Notes:

There is a move to treat soldiers closer to the front for some injuries. This gets them back to the line faster. This action seems to please soldiers on the ground and their leaders. Everyone seems to just want to get back to the job and their buddies. Makes sense.

You can have your genes mapped in about 24 hours. It costs a grand. You have to be prepared to find out that you have some dreadful disease or that there is something wrong with you. The fifteen minuet sequence is on the way. Be prepared to have it required for insurance. Very soon, it may be needed just to go to a doctor.

We are adjusting our SPAM filters at work. We swing from "I lost emails." to "Can we do something with all this junk?" It takes a surprising amount of effort to make email usable. There are careers for people to figure this stuff out and stay a step ahead of the bad guys.

Republicans don't have a chance unless they run another minority against Obama. There are none that I'm aware of in the pipe.

I'm going to have to look in to full drive encryption for my home machines. I hear that law enforcement has trouble with drug traffickers who have learned this trick.

Nascar had two things going for it this year. There was a cool crash. The delay put the race in to prim time. With all the frigging people who follow Nascar, not every race of a season has a sponsor. I cannot believe that. I hate Nascar. "Drive fast. Turn left." I suppose that appeals to someone.

I've used Dell's web page for a long time. They have a pretty comprehensive method of delivering drivers. One problem we have with the tower machines is we put an OS on them that is not supported. You used to be able to install many of the drives on other platforms. They all have a check for proper OS now. Today, I got to look at the Samsung web page. They have a very similar system. It looks like they still support some old OS drivers even on their new machines. That is nuts. I did not expect that. Still no hint of Linux. You can't have it all I suppose.

Google

I use entirely too many Google mechanisms.

Gmail

Someone at Google said that if they had Gmail to do over again, they would simply have called it Google Mail. That is what it has devolve din to an the rights all over the world were a pain in the ass.

I remember being invited to Gmail all those years ago. I used the same name that I always used. I didn't even check if any form of my real name was available. I was old hat at not caring about the details of names online by the time Gmail hit the scene. I was also very sick of every other mail service and mail software for that matter. To this day, I use Gmail and refuse to use a software package at all for reading mail.

If the web mail system at work didn't suck, I would prefer to use it over Outlook or Thunderbird.

Google Reader

I read Blogs, news stories and even podcasts with this software. This is the Google program that I spend the most time in I bet. Well, this or YouTube.

To replace this is an easy task. There are tons of alternatives. None of them are as cool as Google mail. Also, I haven't had to change my email address in years. This would a nightmare. I have no idea who still has this email address on an account that I might want to resurrect at some point.

Google Calendar

I refuse to use other calendars. We have Exchange at work. It is not compatible with Google Calendar for the most part so I don't use it. I would be lost without some kind of online calendar. I would be late and miss things. I really should add people's birthdays to my calendar.

At work, I attempted to use Thunderbird to mount Google Calender so I could click on emails that were invitations to meetings and such. This would have been awesome because at the moment, I have to recreate and update everything in my work calendar manually. This introduces errors of course.

There are only a couple calendar services online. Not sure if any are better because Google Calendar is the only online calendar I've ever used for longer than trying it out. You seem to have to use the same calendar as the email you have chosen. If you don't, you are in a world of hurt when it comes to integration.

Google Docs

I use Google Docs for all kinds of things. I keep track of what books I've read. I keep track of what bills I've paid. I jot notes about web pages. I used to construct my blog entries in Google Docs, but they removed the HTML side of the editor so I can no longer do this.

I've even written poetry. I have hundreds of documents. Most of them are old blog entries that I should probably just delete. They are after all on the blog.

Is there a live free alternative to Google Docs? Microsoft has a charge service.

Google Drive

This is supposed to come online soon. It is a place online to store files and other information you want to have access everywhere. I use Google Docs for Google Drive at the moment. The only files I keep on line are password databases. Just recently, a company got in a bunch of trouble for doing this very thing. If Google pursues it, they will have to enforce some kind of DRM or the RIAA will come along and shut them down. That is all I need.

Picassa (Google pictures)

I use this to store some pictures that I use all over the place online. This used to be a problem before every single service online provided this service. They are all splintered and they all, including Picassa, prevent you from properly sharing your pictures without coming back to the main service. This is, of course, to force people to be exposed to their advertisements.

YouTube

I don't just watch YouTube, I participate. I have no backup of many of the finished videos. Some vloggers keep even the build information for their videos. That is fantastic if you have the resources. Drives are not free. They die sitting on the shelf. Same with DVDs, not to mention that DVDs are headed the way of the Dodo.

There may be other places to upload your videos, but none come with all the people scouring the service like YouTube. If it were not piled in with Google Search, YouTube would be the second biggest search engine on the web.

Blogger

I almost forgot to include Blogger. It to is under Google's umbrella. This very blog is part of that conglomerate. I am satisfied with the performance. There is a utility somewhere that lets you back up the contents of your blog to a file. I did this a while back. I need to do it again. Who knows, this information might actually be read by someone some day.

Much of the data on my blog consists of things like links and embedded other stuff. None of this will be saved. If I linked to something, the link may or may not be there the next time someone comes clicking. That is true regardless of backups.

Archaeologists will hate this part of history. They will sift though the galactic amount of useless tweets and such. They will pull at their tentacles and shake an orb at the heavens while cursing anything with a spine.

Most of the alternatives to Blogger require you to have a piece of software on the client end to get the most out of your formatting and features. This is ridiculous. They should all just take HTML and leave it to the user to format their page. Besides, none of them work on Linux. There are some HTML based alternatives. It isn't like anyone is reading this blog to be honest.

Google Maps

I use Google Maps, but I don't use it to the point that I depend on it. That is, I don't use it for business. I have written no software to take advantage of it. I could probably use another map service if Google Maps vanished. However, I don't know how good any of the others are to be honest because I have not used them much.

Google Search

I use Google Search daily. I only bail to Bing when I fail to find what I want and I fail to think of anything else to search for that might lead me to what I'm looking for. I view bailing on my first choice of search engine as a failure on my part to be a good web searcher.

Google Translate

Google Translate is awesome. Actually, it will be awesome when it can simply listen to a conversation between two individuals who do not share a language and can simply translate for them without missing every third beat. Better yet, it will be something worth praising when it can translate people screaming at one another accurately.

I don't think of Google Translate as a service that I depend on all the time. There are alternatives that seem to work. I do go straight to Google Translate when I need such a service. I have compared a couple of them a few years ago. The results were not surprising. They were all about the same level of quality while using different words to be so.

Try translating Chinese poetry sometime.

---

I need to backup all this information. Google gives users the opportunity to do this in many of their online programs. It does not work in YouTube or Picassa, but Gmail, Docs and Blogger have some sort of export. I've never tried to upload it to somewhere else, but at least it dumps the information so you can do something with it.

.What would I do if Google went belly up tomorrow? After waking up and weeping for an hour, I suppose I would find another service for most of this activity. That would not be easy. I'm not sure if there is another docs or reader web page that doesn't cost. I hear Microsoft has some kind of Live Docs or something. Not sure what that is all about.

Samsung

Field	Data
Title	Quick unboxing of 2 Samsung laptops (time lapse)
Description	Two Samsung laptop unboxing time lapse Music: Heavy Interlude by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tags	Samsung laptop unboxing timelapse "time lapse" work IT "Information Technology" computers setup "Toshiba H30" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Christmas Tree

Field	Data
Title	Down comes the Christmas tree
Description	I really wanted tree to come down before the end of December. It is not quite March, so I'm still calling this one a victory. I also complain about my Toshiba H30 camera.
Tags	Christmas tree decommission "take down" "time lapse" "Toshiba H30" "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive Houston Texas
Link	Link

Stuck as a mutherfucker

Looks like three trucks and two tractors later, the Chevi finally gets out of the waves.

New glasses and Google maps

Field	Data
Title	New glasses and google maps
Description	New glasses and Android Google maps got "bigger text". About time. http://www.zennioptical.com/
Tags	vlog Google Maps Android settings phone "bigger text" legally blind "new glasses" prescription bifocals Michael's "Canon Elph 300" Houston texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Economic terrorism

People keep talking about Greece. Some say they simply have to pile more debt on top of what they already owe. In other words, barrow more money to pay off the current investors (lenders). No one is lending thought. Greece simply says they need jobs and commerce to get any kind of solution under way. The rest of the world says that Europe is going to have to forgive Greece's debt and make sure they cannot run up the credit card any more. The Germans say they are not going to pay off the debt unless Greece relents to foreign control of the checkbook.

Greece says they will be happy to submit to another government's control just so long as the corruption and graft continue. I'm paraphrasing. People in Greece are getting a 30% reduction in pay on average and told that they just have to swallow it. This is on top of a high unemployment rate and things only getting worse. People want to flea the markets in Greece.

The only way to fix Greece is to make the entire country responsible. They as a people need to accept the idea of not letting corruption stand. They need to accept the idea of paying taxes. They need to understand that jobs go where the work is needed. If you do not generate a need, you will have no jobs.

We in the United States could learn this as well. We may have simply started in a better spot than Greece, but with all the borrowing that our country is doing, we will quickly fall in to a bad state. I'm not talking a generation down the road. I'm talking in a couple years. Something needs to give when it comes to the economic decisions being made in the U. S.. We cannot continue to swipe the card without worrying about the bills.

The term economic terrorism has been batted about. No matter what you call it, the U. S. cannot stomach a hit to the economy. If something happens to the value of U. S. curacy or our word is finally exposed to be as valuable as the politicians who made the promise, we are hosed. All it takes is the opinion of investors to turn south to sink the U. S. economy. right now, we don't really make enough things to grow our way out of a truly collapsed economy. We have already sold off the soft assets that might save us in the short term. There is little margin for failure. We are not even set up to ramp up the sale of things like oil or other natural resources to save ourselves. The only services the U. S. offers very well are illegal.

This country needs to slow the attention being paid to people walking through airports and start paying more attention to who we owe money to.

Lunch conversation

Good food and better company.

• Hard drives
• 512 byte vs 4k does and don'ts.
• Form fitting flash drives look like a hard drive.
• When flash is slower than a spinning drive.
• What does green mean anyway for drives? Matt knew.
• Apple iPhone vs Android
• Interface issues.
• Updating software issues.
• Maternity leave vs Paternity leave. I get them mixed up even though I remember the mama and papa rule.
• General moral at the office. Some good and some bad. About right for our company.
• Industrial strength wifi systems and the industrial cost.
• Kids and adventures.
• The Houston Music scene.
• Mardi Gras parties and how many sore heads there must be today (Ash Wednesday).

Notes:

I am listening to more and more fictional podcasts. It makes the day go a bit faster I think. Yet, it doesn't seem to distract from the work. I hope that is correct. I've come accustom to listening. I would hate to think that it is interfering in any way. I notice my mood is better on days when I have a chance to leave one of them playing in the background while I toil. That could be because I prefer the toil work to interacting with people. Sad.

Got new glasses. They work. Instead of getting bifocals, I got slender glasses that I can both look over and under when trying to read things like laptop screens.

Machine language

In the beginning

So, we have these computer things. They do a great job of crunching numbers. But, the software that runs on the systems can't keep up with the changes that we want. We end up sticking with the same version of an operating system for five years.

If only we had a way to write and maintain our own software on the server and ignoring the old dead operating system. We could rule the universe and make fixes to our software on the fly. We wouldn't even need to bather the users. Just make a single change on the server and everyone is up to date.

Then came the cloud and web aps

Now we have what we always asked for. We shall rule the universe ... Wait a minute.

The users don't care what operating system they are running. They don't care about cloud computing really. It turns out the users just don't want to work for a living. If we invent a robot that takes the place of users, they would be happy to let the silicone based life forms take over, so long as the users can play with a puzzle game with the remaining flesh bags before they are all fed to the machine.

The users complain that we make too many changes. The DB admins complain that they can't keep up with the changes. Training is getting expensive. You still need training? I thought this was supposed to be so intuitive. Aren't they teaching this crap in schools? Don't they have tablets in schools now? Why are kids so stupid? Why are adults so stupid? Why don't people know how to treat one another?

The operating system basically no longer matters, but it didn't help us make our software any better. Users are used to someone else paying for everything. All the users want is to complain about bad coffee to the entire universe and watch videos of kittens falling asleep. Working and efficiency is a side effect of making computers do all the work.

Why are we writing more software? The companies who own the distribution platform are the only one's making any money. The biggest secret of open source is that no one make any money at it. The only company that makes any money around open source are the lawyers.

The masses of millions of people climb over their own mothers, go without good nourishment, forgo entertainment, skip vacations just to afford devices constructed by people in a country where very few have the right to even ask to have children. That is so far away. The workers are slaves to building the devices that make the users slaves to a company that demands more and yet more information from the users.

The phones are not the commodity being sold. The thing being sold is the attention of the users. The companies make money on every step of existence. I there is no money, there is no choice. "You can buy A, or B or even, if you dare C from us and no one else." [Insert mad scientist cackle here]

Notes:

The image of the laptop finished at 03:44 the next morning.

I really liked the episode of Castle that I watched on Hulu yesterday. It was a two parter. The episode was about "launch pins" Those single things that happen that cause much larger consequences. The story boiled down to some rogue CIA operatives killing a Chinese diplomat's daughter and allowing it to be traced back to the CIA. This diplomat who had control over China buying U. S. debt. This would cause the fall of the U. S. as a world power. I like the story. I didn't like the execution or tactics much. They seemed Hollywood. However, I think the premise of China controlling the power of the U. S. through the constriction of debt is very true.

What am I good at?

Cultural competency - Taking the culture in to account when making decisions on how to fix someone's problems.

Institutionalized racism - Take the culture in to account when making decisions on how to control someone.

Someone on Starshipsofa ran through a bunch of conspiracy theories about the end of the world or at least massive changes in 2012. They did this late last year. She ran from some that were loosely based on science to just plane bullshit. Any way you cut it, people want something to happen this year.

I tried to use the screen of the label printer we have as a touch screen. I've caught myself touching the screen on several hand held devices. My phone has ruined me for buttons.

Imaging a laptop

Field	Data
Title	Imaging a laptop
Description	Just one of my tasks in the wild and crazy career of an IT professional. Little more to it than booting and hitting copy. I'm copying the data on the laptop's hard drive to another drive and compressing it for long term storage. This is not a how to video.
Tags	Linux Ubuntu dd "image drive" laptop disassemble Dell XPS work "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Someone's new iPhone

A gaggle of coworkers were in the hall talking about a new iPhone one of them just bought. The guy who got the iPhone was not an Apple fan. That is, he didn't care that it was from Apple. He wanted a capable phone and decided that was the most capable.

They spoke of incompatibilities between Google aps and Apple phones. They covered automatic picture uploads and issues that might pop up because of such foolishness. They went over hack attacks and wondered why someone hasn't attacked the phones. They pondered the security that the phones have to cover you if the phone gets stolen.

I didn't hear anything about who is watching everything they do as they move around. Who is listening in on their online conversations that are so not private. No one complained about tracked purchases or targeted advertising. No one threw up their hands or shook a fist at the heavens shouting "Hands off my friend list!!!"

They seemed worried about some things and oblivious of others. If you want a capable phone, you are locked in to a couple companies to get the services everyone is looking for. There is just very little competition. I chose Android and a cheap Android at that. I figure, if I'm going to by buy in to Big Brother, I'm going to spend as little money as possible. That's just me. Even if I had bags of money falling in to my lap, I would be cheap. I'm not the only one around here who is like this.

Notes:

Sometimes, I put my damp socks behind my computer at work so they will dry. I have to walk through wet grass and mud to get to work. I need to just keep an extra pare of socks in my bag. That thought makes me think of old men who keep socks in their bags.

One of the podcasts I listen to had a man on who is both a programmer and a lawyer. He said writing legal documents is very much like writing code. When I stop and think about it, you have a huge number of rules to follow and a huge number of ways to get the same goal accomplished. Law is the programming language of behavior.

Video idea - Google Maps finally got larger text.

Video idea - New intro. Look up the I'm a pepper song and substitute I'm a tuber.

How to drill a square hole

Always wondered how they did this. A similar mechanism works for hex holes.

Sunday afternoon

Field	Data
Title	Sunday afternoon
Description	Can't find my drill bits. Nat reconstructs a crock pot, and BUBBLES!!
Tags	Sunday afternoon kids family fun "drill bits" "work lights" "Crock pots" "three in one" kitchen cleaning popping bubbles garage rummage Houston Texas "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Blind spot 101

Field	Data
Title	Blind spot 101
Description	How to test for the blind spot in your eyes. Yes, you have one in each eye. Really, you do. I promise. Try the experiment. Blind spot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision)
Tags	"blind spot" experiment how to test paper pen medical layman eye retina garage anecdote "car wreck" psychology class "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Base

Tha's how it's sung.

Notes:

We got a label maker at work. We paid something like $15 for it. It is electric, comes with a cartridge. It has a ridiculous interface. The keyboard is ABCD which is more annoying that it sounds. I am a child when it comes to label makers. I want to label everything. We had to practically beg for the device.

Lunch conversation today consisted of John telling the stories of the three times he got punched in the face.

Some Greek guy came on and attempted to explain how corruption works in Greece. I was lost, but it appears that people are only paid a salary as an excuse to stand between someone and what they want so they can then get a bribe. He said that someone outside of Greece is simply going to have to come in to the country and take over. Many Germans say that if they pay off Greece debt, then Germans need to run the country until it is paid back.

Kdenlive build script

So, I realized that I never blogged the location of the Kdenlive build script. I have to use this script because the Kdenlive that comes with Ubuntu 11.10 is broken. The Kdenlive that you can get that is already built doesn't work with the libraries that come with Ubuntu 11.10 either. So we have to build the whole mess from code.

Go to this page and follow the instructions there. The script has been fixed as of the typing of this blog post. For a while one of the libraries had been moved and you had to modify one of the lines of the script to make it download properly.

This script does a couple things. It downloads the latest stable builds of all the libraries and of Kdenlive to a temp folder. It then builds them all against each other in that folder. It then puts the built packages under /home/<user name>/kdenlive/<date>. You can run the program from there. I suggest making a script and putting it in your path. I also recomend removing any other versions of Kdenlive you might have lying around except other versions created by this script.

That is one of the good things about this method of running Kdenlive. I can try a new one to find out if it fixes one of the problems I'm having without blowing the old version away. This kind of thing is difficult with built software repos. Once you try to revert anything the repos get upset and downright nasty.

I also have to go to /usr/bin and make a link for milt back to whatever version of kdenlive was just built. I'm not sure if this causes any troubles down the road with other libraries. This is a bug in kdenlive. Not sure when it will get fixed.

This is a PPA link I forget what PPA stands for. It is a private development code source that is somehow official. The first time you run though these instructions, you have to do some kind of key swap. The instructions are at the link, but not user friendly. This is normal these days. This way someone can't use the link as their own and you are far less likely to run in to malicious code. So don't complain too much.

This link is as for my own use as much as any one who reads the blog. I lucked out and found it again today on my first try. It also built on the first try because I had already gone through the trouble of setting up the key swap.

Have fun.

Coming to a computer near you

Microsoft and Apple and probably every single other computer company in the world has been chomping at the bit to sell you a computer/device that you pay every month for the privilege of using as intended. You are locked from taking it anywhere else and it will only run software they allow to be run on the device. Apple has done this with the iPhone and iPad. They don't allow anyone to come along and put software on their phones. You have to talk to Apple. Now Microsoft is getting in to the gig with Windows 8. You will have a phone like interface where everything is done for you with Microsoft's blessing. You will be able to buy software though Microsoft's repository built in to the OS. At some point, I picture this becoming mandatory. Because, well, why not?

I have a reoccurring nightmare where some very intelligent hacker has figured out how to brick all Apple products. By "brick" I mean to render unusable or fixable without physically modifying each device. This would be far too expensive to make happen for most devices. People would have to get new devices or have their devices looked at by someone who knows what they are doing to bring it back online.

The Apple Store, that is available now on Apple computers, is a single point of entry to every Apple products. Soon the same thing will happen to Microsoft. Again, optional at first, then mandatory after the bugs get worked out. That is how they get you. Nickle and dime.

There is something else a foot. Microsoft is trying this thing called "Trusted Computing". It is a ploy to make every computer only run Microsoft products. You know how you can't take a phone from one carrier to another without getting the phone unlocked? Well, the same idea is coming to computers. You will have some magic number assigned to your computer. it will have to match what is in Microsoft's database or you will not be allowed to surf the net or get anything done. It will probably brick the box. They say this is to ensure their software is not pirated. It will also be a boom to the RIAA and other organizations that want to track every move you make bemuse every computer will then have a unique code that will track every thing that it is used for.

The idea here is to lock people in to buying services and paying every month. I remember in the early days of the iPhone, someone bought one on a radio show. The second commentator said (paraphrasing) "I just can't afford the $3600 over two years for a phone."

The first person says "It isn't that much."

Second guy "$X every month for 24 months is $3600. That is only if you buy nothing else to go on the phone." The other person with the iPhone quickly did the math in their head and was depressed the rest of the show.

That's OK. The other members of the IT department agree that we need to wait for service pack 1 before we even consider upgrading to the Microsoft 8 OS. That is a pretty good idea for most operating systems regardless of a complete change in the way things are done.

Notes:

"Tough as a $0.40 steak." I've heard "Tough as a $3.00 steak." I suppose the story I was listening to was kind of old.

I forgot I like "grunge" music. I was searching on Shoutcast for a frigging music channel that didn't have shit playing 25/7. I searched and hunted the menu tree. I finally fell upon grunge. I hadn't listened to music in a while. It is not always easy to remember what music you like when you haven't been listening in a long time. For being a form of music that I like, it only took me about tow hours this afternoon to get sick of it. They play too much Nirvana. On to my next favorite music.

Greece has a really good unemployment mechanism. The trouble is, you have to be laid off to qualify. It is difficult to fire people in Greece as well. Thus, employers simply stop paying people's salaries. You still work here, but we are not going to pay you any more. This also prevents the company from hiring someone else. They would have to pay the new person.

Wifi rant

Field	Data
Title	Wifi rant
Description	Just an IT guy complaining. Nothing that doesn't happen at every company every day.
Tags	IT "Information Technology" rant wifi wireless access point Ethernet network setup "help desk" helpdesk diagnostics "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Notes:

"Tough as a $0.40 steak." I've heard "Tough as a $3.00 steak." I suppose the story I was listening to was kind of old.

I forgot I like "grunge" music. I was searching on Shoutcast for a frigging music channel that didn't have shit playing 25/7. I searched and hunted the menu tree. I finally fell upon grunge. I hadn't listened to music in a while. It is not always easy to remember what music you like when you haven't been listening in a long time. For being a form of music that I like, it only took me about tow hours this afternoon to get sick of it. They play too much Nirvana. On to my next favorite music.

A friend's Caravan

Field	Data
Title	A friend's Caravan
Description	A friend of ours visited in their new 2007 Dodge Caravan. It looks pretty good from the outside. I didn't get a chance to ride in it. I use the lesson of her trying to figure out the clock in the radio to compare to my recent brain farts at work.
Tags	2007 Dodge Caravan clock set radio stations Microsoft Exchange Distribution lists email addresses "Canon Elph 300" Kdenlive Houston Texas cold weather
Link	Link

Pretty sparkly things

Field	Data
Title	Pretty sparkly things
Description	Just another Saturday with the family and cats. bit too wild for my taist.
Tags	cats paper box sparkle 9 year old kids family fun play Saturday "Canon Elph 300" "Toshiba H30" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Checkout the size of this guys's crank

I'm impressed.

Notes:

One of the podcasts I listen to said that Facebook is taking down pictures of women breast feeding. There have been some protests. I say if it is allowed in public then Facebook should be obliged to allow it as best as they can in the areas where it is permitted. This may not always be logistically possible. I don't have a problem with breast feeding. However, if there is a county in BFE that allows public urination, or does not specifically prohibit it, I do not want to see it scroll past my feed. There should be lines.

Only 40% of the unemployed qualify for unemployment.

I remember a cartoon that was a daddy car, a mama car, and a baby car. The baby car became a teenager and had himself supped up. He filled up with Ethyl and crashed round a corner. The same cartoon was done with nearly the same plot and outcome with planes. The baby plane was a jet. It was about prejudice. The thing that reminded me of this was a Signal Gas Ethyl advertisement in one of the old time radio shows that I listen to online.

Lunch conversation consisted entirely of small talk. I cannot for the life of me remember a single bullet. I remember laughing at some jokes and thinking the conversation went well. I have a hard time with talking to people so I rate myself on how my conversation skills went after talking to a small group like that.

Eyes

The eye doctor I use has a great bedside manner. He spends time with me and Nat and answers our questions. He is knowledgeable on current stuff and is willing to let me run out front with a prescription to look out a window just to make sure it is working for me before I spend money on contacts or glasses. I don't mind paying him a premium because he knows my situation and knows what to look for to head off any trouble I might run in to. I pay for the confidence.

The contacts he has put me in are great. I've had lousy contacts before. These are many times more comfortable. I want to order some. I want to order some from someone else. I just don't have the money for the appointments and the contacts, especially in the same month. I feel a bit bad. I wish I had their email so I didn't have to call them and ask for my prescription. I have my glasses prescription. I believe my contacts are a bit different. I may have to make six months worth of lenses last for a year. Or, at least, try.

Last night I ordered glasses. I used Zenni again. I cannot beat their prices. I didn't get bifocals this time. Drive out on the glasses was $17.90 I think. That is without any frills. The last glasses I got were no line bifocal and nice frames and only cost me something like $45.

Nat got a pare of glasses and we bought a pare of glasses for a friend. She is going through a divorce and having trouble getting anything she needs from hubby. They have been married for many years and they have kids. It is tragic. She is getting it together and learning to make things happen without her husband's input. It is just something that needs to happen.

Many years ago I remember bogeying our friend Tex a pare of glasses many many moons ago. He needed them. He had just given me a ride to the eye doctor and he asked if they had some glue for his broken frames. Considering he was my ride home as well, I thought it best to chuck a few bucks at his and my well being.

Glasses have been a huge part of my life. I still feel as comfortable waring glasses as if I am not. I'm glad I tried contacts at a younger age. My eye doctor told me that the hardest person to try contacts for the first time is a fifty plus year old man. Women have no problems typically at nearly any age. Men however, just loose it after fifty. I try to think why this is. The only thing I can come up with amount of control most men have in their lives up to that point. Now, they want to try contacts and they have to give up some control. It is not easy to try contacts when you have never stuck anything in your eye.

Notes:

One sixth of all meat in the world is consumed by one twentieth of the population. That one twentieth of the population is the U. S.. The numbers are declining. People are making the decision to eat less meat.

The world is a fun place sometimes. Heaven will be more fun.

Microsoft makes a program they call TMG (Threat Management Gateway). It is a firewall software more or less. It works for the most part. It is adequate for the intended purpose. Microsoft is discontinuing TMG. The software world has alternatives. They all have issues. Now we have to figure out how to use one of them. I cannot find out why? Microsoft says simply that they don't want to compete with existing software. What does that mean? It means that something to do with law going on. That or Microsoft doesn't want to deal with all the countries and governments in the world wanting the back door keys to their firewall systems. It will be more full of holes than the U. S. Mexico border.

Windows 8 will not have a start button. I don't care. As long as whatever interface that replaces it works for me, I'll use it. I have already used several interfaces that do not have a start menu or button or whatever you want to call it.

Amazon is officially publishing books, not just selling them. Major book chains are not stocking the books. If you want them, they will sell them to you. I like one of the commentators description of this effort to stifle competition. "It is like putting out a fire by putting out air freshener so no one smells the smoke."

It was almost too cold to run around outside without a jacket at lunch time. It was almost too warm for a jacket. The air is wet and kind of nasty.

One must have the proper attitude when shooting a video. You must think that it is possible and indeed allow yourself to enjoy the situation. You have to have the drive to get it done and be willing to continue when you are otherwise worn with the idea, the doing, tired of the speed bumps and potholes along the way. You must make your vision come alive. You must compromise, but not too much. Choose your battles carefully.

The UN says, in the form of a rule, governments have a responsibility to protect their citizens. That sounds obvious to me. This rule had to be enacted in 2005 after Rwanda. This rule should be applied to Syria. Russia and China have vetoed the votes. They call it regime change and say that it is western countries applying their morals to middle eastern countries. I as "Is that a problem?" I like our morals better than a government that wholesale slaughter of the citizens trapped in the country. It is simple. Russia and China are worried their sovereignty will some day be called to account.

Priorities

Field	Data
Title	Priorities
Description	What matters is what you make matter.
Tags	priority priorities Chuck Yeager x-1 experimental aircraft anecdote "Canon Elph 300" Houston Texas Westheimer Kdenlive
Link	Link

Lunch conversation

Interesting lunch today.

• MineCraft
• New version out
• Animal husbandry
• New TNT that allows you to mine every single block that was blown up.
• You can label a sign, but not a map.
• Super Bowl
• Who was MVP? No one stuck around.
• Good plays.
• Bad plays.
• Great time to speed on 290 because the cops are watching the game.

My time

What do I think I spend my time on.

24*7=168 hours in a week.

Description	running total
Total hours in a week	168
Sleep 8 hours a day (wishful thinking)	112
Work straight 40	72
Work over time 8	64
Commute to and from work 2 hours a day	54
Lunch 1 hour a day	49
Cook, clean, chores, 4 hours	45

Thus, 45 hours for family, fun computer stuff, games, vlogging, photography. My wife will tell me that I don't spend enough time with her and the kid. This is true of course.

Notes:

I listened to a podcast talking about people on benefits in England. Families don't want anyone to get a job in the the family because that will screw up their benefits. It turns out the secret is to pay a family, not an individual. Another secret is to start by telling the family that not only can they do it, but when they do it, they need to come along behind and help the next family do the same thing. That heps self esteem.

We were out of Sharpie pens for about six months at work. I have since horded them. Now I am embarrassed that I have nine varying Sharpie pens in my Dart Vader mug along side a few wooden pencils, a pare of sizers and a pen my father made made primarily of deer antler.

9 billion chickens in the U. S. each year. Wow. A chicken wing has 3 portions. The foldy bit we call a wing. The mini leg looking bit. Then there is the end "flapper" that is typically exported to Asian countries. I was salivating when I listened to this story on Dinner Party Download.

Our company is upgrading the Exchange (email) servers. This is a normal every day thing. It happens at every company that has an Exchange server eventually. Thing is, this morning's Dilbert has a joke about moving the Exchange servers. It is unbelievably convenient. They are watching I tell you.

I'm reading His Majesty's Dragon series. The lead dragon is complaining about dragons not being paid for their labors. He likens it to slavery. I cannot disagree in the abstract. However, when robots ask to be paid, I may find myself groping for the reset button.

The number of loans has fallen off a cliff. Employment numbers are improving. People are getting used to being broke. Banks don't want to get in trouble loaning to people who cannot afford it. Politicians are screaming to loan money to get the economy rolling again.

Some folks are worried about the Apple text book imitative. The deal is that Apple wants to provide a platform, consisting entirely of Apple products, that will lead students down a path of both learning and Apple loyalty. If you want to ride the train, you have to use Apple products. If you want to sell on that train, you have to talk to Apple. Sounds a bit Utopian to me, but it greatly pleases Apple investors.

Spent a good chunk of my day trying to deal with crazy spam messages. The auto whitelist that comes with our system was set to ignore the emails that the spam used. They are not stupid. They learn what to look for that businesses will want to let though and exploit these things.

Vlog idea: comparing phone to first rocket plane that broke the sound barrier.

Social Layers

• Taboo
• Law
• Rule
• Guideline
• Etiquette

Dishes

Field	Data
Title	Super Bowl Sunday at the zhsy00001 compound
Description	Not exactly an anti Super Bowl video.
Tags	"super bowl 2012" weekend Sunday griping dishes hits "how to get hits" "youtube views" "stupid news" priorities "MSN sucks" Houston Texas Kdenlive
Link	Link

Tracy trip time lapse

Field	Data
Title	Tracy Trip time lapse
Description	We picked up Tracy so Nat and she could go to karaoke. This is to keep me entertained on the trip. Sorry it is shaky. I need to rig up a better mount in the car. Music: Porch Blues by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tags	timelapse "time lapse" car vehicle night road freeway beltway "Sam Houston" Richmond Texas Houston Texas "Toshiba H30" Kdenlive
Link	Link

Day

Well, morning really. I woke up at 05:30 with a headache. My body kept telling me to get up and get something to drink. I lated there listening to my book play on the blind reader thing. I'm reading the third book in the His Majesty's Dragon series. I missed number two for some reason. The books are awesome. The guy reading doesn't do feminine voices as well as other male readers. That's fine. I get past it after the first couple paragraphs.

At around 07:00 I fell back asleep to the sound of thunder and puring rain. It was awesome. I turned off the book just to listen to it. Have you ever had the opportunity to sleep in a building with a tin roof while it is raining? I don't have a tin roof, but I imagine myself back in a tin roofed building every time it rains and I have the opportunity to sleep. It does rain in heaven. The roof is tin.

Some time around 12:00 I got up, dressed quickly. Put on my boots and went directly out to the knee high grass in both front and back yard. There, I put gas in the law mower. I primed it and gave a single tug on the pull start. God Bless Briggs and Stratton. The ground was soft. The ants were to arms. The grass, or weeds were thin, but looked thick. That is good. My mower is not top of the line. I have to push it. You are not supposed to mow wet grass. The yard had a chance to drip dry from this morning and the wind was blowing a bit to help dry the higher parts of the yard.

It looks better than when I started. The mulching part of my mower only works going forward. The front yard, I try to only go forward so as to use this feature. The back, however, I just want to mow. There are piles and trails of plant carcases from fence to fence in the back yard. One feature of the mow is that it mows much more easily when being dragged behind you for the very reason that the mulching does not take effect.

Here it is now 14:02 and I'm sitting down to jot some notes about my day.

I still need to pay bills desperately. Considering it is supposed to rain like mad tomorrow, I'll have every opportunity. Wish me luck.

Notes:

Get this. I'm using Unity on Ubuntu. I've come to the conclusion that it sucks about as much as Gnome 3 in design, but is just a bit more buggy. The thing that sent me over the edge is the mouse upper left corner in Gnome 3. Just moving your mouse to that corner opens the menu. I move my mouse to the closest corner of the screen in order to find the cursor. You can't turn this off so I would have to move it to the upper left corner twice, once would activate the menu, then again to deactivate the menu. Not sure this would upset any one else on the planet, but it drove me away from Gnome 3 to Unity.

Got a free lunch today. Lance bought me a Jimmy John's sandwich for shooting their gig last Saturday. I told him it was a pleasure, but he would not take fuck off for an answer. It was awesome. I forgot how much I like their sandwiches. I would have done the videos and editing for nothing. As I type this, we have 100 hits on the first video. The rest of them are around 30 or so. I just put two up last night and they are still around 6 hits. Up and coming I say. John put up a video of him screwing around with a video game and got 16000 hits.

One of the podcasts I listen to names his computers. I never named my computers. The same reason cowboys didn't name their horses. They may need to eat it one day. I may need to cannibalize the box to get something done. I don't want to feel like I know it.

Yesterday, as I exited the building to go home, I stopped at an office across the hall because I heard some not work discussion. We ended up talking about DnD and plucking nose hairs. For this, I made my wife and child wait an extra five minutes out in front of the building. Elle did the "I'm hungry" dance and Nat didn't get it on video.

It turns out heavy metal is very popular in South America. Heard an interview with Megadeath. One of the guys in Megadeath is Lutheran. He grew up in the mid west. He went to school to be a paster.