New light

Field	Data
Title	New work light
Description	I bought a second of the work lights. This one is trying out the new Toshiba H30 video camera. Not too shabby. Light or camera. It is a bit of a repeat, but this time I have much better lighting.
Tags	unbox "work light" video lighting "night shot" "Toshiba H30" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Siren still works

This is why they put snorkel kits on fire trucks.

Me and Merlin

Field	Data
Title	Me and Merlin
Description	Merlin loves this stuff. Music: Gymnopedie No 1 - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tags	cute "classical music" cat scratch ears shake "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

One side light weight

Dang slower traffic.

Yard

Field	Data
Title	Cleaning up the yard
Description	Cleaning up the yard among other things.
Tags	yard Christmas decorations cleanup "clean up" "time lapse" "toy assembly" family "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Drive

I ended up blowing away the Windows drive on the laptop. It got to the point it would not let me shrink the NTFS partition properly. It is really annoying that you have to jump through so many hoops just to get partitions to form the way you want. I've had to deal with crazy setups at work. I've had computers with 8 Linux OS installs on one machine. All set up to boot independently. Only one swap partition that worked for all of them. I have made drives work in just the way I wanted this one to work. It seems I'm more determined at work to finish the job. I just didn't care that much about this one.

Right now, I'm copying information from one partition to the other using, what else, the 'dd' command. It is so frigging easy. If only it worked every time. I tried to move the partition. It would not go because it was inside an extended partition. So, I created a primary partition and am now copying the data. Sounds easy. All kinds of things could go wrong. The alignment might be off. The system may not recognize the correct boot device. The data might be corrupt. The drive might blow up from all the copying. I need to stop dwelling on the negative. I'm upsetting myself.

The screen saver has kicked in. Every few seconds I look over to find if the drive light is still lit. It is going from and to the same drive so that slows things down. The worst thing about the dd method is the lack of a progress method. I can look at the amount of data that has gone by and get an idea, but in so many cases, it is just miles off.

After all was said and done, I ended up just wiping the drive and starting from scratch.

Putting Ubuntu on the laptop

I want to put Ubuntu on the laptop. I intend to put it along side Windows. We will see how that goes. There is another partition on the drive that I don't understand. I believe it was made by a piece of software. It is going by by shortly. The restore partition is nearly empty. Not sure it works at all. This system has been restored once after a virus infection.

First things first. Download the OS. Well, I screwed up and downloaded the wrong OS. I downloaded Ubuntu Server. That is fine, but not what I'm after here. Back to the download page.

Unetbootin is what I use for putting the ISO file on to a thumb drive. I must then figure out the key to hit in order to boot from that key. I gave up using CD and DVD disks because of the sort of mistake I just made. There are so many choices out there that it just costs too much money.

Boot off the USB key. Make sure video, wifi, touch pad, drives, USB, and other bits show up in the "try Ubuntu" bit of the ISO install. Click install. Let Ubuntu shrink the NTFS partition as much as it will. Worry about getting it right later. The resizing partition step is scary because things are getting moved around. This is where you can break the existing OS the easiest.

Then comes the inevitable hang up during install. I then start over and the system appears to run smoothly for a while. The funny thing is that the lockup was not a bad one. I was able to kick off a terminal and execute top to verify that indeed, nothing was happening on the system. This is frustrating, but common.

On a side note. The count down timer on the download and install is fluctuating from 22 minutes to 1 hour 45 minutes. So, it isn't just Windows and iTunes that is useless in this area. It is just as useless on Linux.

Waiting ... Starting to look like it is going to take longer than the hour and forty five minutes. Glad I have nothing else on my plate. ... Now it says 1586 minutes remaining. Not looking good.

It was stuck on language packs. I clicked skip and things started moving. That is just not right. Was it trying to download all language packs? Was it trying to download English only, but having a hard time? I remember setting it to English when it asked.

First reboot. Always wonder if the dang thing is going to come up after. ... Came up fine, but the mouse pad is not working. Figures something would break. It worked fine when booting off the USB drive. ... OK worked after a reboot. Not sure what happened there.

Next. Run through one of the 10 things to do when after installing Ubuntu sites. There are any number of these sites. I recomend reading though several of them and pick and choose the things you want. I do recomend Gnome over Unity at the moment. Unity just has too many bugs right now. Maybe this will change, but not unless the developers start using the interface.

Run first (over sized) set of updates and reboot. Will it reboot and run? Will something break? ... Few!

Hmmm. It won't let reinstall better video drivers. That is kind of a drag.

Install Kdenlive from PPA (development) repository. Takes a long enough time to be worrying. Tons of scary crap going by on the screen. Check. ... How many frigging libraries does it take for a video editor? ... Half an hour later, it is still doing ... something. A bunch more scary stuff is going haywire.

Kdenlive keeps telling me that it cannot find the MLT modules. It is installed in the normal place. They told me the one I installed is the correct one for the version of the OS I have. Of course, something must not work just because it is me doing it. More tomorrow. Well, I need to pay bills and clean the yard tomorrow. We need to take down the tree as well. Humph. Chores. Bah!

More to come.

UPDATE

Finally got the Kdenlive repo working properly. Something about a key not matching. It only took me all day to get this laptop up and running the way I wanted it.

Random numbers

Christmas number two

Field	Data
Title	Christmas number two 2011
Description	This is Nat's side of the fmaily's christmas 2011.
Tags	Christmas 2011 fireworks presents family fun Magnolia Texas "fire pit" country "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Christmas number one

Field	Data
Title	Christmas number one 2011
Description	This is my side of the family's Christmas 2011.
Tags	Christmas 2011 family parents family fun kids presents wrapping paper "Santa hats" "Missouri City" "Ft Bend County" Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

How an Engine works

It is nice to have one taken apart in front of you and someone who knows simply explain it.

Last day of work for the year

Field	Data
Title	Last day of work for the year
Description	A couple things lying around the office.
Tags	Christmas "last day of the year" work labor wifi "access point" "poor design" electronics "dead hard drives" "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Imaging drives using DD under Linux

I wrote this for work. It is highly transferable information. If I got anything wrong, scream at me. Comment on this post or email me. The address is somewhere on the page, I think.

I used Ubuntu 11.10 for the commands in this document.

Writing zeros to the drive before imaging

Remember, this is done on the drive you are about to make the image of. It will make the final file size much smaller.

Find out free size of disk.

>$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb1             147G  114G   26G  82% /mnt/disk2

Write the zeros

>$ cd /mnt/disk2
>$ dd if=/dev/zero of=big.txt bs=1G count=26

If you get an error saying something like “memory exhausted” Drop the number bs (byte size) and multiply the count accordingly. The result will be the same. Don't worry about running past the end of the partition. We are just trying to get loads of zeros out there.

>$ dd if=/dev/zero of=big.txt bs=256M count=104

Delete the file immediately after the above command finishes. The zeros are left behind on the drive.

>$ rm big.txt

Write partition to file

From the drive where you want to store the image, run the following command.

>$ dd if=/dev/sdb1 | bzip2 > file.bz2

Write file to disk/partition

When using a partition, first create a partition and format it the same as the original image. This command will only expand data to the “data” portion of the partition and not overwrite any partition metadata on the drive.

>$ bzip2 -dc file.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sdb1

When writing a whole drive, write directly to the top pointer /dev/sdb, for example. This will over write partition information. It should also allow boot information to transfer properly.

>$ bzip2 -dc file.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sdb

Image file integrity check

After making the image file, always do an integrity check before you let the machine go or do anything that will alter the data.

>$ bzip2 -t file.bz2

Errors will be listed.

Recovering broken image files

All this does is break the massive file in to billions of smaller files. Run an integrity check on all the files. Rename the ones that are bad so they do not make it in to the list. You can then use those files to write back to your partition using wild cards. The partition will be damaged and must have utilities run on it to fix those errors. Some data may be recovered and some may not.

The number of files will depend on the size of the original file. I had a 9.5G file break in to 26,933 files. Their total size was just a bit larger than the 9.5G original.

>$ bzip2recover file.bz2

Running integrity check on several files after they have been “recovered” above.

>$ bzip2 -t rec*file.bz2

Notes

File names

I strongly suggest using descriptive file names. Not only describing what is being imaged, but the type of file system and the whether it is a full drive or a partition that is being imaged.

For example.

<computer id>_<desktop|laptop>_<internal|external>_<part|disk>_<ntfs|ext3>.bz2

Time

All of these steps take a long time.

Machine

This is the sort of thing you need to do with a machine that is not used for anything else. I recommend using a thumb drive or CD boot system because you might incidentally over write your OS drive.

The right drive

Do absolutely everything you can to make sure you have the correct source and destination drives. In Ubuntu, I use a thing they call disk_utility on the menu to get a GUI description of the drives and what /dev/sd* they are trying to come up as. Most of the time you can use drive size and the partitions on the drive to double check.

The instant you hit enter on DD, the damage is done. The first part of a drive that is over written is the partition information. The first part of a partition is usually folder information.

Watching things happen

You can use the watch command to keep track of things like disk free space and file size. Open new terminals for these commands. The watch command updates ever 2 seconds by default.

>$ watch “ls -lah ”

and

>$ watch “df -h”

and

>$ top

Outstanding issues

This trick seems to work regardless of block size of the drive. I haven't done enough testing yet to know for sure.

Haven't yet tried to put an NTFS image on to an ext3 partition. That should be interesting.

The USB cables seem to cause errors, not to mention how slow they are. Stick to real SATA connections.

BZip2 is single threaded because of the way it works on variable sized blocks. GZ is faster, but does make larger files.

Notes:

NPR ran a story about a guy in China who wrote a book about beating you kids in to submission. He sounded like so many tyrant fathers I've known over the years. He is doing the talk show circuit in China. The only thing that frightens me is some people will listen to him. NPR went through some interviews with people talking about how out of control their kids are. It sounds a lot like the U. S. and other western countries to me. Maybe we do have something in common.

I wonder if there is a business opportunity to create a service where you have one number to call and report a wallet stolen or lost. You could do the same for phones and laptops and such. You could not only have someone know everything you have to call about to report stolen property and information, but they could make the calls on your behalf. They could also help you one the road to getting back up and running. They could also write letters to the credit people to keep a lookout for stolen identify type hits. I would charge $20 a year or something, or $200 after the fact.

We did spend a few minutes today trying to track down the instructions for the funky automatic light switches in our offices. I don't think we learned much. These switches are befuddling. The one in my office broke and was replaced with a regular hand switch to the envy of many others. The fancy switches simply have about five ways of adjustment. Time on, motion sensitively, light sensitively, timeout for turning off without motion, blinders. It is all a balancing act beyond even the most inquisitive and annoyed engineer. It was interesting watching the engineer play with the light and try to diagnose the different seatings while manipulating them to his liking.

Q?

What is quantum?

Answer 1

Don't worry about it. It isn't important. If you have made it this far in life without quantum, then just skip it and the migraine.

Answer 2

Quantum is a collection of rules made up by people who are, let's be honest, guessing why thing are happening that they can't explain in any other way. Scientists always want things to boil down and become more simple. They want finite lines and roles. When you divide and define, things are supposed to start making sense dammit. Some very smart people refuse to admin that maybe things get more complex as you get smaller, as you dissect. There are more choices instead of less for things or more interactions not less. Maybe those things you think are small are still just as complex and varied as all the big things.

Answer 3

The stuff the universe is made of. The material that can become anything on the smallest scale possible. These are buckets full of generic particles and forces that make up everything else.

Answer 4

The free memory in the simulation we all live in. These particles are the bits of random access memory that still have some traces of what piece of the universe was remembered at some point. Black holes are probably just memory leaks in the galaxy or sun subroutines.

Answer 5

No two things can occupy the same spot at the same time. Quantum is simply the act of very small things trying to keep out of each other's way. This is why they appear to travel faster than the speed of light. This is why they appear to change attributes or design without explanation.

Answer 6

The drone of creation. The soup of matter and happenings and changes.

Answer 7

Proof that God will always throw more at us. We are not in danger of figuring everything out and thus stagnating.

Notes:

There is some bar that sets the price of beer like a commodity. The more of a particular kind of beer sells, the cheaper it gets. That is kind of backward. Still, people buy in, so to speak. There are margins to prevent 300 people from walking in and attempting to drive the price to zero. The only thing I walked away from was that people were paying $6.50 for a glass of logger.

If I had a goat that ate nightmares and shit rainbows, some people would find a reason to bitch. Some people will never be satisfied. These people seem to gravitate to the whole environmental movement.

Americans are getting fatter. Some port authorities are changing the rules for passenger capacity. They have to calculate the number using 180 lb instead of 160 now. Yikes.

Been a few days since I put up any online content. I've been ridiculously busy at work. Our company seems to stir the pot hard this week because most of the employees get next week off. I suppose this is a normal response for so much time where the company is basically shut down. However, Many people need me in order to get things done on our network or on their computers. It was not until today that I got a breather. I was able to catch up on some things today.

I ordered the frigging video camera. It will only fix one major problem I have with my current camera. It will take longer than 10 minute videos. It has a normal lens. That is, it does not have a wide angle lens. I intend to use it for long videoing something stationary for a couple hours and using the 30 seconds of video that is worth keeping. This is something that I've missed being able to do. It would be great if I were making money off this, but it is still in the hobby stage.

Once upon a time, I set up a web server to host my own video files. This was just as YouTube was kicking off. If I had known how much easier it would be after YouTube came about, I would have just waited. I have yet to upload those videos to my YouTube Channel. I need to do this.

Sleep is for the dead.

A couple months ago I sent out an email asking if anyone had extra unused DVI cables lying around. A couple weeks before that I sent an email around asking if anyone had seen a DVI splitter, converts a single in to a coble headed connection. Again, no response save a single cable that someone gave up. Today, I found a box of dusty DVI cables and splitters in one of the labs. I moved it to my office. I'm the one who divvies these things out. Now I have a box full. This also makes a couple of otherwise useless video cards work. Today, it paid to be nosey.

"Loads of people have PhDs. They are as dome as I am." -Mar Kermode. Film critic with a PhD.

Bliss is for the weak.

Notes:

What do I wish? What is worth wishing? If I admit something selfish, does that make my wish moot? If I wish for something selfless, is it for selfish reasons? Is there a way to win this wishing thing?

The days will get longer and the nights shorter from today on. This is the solstice. Summer is right around the corner. Tomorrow is rain. Hope this is a good omen for the year. That is a good omen when you have come off a couple years as dry as we have had.

The bar I'm looking for smells like a wharf. It has only one light bulb hanging from bare wires. The wood is as rotten as the barman's stare. There is only one drink and they call it poison for a good reason. This is my place. These are my people, even if they would stab me for the price of a single shot. Good times.

The laptops I've been looking at are very cheap. The cameras I've been looking at are very cheap. Still, I can't really afford them. We need to pay off all the bills before worrying about these things.

Shit happens

Goods

• We have good insurance at my work.
• The roof doesn't leak (yet).
• I've been vlogging for a while and seem to like it.
• Global warming has still proven to be bullshit.
• Had a couple free lunches last week. Christmas and all.
• Man's domination of the dog and horse continues unabated.

Bads

• Illness
• Nat is still recovering from surgery.
• I'm sick.
• My father needs a new kidney. God knows what else.
• My right big toe knuckle appears to be too large. What the hell do you do about that?
• I think I have a cavity and no frigging dentist. We don't need any new medical bills.
• Our water keeps getting dirty because we are at the end of the water line. That is just plane disgusting, but a fact.
• The bills are piling up faster than I can pay them. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but it keeps getting farther away.
• People keep dumping work on me so they can take off early for Christmas vacation.

I'm sure I'll think of something else.

Game farming

All your score are belong to us.

The first half of this video shows a little bit of how game farming works. This is a blip, but there are many people doing this. I've heard that there are entire warehouses full of people doing similar things.

Vacuum Belt

Music: Faster Does It by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Field	Data
Title	Vacuum Belt
Description	An hour and a half to change a vacuum belt. It should have taken maybe ten minutes if we knew what were doing.
Tags	"time lapse" "vacuum sweeper" vacuum belt change replace adults "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Oil lamp

I wonder how well used oil would work.

Lunch conversation

The big story today is that someone accidentally copied someone high up on an email complaining about he company. I'm sure this kind of thing happens all the time at every company. It is just interesting to hear about it. I await the memo.

You can tell that people use email for work because they screw up their emails and complain when it is not around. If they didn't get use out of it, you would not hear about the problems people have with it as much. I should stop complaining about hooking up printers because that means people are using them.

People only spoke briefly about the latest Star Wars MMOLG. You can play a droid. The three minutes I spent playing World of Warcraft came up briefly.

It was hot outside today. The weather is nuts. On the way back to the office, the sun came out and everyone was sweating. Adam asked about the Greenland Ice Pack and if anyone had hard about it breaking up. He claimed that it is supposed to bring on the next ice age when it melts and dumps a bazillion tons of frigged water in to the Atlantic. I mentioned that today, it has my vote to break.

We walked past a car that had its alarm going off. It was one of those alarms where the horn just keeps beeping randomly. My father had one on his vehicle a couple years ago. The comments were made that at least it makes people turn their heads. Another person commented that we didn't stop. A third person mentioned that the two young ladies beside it didn't fit the profile of car thieves.

Notes:

I am not a tree hugger. I wish our government would outlaw cutting down huge trees for Christmas displays. It is a waist. Try growing a big tree in one of those squares. Same for the Whitehorse. Stop it. You are contributing to killing the planet.

Then came the beginning.

I am so rooted in reality that you exist to me.

What is going on with gluten? "People try it and feel better." What is the problem with the gluten? "I don't know. Some people have an allergic reaction ..." It sounds like bullshit to me. it sound like a placebo effect to me.

The Voyager probes are still working thirty something years on. I can't find a light bulb that last more than a year.

Someone has really made entanglement work on a macro scale. This is amazing. This is the gateway for computers using thousands of processors all at once. It is the gateway to world wide mass direct point to point communications. It might lead to instant communications regardless of distance. I know this last one is not that big a deal on Earth, but will come in handy for space travel.

There is a movement to make photos have a rating system that tells how much retouching has been performed. I want one that is applied to politicians and how truthful they are while bullshitting lying speaking.

Today I tried to install Windows Vista Home Premium on a couple old laptops. They had the Dell license for that OS. The key does not work. You need the Dell copy of Vista to make it work. Goodness only knows what Dell would charge for two old laptops (really only one because the first one would surely work on the second) this far out of warranty.

There are going to be thousands of CIA and other special ops and even FBI staying in Iraq after the first of the year. No one is fooled. Least of all the Iraqis.

The clouds were so low this morning that you cold hear yourself cussing at them echo off them. The air was thick. It looks like rain. It smells like rain. The ground is wet and the grass is clingy.

CSI Pope has to come on to the scene to prove a miracle has happened before someone can become a saint.

Some reporter drove through Syria. The rebels gave the woman a tour. It never fails to crack me up. When the press agrees with a group they are rebels. When they disagree, they are terrorists. The rebels want a no fly zone. I also love how every side claims they are not free until they are fully in charge of everything. I didn't know that is what the word free meant.

Linux can look complex

Field	Data
Title	Linux can look complex
Description	Sometime things are not ad complex as they seem.
Tags	image linux Ubuntu dd "linux commands" complexity Dell laptop "Canon Elph 300" unbox server Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Notes:

When I write a blog entry or shoot a vlog video, it reminds me of how it must feel for a tree to grow a new root. I feel just that little bit more grounded. It is a feeling and there for not even close to mattering in reality. Feelings count for motivation.

Hooked up three printers today. One of them twice. I then shared most of them. Then I attached a couple users' machines to those shared printers. This is worth mentioning because we have printers in most of our offices that are hardly ever used. I try to put them in communal areas so anyone can connect to them over the network, but I am commonly overridden by the powers that be. Ho-hum. Another day.

I watched a man try to fix a motorized wood splitter. It turned out the crank case was cracked and he had to replace the engine. After that, the wood splitter worked like a champ.

Nat was very kind. She cooked a TV dinner for me. It stunk so bad from some kind of pepper in the sauce I had to throw it out in the garage. She hosed the place down in Febreez and we are back to normal.

I've had this running through my head half the day.

Europe

Man, they are pissing themselves in Europe. Shit is looking like it will fall apart. Basically, Germany has let it slip that they are not going to pay off everyone's credit card. Everyone else is saying "That's why we joined in the first place." The bills have come due. The collectors are knocking at the door.

England, for a while wanted to join the Euro. The division was something like 5/10 yes 4/10 no and the rest undecided. now the numbers have apparently flipped. The news is full of what is on TV and sports on the BBC. That along with weather and traffic. Not much about Iran getting the bomb next year or the Russians tearing their government in little pieces.

Europe is upset that England is really thinking of telling Europe to go fuck itself ... again. Some diplomat or whatever came on the BBC and basically shouted at the commentator that England should just shut up and fall in line with the rest of Europe. More than a few Brits are not happy about the attitude of Europe.

I keep hearing therms like:

• "epoch moment"
• "world economy"
• "not the end of the world"
• "no one is starving yet"
• "new EU treaty"
• "worse thing in a generation"
• Briton has a better negotiation stance now specifically because she is not part of the Euro.
• Some folks throw their hands up and say the only solution is to give the government totalitarian powers to "fix" things.
• Others throw up their hands and say giving government totalitarian powers was a mistake.
• Others throw up their hands and say "Now is the time for action!" They then sit on their hands and wait for the Germans to sign the check.

There are 27 countries in the European union. Many use the same currency. Briton wanted a change to the treaty. Europe said no. Now Europe wants to change the treaty. Briton says no. Europe is going ahead anyway. This may be illegal. Offal convenient just ignoring laws that don't fit your agenda. This sort of thing is happening a lot these days. Egypt ignores the rights of their citizens not to be killed while protesting. The U. S. is working on suspending or abolishing Habeas Corpus in the near future. They say it is just for terrorist types, but the powers that be will really like the idea of just getting rid of trouble makers.

I listened to some debate on the BBC between people in Briton who want to fully surrender, I mean join Europe and people who Want to fake an independent nation joining Europe in a financial way only. They do not want to let it slip that both sides want the same thing. Europe will make and enforce the rules. Europe will collect and spend the taxes. The U. S. will supply the armed forces for foreign conflict and China will supply everything else. The debate was heated. Those in the hall were told repeatedly to shut up.

The European Union is fraying at the seems.

Notes:

Coughing my head off. Have I mentioned that I'm sick of being sick? While sitting in my office this afternoon, I took a moment to listen to every single office around me cough. It seems like the whole office has come down with the same ailment.

Just can't leave it to one comment on thenews post.

Elle's Christmas fort

Field	Data
Title	Elle's Christmas Fort
Description	Ever just wanted to get away from it all?
Tags	kid fort "Christmas fort" "hiding place" family fun "Christmas tree" "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Making it look easy

Not too shabby. The mud looks pretty well packed. I've been watching a couple 4x4 type videos this morning. People seem to put a lot of stock in bald tires. I don't know if they just don't want to put good tires on an off road vehicle or if someone out there is telling people the slicks have some advantage. Half the problems in the off road community could be solved with some nobbies on an otherwise decent off roader.

Saturday

Field	Data
Title	Saturday
Description	Work, family, shopping. Another day in paradise.
Tags	vlog "Sam's Club" "working on the weekend" "cat litter" family work shopping paradise "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Lunch conversation

I went to lunch with one coworker. We seem to get along. Hadn't sat down with him and wrapped in a while. It was good.

• Family
• Commitments related to holidays.
• Conflicts related to holidays.
• Illnesses
• Football and baseball in a moder era of the DVR an internet.
• McRib and French fries.
• Tethering our phones and battery life.
• Old cars.
• Women!!

Notes:

found out at around 06:00 this morning via text message that I have to work tomorrow, Saturday. It is for a good reason. My buddy, the one I'm covering for, is adopting he and his wife's second child. This is so frigging cool. Not that I have to come in. That kind of sucks. Not like I had plans. It is coming in on a weekend. I have no idea what to do with the consultant coming in. I plan on rolling with the punches. It has to do with mail setup. It is amazing how difficult it is to keep email going.

Finally setup tethering on my phone. It turns out I didn't even need to root my phone. I'm so mad at myself for not checking Instructions found here for our Optimus V phones from Virgin Mobile.

It must be a chore to have a very special episode of a podcast/radio show. Thing is, I hate them for the most part. They typically have a live audience for the first time. I dislike when radio shows and podcasts take on the public. This is true for all shows so far except for Dr. Karl. Their callers rock. No idea why except it is purely educational. Both sides want to learn from each other when the calls happen instead of yell at each other which is what most other shows are after.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The Republican party needs to split right down the middle. The only reason it hasn't happened is because of numbers. I think you would be surprised how many democrats would run to the newly created centrist party.

Family evening

Field	Data
Title	Family after work
Description	What goes down on a Thursday evening in the zhsy compound.
Tags	vlog "family fun" "stream of consciousness" Thursday evening garage "after work" home "chick fil a" "drive through" "drive thru" snickers Houston Texas "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Notes:

Every day, I have to add a couple new technical terms like 'Unquarantine" to my spell checker. I've been using this spell checker for weeks if not months. You wold think it wouldn't be a daily occurrence.

A friend of ours is going through a divorce. Yet another one. I hate this. I've had too many friends go through the trouble and expense of these things. Divorce should be easy. Marriage should be hard. It should take two years and thirty five thousand dollars to get married.

Lunch conversation

Today was one of those days I wish I could have shot a video. One of the guys had a children's play thing to go to. He had to deal with some asshole who had $15000 worth of camera equipment which he believed gave him the privilege of standing in front of everyone and videoing his kid, all others be dammed. My friend was not happy about it. He made his displeasure known with gusto and flamboyance. It would have made a good video.

We also talked about work a little bit. Not too much. It was refreshing. Mostly people complained about the recent changes to our email. They also commented on the state of the industry. I need to learn how to run a trout line.

Some of the guys spoke of a new video game based on Battlestar Galactica. The way they talked about it, the whole game was spot the robot. There was some rule that said if you just shove everyone out an airlock you can spot the Silon based on the gaming rules. There is just not a sufficient negative to this activity. There is apparently a supplemental set of rules that answerers this issue.

The subject of kidney stones came up as well. I was told I should keep a strainer and a jar next to the toilet. Perhaps not.

One of these days when we go to Fing Ling, I want to video us all taking our order. It is like clockwork.

Out sick, Kidney stone

Field	Data
Title	Kidney stone anecdote
Description	My anecdote about today's kidney stone.
Tags	sick illness "kidney stone" medical story anecdote pain agony vlog "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Work craziness

Email upgrade

I've just about had it with email issues. Wifi is right behind email in the list if issues that I'm sick of. Why is email an WiFi so frigging difficult? You would thing that they would have the kinks worked out of a 40 year old protocol. Alas, this is not the case.

Much of modern social media started as email. Blogs started as a list of people to email when you had something worth complaining about in your head. People wanted on the list. People wanted off. Finally blogs came about. Same with Facebook and Twitter.

These past couple days have been nuts. Not just for me either. Any time you mess with people's email, you get both barrels. It cracks me up how much modern work runs on email.

As I think about it, nearly every process of our company has an email component. If not something that happens every time the process is executed, then a step that has to happen if things go wrong.

We upgraded. Now, we pay the price. Why did we upgrade? Because we didn't want to tell people we had a ten year old email setup. Hey, it kind of worked.

Email Upgrade Timing

Of course this could not have happened at a worse time for most of the people involved. They refuse to admit that their crisis would have happened no matter when we pulled the trigger on this upgrade.

Laptop charger

One of our people has a laptop with either the wrong charger or a bad charging mechanism in the laptop. I've tried most of the charger we have. Nearly all of them list the correct voltage. many even have the same connector. They all fail.

Otherwise

Otherwise, things are not so bad. Most stuff that happens is normal every day IT stuff. I'm glad when I know how to fix something and I'm glad to learn how to fix things I don't.

Notes:

"Whiskey fueled" "Jinn soaked" Get it right!

I've seen a cockroach fly. I've heard a cockroach hiss. Mainly I make them crunch when I can.

Remember "John and Kate Plus Eight?" ... Me either.

Remember the U. S. credit rating falling recently? Ya, I do too. Well, it is cheaper for the U. S. to barrow now than then. Apparently, the rest of the world fell further than we did.

I was watching a vlog and someone said they paid $9 for a set of clippers from Penny's. Is Penny's still in business? Is it in business in Canada?

Inside the shreader

Field	Data
Title	Inside a shredder
Description	Just a quick video of the inside of a house hold shredder. Got to use my flashlight flood adapter.
Tags	POV inside shredder "paper shredder" shreader shreder "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Tipsy rant

Field	Data
Title	File name extensions tipsy rant
Description	Microsoft wants to rule the univers one file name at a time.
Tags	"file extensions" file names Microsoft tyrant "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive.
Link	Link

Antigravity

I hope some of this is not completely bullshit.l

One good one bad

Field	Data
Title	One good, One bad
Description	Response video to Meekakitty. Name one thing you are good at and one thing you are bad at.
Tags	social interaction ask question meekakitty response "good at" "bad at" social "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Big Truck Videos

Just drag whatever the hell that thing is up the hill why don't you?

Over the hills and though the water. Tankers of oil have to get through.

Up. Up. Up! ... and over.

Vlog for today

Field	Data
Title	Vlog 2011-12-01 Clips galore
Description	Loving life and kicking ass. This is what happened to me today. http://justkelly.blogspot.com http://zhsy00001.homelinux.org
Tags	"ice cream" vlog bus "bus stop" complain "Linux complete command" book work job commute "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Westheimer Kdenlive.
Link	Link

Silly podcast

I tried to listen to a podcast today while working. It wasn't working for me. It was a story about a woman who gives birth to a universe. I think. It was about the author and a miscarriage she had when she was nineteen. Miscarriages fuck women up. I can understand only so much, not having the equipment. I blame modern society assigning a stigma to miscarriages. I'm quite positive that there have been times in human existence where people didn't blame the mother for the miscarriage. I'm sad that we are in a bad place on the subject.

High Contrast

Hold the left-ctrl and left-shift and hit the print screen prtscr button in windows. You will be promoted to set high contrast video. Try it for a couple minutes. Hit the same combination to switch back. There are times I use this to set other people's machines because I cannot read their screens with some settings. It trips people out. As long as you don't switch back and forth too quickly, all the settings come back.

Mac must have something similar. I haven't looked. Linux, that is Gnome, requires you to set a keystroke combination to accomplish this. I don't think there is one by default. I've looked.

When I use Linux though, I don't really need to use high contrast video modes. Most of the color schemes seem to be readable for the most part. Sometimes I change the background and mouse if I can (Ubuntu!). I usually set the zoom buttons to 'win-i' and 'win-o' for in and out.

All the high contrast settings, regardless of OS break things. Some programs just don't test their software in high contrast mode. The text disappears from some buttons. This is because they hard code the text color or they base it on the line color of the current scheme. This causes the text to appear the same color as the background in some cases. Simple lack of testing. How many times have I said that about problems I've had with software?