Halloween. Vlogtober day 31

Field	Data
Title	Halloween - Vlogtober day 31
Description	Last day of Vlogtober. Happy Halloween.
Tags	Halloween boring vlogtober commute walking pedestrian sunset "wolf brand chilli" rice cooking dinner Houston Texas "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Notes:

Dell wants me to run a program that gathers a ton of information about a computer that I'm having issues with. No big deal. I finally figure out how to run the program properly and get the dump. Then it gets clogged in the quarantine of our email system. I have a couple of places I have to jab it with a stick to plumb it through the system. All in all it is much more difficult than it should be. We couldn't connect with a remote desktop connection either. Our firewall is understandably restrictive at work. I'm very glad of that from an IT perspective. I hate it when warring the user hat.

It is Halloween today. I have no plans. The idea of doing anything is just not there. Elle is off with her grandfather. I have so much to do and I don't feel all that well. I have a sore throat that will not go away. I have to get some things on the way home. I have to catch the bus and walk the last mile and a half from where it lets me off. Many miles to go before I sleep. It is just a good thing that I don't watch TV any more. It took too much time.

Where we are headed

Helping the FBI Track You
Hasan M. Elahi writes in the NY Times about his run-in with the FBI several months after September 11th, 2001. They'd received an erroneous report that he had explosives and had fled the country, so they were surprised when he showed up at an airport and was flagged by watch-list software. Elahi chose not to fight the investigation, and provided the FBI with enough detail about his life to convince them that he was a lawful citizen. But then, he kept going, providing more and more information about his life, documenting his every move and making it available online. His experience has been that providing too much information affords almost the same privacy blanket as too little. Quoting:
"On my Web site, I compiled various databases that show the airports I\u2019ve been in, food I\u2019ve eaten at home, food I\u2019ve eaten on the road, random hotel beds I\u2019ve slept in, various parking lots off Interstate 80 that I parked in, empty train stations I saw, as well as very specific information like photos of the tacos I ate in Mexico City between July 5 and 7, and the toilets I used. ... A lot of work is required to thread together the thousands of available points of information. By putting everything about me out there, I am simultaneously telling everything and nothing about my life. Despite the barrage of information about me that is publicly available, I live a surprisingly private and anonymous life."

Slashdot

Not a bad idea. If everyone did this, there would be far too much data for any number of humans to go through. Surely robots could sift to their chips desires, but they would end up missing the emotional element of things. This is a sign of things to come I tell you. People will volunteer to be followed around and track everything they do just to automatically be avoided as suspects for whatever crime the authorities want to blame someone for that week.

Vlogtober day 29

Field	Data
Title	Lights - Vlogtober day 29
Description	Klarus xt10 and a little dime store LED light that glows in the dark. This is a long term update on the Klarus xt10 after several months of daily use. Professional review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L3hrnNF1Bo
Tags	Klarus xt10 flashlight "glow in the dark" "long term" "personal review" "tactile ring" Houston Texas "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

War on speeders

Weaponizable Police UAV Now Operational In Texas
crackspackle writes "The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office in suburban Houston, Texas is preparing to launch operations with a newly received Shadowhawk MK-III unmanned aerial vehicle, paid for by grant money received by the Department of Homeland Security. The MK-III is a product marketed for both military and law enforcement applications. Michael Buscher, chief executive officer of manufacturer Vanguard Defense Industries, said this is the first local law enforcement agency to buy one of his units. 'The aircraft has the capability to have a number of different systems on board. Mostly, for law enforcement, we focus on what we call less lethal systems,' he said, including Tazers that can send a jolt to a criminal on the ground or a gun that fires bean bags known as a 'stun baton.' 'You have a stun baton where you can actually engage somebody at altitude with the aircraft. A stun baton would essentially disable a suspect,' he said. The MK-III also has more lethal options available, capable of carrying either a 40mm or 37mm grenade launcher or 12 gauge shotgun with laser designator."

Slashdot

I still say that if law enforcement is aloud to use a device, so should the citizenry.

Circles

Field	Data
Title	Circles - Vlogtober day 28
Description	Why does this calm me down? Am I nuts? Darkness is Coming Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tags	circles draw drawing crazy nuts baffling why "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Learning

Learned yesterday that when swapping drives around in Linux machines, you have to be aware of the date in the BIOS. I had a computer that I was using to make images and another drive trying to boot the image. The boot machine had the date changed for tolerance testing. When you change the date and boot the computer, things work fine because the drive shutdown date lines up. However, when you put in a drive where the date of the shutdown was a month or year in the future, the system blows a gasket. It took me a minute to figure out what happened and a couple more to remember how to change the linux date from the command line.

This is one of those things that IT people come across all the time. There are simply too many to document. Fortunately, the error I got was descriptive enough to tell me what was happening. It took me another minute to digest that error message. You have to consider the state of the machine when the error occurred.

This is a simple fix. Most things that go wrong have a simple fix. The trouble is identifying the correct simple fix without making things worse in the process of diagnosing. Compounding the problem with erroneous commands and frustrated swings of a sledge hammer happens far too often. I should blog those stories. They are far more interesting than when things work.

The toolbox grows over the years. Some people put things up on blogs. Some folks manage to write tech books. Me, I complain in whatever medium will tolerate it.

Notes:

At the hospital, the TVs all came on to a channel that played very gentle music with beautiful landscapes. You could change it.

One of the online only radio stations I listen to is giving away an all expense trip to Greece. ... Cheap bastards. =]

Someone out there is an expert on ie/ei.

Got another free lunch at work. This one was a pizza party for engineering. We were celebrating taking a project from scratch paper to market. Nice.

Vlogtober day 26

Field	Data
Title	Bad political ideas - Vlogtober day 27
Description	These are the "light" ideas. Imagine what the heavy ideas are like. Please have a flame war in the comments. I could use the numbers.
Tags	politics rant congress government wrong "bad ideas" "illegal aliens" "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Versions

Field	Data
Title	Software version conundrum (rant) - Vlogtober day 26
Description	How freaking hard does it it have to be to come up with a version number for a software package? Really, this is a basic piece of economics.
Tags	rant software version "version numbers" release economics sales engineering engineers marketing "software testing" customers Houston Texas "Canon ?Elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Childhood

When I was a kid and growing up, I did all the following without getting in trouble.

• latchkey kids.
• Drinking on Guadalupe River.
• Traveling on the bus with ammunition and a bayonet in your bag.
• Carnying a pocket knife to school.
• Got spanked when I screwed up.
• Played on a school playground off hours when no one was around.
• Hung out in a public park after hours.
• Take pictures and video in public.
• Swim in a park lake.

Things I was not or would not have been aloud to do when I was a kid that are not so taboo today.

• Be one of the following:
• Gay, or even a submissive male.
• Pothead
• Sexually active, there is not enough of a stigma today in my book.
• Boys growing long hair in public school.

Even distribution

I keep hearing this term "Redistribution of wealth" thrown around a lot. I have been thinking about it. Capitalism will not work if everyone has the same amount of resources. It is the difference in resources that makes transactions happen.

If the world were all the same level, like flat, but round if you take my meaning, water would have nowhere to flow. We might all find ourselves in neck deep water.

One of the stories this weekend was a guy who is in the occupy protests complaining that the money he raised from donations was not being used in his area. That money was just vanishing in the bureaucracy. "They are the government now." meaning the people higher than he in the loose organization that has popped up to organize the protests. I believe this young man was experiencing one of the major drawbacks of "everyone gets the same amount of everything" kind of thinking. That is some people are more equal than others. Welcome to the real world.

There is no way to prevent one person or group from having more than another. There will always be inequality. This is how the universe works. There is this thing called gravity that causes things to clump together. The universe suddenly becomes lumpy. The lumps bang in to one another and you get bigger lumps. The lumps get big enough and the blow up or fall apart. That is simply how things work.

Robot voices

I'm listening to more BBC these days. I cannot get most of my online radio stations to work at work because of some security settings. That's fine just as long as I can get out on the world wide web.

One of the stories on the BBC this morning was whether you want a male or female voice on your electronic devices like GPS and phones. One of the comments was from BMW that had to recall some cars and change the GPS to a male voice because so many male BMW drivers refused to take directions from a woman. I always thought BMW drivers were assholes. This only reinforces that stereotype.

I just don't care as long as I can tell I'm talking to a robot. In a few years, it will sound and react like a human. That is what I do not want. Some of the vlogs I view regularly use the iPhone thing that you talk to. I'm not sure how useful it is, but I know it is a time waister.

Voice recognition was a cool thing back in the eighties. Most companies gave up on it because people don't want to talk to their TVs or dish washers. Those days are gone. So are TVs in the form they had back then. I would love to tell my dishwasher "Run tonight after midnight." I would like ask my DVR "What was that show I liked last week?" and have it give me the correct answer. It will be great when I can ask the house where I left my keys.

Partial update bullshit

Last night, Ubuntu said there was an update ready to install. I click go. Then this window pops up saying there is a partial update, do I want to go ahead and install the partial update. Never, never, NEVER do a partial update of Ubuntu.

It turns out that the partial update was really a problem with dependencies. Whoever (whomever?) put together the repositories that day had screwed up and put in some 32 bit links in the 64 bit dependency tree. This threw my machine in to a anaphylactic shock. These toxic updates caused my machine to convulse and choke on it's own libraries.

I had to identify "held" packages. I had to identify a bunch of broken packages. By broken, I mean they were not the version the system wanted or they did not have the proper dependencies to support them. I had to remove some packages and update others manually to get the system in to a state where it would start taking care of itself again. I had to undo a reverted package. I don't know how that happened. I had to go through the whole install and configure of Kdenlive again. this is no trivial task because I have to make sure I have the correct development repos setup. Blah.

So, I'm sweating putting up a video last night the whole time I'm trying to get my machine running. I'm making plans of getting a copy of Ubuntu and performing a fresh install.

At about 22:15, I started editing my video. I had it up just before midnight. I got to bed before midnight. I think my head didn't hit the pillow before I was snoring. Yet, the act of getting the computer back up and putting the video up made me feel so much better that I slept like a baby. I did wake up three minutes before my alarm went off to look at the clock. That was annoying.

Notes:

Wrong: Two people hating each other is a form of mutual respect. If they didn't value the other person's being, they would not bother hating them so much.

You can only ignore your ID for a limited amount of time. Eventually, the ID always makes itself known.

"With all due respect ..." is a very polite way of saying "Fuck you and your opinion."

Do all these Chinese emails coming in really expect me to do anything except ignore and delete them? I am terrified of the day when all emails is automatically translated.

Got a free lunch today. Not too shabby. Will get another more or less free lunch next month and then a dinner the month after that. It isn't all spelunking cables and weeping over dead servers.

Codaffee or Kadafy or Quadaffee or whatever his name is has been cremated or at least burned or maybe barbecued. Whatever the term is. Can we now please move on to changing the regime now in charge in Libya? Thanks.

Some of the Beatles copyrights are now owned by an American company. That is messed up.

I've never used Groupon. I have had to sit though many reports of how screwed up the company is. Apparently, Groupon is just a marketing front end. They got in trouble for not declaring a bunch of expenses as marketing expenses. Not sure what that means.

Europe is looking at throwing trillions of Euros at the Greece issue. Then they intend to sit back with their fingers in their ears chanting "socialism ... socialism" waiting for the whole bad thing to go away. It isn't working for the U. S..

Someone in Greece was interviewed. They basically said that in rough times in the past they would rely on family, family would rely on them. Now, no one has a job. The government is trying to take everyone's house away. Who is going to live there? Who is going to buy the house? Foreigners? Another man who had been a professional was caretaker a park for a living.

(just after lunch) Shot a whole bunch of junck clips this morning and at lunch. I have no idea if they will fit together in a vlog. Surely, they are no worse than what I've been putting up.

At work we have three people named Brian. We have one john. When it comes to that John, there is only one.

I want to interview someone for the vlog. I have no idea what to do with an interview. Thus, I need to start with friends and people who won't care if I'm inept.

If you take from people and take and take and take everything, they will beg you to let them keep nothing.

Vlogtober day 25

Field	Data
Title	Clouds time lapse - Vlogtober day 25
Description	Major system melt down. Quick video. Music: Dirt Rhodes by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tags	Clouds timelapse "time lapse" shadows Houston Texas "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

The river trip - Vlogtober day 24

Field	Data
Title	The river trip - Vlogtober day 24
Description	Herding cats up a river. http://guadaluperiver.com/site/ http://www.tubehaus.com/ http://www.facebook.com/pages/CB-TAG/374480911737
Tags	fmaily fun CB "Citizen Band Radio" "CB Tag" "Guadalupe River" "New Brownsville" rapid rapids tube tubbing river rafting anecdote story "spoken word" Houston Texas "east Texas" "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Grandfather stories

Field	Data
Title	Grandfather stories - Vlogtober day 23
Description	My grandpa. Three anecdotes from my grandfather. Told while trimming my goatee for some reason.
Tags	grandfather grandpa anecdotes WWII "World War Two" Corsair "flight school" family stories Galveston beard goatee trim vlogtober vlog "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Really big coincidence

This show is from the eighties. They were of on the date by something like two months. Pretty good prediction.

V8 Chainsaw?

No, it is not useful. It is however FUCKING AWESOME!

Found on Eric the Car Guy dot com

Flashlight porn

No, they are not using flashlights for porn. That is a different channel. These are just flashlight output comparasson videos. I cannot get enough of this stuff. This is by far the most interesting thing to do with flashlights.

Big lights

Medium lights

Vlogtober day 22

Field	Data
Title	Vlogtober day 22 - Florida and rant about citizen rights
Description	Search results are based on the title of your video more than the tags and description. Apologies for the long title. People who know me know I left a lot out. Some of it is just too painful. Some is just too boring. I wanted to keep this video under ten minutes.
Tags	"illegal aliens" story anecdote life 9mm ammunition bayonet freedom Florida bus greyhound "find myself" travel "early nineties" "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Vlogtober 19, 20 and 21 all in one

Field	Data
Title	Hospitol - Vlogtober day 19,20,21
Description	Yes, I'm mashing up a bunch of days. It works out better this way. It ends up bing a bit longer, but it is mostly all on the same subject.
Tags	"Texas Woman's Hospital" surgery family visit atrium tree "broken light" medical "wall mounted computer" Houston Texas "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Out of touch

Guess I should have posted something before I took time off. Well, we had an adventure. I'm sure something will be up soon. Things are already looking up. Please feel free to complain about the lack of posting.
I'll give details soon.
The weather yesterday and today has been fantastic. More please. I took a walk around a part of Houston yesterday morning. It was glorious. The sun was shining. The breeze was blowing. The ground was wet, but not too much. No one else was enjoying it. It was a Thursday morning and most people had to be at work.
More coming. Thanks.

Vlogtober day 18

Field	Data
Title	Gross stuff - Vlogtober day 18
Description	I'm running out of things to shoot videos of. Can you tell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neti_pot
Tags	"neti pot" "hydrogen peroxide" hygiene ear nose sick curb "parking garage" vlogtober "Canon Elph 300" "wind noise" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Notes:

One of the background images I use on my computer at work has a building shot from the air. It is one among thousands in a foreign land that might be Taiwan or Tokyo. The top of this building is more decorative than functional. It has some kind of balcony or observation deck. The from the elevator are surrounded by glass, but there is an open area. On the other side of the building, on the opposite side of the elevators, there is an access hatch of some kind. I wonder how many people who have gone to that observation deck know about that hatch. I don't think it can be easily seen from any other point on the building.

I'm sick. I feel like I have some kind of flue bug. I have the swollen glands and sore throat thing. I feel sick. I feel like I'm going to fall over asleep the whole day. I'm sick.

There was a young woman on the bus who was knitting this morning. I wanted to thank her for doing something normal. The trouble is, that is hardly normal any more. Who the hell nits these days? Well, apparently this young lady does. I was a bit flabbergasted. It was great.

One of the guys at work just fell in love with location based reminders. He uses it to remind him to do things after work and help him with his morning routine. I found and Android app that does something similar. It is just one more feature that I'm waiting on for now. One of the other guys said his wife wants to know if she can put reminders in her husband's phone. This all reminded me of a story of a guy who had to "fix" his wife's car door so if she shut it, the door would automatically unlock itself because he had to "saver" her three times a week from locking her keys in her car. This was before keyles entry systems.

I don't remember the last time I had a drink. It has been months. I am too cheap and just don't feel the need.

mallware is bad software. People use this term to encompass every kind of virus or software attack. A zero day attack is a vulnerability that no one except the attackers really know about. This came up in conversation this morning.

Vlogtober day 17

Field	Data
Title	Work rant - Vlogtober day 17
Description	Servers, bandwidth and backa yards.
Tags	IT engineers servers work fun rant "foggy morning" commute infrastructure "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Face-Oh-Ell

Facebook really looks like AOL. Not long ago, I could put up a YouTube link and the thumbnail would appear in the link automatically. The video would play on the Face-Oh-Ell page. Face-Oh-Ell does not get revenue from those videos. Face-Oh-Ell wants people to post straight to Face-Oh-Ell. So, the links suddenly stopped working. Now you just get a link with no thumbnail.

This is one symptom of the strategy of keeping people on your site. Another strategy is to track where people go when they leave your site and take steps to provide these services. Face-Oh-Ell has recently come out and said they are indeed taking the steps to track their users even when they have logged off the service. I forget where, but someone is suing the company for wire tapping because of this practice.

The only thing I use Face-Oh-Ell for is to post my video links and to read what other people are doing in their lives. To be honest, I find what is going on in other people's lives far more interesting than mine. Not sure why. My cousin is hyper on Face-Oh-Ell. He posts every five minutes. He is doing it to promote his comic book business for the most part. Several other people seem to put stuff up just because they feel like they should. It all has a feeling of commitment to it any more. This is an early sound of the nails driving in to the coffin.

Everyone still uses the service, or so it seems. There are other choices out there, but people are not flocking to them. Face-Oh-Ell simply has everyone on it at the moment. This will not last. This is what people said about MySpace. Remember that service? I believe they still exist. I haven't even looked at it in months. It hasn't crossed my mind until now.

Before the end, their walls will crack.
The ground beneath them will crumble.
Upon the end, people will walk away.
After the end, they will be forgotten.

Just like all the others.
When your temple comes crashing down.
As the wreckage burns and boils away.
Your product will forget to care.

No one writes poems for the fall of AOL or MySpace. Face-Oh-Ell, you get one. You are welcome.

Notes:

It was foggy on the walk in this morning. The light worked great. It helps me take up a lot of space and be seen from a long way away. When I got off the bus at my work, there was almost no fog. It appears to have skipped that part of the city. Odd how it is so spotty. I would like to have one of those 2000 lumen spotlights for foggy days. Just to shine in to the air from the other side of the levy. You know, all mysterious like.

I listen to Mark Lavin, Alix Jones and G. Gordon Liddy. I listen to them right up to the point where they take calls. I do not like listening to people argue with stupid people. I know it eats up time and makes for ratings. I cannot sit through it.

There was a show on the BBC today about stamp collecting. Talk about a dead art. They had a statistic that in the 1990's there were 100,000 members of a stamp collecting club in the U. K.. By today the number was 1000. Yikes.

It is getting to the point where everything on geek podcasts is all about Apple and the iPhone. The geek podcasts I listen to are getting ridiculous on the amount of free advertising they give to these products. It is getting to the point where I fast forward through the hype. This is a shame because there are tid bits of useful info going by.

Vlogtober day 16

Field	Data
Title	Vlogtober day 16 - Lazy Sunday
Description	Title says it all. Music: There it is by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tags	lazy Sunday sunny "pretty weather" driveway "rolly polly" "lawn chair" garage family fun hoolahoop laundry "time lapse" "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Cool trailer

If my father sees this video, he will get one of these trailers. Nobody tell him.

For the birds

I remember a cartoon from my youth. Bugs and Daffy were on a bridge. A portable hole fell on the bridge surfaced and Daffy fell through. Bugs looked t the camera and said "I wonder if Daffy will remember he is a duck and can fly." ... Splash! "Nope."

Why didn't the duck fly across the road? I didn't get a chance to ask before he was hit. Perhaps flying is simply too costly in evolutionary terms. Perhaps ducks are programmed to use whatever means of transportation works in order of swim, walk, fly needed to get from A to B. Perhaps it is a simple jiggering of priorities required.

Best Community yet

I'm about to watch the last itteration. Haven't even seen it by the time I post this.

UPdate. Nope, the last one kind of sucked.

George Bush Park - Vlogtober day 15

On a side not, I had just upgraded Ubuntu from 11.04 to 11.10. This caused a library to update which, broke Kdenlive. Five minutes of hunting on Google and I found several possible answers. The least painful was to use the SVN repository. I'm gun shy of these sorts of tactics, but actually trying this was not that difficult. It is much easier than building the source. Some of the other suggestions were to revert the library and to install the old library and attempt to point the existing Kdenlive to it. That last one sounds good, but is surprisingly difficult.

As I type this, I'm re-rendering the video I shot for today's vlog. Since I'm changing versions of the library that deals with such things, I'm going to give the WebM format another try. It takes longer to render on the computer, but uploads more quickly. It is supposed to be the native format of Google one of these days. I get sound issues after uploading sometimes.

I'm not posting this blog entry until the video goes up so the results should be above these paragraphs.

Field	Data
Title	George Bush Park - Vlogtober day 15
Description	George Bush Park in Houston Texas. Not all of it cought on fire.
Tags	vlog "George Bush Park" houston Texas park family fun father daughter walk hike evening sun trees forest "wild fire" "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texaspowershot Kdenlive Ubuntu
Link	Link

Podcasts

I listened to a fictional podcast that was a story about a woman who controlled ghosts with magic. She used them as servants. They walked solid on Halloween. They attacked if she did not prepare. They loved and produced if she had been kind.

Sometimes I wonder if, in another life, I used to listen to these shows. I really enjoy them. The stores are the same as many of the shows that are on TV today. Half the shows are about cops and they are still having the same troubles with crooked people they have today. Some things never change.

It's funny listening to old time radio shows where people use phones and other things that we take for granted. Things worked a bit differently back then on so many levels.

• Phones
• They have to find a phone.
• They can pretend to be somewhere or someone else on the phone.
• There are no phone records of who called whom.
• People are just out of pocket when they are out of reach of a phone.
• You have to call a restaurant or a theater to get hold of someone if they are out.
• People can crank call the police and taunt them.
• Long distance calls.
• There is talk about renting a car at $6 a day.
• People take trips on boats.
• Everyone smokes.
• Police walk beats.
• Cameras
• There are no surveillance cameras.
• Pictures have to be developed.
• There is no video of any kind that isn't a movie in a theater.
• Cameras are not so much rare, but people don't carry one in their pocket.
• Information
• People can hide for years by just telling people a wrong name.
• People read news papers. More, news papers are a primary and nearly the quickest source of news.
• It takes people days of research to look up simple facts that we can Google in 30 seconds now.
• Maps, campuses, pencils, rulers.
• Handwriting, letters, typewriters, printing presses, mail (as in snail mail).
• Going to the bank to get money.
• You could buy dynamite in a hardware store.

Notes:

Wow, people are pissed about the Blackberry outage. My mother is upset. That should tell you something. They have made a powerful enemy.

My frigging phone is bitching about running out of install space. It won't let me remove some programs that came with the phone. I need to figure out how to root the phone just so I can free up some flash. That is ridiculous.

At work today, I looked for HDMI to DVI cables. This allows laptops and similar video hookups to use TVs and such. A couple months ago I looked around and found several for about $8 or so. We ordered some for $6 I think. Anyway, today I looked around and found a couple choices for $1.50 or so. How can they make the cable for that? How can they make the cable and get it to Amazon for that? The copier in the cable is not cheap. It nearly makes me want to calculate the coper mass and if I can make a profit buying these cables and taking them to the recycling place down town. (no)

Had to mess with a system this morning that is about eleven years old. It has the same OS on it as the day this company bought it as far as I can tell. It is miles out of date. It doesn't have half the utilities that I'm used to just to get around in the OS. It has an OS that I'm really not all that adept in to begin with. A drive is having issues. I'm not even sure if I can mount the drive in another OS.

I've decided to cheat a bit and use some footage that I shot today on tomorrow's vlog. Shhhhhh. Don't tell any one. Not that any one cares.c

Virgin Mobile Optimus V batteries http://www.amazon.com/Anker-1600mAh-Battery-Optimus-Multi-purpose/dp/B005B3L6KY/ref=sr_1_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1318594399&sr=1-5

Vlogtober day 14

Field	Data
Title	Rants - Vlogtober day 14
Description	State of Kelly's life.
Tags	"parking garage" "nice weather" TRF "Texas Renaissance Festival" broke depression money Faire lunch vlog embarrassing HDMI DVI cable "Cheap Chinese equipment" "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Vlogtober day 13 - missing usb hub

Field	Data
Title	The missing USB hub - Vlogtober day 13
Description	USB hub. QRC right side up. QRC site http://www.qrstuff.com/
Tags	flashlight, traffic, commute, walking, pedestrian, mowed Westheimer, USB hub, lost, found, stairwell, parking garage, Canon Elph 300, Houston, Texas, Kdenlive, QRC, right side up
Link	Link

YouTube tags

I wonder if I need to go look at my tags on YouTube and make sure the comas are in the right places. It just might make a difference. I will learn the proper way of dealing with these key words the same way I learn about everything else. I will try to hunt down other people to learn from and then I'll Google it.

After some quick experimentation, I find that it indeed makes a difference where the commas lay. I have some 230 videos. I'm learning about this now? It looks like I have a new hobby. I must now go through at least some of my videos and fix the placement of commas. This will require time and learning. Just what is the difference between a tag word and a tag phrase?

These tags are very important if you give a crap about people finding your videos. I get some pretty good numbers on videos that have attractive tags. I often go back and review tags just to make sure something has not been overlooked. This is going to be a chore.

Notes

I ordered some new batteries for our phones. It was $20 for two batteries and an external charger. Got two of the sets. Nat is trying out the new battery. I have spare charged battery in my bag. So far so good. I'm sure I'll mention how things work out good or bad.

There is a splinter in the end of my middle finger on my right hand. It amazes me how often this hits something. I feel a pinch every time I hit one of the keys on the keyboard. This is apparently my favorite pound the enter key finger as well.

Is it even worth prostate tests? Some people say this is the one cancer where it basically just doesn't have and advantage to find it early. The tests might do more damage on average than disease.

Vlogtober day 12

Field	Data
Title	Vlogtober day 12
Description	New QRC for zhsy00001 channel. Dad's old Dodge. Big bend trip no head lights.
Tags	old dodge vs Corvette rain anecdote big bend highway 90 cops Canon Elph 300 Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Notes

More is not better when it comes to vitamins.

The Marines have a high retention rate in an economic down turn. recruits may have to wait months for a position to open up.

The thought crossed my mind to capture the sunrise this morning. However, when I got to work, the building was dripping wet. So wet that the windows were fogged over and streaking with running water. There was not a cloud in the sky. This was entirely from humidity. Welcome to Houston.

There is a saying among young women in China. "I would rather cry in a BMW than smile on a bicycle." I hate to tell every one this, that is women in general. Women for the most part are hard wired to seek out a mate with resources.

Heard a Wakeup to Money report yesterday where people on the show were asking the question "Is it possible to both increase lending and only lend to people who can pay it back?" The guy being interviewed acted like it was obvious that the two went hand in hand. Everyone on the show seemed to think he was nuts. I agree more with the later. Those things seem to conflict.

"Slovakia should not be forced to loan to Greece." Slovakia is really regretting getting in to this mess. I remember when some of the more resent joiners to the EU pulled the trigger thinking "You will be sorry." They are. What was the draw to join the EU in the first place? I live in the U. S. so what do I know about living in a small country? Perhaps they wanted to stop getting bullied around by the Eastern Block. Perhaps they just wanted to have a bit more clout in trade.

Shot a couple anecdotes at lunch. Hopefully they turn up on the vlog. My fear is that I will start repeating the old stories like every other old fart that I've ever come across. My grandfather had some stories. He told them over and over. I wish now I had recorded them so I could have them one more time.

Isn't "unassorted" the same as "sorted"?

Vlogtober day 11

Field	Data
Title	Vlogtober day 11
Description	Time lapse cartwheels. Hoolahoop. Elle tells a joke. Spiders! Music: One-eyed Maestro Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tags	spiders hoolahoop slow motion cartwheels family fun eight year old joke Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 Kdenlive
Link	Link

Iran again

What will it take? What atrocity will this government, not even country, have to commit in order for the rest of the world to decide they, the members of the government, are not worth saving? The people of Iran will suffer greatly at the hands of their government whether it be directly, or when they finally piss China or Russia off. Thank goodness Iran is a hair's width from developing nuclear weapons. Maybe they will drop a set of balls and push the world over the edge.

The FBI and DEA have disrupted a plot by elements of Iran's government to kill the Saudi ambassador to U.S. on American soil, a senior U.S. official says.
The official says the plot involved assassinating the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir.
Details of the alleged plot were first reported by ABC News.
Watch a Department of Justice briefing live on CNNTV.

CNN Headline News email

Iran denies it. There is something in the news about 1.5 million dollars changing hands for the hit.

The U. S. will apparently not declare war on Iran. There is some mention of further sanctions. That should whip the Iranian government in to line. I mean, if this isn't an act of war, what is? Is there such a thing any more? If this were a hundred years ago, there would be no doubt what the U. S. would do. The U. S. has promised protection of the Saudi ambassador. I wish I knew history better. My memory tels me that attempted murder of a foreign government's representative on your soil was at some point a guarantee of war.

Have we matured, or become weak and complacent? At some point, after the piss-ant countries have their way with us, a real rival is going to challenge us. When this happens, we will roll over and die, or not. Which will it be?

Occupy this that and the other

"Occupy Wall Street", now just "Occupy", seems to be made of a bunch of people who want to bitch. It is one way to take the wind out of the sails of the Tea Party movement. Some people say this is the acting out of the people who are disappointed with the idea of electing Obama. He was supposed to be open and fix a bunch of shit. Instead, we get another politician who is just out for the blood of the tax payer.

What gets me is when you ask people who are shouting from the roof tops why they are there, you get every reason under the sun. The protest is all about everything wrong. It feels incoherent and unorganized. That is because it is. There are Union members being trucked in to make noise. There are doctors, lawyers, and a bunch of people who ware expensive sunglasses all lining up in a disorderly fashion to bitch.

There are a couple of web sites. They conflict. There are protests popping up in other cities. Some big, some small. People are upset in so many places across this country and for very many different reasons. People want to bitch.

What is the solution to bitching? The only solution is to stop bitching and fix the problem. More bitching and bitching louder is not a solution. The people in the protests have

Mark Lavin calls them all kinds of names. "1960s retreads" "Parasites on parade". He says that the Democrat party have embraced the movement because they have no Tea Party to speak of. They are using this to raise money for campaigning and getting reelected.

Alix Jones agrees. He says it has been cooped and turned in to more class warfare.

Moveon.org has gotten involved heavily in these movements. Union members have turned up to crack heads and carry signs. I smell Astroturf. It is funny how this kind of thing never makes it in to the mainstream media. I take that back. It isn't funny at all.

Notes:

I haven't been to the movies in a long time. I just don't care any more. I haven't gotten hooked on a TV show in a long time. I don't have cable and I find myself not watching TV as much as I used to. I'm just getting used to less input.

Must shoot some better footage for today's vlog. I've been lax.

Over the last several months, we have run out of money well before the end of the month. This month is no different. I feel like a failure when this happens. Every month something else blows up. Some months, several things blow up. It feels like we just can't get ahead. Is this life? Is life just one crisis followed by the next until you die?

One less asshole on the street

Surveillance video captures a store clerk returning fire on robbers at a gas station in southeast Houston Saturday morning.
Police said two masked suspects entered the Valero gas station on Martin Luther King Jr. at Belarbor around 6:30 a.m.
The video shows one of the suspects shooting a store clerk in the leg, as the other suspect jumped over the counter and started looking for money.
But police said another store clerk grabbed a gun and fired several shots, hitting one of the suspects twice in the upper body.
The suspects scrambled out the door and ended up in Gerald Kilpatrick’s front yard.
"They came around that side there and I guess the guy dumped the gun right here," said Kilpatrick.
He said the men claimed that they were victims of a carjacking, so Kilpatrick allowed one of the men to rest on his porch.
"He laid on the porch," said Kilpatrick. "He was in his boxers. I don’t recollect how his pants and stuff got off. He was bleeding so bad."
Kilpatrick called police, and the injured man was taken into custody.
HPD identified him as 22-year-old Harold Robertson. He’s been charged with aggravated robbery. His alleged partner in crime hasn’t been arrested yet.
The injured store clerk was released from the hospital and was at home resting Monday. The clerk who fired the shots was taking a few days off to recover.

LiveLeak

Rain!

Man the rain felt good. We got three inches over the weekend. We really needed the rain. I bet the run off is not as much as a "normal" three inches of rain would produce. The ground just sucked up the water out of desperation. The grass on the way to work looked like the tops were still dry and the base of the grass was engorged. Perhaps the grass chooses to replace rather than renovate. It has been since August 2010, a tropical storm, that we had more rain in the same amount of time.

The whole family thanked God for the rain. Some friends did too. Social media was ramped with people shouting hurray. It would have been even more welcome, but it was the first weekend of Texas Renaissance Festival. People camping were not happy that the first good rain we have had in a year occurred the same weekend they had been planning for nearly that long. Camping is miserable when it rains. There are a few people who are prepared and a bit crazy who kind of like the rain while camping. There is something primal about sleeping in a tent while listening to the tinkle of rain on the roof. To most, it is just miserable.

The news said we are not due for rain like that again for a while. We could use five or six of those days to catch up a bit. No such luck.

Finance

Greece is going to default. This is what is coming out of the financial programs from Europe. At some point, the EU countries are going to say to investors that they have lost their money. If I were Germany, I would only pay off other countries bonds as though investors had invested in Germany regardless of face value. That means much lower yields. This would send the message to investors that if you invest in a shady company or country, you just might loose your money.

The U. S. government is debating a bill that will make it illegal for people to not consider people who are currently unemployed for job openings. The fact that this is even coming up makes me a bit sick. The idea of a stigma is attached to people who are out of work is just evil.

Speaking of job growth, the gain this last month of a pittance of jobs is not enough to keep up with population growth. Over a long period of time we are behind. They have been trowing the notion of a jobless recovery. Some economists are finally coming around to the fact that we are now in a situation that is as bad if not worse than The Great Depression of the 1930s.

Companies are taking a "wait and see" attitude for the foreseeable future. That is, the foreseeable future is not so foreseeable. Companies want to be able to plan. If they cannot plan to hire people they will plan on not heiring people. The Job bills have failed because the best way to get people in to jobs is to create the environment where companies need to hire people. Hiking taxes for getting work done is not the way to get people hired.

When you hear economists talk about the varied stimulus packages that come from government, they say things like "No one knows if it is going to do any good." Do governments want banks to make loans wily-nilly, basically toss it out of helicopters. Or, do governments want banks to verify loans and lend to companies and individuals who have a high probability to pay it back? The answer, to both is "yes". Good luck with that.

It is not a double dip recession. It is a depression. Say it with me. "We ... are ... in ... a ... deeeeprrrreeeeeeeeessssiiiioooooooooonnnnnnnnn." SAY IT!!!

On a side note, the spell checker tried to correct the word 'depression' correctly in the above paragraph. I'm impressed.

Notes

Warring the wrist watch on my right arm today. Normally, I ware it on my key chain. It is bugging me in that position today. Not sure why it does this all of a sudden. Watch for th blog post of my thumb muscles experiencing spasms in the near future.

All stores have a plot. It might be very simple or it might be bad. It is still a plot.

Is nostalgia a neurotic way of not dealing with the present?

atrocitologists: One who studies atrocities. The 20th century is just not the most dangerous century. The second half of the 20th century was amazingly quiet as far as wars between major powers.

To the victor goes the syndication rights.

The whole Nobel prize thing is a joke. I almost wish someone would do away with them. Even the real prizes like chemistry and other sciences are kind of interesting. Even they don't end up amounting to much. The current one in chemistry or maybe it's physics, found a crystalline structure in the noise. Everyone kept telling him he was nuts and he documented the results. He can now wave it under all their noses and laugh. I hope he has a good mad scientist cackle.

Break time conversation: We talked about NetFlix and every one selling your information. We all complained about media and how they have screwed everything up when it comes to getting and keeping customers. I ate a bowl of ice cream.

Vlogtober day 10

Field	Data
Title	Vlogtober day 10
Description	Vlogtober day 10. Minor adventures.
Tags	check mortgage kfc biscuits garage clean clutter Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 Kdenlive
Link	Link

Rainy day

Field	Data
Title	Rain! - Vlogtober day 9
Description	YES! we really need the rain in South East Texas. Elle and I have a father daughter moment watching the rain.
Tags	father daughter moment watching the rain stuffed dog family fun drought street lights gun range South East Texas Houston Canon Elph 300 Kdenlive
Link	Link

Coffee

This is from a friend of mine. I love it. the more the merrier online.

Vlogtober day 8

Field	Data
Title	Vlogtober day 8
Description	Vlogtober day 8
Tags	fish walk by flashlight spider aracnaminium garage Ft Bend Texas Canon Elph 300 Kdenlive
Link	Link

Vlogtober day 7

Field	Data
Title	Reaction and screws - Vlogtober day 7
Description	Continuing Vlogtober. Music: One-eyed Maestro Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tags	time lapse screws spill slow motion nyquil CVS reaction video funny face yuck bad taist nasty medicine Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 Kdenlive
Link	Link

Apple and Jobs

Steve Jobs has died. I respectfully prey for his family and friends well being.

I am not a fan boy. Apple didn't invent much. They took existing stuff and made it much more user friendly. They didn't marry the mouse and the computer. They didn't invent visual interface for computers. Xerox did that if memory serves. Apple did bring these things to the masses. Apple did and does still charge a high price.

Apple computer is a company that says "Give them what they want and charge them for it." Any company that follows that path will be successful as long as they don't screw it up. Apple is a company. Apple is not benevolent. Apple is not your friend. Disney had some kind of higher status once. For a very long time after Walt Disney died, the Disney corporation enjoyed this status. Then Disney made a bunch of movies and products that reminded people they are just out for money. Now Disney is just another evil corporation.

Did I mention that I'm not a fanboy? A fanboy (fanperson) is someone who thinks Apple products are wonderful and every version must be purchased the moment it comes out. With the announcement of the iPhone 4S, I've noticed this trend has already fallen off a bit. Someone who I follow in the tech world has already said the new iPhone just isn't all "that". He might upgrade just because he has a free upgrade coming.

One of the new features of the iPhone 4S is the button used for the camera just takes a picture when you press it regardless of where you are in the interface. There was an app that did this already. Apple banned them from the iTunes store. Then stole their idea. Kind of a douchebag thing to do if you ask me.

Notes:

The band aid thing kind of worked. This is where I put a band aid over the mic on my camera to stifle the wind noise. The wind noise is still there, but you can hear the person (me) talking much better. Not sure it is a grade A solution, but it is another tool in the box.

People really can't think straight if you have to pee. It is equivalent to having a blood alcohol level of 0.08%. That is intoxicated in many states. Someone won an ig-Nobel prize for this research.

Some people freak when you mention radiating food. That is, you expose food to radiation in order to kill living biologic elements to limit the transfer of disease. I think people forget that mankind has been radiating food for ever with heat in the form of cooking. The frequency of the radiation is all they are talking about changing.

Lunch conversation. I didn't take a lunch today. I was just in the middle of something and didn't want to loose my momentum. By the time I had a minute, it was break time. Even as I ate my bag of popcorn, I was helping someone with RHN information. Not a big deal.

I want to ask the question "Can a white male presidential candidate win the presidency in the full election against an incumbent black male president?" Is it racist to ask the question? Is it racist to propose a rational answer?

Palin will not run. I cannot blame her.

I've had serious issues with wind noise while shooting videos. I don't know if the camera is particularly susceptible or what the deal is. Someone online suggested putting a cloth band aid over the mic holes in the body of the camera. I was already looking at things to use as a wind buffer. I've only tried blowing on the camera. it is going to take a real comparison between has a band aid and does not have a band aid. I also wonder if the type or size of band aid makes any difference.

Ate some grilled chicken wraps for lunch today. Oh, and a left over kolotchy. I skipped an ice cream and cake shin dig in the afternoon that someone threw to celebrate a birthday. I did have my customeary one soda this afternoon. Thi sis a start to eating a bit more healthy.

Games I don't play

Not playing games in a very long time, I've been watching people play games on YouTube. It is not quite as fun. It is something to do. It keeps me off the street.

Man, games have gotten better mechanics and design. They haven't gotten much better play. There are few original ideas out there. I say the idea of a mining based game is the magic behind MineCraft. That and the one guy who started and maintains it all keeps it cheap. I forget what his name is, but it sounds like he is a pretty good developer.

In the latest game, animals and monsters look at you. They turn their heads and follow you. So do some of the items. One, for example, turns a book to face the closest person. As you approach, the pages flip. Nice touch for a game made of blocks. The game is open source and as people create new content and indeed improve on the engine, these changes are merged in to the primary development branch. Let the community do some of the work for you.

Rage is just one task after another. The mechanics of shooting people looks pretty good. The plot leaves some room for improvement.

Dead Island is pretty cool except every frigging five minutes you are back in the same suers killing the same zombies over and over. You use money to repair weapons at stations. The world is not as interactive as it could be. I have yet to see any one playing the game in a night setting. Is the whole game plaid in daytime?

There is another that is based in an insane asylum. You have a super tazer. I have no idea what the object of the game is, but it is basically another zombie hunt.

World of Warcraft is still going. I cannot stand watching this game played. It is all organization and scheduling for a fight. It may be fun to plan and execute the plan, but it is not much fun to watch.

There are trends of games. Normally, when they first come out there is a wave of new videos. The vast majority suck. I've found some people who are not all that great at playing the game, but it is fun watching them. They take the time and effort to figure things out. It is fun watching them because they are friends, they argue. They have adventures.

Wind noise test - Vlogtober day 6

Field	Data
Title	Wind noise test - Vlogtober day 6
Description	Help me decide what works for wind noise on my Canon Elph 300.
Tags	wind noise test experiment band aid baindaid wool sock Canon Elph 300 Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

YouTube

Last night, YouTube said they were in maintenance read only mode. They said I could upload. They said the video would go online after it uploaded and after the maintenance mode was over. They lied.

I uploaded the video and changed some settings. I went to bed knowing something was just not right. You know how it goes. Something is going on with a bureaucracy and you just know they are going to screw you. You just know they are saying something to shut you up while they ignore your needs.

When I got up in the morning I checked the system. "Error processing". I knew it. Of course, they screwed me. The idea of YouTube caring if my and any one's videos work on a single given night made me laugh.

YouTube has customers. They are the advertisers. YouTube has product. The product is the time people spend on their site. YouTube has content partners. They swap their soul, I mean content, for a free spot to put up their videos and maybe a tiny slice of the pie.

I uploaded at work. I simply didn't clock in for 23 minutes and posted my video before work this morning. I hope that is OK. I read the internet usage policy and it sounds like it is OK to me. I did it at work because the video I had was 161 megabytes. This takes something like 45 minutes to upload at the house. It took about 4 minutes at work. Dang it. My home internet sucks.

Something that I noticed was the big partners. Somehow, people who are full partners were able to put their videos up. There must be some super secret upload mechanism that lets them get their videos up even while maintenance is going on. It is probably the Windows Mac only Java upload software. I've tried to get it to work on Linux and it just didn't.

Complain complain. I do this because it is fun. I enjoy having that little bit of myself out there. I am worried that something will bite me in the butt at some future date. I try not to let too many license plates go by. I've decided not to bother hiding mine. I obscure some friend's plates. Some people are obsessed with not letting their visage appear online. Most of me sympathizes. A tiny part of me wants to scream at them to go hide in a fucking cave if they don't like it. I try to suppress that bit.

Notes:

Shot a rant about 3d shows at lunch today. The wind noise is almost too high to use. I'm going to go with it anyway.

The deluxe box set of Next Generation Star Trek DVD set came in a Borg Cube. How is that for good marketing?

It must not cost anything to get your podcast on iTunes. I'm just saying.

Vlogtober Day 5

Field	Data
Title	I don't like 3d movies yet - Vlogtober day 5
Description	Yup. my opinion on 3d movies.
Tags	3d three dimensional movies opinion parking garage binocular vision Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 Kdenlive.
Link	Link

Vlogtober Day 4

Field	Data
Title	Vlogtober day 4
Description	Unbox some computers in a time lapse. Lunch. An orange rubber ball with sparkles. Two anecdotes about cars being broken in to. Elle bicycle lesson. Music: Nile's Blues Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tags	unbox computers time lapse cars auto burglary anecdote orange liquid rubber ball bicycle lesson family fun work Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 Kdenlive
Link	Link

Content

I'm beginning to think I'm not a very creative person. The internet runs on original content. Companies buy that content and bring it to the masses. This is why places like Google and YouTube work. YouTube makes money by bringing people's eyes and advertisers together. Where the two meet, there be money.

The content doesn't have to be production quality. Trust me. People want something that they have not seen before. People do not want re-runs. There are precious few shows on TV right now that are genuinely good. They are all based on other shows, books, movies, comic books, old stories. Some people in the business have asked if all the good stories have been told.

I blame copyright myself. The rules need to be examined. Anyone who has original content is afraid to bring it forward because they will get sued by someone who came up with a similar idea that they never got off the ground. Maybe they didn't bother. Why not let someone else do all the work and just sue them? Sounds like an easier way to make money than working.

Yes, I'm a cynic. It happens every day. The paten trolls have all but killed electronics. They are now killing entertainment. Eventually, laws and taxes will fall prey. I mean, can I write a law that I don't like and copyright it. Then when similar law comes up before some legislature, sue them for infringement? Surely, this has been done or defended against.

When I watch news shows, I laugh. The people don't seem sincere because they are reading from scripts. I'm used to watching people really talk to the camera without knowing what they are going to say next. People who are practiced at it enough start to sound like shills for something. By then, they usually have sold out. That is what the companies are looking for, remember?

Notes:

I notice the "Occupy" movement is not getting hammered in the press like the Tea Party. Makes me say "hmmmmm".

Scientists analyzed tweets. They came up with one conclusion. The entire world is happier in the mourning and gets more and more miserable through the day. I could have told them this. This was not a side effect of looking for something else. They set out to find out this very information. They used super computers to get it done. When you check the details, they only looked for positive words vs negative words. They claim the errors cancel out. -Dr. Karl and the Naked Scientist.

My parents came up for lunch today. I was worried about a long lunch. 12:11 to 13:13. Not only was it a magnificent lunch at Rockfish, but it was great to catch up. My father has been under the weather for a while and he looks better now than he did in the beginning of it all. He has kidney issues. It is one of those things he will have to deal with for the rest of his life.

There is talk of making it illegal to insult police in England. There is no freedom of speech in Great Britain that I'm aware of. Here in the states, if you mouth off to a cop you should expect to get slapped with disorderly conduct at least. Some of the cops in Britain say there are already laws to deal with it.

Vlogtober day 3

Field	Data
Title	Vlogtober day 3
Description	Yes, they are getting worse. Today was the first full day of work with the vlog. Give me a break.
Tags	vlog vlogtober flashlight Westheimer battery change walking pedestrian bus metro busstop Canon Elph 300 Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

• Discuss how you, a legally blind guy, uses the computer. In particular, video you reading your monitor and muttering to yourself. (Though I assume the muttering would happen regardless of eyesight.) If that's not enough, add in a screen capture video of you typing something so people can see how you get your spelling all wrong (and right!). Big time interesting.
• This may be a little more "exposed" than you care to be, but read some of your poetry or prose (verbatim). Your actual reading of it would be distracting, so you'll have to memorize it. But I think it would be interesting. Or if you know someone with a good orator's voice, have them do it.
• Do a piece on your cat box (if it is still as nasty as I remember it.) Nothing like a good hate-filled rant that is really non-offensive to everyone. Andy Rooney is retiring, maybe you can help fill his void.
• Do a small piece on that birthmark you had removed. It's only about a min or two of content -- but again, interesting.
• I don't think you've filmed yourself shaving your head.
• A full, non-emotional piece on the boom-boom next door. I know you've done this bit to death, but a full explanation and history would be nice. And every time you mention it else where, you could link it so people could get caught up.
• I assume that your Dad's garage is still the envy of men everywhere. Ask him to give you a tour of it and film him doing it. That would be bad-ass.
• You can tell any/all of the following anecdotes:
• How your Mom kept you back a grade (surely not your favorite, but its one of mine).
• How you punched some nitwit back in high-school and then everyone left you alone.
• How you Dad loves to haggle car deals with questionable ethics (though I doubt he thinks so -- don't tell him I said that.)
• How many brothers and sisters your Mom has and how she was raised.
• All the notable people in your family (in particular the comic-book guy.)
• How you met and married Nathalie. Its a great story. Have her tell it. It would be better. If she doesn't want to be filmed, have her narrate it and you accompany it with photos.

Vlogtober day 2

Field	Data
Title	Vlogtober day 2
Description	Vlogging every day in October.
Tags	October Vlogtober chores family bicycles lawn yard work coffee cats garage Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 Kdenlive
Link	Link

Model planes becoming bombs?

Prepare for regulation of toys.

A 26-year-old man from a Boston suburb was arrested Wednesday and accused of plotting to attack the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol with remote-controlled model planes packed with explosives.
These are not balsa-wood-and-rubber-band toys investigators are talking about. The FBI said Rezwan Ferdaus hoped to use military-jet replicas, 5 to 7 1/2 feet long, guided by GPS devices and capable of speeds over 100 mph.
...
Massachusetts prosecutor Gerry Leone, who handled the prosecution of would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid, said terrorists are always building bombs out of common, legitimate items, and imposing restrictions on buying model aircraft would not make sense simply because of this one case.
But he said law enforcement might want be more vigilant about such purchases.
Similarly, Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said recent advances in model airplane technology could make them more attractive to terrorists. But he said the answer is better intelligence, not trying to regulate hobbyists and their toys.
"Kids have them, people fly them, groups are organized just to engage in this type of pastime activity," the congressman said. "It would be almost impossible to regulate the little engines and things, propellers."

Military.com

There comes a point where you outlaw boards with nails and not boards that have no nails. I think they are wrong to think these things are harmless, but they are also wrong in thinking that everything that shows any potential of being dangerous if someone has bad intentions. Have you seen some of the really cool remote control devices? Maybe there is something to worry about.

Think I've put that one up before.

There are dozens of videos of planes flying through cities. There are nearly as many of flying through a building. The thought of using these things to keep an eye on someone is all over the place. I worry about someone using them for assassinations. Blowing up a whole building may be difficult with the payloads these devices are capable of. But, they could have the potential of a heavy grenade without too much trouble.

New world order

I remember once speculating, here, there or somewhere, that one of the many things that could reasonably be said to have caused Word War 2 was the failure of any sort of German Parliament to meet - circa 1939, and say, in the manner of a British Parliament: No! No more of this! That time, the idea was for Germany to conquer Europe (and much else besides) with armies. Now the plan is and has long been for Germany to buy Europe, and give it to … Europe. But the price is again proving ruinous and the object being purchased is a crock.
This time, the means are surely still in place, as they were not in 1939, for Germany to say: No! But, did they? And if not, will they? Over to you, Paul Marks.
LATER: Detlev Schlichter agrees with Paul, using the word Götterdämmerung. Germany, he says, is finished.

SamizData

Where goes Germany, so goes Europe. If Germany wanted to finally take over all of Europe all they would have to do is threaten to stop paying every one else's bills.

Was I the only one who saw this coming. I remember when the creation of the EU was being discussed. People said out loud that Germany had finally figured out how to take over Europe, this time without firing a shot.

Germany has but to fire the final salvo of fiscal responsibility over the bow of Grease and a few others to get them to fall in line with what Germany wants. Europe will not dissolve. The Euro will not dissolve. Freedoms will dissolve. Mark my words. In the next 20 years you will see the beginnings of the world government that does this sort of thing to countries all over the world.

Vlogtober day 1

Field	Data
Title	Vlogtober day 1
Description	I'm vlogging every day in October. Love it or lump it.
Tags	vlog vlogging vlogtober October mowing bills internet trouble safety glasses ear plugs weed whacker weed eater Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

Conook cook

I think this guy is speaking English.

Just kidding about the cook part. He seems like a good enough guy. Might even subscribe.