-wing or rotary-wing) illegally flying into Brazilian airspace. As such, the Super Tucano can be fitted with 2 x Sidewinder, MAA-1 Piranha or Python 3/4 short-ranged air-to-air missiles to meet the target with lethal results.

Military Factory

Spin recovery

Taking out a bad guy

The description of attached to the video above says it was a Colombian plane taking down a drug plane. The U. S. voices you hear are intelligence people from a U. S. plane tracking the traffickers.

Yeee-haw

Love it.

YouTube subscription auto play remover

Link

YouTube put up this auto play bar at the bottom of their subscriptions. I've put the above plugin on my computer. I have only tried it once. I really hope this guy is not steeling all my passwords and crap. Getting rid of that bar is worth a chance.

Notes

I got to sleep in an hour and a half this morning. Nat gave me a ride in. I missed yesterday of work because my foot is bugging me.

Listening to one of the financial podcasts out of the U. K. Tells me that the rest of the world fully expects the U. K. to take a back seat from no on when it comes to the financial world. The same thing is happening to the U. S. and no one seems to notice. Between India and China, the world is going to take a serious left turn for western civilization. In the next couple decades (if not years) the power structure of the planet is going to shift.

They still have milkmen.

Rwanda was 70% female after the recent war. Rwanda is the only country in the world with more women in Parliament than men.

You have heard of energy drinks. Well, now there are help you sleep and relax drinks out there. Be aware, they are not regulated.

Even a burned spy has more fun than an accountant.

Porch does a hybrid

"The Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid supercar, first shown as a concept at this spring's Geneva Motor Show, got official approval as a production model today from the company's board of directors. Just consider the specs: a 500-horsepower, 3.6-liter V-8 engine with a 9200-rpm redline, 0-to-62-mph acceleration of 3.2 seconds, and top speed of 198 miles per hour. Oh, and did we mention it gets 78 miles per gallon on the European cycle? The astounding fuel efficiency comes courtesy of an E-Drive mode that lets the 918 Spyder drive up to 16 miles on pure electric power, though [ahem] not at 198 mph."

SlashDot

At $650,000 or so, t hey have got to be kidding. I was wandering how long it would take for one of the big manufacturers to come across the idea that the only people buying over priced cars are people who are too rich to rich to be trusted with their own money.

irregardless

regard: respect: (usually preceded by `in') a detail or point; "it differs in that respect"

regardless: in spite of everything; without regard to drawbacks; "he carried on regardless of the difficulties"

irregardless: Irregardless is an informal term meaning regardless or irrespective, which has caused controversy since it first appeared in the early twentieth century. Most dictionaries list it as "incorrect" or "nonstandard".

Stop using the word irregardless. It is meaningless. use regardless.

YouTube wakes up

Sources at YouTube tell us that online video giant will soon increase the maximum duration of uploaded video clips from 10 minutes to 15 minutes. The move may not mean much to some, but if you're a YouTube uploader, the increase would mean significantly less chopped-up installments of longer form works, and subtly redefine the medium, given that YouTube is the largest video hosting service online.

BoingBoing

YouTube is a huge social medium. People who do not YouTube don't realize there is so much more to the experience than watching people flop balls over basket while trying to do one of those reverse wheelies on their daughter's bicycle.

I've heard that the only reason there is a limit to the length of a video in the first place is to stem the tide of copyright violations. The court case mentioned in the article above is a win for the rights of people to be presumed innocent before proved guilty.

broken foot

Stayed home sick today. My right foot hurts. Here is its back story

A couple weeks ago, I rolled my ankle on the concrete. You would think that this would hurt my ankle, but it didn't. It hurt the side of my foot. I missed a day because I could barely stand up. It has been a while. Now I have a blister behind my big toe on that foot and the muscles in the food itself feel like they are about to go on strike.

This makes me wander if the original injury made me walk differently. The blister came about even though I'm warring boots that I have worn for over a year now. I switch boots daily. I always ware socks. I walk the same rout back and forth to the bus stop. I'm not suddenly walking more. The wet feet thing was a while back.

The only really new thing is the injury. What will it take to make pancakes at home this morning?

Notes

Why are sales of homes bouncing again? We are in another slump. In 2006, new home construction made up 6% of GDP. Now it makes up about 2%. People are watching their value vanish. They are watching their job prospects dry up. I cannot blame them for holding off on a huge purchase like house. People are not stupid. They know that failing to renew a tax cut will take money out of their pocket.

There is a hardened Android phone on Sprint. Looks pretty cool. It is expensive, but it won't go down with the first drop of rain. I picture trying to find a bus rout online in the rain.

BP has lost 70,000,000,000 of worth since this whole oil spill. They are selling 30,000,000,000 Worth a assets to help cover the losses. They are still going to focus on deep sea oil. Gas stations will probably be known by Amoco instead of BP in the future.

Started a huge box for scrap parts. These are parts that are to be tossed/recycled. There are two 3.5 inch drives in that box. This will not stand for long. That huge box will not be enough in a couple weeks I bet.

Everr drempt this man? I'm telling you, this looks like my friend Ken at work.

iPad owners Selfish elites

iPad Owners Are 'Selfish Elites'

"It's not exactly official, but should also surprise no one: According to a new study the psychological profile of iPad owners can be summed up as 'selfish elites' while have-not critics are 'independent geeks.' Consumer research firm MyType conducted the study, in which opinions of 20,000 people were analyzed between March and May. The firm's conclusion was that iPad owners tend to be wealthy, sophisticated, highly educated and disproportionately interested in business and finance, while they scored terribly in the areas of altruism and kindness. In other words, 'selfish elites.'"

SlashDot

I know several people who own iPads. ... No farther comment.

Day in the life

There was a video contest on YouTube. If you made a video on July 24, you could upload it as part of this project. No idea what prizes or recognition there is involved. This is the spirit of the above video. It is just too bad that I'm so bad at it. I tried to video a couple things and none of them worked out. Imagine that. There was even more boring footage that was left out.

Sometimes I wish I could film some of the conversations at work. Some really interesting stuff goes by.

Crazy box

We have a system at work that exhibits the following symptoms. You can see it fine from different subnets, but not from machines on the same subnet.

When you turn off the firewall it kills the mechanism that answers pings and advertises on the network. When the system uses DHCP, the DHCP server tells the rest of the network where the machine is. If you are on the same subnet, the machine is expected to advertise itself. Thus our problem.

This has something to do with services and the Windows Firewall problem. Is it fixed? I don't know. The system shows up sometimes and drops others. Someone else set this box up. That is not a problem, except I can't figure out what caused this issue. Normally, I don't mess with these settings and things seem to work fine. Now I'm wandering if it would be faster to just restage (start over and install the OS from scratch) rather than continuing to mess with it.

Notes

The first bills I pay this coming month will be the left over bills from the current month. Hate it when that happens.

Someone is sending a vehicle from Europe to China. This happens all the time, but this is a driverless vehicle. Someone will be in the driver's seat making sure no one gets run over. This is a test after all. I can't wait for the cars that come out that do not have steering wheels.

interferometer: The thing you need to get your camera to take a picture every ump-teen seconds in order to create time lapse movies. More and more modern cameras come with a menu choice that enables this off the showroom floor.

One of the podcasts covered the decriminalization of cocaine. I for one amd against it because it is so addictive. Who knows? Maybe making it not so illegal would prevent many of the surrounding crimes of theft, assault, sexual assault, prostitution and every other kind of crime because people want cocaine and basically have to break the law to get it.

One of the boxes at work refuses to play nice with others. Ironically, far away computers can see it fine. Close computers cannot. It makes sense, but the solutions that should work are not working. It may be a matter of waiting for things to wake up. They had a very good point about decriminalization. This would leave all the production and trafficking in place. If you legalize it, those traffickers are on the street looking for a job. Think about it. Most of the problems associated with drugs is the surrounding crime. If you found out your daughter had a drug problem, would you call the police, or a doctor?

Ken Rodin, Political Editor (I think) for NPR called NPR "Lame-stream media". I love it. OK, he was quoting someone, I still like hearing it.

Notes

2010-07-26:

I got caught a bit on the way in this morning by a light summer rain. It was one notch harder than a sprinkle. It was between exiting the bus and entering work. I hid under the bus stop cover for a moment while the light changed. As I walked under the trees, I couldn't help but notice the rain spots directly under the thickets parts of the trees along with the spots between the trees. Not sure where that came from, but sure enough, the rain fell directly under the thickest parts of the cover of the trees. Not sure what was going on there.

"Some kids are just bad seeds." This from a psychologist on NPR. About time someone came up with this idea.

Stormy weather time lapse

this is the guy with the Android phone and $2.50 to blow on the time lapse app.

Information warfare

WikiLeaks Publishes Afghan War Secrets

A number of readers submitted word on the massive WikiLeaks release of Afghanistan war documents. "The data is provided in CSV and SQL formats, sorted by months, and also was rendered into KML mapping data." WikiLeaks provided the documents in advance to the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the UK's Guardian — the latter also has up a video tutorial on how to read the logs. From the Times: "A six-year archive of classified military documents... offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal. The secret documents... are a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year. The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, and the German magazine Der Spiegel were given access to the voluminous records several weeks ago on the condition that they not report on the material before Sunday. The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001."

Slashdot

Wikileaks is playing in to our enemy's hands. By releasing this information, they have at best created a rift between the intelligence and enforcement parts of the military. I do not see the good side of this. Who has skin in the game?

Obama is looking for an excuse to pull the plug on all the wars. He has plans for all that money that do not include defending the freedoms of Americans.

The folks who run Wikileaks don't get much more than recognition as activists. They may have unplugged the one little leak in the damn that brings down a nation. The most powerful nation. I suppose that is a feather in the cap of someone who is out to bring western civilization down.

The train wreck who most likely gave the data to Wikileaks is going to be a hero to the socialists one day. I foresee a statue in his honer that says he made all the big government controls possible. Not sure he will make it to that day.

Every liberal in Europe just plane loves to see it get stuck to America. I hate to inform Obama, but they hate us almost as much as they hate the Jews and Israel. There is not much in it for Europeans. They don't realize their necks are on the same block as ours. Divide and concur.

As much as I would love to blame insurgence in Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever, I can't really. Some of the people fighting us do it out of religious need. Some do it to fulfill being a man. Some do it to get away from their family. Some do it for pure adventure. Some do it for the money. I bet chicks dig insurgents. No, I can't blame the individuals. I can blame their society.

I would much rather blame their society than ours. This is what makes me a racist. or a Nazi or a Fascist. Nazis and Fascists were left politically. I am right. I am none of those things. I have simply chosen a side. this doesn't make me any better or worse. My side used to believe in freedom of thought and the freedom to speak. That is all but gone now. I am ashamed for not making more of a stink over it going.

Did I ever have the will to win?

Camping related chopper crash

A pilot and three firefighters shared a near-death moment after their helicopter went down in the mountains of Nevada. The incident was captured by a camper while he was filming the rescuers pick up stranded climbers on a cliff top.

After the crew picked up their fellow rescuer near the cliff precipice, the helicopter lifted up and quickly banked hard right, then taking a near vertical descent, pulling up before nearly nose diving into the ground. The helicopter's rotors thrashed through bushes as the craft skimmed over the crowded campground below, when it finally reared up and stalled, crashing to the ground.

...

"We already travel 4,000 miles, we still have 2,000 to go, so we have adventure everyday, this one was a big one," said father Ransijn.

liveleak

I hope you do not top this adventure the rest of the trip. The accompanying story claims that every one survived the crash with injuries.

When bears drive

That bear trashed it about as bad as the local teenagers would have on a joy ride. That poor bear may have broken a nail in this attack. Did you leave a sandwich in the passenger seat or something? I'm trying to picture the bear's motivation here.

Mess with a bull ...

There are warnings all over the place not to mess with the animals. If it indeed turns out that someone provoked this animal, they should be arrested and charged with some kind of abuse. The chick who chased the animal down a hill should get a smack as well. No matter what else happens, no one should make nay money off this animal attack.

Best Comic-Con video yet

I have to say this is the best video I'ev seen yet. This is one of the vlogs I frequent. Normally, he bitches at news items. Sounds like something I'de be good at, but not really. He is far more interesting. He has gotten on this loose weight kick lately and it is highly annoying. Still, you have to throw yourself in to that kind of thing to make it work.

Shows

Ultraviolet

Another vampire show. Ultraviolet is from the late nineties. Remember the nineties? They had some bad TV back then. Friends comes to mind.

I only saw one show. The editing looked bad. That is, some of the scenes had jumpy video and there was one spot that did a double jump. Not sure if it was the hulu video or the TV show itself. I didn't like the plot much. Again, it had the theme of big government is good because they are the only way to solve problems kind of string running through it.

Haven

Haven is a Twin Peaks meets X-Files, FBI knows best kind of wanna-be show. Can't keep up. Don't want to keep up.

FBI and local town politics. Anti-small town sentiment. I couldn't finish the first episode. It made me ill.

Friday Night Lights

Dear God; Please strike down those who poke fun at Texas. Friday Night Lights is, or at least was, filmed in Austin. I like the idea of shooting a show about something other than cops, lawyers, writers, actors or collage professors. Still, something rubs me wrong about this show.

Some of my friends think this show is magic. Finally, Texas gets a show about the real people of texas. Remember Houston Knights? Anyway, I'm not buying it. Friday Night Lights is a damn sight better than Houston Knights. That isn't saying much.

Besides, I hate football. I hate football players. I hate those bitch cheerleaders who live to bang football players. They all deserver each other. They all deserve to ride the wave and crash hard.

SyFy sucks

Eureka

I like science fiction. I get books from the library for the blind. I have a random book sent to me every time I send one back. The only genera I have on my request list is science fiction.

That said, I do not like Eureka that much. It it not science fiction so much as social awkwardness with some big words thrown in. This is what happens when you have people who rare writers before being geeks writing the shows and execs concerned with the bottom line before all else approving things. This show is lawyer science fiction. It doesn't even tick the boxes.

The stories are more about the people and relationships than the science or the technology. One of the latest shows is all about a ray that makes every one rage and turn in to sort of zombies ah-la 28 Days. Except, people end up apologizing to one another. What the fuck is that about? They got zapped to a different time line and now every one is all about making things right in their relationships and falling in love all over again.

The agency every one works for is supposedly paid for by the U. S. government, yet there are few episodes about centers coming in and shutting the place down because of budget overruns. Blah.

Warehouse 13

Haven't I complained about Warehouse 13 already?

A mismatched buddy show that is about mystical kind of science related magic items. This show combines acult with a touch of science fiction. Not sure I get half the jokes.

The agency every one works for is supposedly paid for by the U. S. government, yet there are few episodes about centers coming in and shutting the place down because of budget overruns. Blah.

Concluding

Government is good, apparently. The Communists at SyFy have drunk the big government cool aid. And, they want every one who watches their shows to think that government is good. At least, as long as a bunch of pinkos run the place.

But, I'm not bitter. All science fiction seems to take sides in some way. I wander if all writing does. You cannot help but figure out what a writer and publisher feel about the world around them by taking in their fiction writing. Think about who fixed things and who broke things and what each stood for and thought was good and bad. The good guys and bad guys will be consistent with the thoughts of the author and publisher.

Do I watch these shows? Kind of. There is so little on, particularly in the middle of summer, in the science fiction genera.

Joke

After being married 25 years, one day I took a look at my wife and said, “Honey, do you realize 25 years ago, I had a cheap apartment, a cheap car, slept on a sofa bed and watched a 10 inch black and white TV, but I got to sleep every night with a hot 25 year old blond. “Now, we have a nice house, a nice car, big bed and plasma screen TV, but I’m sleeping with a 50 year old woman. It seems to me that you are not holding up your side of things!”

Now my wife is a very reasonable woman. She told me to go out and find a hot 25 year old blond, and she would make sure that I would once again be living in a cheap apartment, driving a cheap car, sleeping on a sofa bed …

I shut up and took out the trash. Aren’t older women great? They really know how to solve your mid-life crisis!

Patterico

Yup.

Dell is pissing me off

Linux: Dell Drops Ubuntu PCs From Its Website

"Dell has stopped selling consumer PCs preloaded with Ubuntu from its website, and doesn't know when they're coming back. A search for Ubuntu on the Dell UK website returns only one laptop — the Dell Latitude 2100 from the company's business range. Dell insists that it's continuing to sell Ubuntu systems, but only over the phone, and has no idea when — or even if — the Ubuntu PCs will return online. 'We've recently made an effort to simplify our offerings online, by focusing on our most popular bundles and configuration options, based on customer feedback for reduced complexity and a simple, easy purchase experience,' Dell told PC Pro. 'We're also making some changes to our Ubuntu pages, and as a result, they are currently available through our phone-based sales only.' The move comes after Dell put a page on its website advising customers only to go for Ubuntu if they were interested in open-source programming."

Slashdot

I knew something was going on. I recently went looking for a laptop just for the heck of it. There were few choices on the U. S site. Dell is really starting to piss me off. When I buy a computer, I do not want Windows on it. When I buy a computer I want either no OS or Linux. You can buy desktops and servers with no OS, but just try buying a laptop from a major manufacturer with no OS. They will charge you the Windows tax regardless. That is a violation of my rights.

Timelaps

Here is the timelaps Tim took. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Lunch conversation

• I was the envy of some today because I had macaroni and cheese. Thanks Nat.
• Off-Broadway shows. I actually participated in the conversation a bit.
• Time
• Some people, like me, are early and want to be early.
• Others think that being early is a waist of time. Both are valid. Nothing is wrong.
• When you add a second person (spouse) in to the mix, the time it takes to do anything more than doubles.
• Videos
• There was a comment of my video about the monocular. They were surprised how well it worked. I was too honestly.
• Tim took a timelaps video of his trip in to work this morning. It will be up soon. I like doing this sort of thing. I do not have the equipment.
• Drinking too much coffee and sodas, 5 hour energy, who knows what else. It is all bad for you. Drink water. Eat stuff that grows out of the ground or eats what grows out of the ground.

No one brought up movies or video games. It was weird.

Notes:

Setup a backup server today. Well, mostly. It took me nearly an hour to figure out I needed to copy a license number from the old box to the new one. <sigh>. That is the way this whole IT job is going. Try it, fuck it up, un-fuck it. try something else. That is my job.

Windows just does not play nice with installing itself along side Linux. Even the new server software has issues just shutting up and playing nice with others.

I spent most of my work day trying to identify the cost of a discontinued system from Dell. I'm not going to get in to why. This is one of the paperwork issues in my new job that I frigging hate. Must be done. Must be done. Do it Kelly. Get it done. Someone motivate me for God's sake!

I ran around the office this morning taking pictures of the office name plates all across the company. I did this so I could put them on my computer and compare them to the database. The DB had gotten out of sync quite badly. It needed the attention.

I ruined a spiral notebook today. I kept a pen shoved in the spirals. I dropped the notebook and grabbed wildly as it fell. One of the metal wire spirals caught the pen. That spiral was pulled in a huge loop. The notebook is full of important data, so I had to cut the spirals off so I could get to the old pages. I folded the spent wire under the other spirals to keep it out of trouble. Then, I started a new notebook even though this one was only 70% done.

Went and saw Sorcerer's Apprentice. ... Lame.

Timelaps

The guy who did this used his phone to shoot a timelaps. I tried using an Android app to do something similar, but mine sucked. I need to find a way to make a regular video in to a timelaps.

Better than a transforming train

For over an hour I searched the internet over looking for a video worth blogging that wasn't someone dying, a bunch of people dying from one person shooting, one person dying from a bunch of people shooting, someone committing suicide by sliding face first down a dam, or a bunch of people dying in the same way one after another.

It can be done. An impressive video, found on the internet with no one dying.

Shoes

How can you tell it is laundry time for Kelly? I ware either nice cloths or shorts. This happened today.

I wore my new sneakers this morning. This means I made it to work with soaking wet feet.fortunately, I have a second pair of shoes at work for just such occasions. However, those shoes were not dry by the time I left. I need to hang them in the server room next time. Perhaps I need to bring up a small fan to dry them through out the day.

It rained yesterday, but not enough to make the ground saturated. The thing that makes my shoes wet is the grass. Normally, I ware boots and long pants. The boots protect my feet from getting wet. My pants get wet, but the boots typically keep me from feeling the wet from that either. My feet are dry.

The shoes get wet and stay wet all day. I tried just waring them the first time to find out if they would drip dry over a long period, but no dice. This tells me how much protection the boots offer me. It is hugely distracting having wet feet all day.

Upgrade or not to upgrade

Last night, I stayed late to work in order to upgrade a server. We only went from Red Hat 5.2 to Red Hat 5.5. The switch was needed to fix a kernel issue with the file locking mechanism. Sounds easy right? Well it was.

The issue was hitting us randomly and required the system be rebooted in order to fix. This was not acceptable because it happened often enough to get on people's nerves. It kicked people off their Linux boxes. A high percentage of our development is on Linux. Downtime sucks.

We researched the issue and decided the best fix was to upgrade the operating system. I hate just updating the kernel if I can help it because that might throw the system and the kernel out of sync. The user space and kernel space my end up with different expectations of the other. This just sounds like a pain so I try to avoid it.

The week before the upgrade I ran through an upgrade of the same versions on a different box. I'm glad I did because the upgrade went well and told me what I should be looking for. When the time came to pull the trigger, I was able to say "We are here and the next step will be a, b, c." That instills confidence in the thing we are working on.

We had a quick meeting before the event to discuss wholesale disaster and recovery. We met in the server room after hours and kicked every one off the network. We ran through the upgrade and rebooted. Oh, and had some pizza. The system came up and was working well. Only time will tell if this upgrade fixed the original issue.

On the way out the door, I thought about how much effort we just put in to the upgrade. I have to say we made it look easy. So much could have gone wrong and cost us not only our time, but many other people's time as well. We were as prepared as we could be. Things went well this time.

Notes:

One of the blogs asked an interesting question. How much are insurgents paid to fight American troops? Someone speculated about $5 per engagement. They receive 5 minutes of training in many cases. No idea how accurate that is. Makes me think though.

China past the U. S. in total energy use this past year. Is that one we want to win? The U. S. is still #1 per person. Surely someone is up there with us.

When?

Remember the end?
It was so very final.
People worried so much before the end.
After the end, no one seemed to mind very much.

I remember the end.
I remember the beginning, vaguely.
I do not remember the before.
Before doesn't scare me as much as the after.

I'm told the sun rose and set in the before.
That is hear say really.
I am confident that the sun will act in the after.
Well, it doesn't really matter to me does it?

The now is interesting, but hard to nail down.
The now keeps wiggling around.
When I sleep, there is now now.
There is no now in the before or after either.

Notes:

No rats this morning. I carried my walking stick in case they ganged up on me. I even had my camera in my pocket just in case they had multiplied and become belligerent.

Moved offices today. Again. With the new position comes a new position I suppose. it took a huge chunk of the day. I did take the opportunity to move a bunch of lab equipment around as well.

I missed lunch because I wanted to get moved from one office to another. I need to get back in the habit of eating something for lunch. It is so difficult to make myself fix something. This month, I am completely out of money. So, there is no buying lunch. Hey, such is life.

Voyager II is 33 years old. 12.8 hours to receive a signal at the distance 21,000,000,000 km. That is 21 tetrameters.

When will Ubuntu fix the mouse pointer problem I complained about a couple months ago? it sounds like they will fix it in the next major release. That is, they will not fix it as a bug. If you ask the people who modify the programs, it is fixed. If you ask users, it is not fixed. This is because code monkeys fixed it in the build process, but that process will not take effect until the next major build. Programmer assholes.

Here comes the rain

I couldn't capture the rats on the way to work this morning. This is just some rain could as they rolled in this afternoon at work. I'm kind of gad I got them today because I'm moving offices tomorrow.

No comment

Prefix Decimal
yotta  1000000000000000000000000 Septillion
zetta  1000000000000000000000    Sextillion
exa    1000000000000000000       Quintillion
peta   1000000000000000          Quadrillion
tera   1000000000000             Trillion
giga   1000000000                Billion
mega   1000000                   Million
kilo   1000                      Thousand
hecto  100                       Hundred
deca   10                        Ten

I tried to post the above in to a YouTube comment. It wouldn't let me. I guess it has too many numbers in it or something. They must have thought I was spamming. The person wanted to know what came after terabyte. Well, this is the definitive list. It came from Wikipedia.

Notes:

"You guys have probably heard so much about Apple you want to puke." Heard on the Geek News Central podcast. Amen.

I got a call from my mother this morning. The phone took an age to answer the call. I rebooted it and it started acting better. I really hate having to reboot my phone. It is an appliance and should just work. What happened to six sigma? Zero defects.

Thunderbird needs a way to export and import filters. If the new version has this, I need to find it and upgrade.

The rate of growth in China is slowing down. American stopped buying ridiculously cheap crap. Julie and my parents have both had yard sales in the past couple weeks. No one is buying anything. People are doubling their money by folding it in half and putting it back in their pocket. It is scary when the Mexicans are not buying quarter a piece cloths.

I got chased around by rats this morning. They were in the tall grass and ran along side me chirping while I walked. I tried to capture them on video, but it was not happening this morning.

Password Safe

I spent most of my day writing some rudimentary instructions for the following software. The hard part was figuring out what each software package was supposed to do. The Java version is multi platform, but missing several features.

Password Safe

Java Password Safe.

Awesome piece of software. Check it out.

Journal

I'm watching an episode of Eureka. This episode has a situation where people have changed their time line. They come back to find not only has a local stature suddenly been made from a different material, but all their lives has changed. Kevin is no longer autistic. The sheriff is no longer broken up with his wife. Oh, and one of the smart people traveled back with the group from the late 1940's. He is a prick, but not so much the worst of their problems. I have to say that I really like the fact that they get stuck there. Star Trek always found a way home. I hated that. Bad things happen to people on TV shows all the time.

This made me think. I need to start not only a blog for public access items. I also should start a private journal to keep simple chronological events and cause and effect episodes. I could use the opportunity to store what really happens from my prospective. This would be a great achievement. The possibilities are enormous. This could be used by someone trying to reconstruct my life after I'm gone. It could be used to identify the person who kills me. It could be used far in the future for posterity, legacy, toilet paper.

Too bad I'm so boring. An example of something that might go in the life log that would not make it in to the blog.

Entry

Went to Julie's place today. Elle spent last night over there with Tracy and Dalton's kids. The place was a wreck when we showed up. The AC was broken. Julie had a friend of ours on the way to help fix it. I think it was Blueberry from Fair. Not sure.

Filmed the entry and exit from the driveway and put it on YouTube. Nat's commentary on the exit was nice. It rained like mad, on the way home, but I didn't get any of that on video.

Started keeping the really boring privet entries that will not go on the blog.

I worried more about work today. I have feelings of inadequacy one minute and granger the next. Still wandering about asking for a raise. How long should I wait and embed myself in the position first? Is the position worth a raise? How can I better learn the new position? I already know much of it, but there is a ton of stuff I do not yet have a handle on.

Nat cooked today, twice. She did a load of dishes. The fact that we are completely out of money this month has made an impression. We have to go the next couple weeks with as little out go as possible to survive.

The earphones that Nat got me are pinching my glasses. They also cause Nat to have to repeat herself because the earphones cover my ears. It is nice when she turns up the TV while I'm watching something else on the computer.

Had a coffees and a hot chocolate with some Irish Cream in them tonight. The Cream was not high in alcohol content, but it is a rarity for me to drink anything.

end Entry

Thoughts? I wander if I would keep up with it.

##################################

Cop Cary

This is a military 0.50 caliber weapon. It can shoot accurately over half a mile, with the right ammo, nearly a mile. How long will it be before they start paroling the streets in these wheeled, armored arsenals? Hey, if it cuts down on crime I'm for it. Well, as long as the right people get shot.

The Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio launched its 16th crime and immigration sweep in a stretch of desert in the southwestern U.S.-Mexico border, on Thursday.

Although the next crime suppression operation had been announced for July 29, Arpaio said the one-day sweep was executed sooner due to reports of many drug and immigrant smugglers activity through the Vekol Valley.

Arpaio ordered the deployment of a powerful belt-fed .50 caliber machine gun to be on site during the operation to ensure deputies' safety, as there have been recent reports of violence in the desolate desert areas.

...

By late Thursday night, sheriff's deputies said they had arrested 11 people, including seven of those being investigated for human trafficking. The rest were detained for outstanding warrants and traffic violations.

Examiner

Seven human trafficking suspects and several on warrens. You would think this sweep would have gotten a bit more than that. I want a parade of a hundred drug dealers marched right down the middle of the street while citizens get to throw rotten fruit and vegetables at them while pointing and laughing.

That would be raciest. Wait a minute. I didn't say march the Mexican drug dealers and ignore the Scandinavian drug dealers. Throw them all in to one fair and comprehensive parade.

Picking up Elle

I almost didn't put this video up. It is just us picking up Elle from Julie's place. The conversation as we leave though is kind of nice. I figure it gives a little insight in to Nat and my relationship. I didn't shoot anything else because I don't like taking pictures or video of other people's kids.

REX freedom of movement

It is the little things like selfe reliance that let us feel like we are alive. I have a hard time changing the oil.

New toy

My parents came by this afternoon to drop something off.

The Tool

The Monocular

They saw this combo at REI and thought of me. How much more Kelly could this be unless it came with a flashlight?

Arguing Fail

I understand the Ibex better than the guy.

UFO over China

The first sighting occurred at Hangzhou's Xiaoshan Airport, in the eastern part of the country, according to the state-controlled Xinhua news agency.

Eighteen flights were delayed or rerouted and operations shut down after twinkling lights were spotted above the terminal around 9 p.m. July 7, the agency said. According to Xinhua, speculation has centered on a private aircraft. The state-run China Daily quoted a source saying the object had a military connection.

"No conclusion has yet been drawn," said Wang Jian, head of air traffic control with Zhejiang branch of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, and the investigation continues.

...

<0p>Meanwhile, The Shanghai Daily reported a UFO appeared above the city of Chongqing on Thursday.

Witnesses said four "lantern-like objects forming a diamond shape" hovered for an hour above a park.

"I stared at it and it did not move," one resident told the newspaper. "After hovering for an hour, the thing started to fly higher and finally out of people's sight."

CNN

Busy day.

Fantastic Trick

You learn something every day. Someone who has an extra piece of glass and an itchy pare of tin-snips lying around give this a shot and let me know how it works. Ware safety glasses and gloves for God's sake.

Pay Wall Woes

News: Murdoch's UK Paywall a Miserable Failure

from the sorry-rupert dept.

"As part of his war against free, Rupert Murdoch put the Times and Sunday Times of London behind a paywall. Michael Wolff of Newser asks how that's working out for him. You can guess: miserable failure: 'Not only is nobody subscribing to the website, but subscribers to the paper itself — who have free access to the site — are not going beyond the registration page. It's an empty world.' Not that this wasn't entirely predictable."

Slash Dot

I give Murdoch props for at least trying. He is going about it the wrong way in my opinion. Someone needs to figure out how to make money without milking people needlessly.

It isn't that people are used to getting things for free. People are not steeling it. It is that the value of your information has dropped due to competition and explosion of choice in the area. You need to evolve or go the way of the trilobite.

I'm just saying.

Me and Tea

So, we went to Berger King. We asked for iced tea, among other things. The lady taking our order didn't sound like she was in to being there today. Nat and I have had this same discussion with half the fast food places in the Houston area.

The chick is like "It isn't sweet. Is that OK?"
"Yes, thank you."
"So, do you want it?"
"Yes please."

We got home and it was a coke.

Should have put money on it. I've asked for diet tea. I've asked for unsweet tea. I've asked for regular tea. It is always a challenge. It is no particular type of person who doesn't get it.

When I was growing up, sweet tea was asked for by name. Iced tea was just hat water, a tea bag or five and time. That was the magic formula. Nothing special, except it was served slopping over with ice and kept full at all times.

Notes:

"Can you cut police whiteout affecting law and order negatively?". I say not if you let people know in advance.

I got a new power supply for a switch at work today. It is amazing what is available out there. The switches are worth like $80. So, replacing the brick for about $16 makes sense. it is funny how excited I got firing the switch backup. The reason it died is because someone plugged that switch in to the wrong brick and it died after it over heated. Lucky it didn't catch on fire.

It stopped?

BP: No oil flowing into Gulf of Mexico for first time in months as part of test of ruptured well. Watch live on CNN.com

CNN

So, you can go to CNN.com and watch it not leak any more?

This has got to be a first. They are far too proud of nothing happening.

Is the pipe broken below the sea floor? If so, isn't it still leaking down there, thus, the oil will simply ooze from elsewhere?

Are the relief wells in operation, as in draining oil from the sea floor before it hits the open sea?

Lunch conversation

The cats dogs conversation started when Bill made the comment that one of our coworkers was under the table waiting for scraps. The BP conversation started when someone came in to the lunch room to ask a question about a customer and the two people spewed a dozen acronyms. BP dosn't actually stand for anything. That is the company's name.

• Cats vs Dogs
• Dogs are too much work.
• Cats are useless.
• Cats are good for target practise.
• BP
• I heard the cap finally worked.
• I heard the cap didn't work.
• I heard the government made them open the valves for 24 hours just to measure the flow rate so they would know how much to fine BP.
• Sounds like something our government would do.
• I heard there is a break in the pipe under the sea floor so there is not much hope of capping the leak. It will just ooze up somewhere else.

Spy hunt

Deported Russian (Spy?) Worked At Microsoft

subtropolis writes "KOMO News in Seattle is reporting that a recently-deported 23-yr-old Russian man 'appears to have ties to the recently-exposed Russian counterintelligence' (according to unnamed Feds). The article states that he admitted to unspecified immigration violations and was promptly shown the door on Tuesday. It also says that 'Microsoft confirms Karetnikov worked as an entry-level software tester for less than a year.' So, I'm thinking that MS had better take a really good at their logs for that time. He may have got in at 'entry-level' but his abilities may have been a fair bit beyond that. ... Interestingly, his admission to mere 'violations' and swift departure would be right in line with how this swap has gone down. The four Russians who were flown to Britain and the US had to first sign a confession before President Medvedev granted them pardons." The same news is at CBS News, too.

sladhdot

Yes, this is scary. Where are the next batch working? Where is the made for TV movie of this rusky invasion? When lobbyists do this sort of thing they call it a job. When spies do it they call it an incident.

Muscle Memory

Dribbling a basketball. Juggling. Yo-yo. Bicycle. Think about any kind of thing that is very difficult to explain, yet must be mastered through repetition. This involves muscle memory.

It is funny when you learn a new password. I don't know about every one else in the world, but I type it in consciously for a long time and get it right because I have to stop and think about it. Then, as it gets put in muscle memory, I get faster and make many more mistakes. Perhaps there is something to having the pas-phrases that cannot possibly be remembered in muscle memory, thus forcing you to consciously run through it every time.

This is a funny thing, muscle memory. It helps for all kinds of movements. When I was teaching myself nunchucks, I notice early on that if I stopped thinking about what was happening and just thought about which move I wanted to do next, I would throw those things around much more quickly and hit myself in the back of the head much less.

Phone numbers and passwords are a dangerous thing to leave to muscle memory. I can't tell you how many times have I had someone asked me the password to some functional shared account and had to type it in order to remember with accuracy. I'm not the only one. This happened just the other day with someone telling me.

Typing in general relies on the same thing. I cannot see well. I put the keyboard out of sight and have the monitors up close to my face. Some People freak when they watch me type because it seems like I have the entire keyboard memorized. Trouble is, if you ask me where a key is on the keyboard, I have to try to type it to find it.

Even when it comes to the on-screen keyboard for my phone is in my muscle memory. This is not really a good thing because I have such poor eye hand coordination that I get the wrong character and make the same mistakes over and over.

There are places for muscle memory and places to avoid it. Balance is true in all things I suppose.

Notes:

China owns 30% to 40% of the U. S. bond market.

I killed a bunch of ants yesterday at home. Now, I find a bunch of little tiny ants in my office. They are in the walls. Someone warned me they were there. I got bit by one. I wander how they found out.

It took me 45 minutes to set up my own email on a new Windows system at work. Some admin.

The G. G. Liddy show had some black activist on who said basically, if black people think things are bad now, wait until Latinos are on top. From memory "I'm surprised there have not been race riots in Los Angeles." The guy was from Project Twenty One.

I do not need to consume collieries or caffeine in order to function. I do not need to drink a soda, eat a candy bar, consume chips or another cup of coffee after lunch. I did not eat lunch. That doesn't matter. I hereby declare myself immune to low blood sugar. It is my own fault for not eating lunch. I have food, I'm too lazy to fix the food I have and I'm too cheap to buy a burger.

Have I already complained about the spell checker in GEdit that does not work for contractions? Well, I should some time.

There is a book out about living life without air conditioning. The U. S. uses more electricity for air conditioning than the entire continent of Africa (a billion people) use for everything. The book is called "Loosing our Cool." They have dubbed a new disease "Nature Deficit Disorder." I like it. I'm all for sweating like mad and just stinking.

Anchor Baby: When a foreign woman or couple has a baby in the U. S. in order to achieve residency.

I set up a bunch of filters at my work email. Why did I wait this long to do this?

Couple of videos

Poor kitty.

Thieving Alligator! Take that!

Not that I have a problem with sucking coffee through a straw, but there is just something manly about making a coffee cup work in zero G. Once again, coffee contributes to science.

Just kind of cool.

File Filter

Before adding six more criteria.

-------- Summary ---------------------------------------------------------------
Total files processed     > .............................................. 73574
Good files in playlist    > .............................................. 44248
Bad files out of list     > .............................................. 12611
Fantastic files           > ............................................... 5429
Number of Duplicates      > .............................................. 13695
-------- time ------------------------------------------------------------------
Process h:m:s             > .............................................. 0:8:3
Elapsed h:m:s             > .............................................. 0:8:3
Files/second              > ................................................ 152
reg ex count              > ............................................. 317957
CPU h:m:s of this process > .............................................. 0:7:9
-------- Info ------------------------------------------------------------------
Good file                 > ..................................... kelly_good.m3u
Fantastic file            > ...................................... kelly_fan.m3u
Log file                  > ..................... kelly_log_2010-07-12_07-28.log
Directory processed       > ..................................... ['/mnt/music']
Items in kill list        > ................................................ 172
Items in fantastic list   > ................................................. 78
Options                   > .......................................... See below
 ['-o', '-g', 'kelly_good', '-f', 'kelly_fan', '-l', 'kelly_log']
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After

-------- Summary ---------------------------------------------------------------
Total files processed     > .............................................. 73574
Good files in playlist    > .............................................. 42904
Bad files out of list     > .............................................. 14098
Fantastic files           > ............................................... 5415
Number of Duplicates      > .............................................. 13552
-------- time ------------------------------------------------------------------
Process h:m:s             > ............................................. 0:7:36
Elapsed h:m:s             > ............................................. 0:7:36
Files/second              > ................................................ 161
reg ex count              > ............................................. 313496
CPU h:m:s of this process > ............................................. 0:6:45
-------- Info ------------------------------------------------------------------
Good file                 > ..................................... kelly_good.m3u
Fantastic file            > ...................................... kelly_fan.m3u
Log file                  > ..................... kelly_log_2010-07-12_12-52.log
Directory processed       > ..................................... ['/mnt/music']
Items in kill list        > ................................................ 178
Items in fantastic list   > ................................................. 78
Options                   > .......................................... See below
 ['-o', '-g', 'kelly_good', '-f', 'kelly_fan', '-l', 'kelly_log']
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note over a thousand files are added to the bad files list. Note the time and regex decrease. This is because of the way I nested the loops. The more you eliminate from the bad list the fewer duplicates you have to check for.

Podcasts

I managed to blow away my podcasts today because of a lack of a semicolon. I so hate that.

My normal process is as follows.

• Download the files at the house.
• Somehow only download one file and not notice.
• Put them on my thumb drive.
• Forget to put the files on the drive (sync) before I go to bed.
• Leave the drive at home.
• Copy the files off the drive to my hard drive at work.
• Blow away the files.
• Copy all the files to the wrong spot and not discover it for a week.
• Copy the files all to one folder, thus making it a pain in the butt figuring out what file is what podcast.

You get the idea. Ironically, washing the drive in the laundry didn't do crap to the data on the drive. The plastic broke on the back, but my files were still there.

Then comes things that are not my fault like the Gnome interface in Red hat 5.5 that we use at work will not let me remove files, even with rights, from the GUI. I have to remove files through the command line. This makes me do the whole thing from the command line. I must remember not to do command line stuff before coffee in the future.

I'm really starting to understand the attraction to having a dedicated device for this crap. Many smart phones, including mine, allow the gathering and playing of podcasts. I can't get the software to work and I do not have enough memory on my phone to do much good. There is always something. Maybe in my next phone. I'll still be too cheap.

Lament

If only I could sit in the grass and listen.
Where I live is beside a highway.
Beside a field of tall grass, full of bugs.
The ants own my yard.
Soon, I shall take it back. Soon.

If only I could go for a drive.
If only I could ride a motorcycle in the country.
Never been much on horses, but ride a horse too.
Find myself in a stream with my pants rolled up.
Watch the fish pass me by with more important things to do.

What ever happened to summer days playing in the dirt?
What happened to running in the heat?
What happened to waking up early just to be the first in the public pool?
I miss BB guns in walking down the bayou.
I never did steel a kiss from just any girl who would let me.

We played Dungeons and Dragons for entire weekends.
We learned how to program basic and pascal.
We helped poor driveways and build fences.
We did landscaping and mowed.
We taught ourselves to care about money.

Playing from dawn until dusk.
My parents had to beg me to come home.
We would conspire to waist time.
We would dream.
We explored our universe.

Now I'm older, summer is hot.
I miss summer, when it was cool.
I miss youth, a time when I did what felt right.
I'm still alive, does that count for much?
Youth is a state of mind, I need to get out there and play.

Notes:

I heard "The Wichita Lineman" on a TV show this past weekend. it was a modern TV show. That is not the normal fare for hip TV shows. Then I heard it today come up randomly on the music list. 70,000+ files. Wander if there is more to work in the universe.

Got a touch of rain this afternoon at lunch. If I hadn't had my phone with me, I would have just stood there and gotten soaked. It felt that good.

Tried a free form poem today. How long has it been?

A couple of the new young engineers are sick of doing technical writing stuff. "This isn't engineering." Welcome to our company.

Lance! explain this to me

I want to have Back to the Future style hover board by the end of the month.

Bradford Football Disaster

Warning: Graphic tragedy.

The Bradford City Fire Disaster occurred on Saturday 11 May 1985 when a flash fire consumed one side of the Valley Parade football stadium in Bradford, England.

The fire broke out during a football match between Bradford City (the home team) and Lincoln City, on the day that Bradford City were supposed to have celebrated their winning the Football League Third Division trophy. A total of 56 people died and more than 265 others were injured.

This is raw footage from the Bradford football disaster. Most of you have seen some footage of it, mostly in tributes and other compilations. This is pretty rare and raw footage from that tragic day.

Live Leak

I listen to the BBC all the time. I've heard reference to the Bradford Football Disaster, but never thought to hunt down footage of it. I didn't realizde how many people died. If you had so much as a sore toe, it would slow you down.

Worse than Metro

I need to stop complaining about Houston Metro service so much.

I'm starting to feel much better about metro.

Oil price rize

Where have all the oil rigs gone? Where is all their money spent?

Diamond Offshore announced Friday that its Ocean Endeavor drilling rig will leave the Gulf of Mexico and move to Egyptian waters immediately — making it the first to abandon the United States in the wake of the BP oil spill and a ban on deep-water drilling.

...

Once the rigs relocate, it could be a minimum of five to 10 years before they return, predicted Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land.

Fausta's Blog

Hell of a guy that Obama. I cannot help but wander if he is deliberately doing this to th Gulf Coast region to force high paying jobs out of existence in order to weaken Republican strongholds. I mean, that is what makes sense. Isn't it still OK to drill on the East coast, a Democrat stronghold?

Modern sixties Vet

I can't tell if this is just a look alike, or if it is actually a sixties era vet that has been vastly modified. 1000 horsepower, modern suspension, lope, two immense turbos, stereo.

Looks, Sound, Base and Balls. That is a fine vehicle.

Radiation

How many times have you watched an old movie or cartoon that had some kind of wave drawn out on the screen to indicate radiation? Well, here is the real thing. The particles floating in the air move around and cluster where the decaying molecules have gone. This is real. This is how you do it.

The same thing happens in your body when you are exposed to radiation. These particles of alcohol are moved around enough to see them. The molecules are moved around in your body. Sometimes cells are burned or caused to fail or become cancerous by the same sort of motion you get in the cloud chamber above.

Seeing color

No wonder I cannot see the color blue on top of other colors. This is the approximate number of color receptors in an average human eye.

• 120,000,000 black/white/gray rods. They are smaller than cones and thus higher resolution.
•   3,000,000 red cones
•   3,000,000 green cones
•      10,000 blue cones

Why I don't paint

Nat wants to paint Elle and her bathroom. More power to her. I believe she wants to paint the room. We have the stuff she needs in the garage. Except that is for the most important item in my opinion. I don't remember any tarps for painting. There are a couple of old smelly tarps out there.

I am not excited about painting anything. I know it is possible to paint something in your house yourself. I know it is by far cheaper to do it yourself. I am bad at it. I cannot tell when I screw up. I cannot fix it easily when I do tell. This is not why I do not do it.

Once, when I was like 10, I helped my mom paint some wall in the garage or something. She didn't care if I got some drips on the floor of the garage. Anyway. I had a soda in a bottle sitting near me while I was painting. I avoided the drink like the plague because I had heard that paint was highly poisonous. Not two minutes in, I noticed a drop of paint dripping down both the inside and outside of the bottle. I only noticed it by accident really. Moments after I saw it, the drips were more or less gone.

At that moment, I promised never to paint again. If I could come that close to killing myself, I didn't want to maybe kill any one else. Most likely, the paint would not have killed me. I was 10 or so remember. Still, it made an impression.

Plotting at work

A couple people at work had to put together a huge chart for a presentation. We have a plotter, but the orders were not to use it yet because this was basically a rough draft. Makes sense until you watch three people try to stitch forty pages together for half an hour before the meeting, per print. I wander if the time saved would have excused the plotter expendables.

This is added to the time it took to hunt down a piece of software for the job. I suggested rasterbator for cutting up the pages better than the default printing tried to do. I believe they went with an open source package called Poster Razor, which appears to have a Linux version by the way. it is too difficult overcoming the name of that first one. I have to admit that I remembered it even though I have never used it and it has been years since it has so much as crossed my mind.

The end result looked pretty good if you ask me. The plot would have looked much better and would most likely not have taken three people three hours to compile over all. Having the right tool for the job is a must. Wish I could put up a picture.

Notes:

The geek blogs are going ape shit over the Microsoft tech that allows you to put batteries in which ever way. I looked around, but I figure you still have to put all the batteries in the same way. That is, the batteries all have to be positive to negative. Didn't someone do this when I was a kid?

The young people coming in as new engineers are surprised to find out a Lazar printer is black and white. They look at me like I'm pointing them to a slide rule. At least a couple of the new folks are very impatient when it comes to learning new software or methods of getting things done. It seems to me they think they know a better way and it eats at them that they have to do it the [this company] way. I fully understand this, but it does get in the way.

Four billion people have mobile phones. One point five billion people have access to financial institutions like banks. Apple will shortly offers PayPal kind of service. How long before Starbucks accepts iPay?

I forgot the two guys who started Twitter both worked for Google.

There are more and more contacts between my world and China. Now I know two of my friends who dated Chinese women. They both have learned the applicable languages.

Big board

I am so glad these guys are out there doing this. I want to see a pipe for this ting.

kicker

Really simple Python kicker script. I believe the subprocess module started in Python 2.4.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys, subprocess

command=["nedit", "-create"]
if len(sys.argv) > 0:
    command+= sys.argv[1:]
try:
    subprocess.Popen(command)
except:
    print "Error executing NEdit."

Notes:

There is a study of people who lived past 100 that says there is a collection of some number of jeans the may be used with a 77% accuracy to tell who will live to a ripe old age. The only use of this I can think of is for retirement planning and insurance rates. "You can retire at 65, but your spouse has to wait until 90." Would I want to know if I have the trait? I doubt I can afford the test right now but it will cost $7.08 at Wal-Mart's genetics kiosk in ten years.

It is just plane bleak in the job market. Every bit of news sounds bad. The over all rate is 10%. For black people it is 15.x%, women 12%, men, 17%. For black male teens the rate is 43% unemployed. Remember, these are only people still looking for work.

Interest rates are at their lowest numbers in 50 years. New home loans are down over 30% from last year. Habitat for Humanity is doing pretty well. They are looking at buying foreclosed homes and giving them away as apposed to building them.

GM sales more cars in China than the U. S..

Nat came home Monday with 100 44 cent stamps. Why didn't you get "forever stamps?" "I didn't think about it." I hear Tuesday that they are going to 46 cents. sigh!

There was a British board game form the seventies called BP Oil Strike. One of the 'hazard cards' caused a blowout and had one million dollars cleanup cost. Now, why were the costs in U. S. dollars I wander? Creepy.

I have a simple idea for a very short fiction story, but it is too close to what we do at work to clear the censors. I'll keep it in my mind and try to figure out how to write something that isn't too close to reality.

How ... Cold War -- From CNN email "Judge: 10 spy suspects pleaded guilty and will be deported to Russia, which in turn will release four prisoners to U.S."

Notes:

Bloodmobile is poor diction. Both sanguine mobile and blood wagon are better because they do not cross languages in the same word. I separated them to make thing readable.

China imports coal from Wyoming among other places.

Nearly half of U. S. states have worse financial status than Greece.

Android based consumer level tablets by Christmas this year. Business level devices next year. Rumor is, they will run Flash out of the box. It may be moot because an EU law may force Apple to support Flash on the phones and pads.

Flip WiFi camera out very soon. It will have to have a different interface. That is, more buttons or a touch screen ore some way to input information like a WiFi password. Can't wait to check it out. No, I will not get one.

Lady Gaga went over 10,000 fans on Facebook. Yup. End of civilization.

Can you imagine a world without helium? That day may be coming.

Day 1

Neural networks are a collection of decision making nodes that are connected to one another in a network of pathways that can change and be prioritized and even eliminated based on need. Each decision is small, but all of them piled on top of one another and the using pathways of a given moment make it nearly impossible to predict the outcome in a perfect fashion the result of problem posed to a neural network.

By introducing the ability to increase the number of nodes based on need, and designing the decision making algorithms and design of pathways to be extensible, the limits of the neural network and capabilities of the network to complete problems can be increased dramatically. The use of virtual nodes and virtual nodes that can run recursive networks, links that can be madke from parent networks to child networks, the capabilities of the neural networks can become greater than the capabilities of the hardware the software is running on. It is not the speed of decisions every time that is important, it is the answer that comes back.

When neural networks are combined with preexisting training of parts of the network, recursion, access to external controls and data, the limits of the neural network become the limits of the neural network to change the situation around it.

All neural networks should be subject to oversight by people who have the understanding of the signs and consequences of runaway processing. The best example of a run away neural network is all of life as we know it at the present time.

Office

90% of the things that 90% of people need an office package for is doable in Open Office. I say this having used it for a couple years now. The only times I have had to track down a box with MS Office on it was to satisfy someone who said specifically that they wanted me to do something in a proprietary MS Office format.

We have had some new folks at my office who are in technical fields who have not ever used Open Office for anything. I cornered a couple of them and they ended up admitting that they either fudge on the student purchase forms or outright pirate MS Office in non professional arias like home or friend's computers they set up.

This is one area where I wish MS would start going after people for prating their software. Open Office has problems. The more people who used it, or are at least exposed to it, the better it will become. There are other office packages. Some are OK and some are outright terrible. The tide of MS enforcing their rights would raise all the boats in this case.

We setup a couple computers on our network that let people run MS Office remotely. There are three. If I go look at the logs, they get used about three times a week by the same people over and over. Then, thirty five people all try to use them at once. It would be great if we had a virtual machine system that would scale and allow so many hours of use or whatever as people needed them. This is what the whole MS Office Online thing is supposed to allow. The trouble is, we don't have internet access.

Tax the Rich

I knew that redistribution of wealth meant taking it from private citizens and handing it to public entities. The goal of leftists is the classless society. This is not true of any human society. They keep trying it over and over and it keeps failing over and over. It is a classless society except the political class is on top.

They say "tax the rich" only because the poor don't have anything worth taking. The poor have already lost their freedom and do not even know it.

The current government of the U. S. wants to tell you what to eat, how much sleep to get, where to work, what you are aloud to spend money on. Perhaps our government has no problem with the Chinese paying for it all, but I do. The U. S. shouldn't owe any one any thing. It has been decades. How is this possibly a good thing?

Saying one thing on TV and another behind closed doors is lying. It is what the terrorists do saying one thing in English and another in Arabic for example or other language. There need to be consequences for lying to the American citizenry. Apparently, just being voted out of office next time is not good enough.

Gloom

Heard while listing to podcasts about U. K. Financial well being. (all from memory)

• "Ferocious" while speaking about the job market.
• "70 applicants per vacancy"
• "No one ever asked employers if they needed double the graduates in the last fifteen years."
• "There are going to be hundreds of thousands of additional job losses in the U. K. yet."
• "Don't touch property with a barge pole." when asked about buying a home.
• "Households do worse during the recovery than the re recession."

Dreams

As one who works that nine to five, I have to say that he is right. If there were anything that I could do that would make me stand out in the crowd, it would get me fired.

The only thing I'm good at that I really enjoy is being an asshole.

We had a guy named Larry at work. He was a new engineer not far out of school. He worked in a couple different departments at our office at different times. I don't know how to put it, but he never quite meshed with the flaming mayhem that is our engineering staff. if your ass is not on fire and you don't look like you are about to climb a tour with a deer rifle, your are not exhibiting a sense of urgency. That is why a guy got let go a couple years ago. Or work is not healthy for the engineers. They are worked to death and expected to sacrifice their youth and brilliance to the cause and can't even shift a couple hours around to spend time with their families.

This i true through the engineering world. It is no wander that so few women get involved in this field. They can do better without trying very hard. They are smart.

So, Larry left today to go back to school He and is wife packed up and went back to Austin. God bless them. Forty five minutes after he was gone, I, the IT guy, packed up his computer and moved in another engineer in his place.

Don't be an engineer. They will squeeze you until you are empty, then throw you away for the new guy. Follow Phil's advice and find something you are good at that you can make money at and do that. Do it well. Be the best. Make that work for you rather than making yourself work to fill in someone else's dreams.

I listened to a podcast today that was reviewing films. He mentioned music and said he would take someone who could barely sign their name, but loved their music like their children over someone with a PHD in any form of music. This is along the same rail. Is it possible to live your dreams without loosing everything in the process? Can you feel like you accomplished your dreams without loosing everything or sacrificing everything else?

Someone out there tell me you are following your dream.

Go or blow!

She blue.

Persons Unknown

Bad attempt. Persons Unknown is another show about people trapped on an island. Well, sort of. They have a barrier they cannot pass. They have someone declaring their power over them. This is a LOST wannabe. It doesn't look nearly as good. I hate the characters. I dislike the power. I have a hard time following the flashbacks because I just don't care about the people.

When is it going to stop. Every time someone comes up with a show that kind of works, there are copy cats that just don't get it right. Not by miles in this case.

The area is not big enough. The people are shallow. The power is failing to control. The barrier is not impervious or scary enough. The happenings are predictable. There is very little suspense. There is no action.

Lame.

Firworks

This is what it looks like from my driveway on the Forth of July. One of the biggest shows used to be right next door. Fortunately, I still have a hard time with this concept, a fireworks stand moved in right at the end of the block. This means my next door neighbor cannot pop firecrackers because he is in the 300 foot limit. Nor can people pop them in the neighboring field or in front of our house.

Vow of poverty

I love the number of people who think that there is a huge number of rich people who are sitting on a big piles of money and cackling while not spending it for useless goods made by the Chinese.

Even if people spent all the money they had on Chinese made products, it shouldn't help Americans very much. Do people who have money deserve to have money or do they deserve to have someone come in and take it away? Honestly. Do you feel that people who earn money deserve to spend it or save it or invest it as they please?

If you are someone on the receiving side of spent money, answer this. Do you not dream of having money? If you come in to money by earning it or just finding it along the way, like marriage or lottery, should you then be required to give it up just because you have it?

Economic freedom is the first freedom. It is the foundation for all other freedoms. The freedom of the press resides with those who own one. The freedom to speak your mind resides with those people who can afford the lawyers to defend that right. the right to own property lies with those who can afford that property and avoid imminent domain.

The current government speaks about medical doctors like they are Wall Street bankers. Doctors are business owners and operators. They have to worry about a bottom line just like any other business. They have to additional worries of killing their customers if they screw up. Do doctors deserve to have their livelihoods taken from them because they make money? Do butchers, bakers, hair stylists deserver the same?

What professions do people deserve to make money doing? I suppose the entertainment industry, the industry that must have the largest ratio of millionaires in the States, is exempt from the rules of wealth distribution. Why do they get a pass? Why do some politicians get a pass and others do not? Democrats want to pass money out by the truckload and Republicans wont to help people make dump truck loads of money.

I don't get it. It is like there is a social stigma against success. We are teaching children that trying is more important than succeeding in schools. We teach that "everybody wins" makes sense. Then we bitch when people show up at our door and take our house away because we could not afford to make the payments. We complain when there are no jobs because people in other countries do wheat we did for a tenth of the money.