AT&T T-Mobile merge in trouble

Somebody woke up. I basically quit T-Mobile because I was afraid of this going through. It still may go through. AT&T would love to control 100% of all communication AGAIN!!. Weren't they broken up a million years ago for the exact same practices? I'm not that frigging old.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to block AT&T's $39 billion merger with T-Mobile.
The merged companies would be the largest wireless company in the United States, combining AT&T's 95 million customers with T-Mobile's 34 million users. Along with Verizon Wireless, the merged companies would combine for more than two-thirds of the wireless market and account for 78% of the wireless industry's revenue.
"The combination of AT&T and T-Mobile would result in tens of millions of consumers all across the United States facing higher prices, fewer choices and lower quality products for mobile wireless services," the Justice Department said in its announcement.

CNN Headline email

I'm stuck using AT&T for my internet for the moment. I'm working on it. Sometime after Christmas, I'm going to look in to something like the Sprint portable 3G 4G solutions. This will work for a static location just as well as a mobile one. I already had someone come over with one of the devices and sure enough it worked. It says unlimited. I need to check on those numbers.

Lack of confidence

Our current government is not going to fix the problem. People are charging less on credit. House prices are dropping. The answer is jobs stupid.

I have run up some credit card dept recently. This is due to medical bills and house costs. I would have never done so except for necessary. I look at our government and think things are not going to get better until we have regime change in this country.

The U. K. is calling the housing situation a crisis. The word "crisis" is far over used. Fewer homes were built last year in the U. K. than any year since the 1920's. Soon renters will be in the majority.

What scares me is history. In the great depression, people loved the president. They kept putting him back in office regardless of his efforts not working. He was trying though. He made a good show of it. He failed. No one cared. No idea if something similar will happen or is happening in the U. S..

Some of the investment advice includes (from memory) "Why on earth would you invest in retail unless you are looking for a faster way of loosing money." This was a guy in the U. K. talking about the outlook for this Christmas.

One of the other complaints are banks not lending or people not asking to barrow. One of the horror satires was a business owner going to a bank for a loan. They wanted to owner, not put of for collateral, "own" 30% of his company before they would approve the loan. in other words, the bank wanted him to sell them 30% of his company for basically $0 and pay the loan back with interest. Wonder why no one is borrowing.

I'm sick of the current government in the U. S. thinking they can just not bother to run the country between campaigns. I want a law that says politicians are not aloud to campaign until 60 days before the election. Even then, only some percentage of their efforts can be devoted to campaigning. I'm thinking 25% to 40% would be realistic. Everything else has to be to perform the tasks of the job they were elected to do. Perhaps a limit on the amount of money they can spend would be nice. Something banning them from using their position to spend money that basically boils down to campaigning would be good.

You will forgive me if I don't hold my breath.

Notes:

found an old IBM laptop at work. It is circa 98 to about 2000. I want to fire it up and check it out. It looks brand new. I cannot find one of the proper sized 3 pronged power cables to fit in to the brick that came with it.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find all the files that a user leaves behind on a computer? Me either. It turns out that there are files rat-holed all over the operating system. One end to the other, there is some kind of evidence left behind. One of the vlogs I frequent just got through talking about a bunch of legal documents left behind on a public computer. Makes me wary.

Speakerectomy

The KVM at work is now perfect. I performed a speakerectomy. It no longer beeps when switching. The speaker came out with a bit of a nudge. The leads left behind needed to be trimmed because they may have shorted or something. Done and dusted. This is officially the quietest KVM ever. Thank you for the massive assist from Adrian and Don.

The chopper

Field	Data
Title	Speakerectomy on a KVM
Description	Ever have a device that makes noise? Every take the squeaker out of a dog toy? That is what this is all about. This is a IOGear MiniView.
Tags	annoying sound beep speakerectomy IOGear KVM MiniView electronics disassemble IT Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

Field	Data
Title	Random chopper landing
Description	This is a helicopter taking off and landing again about a half hour later in a field near my work. Anyone know the rules for choppers landing in the city?
Tags	chopper helicopter takeoff landing rules in a city Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

Saw a helicopter land and take off again from a field near our office. Tried to get some video. Didn't work well. The guy who noticed it didn't see anyone leave or enter the chopper before it took off again. If there had been anything wrong, I don't think they would have just taken off again. I wonder if the pilot had to take a leak. That is a definite advantage of a chopper I suppose.

Later that day

Well, it came back about 30 minutes later and did the same thing. This time I get a bit more video of it landing. Had to get back to work before it took off again. This time was a bit more exciting and easier to see because the sun was pretty much all the way up.

Now, I want to know a few things. What are the criteria for normal every day pilots to land their choppers in a city where they want? I've heard you can get in to all kinds of trouble doing so without a flight plan. I remember stories about a guy my mother used to work for who had a helicopter and landed it all over the place. I've also heard the rules got tightened up a bit after 9/11.

how much slack do emergency workers have in landing their choppers in non-emergency situations? Same question for news and commercial operations. Even if they own the land they landed on, there must be rules governing such things. This chopper looks like a private vehicle to me.

I want a chopper. I've blogged about this before. Doesn't every person who has ever commuted anywhere under any circumstances thought "It would be so much better if I just had a helicopter." I mean come on. Unless they already have one.

Break conversation

Walked around in the 109f (42c) degree heat for lunch today. They say it felt like 113f. I was on top of the parking garage in the direct sunlight surrounded by concrete. The following came at 15:00 break. Glad I took one today. Needed it.

• The Texas heat
• Our dead lawns
• Those chit-chit-chit-dhdhdhdhdhdhd sprinklers are called pulse sprinklers or impact sprinklers, thank you Brian G.
• Never did look up what those clown head tentacle hose toys were called. We decided they are why our entire generation is created out by clowns.
• Cold brew drip coffee
• Vacation plans

Cuz

I go back and forth following my cousin on Twitter and remover her. She is 18, but has the emotional age of about 13. Maybe I'm just old. If I could just turn off her re-tweets. For some reason, her re-tweets keep coming through even though I've turned them off in the web interface for Twitter. Currently I have her unfollowed because of Britney Spears tweets.

My other cousin runs a comic company called TopCow Comics. I love his tweets. Oh, excuse me, his Facebook posts. He talks about parties, people in the industry, how proud he is of his boys, the biasness, occasionally running in to celebrities. I really enjoy living the touch of celebrity life through him. I understand he is sick of it and looking for a way out.

Another cousin writes books about vampires.

Another was a cop, but I don't know if she and the author are the same. I can't keep the names straight.

One of my cousins did crime scene animations for a couple years. Not sure if this is all the same cousin or not.

Higgs

The Higgs' Particle is still not found after spending a couple bazillion dollars on Hadron. I could have pissed in a hole and told them I didn't find anything for half that. The Higgs' Particle is a mathematical construct.

It reminds me of dark matter that then became dark energy, because you couldn't see it, which then gets folded into multiple dimensions because the universe would have detonated from dark matter bumping in to itself. In other words, bullshit on a cosmological scale. I'm getting kind of sick of paying for it via my taxes. I would rather pay for faster and more wide spread internet connections. Don't get me started about dark matter.

What is the out of pocket for this? What is the opportunity cost? Who is paying for this? What will finding an answer right now buy the world? Is any one answering these questions?

Notes:

No more ASCII text stuff. I think I got it out of my system. It is a long hard road to giving up ASCII graphics. I may never completely recover.

What do you call a row of rabbits jumping backward? A receding hairline (hare).

The dictionary people removed the word cosset tape. There are still cosset tapes. Sexting has gone in.

One of the folks being interviewed on Wakeup to Money suggested that the only thing that QE2 (Quantitative Easing 2) accomplished was driving the price of gold through the roof. Bring on QE3 apparently.

Hollywood is figuring out that people like longer ark kind of stories. That is, people like the hour long episode that has some kind of problem resolution with an over all story or multiple stories going on in the background that come together at some point. LOST seems to have kicked this off recently. They certainly did not invent the idea. It reminds me of Japanese Anomie. I'm waiting for TV series that have defined number of episodes and that is it. The story is done.

When is the last time you saw a video game arcade that was making money? One of the podcasts I listen to revisited the movie Last Star Fighter. The premise is recruiting troupes using games. Now, I'm sure our government keeps an eye on X-Box Live scores to recruit. If they are not, maybe they should.

I may have to poke out the beep mechanism from the new KVM at work. It is driving me up the wall. There does not appear to be a switch or method for killing it without actually killing it.

"Jar-jar Binx jumping around like a Fragile on crack." -Doonsteef. I love it.

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 or September Eleventh approaches. I was in a meeting on the phone with some guys in Midland Michigan. I worked for my previous employer. My door was shut. Someone called me on my mobile phone. No one ever called me on my mobile. This was before text. I only had a mobile because every one else had one. I didn't answer. I wish to this day I had taken a picture of the hundred plus people in the snack area watching the single TV in the building.

Made my first video intro. Now I just need a video to stick it on.

Sunday Puzzle

Field	Data
Title	The puzzle
Description	Too hot to do much else. Elle messed with her puzzle this afternoon. Music: Somewhere Sunny (ver 2) Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0"
Tags	hot summer day puzzle kid board family fun Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

Morto

This sounds like a job for the IT department.

New Worm Morto Using RDP To Infect Windows PCs
"A new worm called Morto has begun making the rounds on the Internet, infecting machines via Remote Desktop Protocol. The worm is generating a large amount of outbound RDP traffic on networks that have infected machines, and Morto is capable of compromising both servers and workstations running Windows. Users who have seen Morto infections are reporting in Windows help forums that the worm is infecting machines that are completely patched and are running clean installations of Windows Server 2003."

SlashDot

This is the kind of crap that is difficult to stay ahead of. It also means a reboot of many of our servers at the least.

Klarus XT10 Flashlight

Field	Data
Title	Klarus XT10 flashlight unboxing and review
Description	I'm legally blind. This light will serve me well. My initial opinion is off the chart good. Purchased from www.goinggear.com - I am not associated with GoingGear. I am just a satisfied customer. Found via sootch00 http://youtu.be/jXIvuZ8YfUc and goingprepared http://www.youtube.com/user/goingprepared
Tags	Klarus XT10 tactical flashlight unbox unboxing review 18650 batteries charger lithium ion maglite maglight holster o-rings clip night test bayou reservoir Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 KdenLive
Link	Link

Notes:

Law enforcement would love to take all bank account information in the world, correlate it with human beings, look for suspicious activity compared to what they think that person should have. They would then enjoy very much knocking on their door, looking them in the eye and very politely asking them where this money came from. This is happening as I type. Switzerland is under great pressure to turn over the banking information for residents of specific countries. I await the elimination of cash. The day is coming.

A storm surge is basically a tsunami. A hurricane is a low pressure storm. This pulls the water up just like sucking on a straw pulls soda up the straw. I feel extra bad for the people on the east cost because Irene because they are not prepared. This thing has a chance of hitting New York City and western Long Island the day after making landfall. God bless and pleas pay attention to the people shouting from emergency vehicles.

My contact lenses refused to cooperate this morning. I took them out and threw them away. They were well past their one month time line. I am contact-less tho day. This bit me in the butt this afternoon because I was asking someone where one of the other employees was and he was standing right in front of me. drag. Makes me wonder how in the world I made it across all the streets this morning.

Do I really want to know if Alzheimer's runs in my genes?

The idea of an RV conversion made from a Isuzu truck keeps hitting me. I don't get it. There are better ways to make an RV. Even the thought of converting one of those box vans like UPS and FedEx use has hit me. It is not a cool idea, but it won't leave my head.

Humans generate about 100 Watts of heat at all times. No wonder our AC bill is so high. -Dr Karl

Humans shift more dirt than natural geological processes including erosion. -Dr Karl

Something smelled like burned insulation at lunch today. Someone was either welding, or doing some electrical work in the apartment complex next to our parking garage. I was on the sixth floor and the stink of it drove me back to work early.

One of the fiction podcasts I listen to uses voices to read the stories. It is a couple guys and a girl who are very good voice actors. They read out all the "so and so said ..." and "What's his name replied." parts of the stories. Usually they do this in the character who is narrating. It drives me up the frigging wall. I understand that not all stories are easily converted to radio plays. That is basically what they are doing. I've also been listening to old radio plays like Superman and The Shadow. These were done by professionals who knew what they were doing. Perhaps the podcast crowd could learn a thing or two by looking up these techniques.

Today, I sat down and swapped out the KVM I was using at work. I had a by 4 KVM because I have three computers. It had a single switch and gave no indication what computer you were looking at when you switched. In order to get from computer A to computer D, you had to hit the button 4 times. Obvious interface, except 80% of the time, the button would send you off in to limbo. It would only accept one or perhaps 2 of the taps. It was also pretty slow so it took a while to get the machine you wanted. This happens every three minutes though out my day. I swapped it for a by 2 KVM. the third machine is a Linux box and doesn't complain if you don't have a monitor plugged in. Now, I have one button for each computer. It beeps, but I hope this does not drive me up the wall after a couple thousand switches. I may be taking it apart, identifying the noise making device and disabling it permanently.

The meaning of life

What is the meaning of life? Who's life? Or is it Whom's life? As people, we are quite full of ourselves. There are other life forms crawling in the dark behind the walls and between the floor boards. Plants climb the walls. The smallest of all living things might touch cell walls and talk to one another. What might they all talk about? Perhaps the meaning of life.

The bacteria in our gut need entertainment. It, because it only has one consciousness and is basically immortal, had to create us because we have hands. It has had to sculpt DNA by trial and error since the dawn of creation to get just this far. Now, having made dozens if not thousands of civilizations with space travel, whiles the slow tick of eternity by to the drone of pitting us against each other in endless wars.

In the beginning, or there abouts, bacteria found its way round the universe by being small and light. It could not propel it's mass easily, even in a vacuum, even without much gravity. It had to ride the currents of radiation and the bits of dust that were handy and already had moment. These bits of dust clumped in to ricks. They then clumped in to planets. This entity must be very patient. It must be very board.

The only life in the universe tried to think of a way to die. All of lie tried to think of a way to split in two so it would have something to talk to. The only thing more depressing than spending eternity alone is being forced to spend it with another who is just as board as you. To split was impossible.

Then, at some point, this juggernaut found that it could take a single bacterium apart and change what it was. It could use the parts of several bacterium to make something completely different than itself. The entity found pleasure in experimenting. It had all of time to make something, anything work.

Now you have it. This is the secret of life and existence. We are the playthings of mother bacteria. Hope it was what you were looking for.

Lunch conversation

I went out to the parking garage for some piece at lunch. Today's lunch conversation was experienced at afternoon break.

• McDonald's new sandwich in Spanish.
• How bad all our Spanish is. How many words will never translate between U. S. English and British English much less English and Spanish.
• Company travel policies and how the policies have evolved over the years based on incidents.
• How I remember things that happened at the company before I started because I had hung out with the people for years before coming on board.

ASCII Art

Back in the day, you had to use text as graphics because that was all you had to work with. Connections were so slow that there was just no capability for graphics. Some looked upon it as a limitation. Others, a challenge. Now, you can just go to a web page and get most of what you want without much effort. You may have to stretch out your browser horizontally to get the full effect.

Link

       _                 ______  ______  ______  ______  __ 
      | |               / __   |/ __   |/ __   |/ __   |/  |
 _____| | _   ___ _   _| | //| | | //| | | //| | | //| /_/ |
(___  ) || \ /___) | | | |// | | |// | | |// | | |// | | | |
 / __/| | | |___ | |_| |  /__| |  /__| |  /__| |  /__| | | |
(_____)_| |_(___/ \__  |\_____/ \_____/ \_____/ \_____/  |_|
                 (____/

 ____    ___                     __                __  __          ___   ___               
/\  _`\ /\_ \                   /\ \__  __        /\ \/\ \        /\_ \ /\_ \              
\ \ \L\ \//\ \      __      ____\ \ ,_\/\_\    ___\ \ \/'/'     __\//\ \\//\ \    __  __   
 \ \ ,__/ \ \ \   /'__`\   /',__\\ \ \/\/\ \  /'___\ \ , <    /'__`\\ \ \ \ \ \  /\ \/\ \  
  \ \ \/   \_\ \_/\ \L\.\_/\__, `\\ \ \_\ \ \/\ \__/\ \ \\`\ /\  __/ \_\ \_\_\ \_\ \ \_\ \ 
   \ \_\   /\____\ \__/.\_\/\____/ \ \__\\ \_\ \____\\ \_\ \_\ \____\/\____\\____\\/`____ \
    \/_/   \/____/\/__/\/_/\/___/   \/__/ \/_/\/____/ \/_/\/_/\/____/\/____//____/ `/___/> \
                                                                                      /\___/
                                                                                      \/__/ 

__/\\\\\\\\\\\\\_____/\\\\\\_________________________________________________________________________/\\\________/\\\___________________/\\\\\\______/\\\\\\___________________       
 _\/\\\/////////\\\__\////\\\________________________________________________________________________\/\\\_____/\\\//___________________\////\\\_____\////\\\___________________      
  _\/\\\_______\/\\\_____\/\\\_______________________________________/\\\________/\\\_________________\/\\\__/\\\//_________________________\/\\\________\/\\\________/\\\__/\\\_     
   _\/\\\\\\\\\\\\\/______\/\\\______/\\\\\\\\\______/\\\\\\\\\\___/\\\\\\\\\\\__\///_______/\\\\\\\\__\/\\\\\\//\\\__________/\\\\\\\\______\/\\\________\/\\\_______\//\\\/\\\__    
    _\/\\\/////////________\/\\\_____\////////\\\____\/\\\//////___\////\\\////____/\\\____/\\\//////___\/\\\//_\//\\\_______/\\\/////\\\_____\/\\\________\/\\\________\//\\\\\___   
     _\/\\\_________________\/\\\_______/\\\\\\\\\\___\/\\\\\\\\\\_____\/\\\_______\/\\\___/\\\__________\/\\\____\//\\\_____/\\\\\\\\\\\______\/\\\________\/\\\_________\//\\\____  
      _\/\\\_________________\/\\\______/\\\/////\\\___\////////\\\_____\/\\\_/\\___\/\\\__\//\\\_________\/\\\_____\//\\\___\//\\///////_______\/\\\________\/\\\______/\\_/\\\_____ 
       _\/\\\_______________/\\\\\\\\\__\//\\\\\\\\/\\___/\\\\\\\\\\_____\//\\\\\____\/\\\___\///\\\\\\\\__\/\\\______\//\\\___\//\\\\\\\\\\___/\\\\\\\\\___/\\\\\\\\\__\//\\\\/______
        _\///_______________\/////////____\////////\//___\//////////_______\/////_____\///______\////////___\///________\///_____\//////////___\/////////___\/////////____\////________

Notes:

 _ _        _ 
| \ | ___ _| |_ ___  ___
|   |/ . \ | | / ._><_-<  o
|_\_|\___/ |_| \___./__/  o

The minute I walked out the door this morning it started sprinkling. The moment I set foot on the bus, it stopped. I think I got more soaked by sweat than rain.

Natalie said she would give me a ride last night. She reneged this morning 20 minutes or so after I would have normally left. She did tell me as soon as she got up. I got upset. I would have gotten upset with any one who did this. I would also be less likely to depend on them in the future.

Nearly half of all cars sold in the world last year were sold in China. Reportedly, only one of them was a Pries. There is not much point in using electric cars because most of their electricity comes from coal.

Mark Lavin rattled off the vacations and costs of those vacations by our current first lady. He was reading from The Daily Mail. Barrack is apparently pissed about it. It really is disgusting. The number mentioned was $10,000,000 in the last year. I have not had two consecutive days off in eight years. Bastards.

Last night I tried to video the lightning strikes near my home. The camera just didn't capture the lightning the way I had hoped. The clouds were very dark. The sudden blasts of light simply blurred the focus and caused the sensor in the camera to flip out and make funny cuts. I should have A) set it to 30 frames a second and B) jammed it in infinite focus.

Did something today that I hadn't done in over a year. Things went pretty well. I had to leave the script running over night. Some builds just take that long.

There is no such thing as future or past. What we perceive as space and time is simply changes in the state of the universe. The whole universe experiences the same "now". It is just how much you can get done in that moment.

Things left behind

Doll furniture made from coke cans and pin cushions.
Tools, shovels, screws, nails, lawn mowers, garden hoses.
Handles, knobs, casters, doorknobs, hinges by the box.
Brushes for horses, people, tools, cars, painting.
Gages, clocks, dials, Some glowed in the dark.
Switches, wire, meters, light bulbs, solder.
Scrap wood, metal, shingles, glass, pipe, cloth, leather, rugs, tile.
Hors shoes, table legs, chair backs, yard signs.
Batteries, flashlights, dishes, kitchen knives, decks of cards.
Bags for travel, dirty cloths, grass clippings, toiletries.
Headlights, door mirrors, wheel rims, cans of oil.
Hopes, dreams, offspring, memories.

Postscript

I remember being a child in my grandfather's garage, attic and basement. He had several lifetimes of stuff piled in every conceivable container. He bought and sold things. Did everyone from that generation? He had gone through World War II. He was raised in a real admitted depression. People from that era collected things. They wanted to be surrounded by things that they thought useful.

When I was a child the piles and barrels of things were a wonderland of treasures. Everything was rusted. Noting was in pristine condition except the doll furniture and a few other things that made their way to the front room on a shelf.

This list is more than his hoard. It is the combination of many places when I was a kid. A man named Bobert who raised my mom had a similar mentality, but not so much the hoard. He sold things as they came in to his possession. More often anyway.

My father has a garage full of useful things. He is very organized. I bet he can lay his hands on 90% of the things he owns without searching far. That last 10% is slop.

I'm working on a pile of my own. I have more possessions now than ever before in my life. Nat has more than I. Elle has many possessions. Our house is over stuffed. This is not a bad thing if it works for you. It does not work for us.

We are more than our possessions. I believe that possessions are fine as log as they help you be a good person and do not get in the way of you being a good person. You can't take it with you. You leave it behind.

The future is here

There are 160,000,000 females missing from Asia because of sex selection between conception and birth. This is more females than live in the U. S.. Many blame the ultrasound machine. Apparently it is easer to murder a baby before it is born than after. Many ultrasound devices are kept behind lock and key in Asia. There was an episode of ER that covered this idea.

More men, more crime.

Now they are testing babies before they are born for genetic testing. If you have a baby in your body with a horrible disease, would you get rid of it? This kind of thing is coming. Would your insurance deny you coverage if you say no?

Watch Gattaca (1997).

Someone moved a dead cat

Yup. on my walk yesterday, I noticed a dead black cat. It was in front of a building that is now a church. The area is maintained by some kind of yard crew.

When I went by today, I noticed the dead cat is one block to the west in the grass nearly blocking my path.

What gets me, is why didn't they just pick it up with a plastic bag and throw it in a dumpster like a normal person? What the heck happened there? Did the following conversation take place?

"Oh, let's pick that dead cat up and take it a block away and just toss it in the grass."

"Ya, man. We wouldn't want to just toss it in that dumpster 30 feet away. that wouldn't make any seance at all."

I would have kicked it out of my way, but I'm in sneakers today because I'm warring shorts. The next time I'm in boots I will probably do so. That of find a stick and do it. The idea of having dead cat on my person is repulsive.

A couple years ago, dead opossum was just off to the side of my path. For several months, I watched it decompose. I named him Fritz. "They killed Fritz! Little blue bastards! pew pew!!" 10 geek points if you can name that movie. Something made off with poor Fritz's head at some point. They mowed over him and left his corpse otherwise unmolested. One day I only noticed bones. Now, I cannot even find a spot of extra green grass. Poor Fritz.

Notes:

"The facts of life" premiered in August 1979.

I got an email last night on my gmail account. It was from "Microsoft" and said that since I was a Microsoft user I win a bazillion dollars as long as I give them my bank account information. Did I mention that I use Linux at the house?

Yesterday Elle road her bike for the first time without training wheels. We ran through the field next to the house. She needs to practise shoving off with one foot while peddling with the other. Training wheels given her the bad habit of putting both her feet on the peddles before starting off.

The history command gives you the time of each command but does not by default give you the date. You have to jump through some pretty ridiculous hoops to get it to do so. Example. When I look at the man page for the history command, you would think this simple task would have an override switch for the command line.

There is an old saying in Texas. "A chicken is an egg's way of making more eggs." It does too make sense. Because I said so. "You can put kittens in the oven, but it don't make 'em biscuits." That one makes sense too.

I comprehend how gyrocopters work. This does not mean I would want to fly in one.

Bad idea

I've sat down five times to make a rant video about the government. Every time I think better of it.

• Not what people want to watch on YouTube. They want cat videos and celebrity gossip. Not that I'm any good at that stuff either.
• Not what YouTube wants to put up any more. YouTube is trying to be come the family safe video outlet on the net. That is where the money is at.
• Not what I want people to think about me. I have a hard enough time getting past the on the edge scowl as it is.
• Is more of a blog entry than a video subject.

It has become unfashionable to shout about freedom from the mountain tops.

Some times I get an idea in my head and in order to move past it I have to do something about it. This is bad because so many times it is a bad idea that I shouldn't do anything about it. I am getting better at pulling the plug on bad ideas and moving on. This should have been a skill I learned in oh, lets say middle school.

Notes:

I don't know why, but I was early this morning. Well, I do know why. I didn't sleep well because of acid reflux. I ate a huge bowl of ice cream last night. It upset my stomach. I should know better by now. My urine smells like antibiotics this morning as well. The U. S. government allows more antibiotics in our livestocks than most other developed nations. It must be the reason we are all so fat. Antibiotics kill our digestive bacteria.

Many podcasts and online shows just use a number to identify each episode. I didn't think much of this until I heard a podcast that tried to do the numbering more like a magazine. They had volume, issue and even page (for sections I guess) all through the podcast. It was ridiculous. I believe they gave it up after season three or so. I'm surprised it lasted that long.

Why has no one come out with a tablet to compete with the Apple iPad? Well, ask Samsung who has been sued by Apple and cannot sell their competitor in the U. S. or Australia at least. Ask HP who read the writing on the wall and just canned all their plans for tablets and even PC computers. Apple has more cash than all the banks in Europe combined. They use this cash to sue competitors out of business.

Perhaps I'll start a conspiracy theory channel on YouTube. [begin sarcasm] There are not enough of those already God knows [end sarcasm]. I'm good at that sort of thing. I'm getting more cynical and devious minded as I get older. The term theory is not really correct in my opinion. Hypothesis is more accurate.

Funny hearing the term "living within our means" mentioned in liberal fiction. I've been hearing this recently. Normally, the idea of money and the fact that all things have some kind of cost is hand waved away in liberal fiction.

Good story

I listened to a short story about a couple thieves who use the cover of a poisonous fog to steel something valuable. People preparer for the fog by boarding up the windows and making sure they have the ships loaded and ready to sail as soon as the fog lifts. Some spend the fog in their homes, some the tavern, some church. These two spend it thieving.

This story is set in about the seventeen hundreds or so. It has set me off on a fantasy of the same thing happening in modern day. How would our world have been different with a regular disaster happening like this? I imagine no electricity, high perches and walky talkys. How would we organize against the invader? What weapons would we have to stop them. I'm thinking domes for defense for example.

Surely this is a sign of a good story and idea. I would link to it if I could remember which podcast I heard it on.

Lawn

I watered the front lawn for the first time in a wile. I we bought a new sprinkler for such tasks. It is one of those back and forth tsst tsst tsst tsst d-d-d-d-d-d kind of sprinklers. It would have worked too, but I couldn't figure it out. I mean, there is more to it than the range to and fro.

The placement it turns out is far more complex than one might imagine. Besides over spray there are things like hose tension and the angle of the spike in the ground to consider.

It also turns out the nozzle requires a tool to modify the distance or throw of the water. The contraption comes set to squirt as far as possible. This, in my case, causes as much water on the side of the house and sidewalk as on the grass. Getting the edges and crevasses of the yard are all but impossible.

Needless to say, I ended up watering by hand. I've found this action to be therapeutic. There is something soothing about watering the lawn by hand. I wonder sometimes if the plants do this or if I'm feeling an empathy all in my own head.

Notes:

They interviewed some director for an investment fund in Hong Kong. His fund is worth less now than its starting point a couple years ago. In other words it has lost money from day one. Not just in real terms, in number terms. It warms my heart knowing the magic orient is having the same trouble that the West is having. So many people hollered from the roof tops that China will show us the way. Not quite. The Chinese and the entire orient will have the same problems eventually. This is just how the system works.

What is the difference between a double dip recession and a depression? Well, many times someone who is drowning will get their had above the surface of the water until they just collapse from exhaustion and they die. Technically, you are are not drowning until you are dead. You are just treading water very badly, or failing to float. You are not in a depression until things are just that bad. Right now the world or at least the U. S. seems to be experiencing that bounce if you will before sinking again beneath the waves. I really hope I'm wrong.

The U. S. needs 125,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with population growth.

This week so far, I'm on a black coffee kick. I go through waves of wanting my coffee loaded with sugar and milk, or black. A couple of the guys here are coffee conscious of sorts. One is taking a class on coffee tasting. That is a bit much. Still, he can pick a great cup of coffee I'm told.

I heard years ago that disk drives got slower the farther out on the disk you ventured. I can believe it. Not that I do these images all the time I can watch a drive fill up and attest that indeed, as they fill up, they get slower and slower.

Almost a kiknd of fail

Field	Data
Title	Night ride (and complaining)
Description	Me riding the bike POV at night through my neighborhood. Aoso complaining about shooting videos.
Tags	green screen bike bicycle night ride POV maglite maglight complaining garage work light Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

Cool mall in Taiwan

I think this guy is in Taiwan. Anyway, I like the open air mall he is riding through. I like the idea of closing it down to vehicle traffic at night. I think he has ridden his scooter through the mall at night before. I might look up that video.

Notes:

A friend at work and I had a little discussion this morning about coffee. He brings in his coffee. The ... bilge we have at work is bad, inconsistent, bad, tastes like the inside of a Camel's ass, and is bad. Several of the folks at work bring in their coffee. I would consider doing the same, but it is just not in the budget of time or money. Oh, the biggest reason is my laziness.

Lunch conversation today consisted of where every one wanted to go and something about batteries. I didn't go to lunch with the rest of the folks because I'm broke. They went to Fudrudker's. I don't go there without Nat If I can help it. She likes the place.

Elle starts school next week I believe. This may have been her first summer off since starting school. I remember going back after the big break. I and most of the other kids were a wreck for about two weeks. It takes a great deal of effort to get back on track.

There are no dragons flying passed my window on their way to the fields to consumer our future.

Notes:

The bankers will not leave immediately if you pull their bonuses. They don't want you to think that is an effective deterrent. They will hang around for a bit then pull the trigger. Is this going to affect the customers? Well, the only place banks make get any money is from customers of some kind or other. Any change that costs the banks money will in some way affect the customers. It can't be helped.

Man, the stock market is circling the bowl.

One advantage of listening to old time radio shows like Superman and Sam Spade at work is the interruptions. They lead to me being able to listen to repeats several times and filling in the gaps as I go.

DNS

Domain forwarding is kind of interesting. There must be 200 settings you have to change by hand to make sure people trying to get to your site get to the place they want to get to. You have www.url.com, ftp.url.com, billyjoebob.URL.com all to worry about. These first set of characters before the first dot are called subdomains. The owner of the domain has control over them for the most part.

My blog here is plastickelly.blogspot.com. Blogspot has some script set up that when someone signs up for a blog at that URL, creates the DNS entry that points people to their blog. When someone enters www.blogspot.com they go the blogspot's front page, which I believe still pints to Blogger's front page. This is all done with domain forwarding which is done with DNS entries.

This morning I got an email that said "We got domain3. Please forward it to domain1." No problem chief.

I forward domain3 to domain1. Sounds easy. Well, I forwarded domain3.com to domain1.com. I looked at domain2.com and it was forwarded to www.domain1.com. I had to go back and change the forward for domain3 to say www.domain1.com.

It can take 48 hours for the changes to take effect. DNS is a funny beast. All the servers all over the world just talk to one another and eventually your settings make it all over the planet. There is as much voodoo as programming involved.

Will my changes make it round the planet in 48 hours of 96? I had to make the two changes one right after the other. Will the second change simply supplant the first? I doubt it. More likely One change will chase the other round the planet from server to server. With all the confusion of time stamps, I fear half the servers in the world will have one setting and half will wind up with the other. They will probably both work.

It took about an hour for the changes to take affect. No world wide game of cat and mouse. All quite boring.

Buckled road

Field	Data
Title	Street buckled
Description	That's about it. There was one minor mishap (crash). A truck lost some ground effects.
Tags	car vehicle street road buckled fender bender drought Houston Texas Westheimer Canon 300 KdenLive
Link	Link

Lunch conversation

• Baltimore Maryland
• Business trips recent and past
• Clover leaf intersections
• One way streets
• Bad neighborhoods and winding up there in
• Signage contrivances
• Local unemployment rates
• Adult temper tantrums in unrecognized cities.
• Street names that change with the political climate
• VMWare
• The concept of virtual machines is inefficient and only needed to make up for poor design in the first place.
• If VMWare could only lie to the OS about memory.
• I feel that our company will do well if we make a VMWare driver.
• Mexican food
• Good salsa going unused for lack of chips shall not stand! Well the person most passionate will stand and go get more chips.
• Baltimore has poor quality Mexican food. (This entry bounced a couple times between this bullet and the first.)
• More Mexicans means more Mexican food.
• I don't have a problem with Mexicans being in this country. I have a problem with people living here who don't pay a fare proportion of taxes.
• Virginia has some good Italian food near DC.
• The walk didn't feel nearly as hot as some other days recently.
• Know your lights, as in, don't bother running because the light turned red. The left tern people go next (Ken).

We ate at a little Mexican place across the street from our office. They have cheap sandwiches. I bought some cupcakes that were awesome on the way out the door.

MAL

I propose a new acronym for the lexicon. Recently, Google purchased Motorola for 12.x billion dollars. I say this is strictly for the patents. Why? Well, Apple and Microsoft get a portion of every Android phone because of patten lawsuits. Now, Google has all the patents from Motorola and can use them to fend off patten law suits by other companies who compete with them.

MAL: Mutually Assured Litigation. You want me to pay on your patents, I'll make you pay on my patents. This is how companies are going to defend themselves from patten infringement from now on.

Right now pattens are being used to quash what I would call legitimate competition. They are also used in a sort of camping scheme where a company buys up and creates pattens that are based on obvious and expected advances in technologies. They then sit on the pattens until someone comes along and tries to make money with the patten. The patten camper then springs the trap and makes the innovator pay even though the camper did nothing to help the innovation happen.

The way to fix Patten camping is to have some sore of use it or loose it clause in the patten laws. There needs to be a balance in place to prevent a race to an Assembly line with the crappiest venison of whatever innovation can roll off the belt in to a box, but people should not be aloud to simply patten and wait in the shadows stroking their lawyers.

The rules for patten enforcement must be fixed. If no one is able to do anything except twiddle their thumbs because of pattens preventing them from doing so, someone will win a patten on twitting your thumbs.

Euro troubles

European governments are freaking out that the economy in Europe. "We need more power to make things right." This is the battle cry. They are calling it the Eurozone Crisis. We all know what the favorite saying of modern politicians is right? "Never let a crisis go to waist." I don't hear any one saying the size of government needs to be controlled. No one is shouting loud enough for me to hear that regulation of the government needs to be put in place. At least I hear people saying these things in the U. S.. Not sure what will come of it.

What were they thinking when they drew all these nations together? Of course things would get tough at some point and the nations with the money would have to cover their bills. That was inevitable. It is happening now and they call it a crisis.

Germany is the one paying for it. No one else has even the shadow of the economic juggernaut of Germany. France is not so far behind, but the rest are hangers on to Germany. Germany has spend the last decade killing themselves getting their financial world in order. Their financial situation is not all that bad. "Why are we paying every other country's bills?" keeps being heard.

People are asking how to kick a country out of the Euro. Are all Euros the same? Some say watch out for Euros that have specific characters in their serial numbers because they were printed in specific countries. Is a Euro a Euro no matter what?

On a slightly different note, Europe is happy to criticize Libya for cutting people off from Twitter and other social media in order to prevent people from communicate and coordinate attacks on the government. Europe also noticed how effective this is. Now several European countries including the U. K. are considering similar laws about cutting off internet and other communication whenever the hell the government feels like it during a crisis. Will this include criticize of the government. I hear the Chinese are happy to say "I told you so." on this subject.

It already happened in San Fransisco. They killed WiFi in a transit station.

Notes:

Someone interviewed a drug dealer. He was complaining that not only do junkies not have money from a job to spend on dope, but they are running out of things to steel from honest people because the honest people are out of work. Things are tough all over I suppose. I want to know how weed is selling in California. The stuff is more or less legal there, but still costs money.

Someone did the study that if you give unemployment benefits and keep extending the length, you get people out of work for longer. Even if you just pester people constantly about looking and retraining for work, they will get back to work more quickly.

XT10 flashlight

This is my current obsession.

link

I want the light and a rechargable battery or two. The whole thing is well over $100. I so freaking want it though. Maybe for Christmas.

Lunch Vlog

Shot part of a video at lunch today in the parking garage. I'll have to check it out before uploading it. Not sure of the quality yet. The wind was blowing and the I was nerves of people coming around the corner.

...

After viewing, I think that it sucks, but I'll put it up anyway.

Field	Data
Title	Work DVD anecdote
Description	Little story about my work. Blog: http://zhsy00001.blogspot.com
Tags	work dvd drive usb equipment IT information technology job Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

Notes:

It would be great to have written something. It is so easy these days to put words down for others to read. It is no easier to have anything to say. It is harder to be honest. Harder because the ideas don't have time to take seed and grow. They flutter away in the wind instantly.

I woke up this morning at the right time. I reached for my phone which was not there. This is a reflex that I do every morning because I use my phone for an alarm clock. The phone was in my pocket, very dead. Habit, or my guardian angle watching out for me? You decide. You see, I do not wake up on the weekends and reach for a phone that is not going off. The alarm is programmed for week days only. How convenient.

It sucks when the host OS doesn't outlast the guest OS. I have to reboot my Windows machine hosting my Linux VMs more than the Linux VMs. That blows.

Forbidden Planet was filmed on the same sound stage as The Wizard of Oz. There was a fifteen year difference.

Charge phone in war zone

Any one know if this really works?

If you don't have electricity: Get two batteries and dunk them in the cup of water for 1 or 1 1/2 hours and then link the mobile phone with USB cable to the water! Great improvised technique for those traveling through revolution areas, or maybe just backpacking somewhere and you don't have electricity.
As a background to video, Syria, Yemen and Libya (the three countries currently deadlocked in revolutions for half a year without getting change) are undergoing severe power cuts and gas/deisel shortages so that even generators cannot be run. In Libya war has cut off supplies and production. In Syria and Yemen the governments have applied sanctions of mass punishment against the population and left them without services in general.

Live leak

Need rain

When I mow the grass, it crunches under my feet. The mower raises a cloud of dust from my yard. The only green spots are right under the roof. What rain there is doesn't make it far past where it falls. The ground cracks. The fence starts to fall over. The dirt pulls away from the house.

When I water, I'm aiming at the dirt around the foundation of the house and those fence posts. The plants are not quite on their own, but I don't spare much for them.

The ground around my home is raised slightly. They did this on purpose when they built the place. The ground beneath the top soil is clay. It is hard as concrete when it is dry. It is sticky and stiff as bubble gum when it is wet. It shifts around like slow flowing water. That is why we have concrete slabs in Houston. It also means when we have a dry spell, the top foot of dirt on my property turns in to a sandbox. A sandbox, that will not support plants and pulls away from the foundation of the house and fence posts.

The ants don't seem to have a problem with the heat and dry weather. They just come in the house, put their feet up and help themselves to the fridge, ice maker and all. I need to figure out how to put a screen over those weep holes in my wall.

We need rain.

Sunday, two storm clouds passed my home. One passed to the north and the other passed to the south. I don't think we got a drop that day. I heard a tap tap and hoped it was rain drops. It had been so long. It turned out to be gunfire from the range about a mile north of us.

We need rain.

financial stuff

Some person being interviewed said that it took us seven years to get in this mess. It is going to take us several years to get out of it. I hate to tell him, but we are not done getting in to the mess yet. Economic stimulus comes when people have jobs that they trust will be there beyond the end of the current pay period. Economic stimulus comes when people think about the future and think about what university they want their kids to go to, not where their meals will come from, how they are going to make rent, will the car make it another year.

Some people sound optimistic. More people sound pessimistic. The people who are making money sound like the kind of people who will always be in a good situation. There are just some people who always seem to come out on top. There are plenty of people who find themselves on the other end of that spectrum.

It has gotten bad enough that the radio people on the BBC show "Wakeup to Money" have asked listeners for new analogies. They are sick of the standard lot they have been putting out over and over.

No one in any important position is going to call what we are in a depression until we are out of it. Pumping money in to the banks hasn't helped. The obvious solution is to pump even more money in to the banks. That should do the trick. Just don't pay attention to the billions going to banker's bonuses. That fact kind of fractures the narrative. The guy who did Freakonomics called what we are in "re great depression". That is the bravest move I've heard yet to let people know what situation we are in.

The markets are up 5% one day and down 5% the next day. Things are bat-shit nuts on the market right now. We don't have people jumping out of windows on Wall Street, but none of those windows open if memory serves.

The only reason there is no wild fractionation in the currency markets is interconnectivity. That is, as one country takes a hit, many of the countries around them feel the hit through the interconnected markets. Thus, the currencies from the different countries reflect the hit to some extent. Unemployment, lack of stability in most forms cross borders more than ever. Heck, people complaining on Twitter about losing on a stock sends ripples around the world. At some point, governments are going to ban complaining about a stock for 24 hours after the first affect.

Someone estimated that four trillion dollars have been wiped off world wide markets in the last two weeks. The gravy train has left the station.

On All Over the Shop, a comedy show in Australia, they recommend buying a ream of paper and holding on to it. The blank paper will be worth more in a couple years then the equivalent weight in stock certificates. Sounds like a plan to me.

Notes:

I want a constitutional amendment that only lets Congress meet for 3 consecutive days and only 3 consecutive days a year. They have to take care of all business in those 3 days. They must then have a full time job outside of being a representative. The position must be unpaid. What do you think?

Mark Lavin named Barrack Obama as the de facto founder of the Tea Party. I would add Nancy Palosi as a co-founder.

I had the goofiest dream last night. I was splitting wood and the trees kept walking up and asking if I could split them. I was wondering why they wanted to be split. They would pull of some limbs like cutting hair and hand them over.

Remember the 200th episode on YouTube? It was actually the 201st video that I uploaded. I had already shot some of the footage and had the works rolling when I had to re-upload the previous upload due to some SNAFU. These things happen. I hope no one is upset about it. I doubt anyone has done or will do the math.

One day I'll own one of these.

Vids

I'm impressed. I couldn't climb that thing.

20 minutes of rain. This is what we need in South Texas. They are advertising MP3's, but I don't care. I think I'm going to make this one of my favorites.

Yes, Virginia, you can loop the loop a gyrocopter. It is not recommended by the manufacturer.

Huff

I've blocked Huffington Post on Twitter. I've blocked the channel 13 feed too. I still get them in my feed when someone else retweets them. This is bad enough. However, I also turned off retweets from this person. I still get the damn feeds. I don't want to remember that Huffington Post exists. I'm not evil. I'm not ignorant. I'm a conservative. I just don't want to hear their dribble.

Ice

Field	Data
Title	Ice in a red galss
Description	Yup, that is pretty much what it is.
Tags	crushed ice fridge refrigerator ice dispenser flashlight red glass cup Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

YouTube

I want to make an intro and outtro to my videos. Something extremely short, understated and quiet. Some ideas are bouncing around in my head. I would want to use music from Incometech. That means putting credits on every single video. This is not a big deal to be honest. Most Tubers change their intros and outtro on a constant basis. This will simply be the first round of my efforts.

YouTube sent me an email about becoming a partner on YouTube. I would love to do so, even if I don't get paid very much. Being a partner opens some options. I need to learn how the system works this weekend. This means some homework. It is happy homework.

Something about being a partner I've noticed is the people. Not all of them qualify under the terms that I read. They are in other countries. I suppose the rules are more mailable in Australia and Canada because YouTube wants to make a larger presence in those places.

Why not go for it? All they will do is tell me to go jump in a lake. I'll get hits off that video.

To be honest, I just don't envision myself as winning a shed load subscribers and showing up on the front page of YouTube. I'm not that interesting. I'm also employed. Another thing I've noticed about the high end Tubers, the top rated ones anyway, is they do it full time. That is, they do entertainment full time.

Entertainers

• The Vlog Brothers are authors.
• Philip Defranco is a producer of many things YouTube.
• Shay Carl is breaking in to show business.
• Charles Trippy has a degree in communications. I don't know where he will end up, but it will be in entertainment I'd wager.
• Olga Kay is an out of work actress and circus performer. Seriously.

Other businesses

• My Friend Pete has an auto repair place. He doesn't monetize his videos as far as I can tell.
• The Crazy British Bloke and Canadian Carpenter are both in construction.
• Redneck Rick'em is a ... well, a professional Jack of all triads. He does land care taking as a side line.
• The Fat Aussie Bastard has a computer repair places as his primary source of employment.

I could go through all 90 of my subscriptions. The people who have monetized make better videos. It takes effort to monetize. It takes time to keep things going. YouTube doesn't want to let just anyone start putting ads on their videos because people would start and account, put up something that YouTube and the advertisers would not like, but would get a ton of hits. Some of the time, the wheels of justice would grind slowly enough to let bad people make money. Thus, the process takes time and effort.

My whole life, I've spent trying to fit in and hide from attention. I'm not really attempting to seek it out here. I just feel the need to do this. It scratches some itch. In other words, I must find my muse, harness my motivation, zingo, moxy and all those other show biz buzz words. If I'm going to stick with the video thing, I got to learn the language lingo.

Moons

There is a hypothesis going round that Earth may have had two moons at some point. They collided and gave us one large moon. Some scientists with nothing better to do ran a bunch of simulations and crunched a bunch of numbers. I can't help but wonder what else they could have expended their efforts on. Still, this news sends visions of much closer moons to Earth rising and falling by the hour. I dream of weekly eclipses and occasional alignments. For some reason I picture this world as more peaceful.

If two moons why not three? Who can hate on a planet with three moons?

What would the tides be like?

Without predictable tides, no with unpredictable ties for these first several centuries of early adventuring and exploration, people would have not traveled over seas as easily. Storms would have been more or possibly less fierce. How this would have affected people and their societal development is beyond my ponder.

What poems would be written for the three moons?

The beggars three roaming the night.
Prey for rain to hide their sight.

One then the other will blot the sun.
Try neither to hide nor run.

What would different civilizations and tribes call the three moons?

Loonus, Conis and Masis.

Why is this distracting me so strongly?

This distracts me because it is a fresh thought in my head. I like the way it tickles.

Notes:

I had a dream last night that stuck with me. Nat, Elle and I were in an RV traveling around the country. It kept getting bigger and bigger every time I turned around. Then it was a spaceship and we were traveling to distant galaxies. I hope this is not an omen for change.

There is an apartment complex I pass every day. There are two places on the perimeter where water mains have broken. One is oozing and the other is gushing. I hear this sort of thing is happening all over Houston. The dry dirt shifts around and the pipes crack. This is happening in my back yard to a point. The fence is leaning because the dirt is not remaining stable. I need to get some concrete.

Shurlock Holmes retired to a cottage in a quiet corner in Briton near the sea to raise bees.

I had to get something to eat today at lunch. I can't really afford to buy lunch. I went to McDonald's and got 2 $1 burgers and a couple of strawberry pies for $3 and change. The strawberry pies are lame. They had peach for a while earlier this year. Those weren't half bad. There apple pies are about as good, but they always have them.

An Asian bank has stopped lending to a French bank. This is the tip of the iceberg. France is buckling. Even NPR has experts on who question the longevity of the Euro.

I'm trying to think of a quick intro for my videos. The only ideas I've had are something with words that have understated music playing in the background. I want it to last about eight seconds tops. Maybe less. This means I need to make sure I like the name of my vlog. Right now it is zhsy00001. I'm also thinking of calling it "The dumbest channel name on YouTube" to quote the Fat Aussie Bastard. It's going to boil down to playing with it for a while and then putting up whatever I end up with in the end. That seems to be how these things go.

There are several online backup solutions. This is great except 1) I pay for data. 2) It doesn't work in Linux. 3) I don't want them to have my data because a) They or their employees have access to it. b) These places get hacked every five minutes.

Technology is pretty cool. 3D sucks. The Caffiniation Podcast guy had a pretty good thing to say about it. There is no way to interact with these 3D devices in three dimensions. What is the point? He read off the disclaimer for a new 3D laptop. It sounds like one of those medication disclaimers.

These old time radio (think 1930s) are great. There are all kinds of shows from The Adventures of Superman to a dozen private eye serials. Most of them have a standard sponsor like hair tonic or shaving cream, cigarettes to automobiles. Every time the Spenser comes on, I think of "A Christmas Story" Where Ralph decodes the message and all it says is "Drink your Ovaltine." I still like his response

Our insurance company gave us a bunch of the little tops you put on can's of soda with their name on them. I attached one to the soda I had for lunch. It was so tight that the can deformed and nearly squashed getting it on. It came off easily enough. made the soda taste a like plastic.

Russian hit man. Igonna Bumpemov.

Box on wheels

Proof it doesn't have to be pretty.

Tree trimming

Field	Data
Title	Tree trimming on the road
Description	I'm sick of hitting this tree every time I walk to the bus stop. Music: One-eyed Maestro Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tags	tree trim trimming road side pocket knife Leatherman Charge hot sunny summer Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

Say it loud

I wish I were articulate. No, I wish I had the strength to shout from the mountain top. No, I wish that people would be held accountable. Yes.

Hot

Field	Data
Title	Hot days in Houston
Description	It is different when you have to walk home a mile and a half in the heat. It cracks me up when people who walk from their car to the door and from the door to their car complain about the heat.
Tags	hot sweat summer day commute bus walk fence posts Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

Tired

Work kicks my butt. I remember my dad coming home and watching TV until he passed out. I understand how he felt. My job is pretty stressful for me. by the time I get home I want to crash and do nothing. The weekends are even worse. Again, I just don't want to do anything. I want to laze around and let others deal with it. I can't get away with it.

I weed whacked this weekend, but I nearly passed out so I didn't mow. This still needs to be done.

The flooring in the living room needs to be repaired.

Nat recently took care of two things for me. She is a peach. But, she called John More. They are pricey as hell. The AC needed to be checked out. They charged us $500 to spray stuff in the duct work and vacuumed them out a bit. We needed an exterminator and she bought a year worth of visits for another $500. That is a good chunk of my pay for a month.

I can't help but think that we could have gotten it a lot cheaper somewhere else. I know it. She doesn't want to take the time to shop around and I'm at work. I'll just need to take a day of vacation next time. We can't afford to pay crazy prices for simple tasks. We simply can't afford to be taken advantage of.

I am simply not handy. I can't do most of these things myself. I've tried to do the poison thing, but it just didn't work. I cleaned the filter and grating for the AC. I wanted the guy to check the AC for problems, not clean it. I know to tell Nat to say no to a cleaning in the future. It isn't her fault. I did ask her to take care of it and she did.

The answer is simple. I need to not be tired ans lazy. I need to get off my butt and take care of business and home. Why is it so frigging hard to keep focused?

Notes:

The best experts in the financial fields are only a little bit better than a coin flip at prediction the future of financial issues. Meteorologists are better at predicting the weather, but not by much.

Europe and Australia have this thing called Science without Borders. This is a way to get places like Brazil and spots in Africa to foot the bill for some of the science stuff that western countries have been doing up to the present. Not a bad idea to be honest. The rest of the world has skin in the science game after all.

Marijuana is as bad for you physically as tobacco. That's what I've heard over and over anyway. Yet, people in California are complaining that their friends who smoke mo-jo get pissed at them if they light up a cigarette. Hypocrites. Personally, I find marijuana stink just as stinky as tobacco. People who smoke don't think it is offensive.

Today, I debugged some scripts to setup computers on a network. I used a virtual machine to perform this task. It is not the first time. I have used a regular computer in the past that I had to fix between trials. I have to tell you, having the snapshot ability makes it easy to blow a machine up and start over. Just fantastic. This must have saved me a full day of trial and error.

End game

I'm hearing some funny things these days. I heard NPR bitch about the Democrat in the Whitehorse. This is not something that I expected. I fully expected to hear every bit of the main stream media guzzling the cool aid until the bitter end. They are coming to the conclusion that all our leaders self centered twits who are only out for themselves. Well, a couple people in the MSM are coming around. Not all by any measure.

How I contempt my government. Let me count the ways. No, I'll spare you my opinion. I'll stick to the facts.

Professional politicians are in the business of getting in to and staying in office. They are in the business of finding themselves a nice cushy job after they leave office. They are in the business of setting themselves up so they do not ever have to work again after they leave office.

This is not the worst kind of politician. The worst kind of politician is the kind with an agenda. No honest person can afford to be elected. No one goes in to politics any more thinking they are going to do some good for their fellow citizens. Everything, every word, every smile and look must be aimed straight at the end game. If they want to make money and power, that is bad enough, but when they only want to make everyone else comply with their beliefs. This is the worst kind of politician.

I really believe that we have these kinds of politicians in charge of the U. S.. For years, I've thought this of Europe. I'm learning every day that people running this country do not intend to just make a buck. They intend to make the U. S. in to their personal Utopia. They want the U. S. to take her turn as the world's largest Socialist entity. It worked so well for Russia and the Chinese, we should give it a try.

What can the citizenry do about a leadership who have wormed their way to the positions where they can take over the country and bend her to their will without firing a shot? Well, this is what the Constitution was for. We, the people, are not supposed to be able to vote ourselves in to a mess like this. The current president is using regulation to enforce unwritten laws using the EPA and other government entities. Congress is passing multi-thousand page laws without giving the public the opportunity to read the law first.

We live in tyranny.

The U. S. is a two party system at the moment. It sucks that they are working together on the same agenda. The end goal is to get rid of the constitution and allow a dictatorship to happen in the U. S.. Who is this? Who has their hands on the strings? I don't know. The only entities that make sense are international banking or people who already control same. Think about how much is going on. People are broke. Countries are broke. Every one is hading money to banks crying "Please don't go broke!"

What would crack me up is if it boils down to one family or counsel of families who have secretly been in charge foe centuries. They have been hiding in the shadows right in the open since the beginning of the written word was young. You couldn't write a novel about this. No one would buy it.

I would prefer this over the truth. The truth is that our leaders are incompetent and working together to make their names high in the history books. They want a retirement and the admiration of adoring fans. They want celebrity and they are too ugly to do it in TV or movies. They are too stupid to write fiction. They are too crooked to accomplish great works. They genuinely don't give a crap about the people they hurt. They do not understand that they are not just killing an idea of a country, but they are getting people killed in the process.

They refuse to believe that when the end comes, their necks will be on the same block as the rest of us. The winner, or better, the last country standing, will write the history books. The U. S. has done this in the past, but will not do it again. Our day is done. No amount of spending other people's money will fix it. We have spend all there is to get here. There will be no hero to save us from ourselves. No personality will pop above the line and lead the charge to responsibility. We are doomed. Worse, it is our own fault.

I really hope I'm wrong.

Notes:

It cracks me up how difficult it is to rename computers on our network. There must be a specific order in which things have to happen. This is because some changes will unchanged themselves. It turns in to a complex game of whack-a-mole. Eventually things start working. Well, sometimes. The first time I did this took 2 years for all the changes to take effect. The computers involved the machines being off for a while. Still working on the change for today.

I was listening to another old time radio show. It was a murder mystery. The investigator was listening between rooms on a dictagraph. The mystery was simple and shallow. The confession was read out over the device. All I could think was "That is a dictaphone, not a dictagraph. Nothing is being recorded." I'm a nerd. Oh, the husband did it of course. Considering he was the one paying the bill, I can't really call it a happy ending.

Lunch conversation

Adam ate a hand full of Wasaby. It nearly did him in.

Let me back up. A bunch of guys went to GenCon over the long weekend. Long for them anyway. The stories are always great when they come back. I'll try to figure out if I can post some pictures. They are on Google Plus so maybe not.

Every year, they go to a sushi place. It is a nice place. They make you take off your shoes and sit at one of those low tables. John nearly went through one of the paper walls. Adam, goaded on by Jake, ate a hand full of Wasaby. He literally choked it down. He was sweating and cough. Brian tels the story that Adam slowly stood up, put on his shoes, and staggered to the bathroom. Adam had that look on his face of absolute concentration. You know the one. If you loose concentration you are going to loose "it".

The price of his trouble was three favors from Jake. I am not privileged to know the stipulation of what a "favor" is in this context. I imagine it boils down to being the one to order food on Adam's turn at some gathering or means of manipulation in a game of some sort.

After chuckling at this story, there was a heated debate about a free game. That is, a $50 game that was given away for free at the show. John was complaining that Brian just left his swag copy in the hotel room. The argument was that Brian should have brought it back so someone else could use the free initial purchase price of $50 and the complementary free first month to try the game out. Brian's tung in cheek argument was that he didn't care enough about any one around here to have bother packing it away. Brian can be contrary just for the heck of it. John can be that guy who pokes just to poke. I feel quite privileged to have witnessed it. Kind of wished I could have caught it on video.

Benefit of zeros

I have to make images of hard drives. I have troubles with large drives because the compressed files are massive. The way I do images it compresses the blank space as well as the used space. Today I tried for the first time to write zeros to the free space before making the image. The drive in question had a 230 gigabyte partition I wanted to image. The data on the drive only added up to about 20 gigabytes.

Commands from memory for writing the zeros to the free space

$> dd -if=/dev/zero -of=/tmp.txt bs=1G count=194
$> rm /tmp.txt
$> reboot

Next time I'll do bs=1m count=194000 or something. I worry that the huge block size may have not cleared as much data as I hoped. Live and learn.

Once you start the image process, you can watch it hit the zero blocks. The speed of the compression goes through the roof. The bytes second climbs very quickly. All zeros is easy to compress. This should not only help on the size of the file, but the speed of the backup as well.

Up to 5% had been really stressful because It is only barely working. I hoped the drive used up most of the space toward the front of the drive. When I used to look at the data on drive this was the case. I believe the drive just doesn't have to move as much to read and write to that part of the drive. If this was not the case, I would be screwed. As I watched the size of the file climb and the percentage not go by fast enough, I started to sweat. Things were looking good at the half way point. At 53%, the size of the file was 5+ gigabytes.

It took several hours, but the result was awesome. The 230G drive with 20G of data and a snoot full of zeros applied liberally to the "empty" space compressed down to a 9.5G file. This is much better than past performance using similar techniques without the zeros. Many times I would not get 3 to 2 compression on un zeroed partitions.

The numbers

58.1% of American adults have employment. Some of that 41.9% of the not employed are retired. Some have no intention of seeking legitimate employment. Some are full time parents. Some are content living at home for the duration. Some may be students. Some may be criminals and work harder than a real job for less money. Some may already be incarcerated. Some are just rich enough to not work.

More people were working in June than July by 38,000. The labor Department reported that the unemployment number dropped because that many people gave up on looking for a job. (begin sarcasm) Yay!!! Thank God those people are not gumming up the economy and making the numbers look so bad any more. What a windfall. (end sarcasm)

15 billion a month go out to unemployment payments.

The unemployment numbers are more like 16% when you count people who have given up and people who are underemployed. The way we used to measure unemployment, the numbers are closer to 22% unemployment. This is nearly as bad as it got during the great depression.

The president threw a party this past weekend. He says he wants to move quickly on job growth. He will probably start moving quickly when congress gets back in three or so weeks. That just doesn't sound "quick" to me.

He is planning on another stimulus. A stimulus is money to and for temporary things that will be gone soon. If the pours that be actually built something, they, the politicians, would have to take responsibility for it. If they, the politicians, fix a problem, they do not have that problem any more to use to get elected.

Notes:

I listened to a story about Chinese culture being a hindrance to innovation. People are afraid to criticize and question what they have been told. Well, what do you expect? You just might get bullet in the head if you stand on a street corner and shout "I disagree with the government." What do they expect? The story mentioned that plagiarism is the way students are expected to learn at lower levels. Do what teacher tells you and don't dare disagree. This does not leave much room for making a difference.

"Why did the hipster burn his mouth on his pizza? Because he ate it before it was cool." -Dinner party download.

All weekend, the YouTube people I watch were all about the live streaming of Lolapalusa on YouTube. "It's great!" It didn't work in Linux. I had no way of viewing it. I also refused to install Firefox in Wine then installing flash there in just to bypass an OS check on the YouTube page because the word Linux sends them in to a convulsive fit. Losers.

Little Orphan Anny ran for 86 years. The guy who wrote the original was a Conservative. The Broadway play was re-written to be a liberal showcase. Famously, the author would have hated it.

God bless the toy makers

The makers of toys bring the universe to the hands and minds of children. They teach. They build teachers. The bits they put together add up to well more than the sum of their parts and their labor. They mold plastic and clay. They mold minds. God bless the toy makers.

Fessenden said he's has had the truck since 2007, when his brother Ernie, a software engineer in Rochester, Minn., and Kevin Guy, the owner of the Everything Hobby shop in Rochester, rigged it with a wireless video camera and shipped it to him.
Last week, he said, it paid off when he loaned the truck to a group of Soldiers who used it to check the road ahead on a patrol.
The tiny truck hit a trip wire and set off an estimated 500 pounds of explosives. The six Soldiers, controlling the toy in their following Humvee, escaped injury.
...
His brother and hobby shop owner Kevin Guy said they're trying to send Chris a new truck.
"That's just unreal," said Guy when he learned of the recent incident. "That's six mothers that six guys are going home to."

Military.com

How much would it cost to get say 1000 of these trucks to the troupes? I want to say "on the front line" but that term doesn't apply in this case.

True

Truer words. The description said this commercial was banned. I don't know about that, but this is the first I noticed it. I do not claim to support the place doing commercial so visit their site at your own risk.

Roller blading down a salt mine

This looks like fun to be honest. I would like to see this in the next closed in space horror monster movie. Our heroin is blading for her life as she out runs the gigantic spiders from Venus or something.

200

Field	Data
Title	200th YouTube video extraviganza
Description	This is my 200th YouTube video. Yippe. I wanted something nice for my vieweres and this is all I got.
Tags	200 mile stone milestone YouTube vlog vlogging stick with it clip video Canon Elph 300 Houston Texas KDENLive
Link	Link

In a hole

Our government is fighting over 7 billion dollars worth of cuts. The budget increase is 1.5 trillion.

1.5 trillion	1,500,000,000,000
7 billion	7,000,000,000

Imagine you are in a hole 1,500 feet deep. That is almost a quarter mile. Then imagine that the ladder you have to get out of this hole is only 7 feet tall. Do you suppose it makes much difference? Any one remember the most important rule when finding yourself in a deep hole? Stop digging.

Assuming the population of the U. S. is 300,000,000 lets do some maths. 1.5 trillion is (1500000000000 / 300000000 = 5000) 5000 per American for the increase. The amount they are arguing over is (7000000000 / 300000000 = 33(ish)) per American.

This is just the increase that they were talking about this time. The whole budget is much higher. We need a balanced budget amendment in this country. I'm not sure it would help because our current administration doesn't seem to bother itself with the limitations on power listed our Constitution.

Is the U. S. funding some whopping great secret spaceship or hollowing out the Earth or something. This amount of money is astronomical. Are we putting a down payment on another planet?

Notes:

Why aren't consumer buying more? Our economy relies on this. Well, when people have less money in their pocket and little access to additional debt, they stop buying. They are not denying the world their consuming goodness, they simply don't have what it takes to perform the task. Duh.

30% of adults and 60% of teens in the U. K. admit they are addicted to their mobile phones. I'm not sure if I can say I am addicted to my phone. This study didn't count using other devices instead of the phone. If that were the case, I could probably get away without a phone for a week. I would complain online about it incessantly.

I was trying to get a fixed font in one of my blog entries. It worked with the "pre" tag, but that also caused a space after the sections which I did not want. The font settings didn't seem to get applied. I tried several things. Then I thought about it for second. I had over ridden the font settings in that browser to make pages more easily readable.

"The U. S. had to up the debt ceiling. There was really no choice." This is why we want a balanced budget amendment. This will remove the debt ceiling as a choice. The government choice will be to stop spending money they do not already have.

Shooting my 200th video today. Bits and pieces. Can't wait to show it off. It is not good or anything. Just want it done.

One more lesson

Today was a lesson in not giving people what the ask for.

Me: "What OS do you need on the system?"

Them: "Whatever you think is best."

Me: "Linux, right?"

Them: "Yup."

Me: "I'll put the latest version on for you."

Them: "Perfect."

Two days of "This isn't working" and rebuilds later, I ended up setting the system up like another system they had that had been working before. Should have done that in the first place.

I let myself get way too upset over this. it is honest work. I can't expect everyone to know what they need in these kinds of situations. I didn't know what they needed. I find myself asking people what worked before or what is working elsewhere when they tell me they need a system setup. This do it four or five times stuff is annoying.

Notes:

The Chinese are moving to robots. They have rising labor cost. They also have a high suicide rate amounts workers. People have cracked jokes about the robots sounding like that depressed robot from Hitchhiker Guide. The companies in China basically say that they are not getting rid of people. They are moving people up the value chain. I wonder if that chain leads out the door. I use an LG phone. It was made in one of the factories.

Foursquare sucks. Not the service. I mean getting the notifications of "I'm here!" every three minutes in Twitter. At least in Facebook you can block Foursquare. I haven't noticed any in g+, but I have noticed location information on posts. That just worries me. You can get a map of where people were when they made posts by clicking on their profile.

Check the firewall settings before you start installing or un-installing anything.

Once there was a guy who made BBQ out of the back of a truck. Then 500,000 other's joined him and all moved to Los Angeles. Apparently, they have a glut of food trucks.

Spent something like a grand on the house and $15 on the car headlight today.

The house

We have ants. Have exterminator coming tomorrow. $109 for the visits. I'm worried they won't do the place with the mess. Tomorrow will tell. I spray the weep holes and the parameter of the house. I also spray the cabinets. Not sure what else to do. Maybe we can figure out how they are getting in.

We also have the AC people coming out to check on the AC. We haven't touched it since we moved in. it needs a checkup at least. I really hope there is nothing wrong with it.

We need to start looking at getting the floor in the living room replaced. I do not want carpet. I want some kind of tile or fake wood that will last 500 years and look fresh as a daisy the whole time. The fence could use some mending as well, possible replacing. The back wall needs looking after since the hurricane several years ago. What else? Landscaping. Several walls could use a coat of paint. The outside wouldn't duck if some paint was thrown at it. We could just keep spending money if it came down to it.

Nat has already mentioned the idea of a larger place. I feel it necessary to tell her that it isn't the size of the place, it is the amount of crap in it. She is only half buying that idea. The house is getting better. It takes a great deal of effort.

The car is starting to show her age. Ah, life is expensive. If only I were one of those handy guys who can do this crap without getting raked over the coals by contractors.

The blog

The blog is turning in to a data dump. I didn't mean for this to happen. I jot down notes here. I put up messages on social media sites. I post things here so I can reference them elsewhere. The bad thing is I have no idea where this is going to lead. Will I stop blogging at some point? Will I bail on these annoying social media sites? Only time will tell.

The other places where I put up information are designed for very short output. They are designed for a little bit of information in a pre formatted design. They are popular because they make it easy for people to fall across your information. They are designed to keep things short because who the hell is going to read a long blog entry? No one wants the details it seems. People seem to want to know who is banging who and where the party is today.

You cannot put tables on g+. If you could, it would beat Blogger in my opinion. I use tables to present my data. This is going away. Not one of the new blog platforms let you use tables unless you have their software (page layout really) installed. I don't think any of them have software for Linux. I'm thinking of WordPress. Correct me if I'm wrong.

This blog is written in HTML. That is, I write the HTML and paste it in to the box. All the formatting inside the posts is mine. Bold, tables, color, whatever, that is all me. The layout of the page and links down the right hand side of the page are handled by Blogger. I like this. It gives me freedom to emphasize and present as I please and still keep things organized.

Twitter has zero formatting. Tumblr allowed quite a bit, but I couldn't figure out tables. Facebook is just stupid. Google Plus allows good organization, but you can only put up specific designed posts and still, no tables. They are not designed for blogging. They are designed for those really short status updates. I need a full blog interface I suppose.