Outsourced Santa

Don't get me started about outsourcing. I can't think straight when  I think about Americans out of work because of short sighted managers and CEOs who only want to impress the stock holders so they get their bonuses and can bail before the whole place burns down. I'm already hearing about price hikes in China and India for labor. Ya [insert ethnic name], you need a raise. Tell them "Show me da Rupees!".

AVG
I use AVG (Anti Virus Group) software. They have a free version. Go to AVG click on downloads > Products. Then click on the free version about half way down. If you are a not commercial (home user) entity, you are within your rights to use this software.

AVG Free Edition is the well-known anti-virus protection tool. AVG Free is available free-of-charge to home users for the life of the product! Rapid virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product, thereby providing the high-level of detection capability that millions of users around the world trust to protect their computers. AVG Free is easy-to-use and will not slow your system down (low system resource requirements). AVG's web site

My Dell computers all came with a pay service virus checker. The license always expires after six months. That kind of crap makes me sick. AVG is pretty good and it's free for the home user. The commercial version is well priced.

Wireless in Courtrooms
I don't much care what happened to Scott Peterson. I trust in the jury of twelve. However, something interesting did happen during the read of his sentence. Someone in the court room sent a wireless message to their employer (a TV station) with the verdict while the court was still in session.

Peterson's death penalty sentencing was covered live via a wireless device, adding a new dimension to TV news coverage. A reporter from KCRA-TV in Sacramento used a laptop to send reports from inside the courtroom back to the TV station's newsroom, using an existing wireless network inside the courtroom. CNet News

This action seems to have sparked as much debate as the death sentence. Honestly, if it doesn't disturb the court, what is the harm? Well, that is part of the debate. There are bans on phones and cameras in the court room. Why not all forms of communication and recording other than hand written drawings or notes? Anything else has to be pre-approved by the judge. That might do it.

CIA in Afghanistan

The report in Monday's New York Times, citing anonymous American officials familiar with the operation, said the CIA had concluded that bin Laden was being sheltered by local tribesmen and foreign militants in northwestern Pakistan, and was suspected of controlling an elite terrorist cell that could be aiming to launch a "spectacular" attack against America. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who has faced heavy criticism at home for his strong ties with Washington, has previously acknowledged that a small number of American experts were working with Pakistani troops in their operations against al-Qaeda militants. But he has denied that U.S. forces – deployed in their thousands in neighboring Afghanistan – are actively hunting bin Laden on Pakistani soil. ... "There are no CIA cells in Pakistan ... in our tribal areas, and there is absolutely no truth in this New York Times report," said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan. Both U.S. and Pakistani generals have said the trail in the hunt for bin Laden has gone cold in the more than three years since U.S. forces toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan for harboring him. The al-Qaeda leader, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, is still suspected to be hiding some place along the rugged border. Sign On SanDiego

I cannot find the original New York Times article. Frigging NYT requires a subscription to do a news search, the bastards.
It sounds like our governments spend more time squabbling Over semantics than trying to hunt down the current Antichrist. He is there, he is not there, he is a ghost, we want to find him, he is nowhere. he never existed. One man has turned the U. S. in to a nation of shoulder shrugging lost scaredy-cats. People Just don't want to admit that it is going to take more than is currently devoted to fix the problem. There are five major conflicts currently going on in the Middle East. All I hear in the news is how schools are banning Christmas plays so as not to offend any one. I'm sure that contributes to cultural understanding between groups.
When did religion become a race anyway? I keep hearing religious intolerance referred to as racism or racist. That can't be the right term.

Song

Artist:	Venus Hum [ Search RP ]
Song:	Hummingbirds
Album:	Big Beautiful Sky [ Search RP ]

Quote of the day
I laughed for ten minutes after reading the following line.

... actual negotiations with Iraq, which has the world's second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia, are unlikely to start before elections there, which are due to be held in late January -- violence permitting. Reuters

"Violence Permitting", Oh, tell me I'm dreaming. Only a diseased mind could come up with this as fiction. Today's reality makes me yearn for a bad book.I read quite a bit of news and let me tell you, it would not be believed as a plot in a novel.

YES!
finally, some one has invented the truly wrinkle free shirt.

Flight Simulator
I have a flight simulator running on my computer in the background. I'm doing something on it I've kind of always wanted to do. I'm making the run from north Cuba to Florida in a Cessna, at 100 feet. Thank goodness for autopilot. I can just watch the scenery glide by. I'm not sure why this intrigues me. No harm I suppose.

Song

Artist:	Chris Isaak [ Search RP ]
Song:	Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing
Album:	Forever Blue [ Search RP ]

Artist:	Lucinda Williams [ Search RP ]
Song:	Can't Let Go
Album:	Car Wheels on a Gravel Road [ Search RP ]

Mobile (Cell) Phones
Brian: a loner antisocial (in a "something was happening" sort of way)  misfit. Smart guy. Has cats. (Engineer)
Adam: Married, Smart guy. Plays allot of DND. (Engineer)
Laurie: Married (to Adam), Smart woman. (Engineer)
Ethan: Single, but girlfriend has a Mobile. (Engineer)
Alexis: Teenager, Single, taking classes at UT.
Adam, Ethan, Alexis and even Laurie (by marriage) are all in the same family. I can't think of another person who I communicate with at all who does not have a mobile phone.

While older Americans like Harger-Gedeon are catching on to the fact that not having a cellphone could actually be considered socially obtuse ("A call ahead while stuck in traffic is no longer a courtesy but a given," she says), teenagers say leaving the house with the cellphone is as basic as having a wallet or purse and house keys. "Everybody I know uses it for just everything, everything," says Melinda Burroughs, a 17-year-old in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Besides keeping her a ring away from her parents, Melinda says her phone serves as alarm clock and watch. It lists movies, text messages from friends, and latest sports scores. When cellphone use reaches a critical mass among teens, say experts, everyone suddenly has to get one. ... the need to always be connected to others may naturally settle with time. "Those who used to complain that they couldn't get away from their boss at work or find any peace, are doing much better in taking control by turning off their cellphones whenever they want," says Dr. Blinkoff. Christin Science Monitor

"Mobile" vs "Cell"  I listen to the BBC allot and they say "Mobile" over there. I find myself using that term over "Cell". I've had people look at me funny once or twice. They all knew what I was talking about. I find myself just saying "phone" more and more these days.
My parents have mobile phones. Every one at my office has a mobile phone. That group of friends above are the only ones who have not moved into this century. I went out to lunch with them yesterday and forgot my phone. While standing in the Starbucks line, I noticed and felt naked and cut off for a moment. Then I thought, "No one is going to call anyway." and felt much better.

Satellite TV
A hacker was busted. Apparently, it is illegal to sell the devices that are out there to thwart the security on satellite TV signals. They encrypt the signals for a reason. I don't have a problem with a company defending it's property. I also do not subscribe to cable or satellite because it costs too much.

A Canadian man was sentenced to seven years in a US prison this week after admitting he led a sophisticated satellite TV piracy ring that produced and sold thousands of hacked smart cards in the US and Canada. ... In his plea agreement with prosecutors, Mullen stipulated to heading a network of over 100 distributors throughout North America that sold thousands of hacked cards granting free access to all of DirecTV's channels. ... Mullen's daughter, Nicole McKenzie, said she believed the government coerced her father into pleading guilty by threatening to prosecute his family. "My parents have been married for 31 years and my dad is my two children's only father figure," McKenzie wrote. "You hear about these things on TV, but this is real life. In my opinion he was completely set up." The Register

I do hope the judges in the case that comes up next year will remember that the people of this country actually run the place, not the corporations.

The United States Supreme Court announced that it would hear a case on whether P2P companies are responsible for the piracy of their users. The court will hear an appeal to a lower court ruling that concluded that Grokster and StreamCast were not responsible for the activities of their users. The ruling was a blow to music companies and movie studios, both determined to stem piracy online. The ruling in the previous trial had rested on ruling in a case brought against the movie industry twenty years ago. The movie industry wanted to ban VCR's because they would allow film piracy. They lost the case, with courts ruling that VCR's had substantial other users than piracy. Michael Elkin, a copyright litigator said that "What's at stake is basically the future of a close to $500 billion copyright industry, specifically the music recording, motion picture and video industries which have been completely hammered with the advent of the Internet." Representatives from the Electronic Frontier Foundation reject this; "The copyright law principles set out in the Sony Betamax case have served innovators, copyright industries, and the public well for 20 years," said Fred von Lohmann, IP lawyer at EFF. "We at EFF look forward to the Supreme Court reaffirming the applicability of Betamax in the 21st century." The Supreme court will hear the case in March of 2005. Tom Graham

Tom reminds us the corporations tried this back in the eighties with VCRs. I know of a couple open source software development projects that use BitTorrent  as their official deployment  method. There really are other uses for pry-bars, matches, and butcher knives. Lets face it, Criminals find the most use in tools that are the most useful. How many lives would be saved every year if we banned personal automobiles?
Personally, I wish someone would devote as many resources to combating child pornography as the corporations throw at copyright infringement.

Lines
OK Adam I put lines between the posts and an extra line break between the date and the first line (uaually a subtitle). What do you think? Not every post shows it. I'm not going to investigate.

Fog of War
I recently viewed the documentary Fog of War. It is definitely worth a watch.  I have to say I will not sleep as calmly tonight after viewing it. While watching it I could not help but draw parallels between Vietnam and Iraq. The first months of Vietnam had some similar troop killed and injured numbers as those in today's Iraq.

Song

Artist:	Jem [ Search RP ]
Song:	Come On Closer
Album:	It All Starts Here... [ Search RP ]

Support
So, I send in six requests to our support at my day job. Two out of the six had problems. One of which was basically just not done. These are not complex requests. I need a file renamed on a bunch of servers. I need a software package distributed (copied) to a bunch of standard servers around the world. I need an XML file edited to make text changes show up on the web page. It is all standard every day stuff for these guys. We make these requests all the time. I'm the one who makes the changes, they just distribute them over the network. I make the software install properly, they just copy the files. Two out of six fail. Come on.

More on Dell
Drive Swap
Tonight comes the big move. I am pulling the DVD reader out of the Dell (cheap drive) and I'm putting in a DVD burner from my other machine. I'm also adding the second 160 gigabyte hard drive that I have laying around. It never ended up in one of the other machines because I don't trust their power supplies to handle it.
Heat
Man, this thing is hot. I can feel the heat coming from the side of the machine during normal use. When I run BOINC, The fan kicks into high and the heat radiates from the machine. I could bake cookies with the frigging thing. Maybe I should write a cookbook for geeks.

1/2 cup of butter.
1 cup of sugar.
1 cup of flower.
1/4 cup of milk.
Stir, put table spoon sized lumps on a sheet.
Put in bottom of case and run Doom III for 25 minutes.

The case has a nice processor cooling system. There is a shroud over the processor leading to the back of the case. Fresh air is blown over the processor and into the box. There is a grating on the side of the case to let warmth out and the power supply pulls more air out. It is still not enough. When are they just going to throw in the towel and put liquid cooled systems in these boxes?

Offers
I've been offered a computer mouse, a car calender, a paid trip to Dave and Buster's, and trip to some Chinese restaurant for lunch. I had to turn down the lunch and D&B because I needed to get some things done before the weekend.  I turned down the calender because I don't use paper calenders. I don't really get into D&B. besides it was an all afternoon trip.

Strategy
While out with the friends this past Saturday, the ones who were playing Ever-Crack, we stopped in to pick up the Strategy Guide for the game. The store was packed. We were not the only thirty-somethings in the store. Now I find there is quite a market for the strategy guides.

Hint-filled strategy guides now can sell more than 1 million copies, and long-awaited games are being given the kind of "making of" treatment typically bestowed on blockbuster movies. ... Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar (Prima Games, $34.99). The 288-page hardcover coffee-table book was written with the help of game developer Valve Software. The book describes the creative process and includes hundreds of color images. ... In creating the hardcover Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar, Prima Games worked directly with the game's developer, Valve Software. "Valve has had quite a rich history in game development and a following that is phenomenal," says Debra Kempker, Prima Games' president and publisher. "We thought it would be very important to give the background of the development of the game and the drawings, the history, the works." Yahoo (USA Today)

I remember when I was about thirteen buying a pamphlet sized book for the game Pit Fall I think. It was a game for the Atari 2600. I was stumped at this part where you had to jump off a mesa and snag a branch with your parachute. It turns out there was some trick to it. Now, most of these games are online with/against other people. If these books give you some advantage, I say go for it. You are paying for the privilege of being there.
Sales are up for games overall. Like movies, it is the blockbusters that make the headlines.

Citing data from the NPD Group, analysts said "Halo 2" from Microsoft Corp. sold 3.3 million units in November, while "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. sold 1.5 million units. Yahoo (Reuters)

Yee-gads, that is some scratch.

Revolutionary
From Obyonechun, some other revolutionary stuff that has caused changes in society. I didn't say I had a complete list.  Take a look at the comment he left on 2004-12-10 below.

Cell Phones Video compression Those things that tell you where you are (I can't believe I forgot the name) Satellite TV Low cost broadband Video on Demand Teleconferencing Airbags High yield crops Hydroponics All these things are world changing technologies. Throw in all the medical advances they have monthly and you can probably triple that list. I think we are just jaded about technology. Its happening so fast that new technologies are expected.

Well, he is right. He says cell phones. I say any instant communication. Phones were a logical progression of the Telegraph. The Telegraph beget the Wireless (radio, not network). Phones changed business to the point of absurdity. Think about mailing a letter instead of picking up the phone and calling the next person you work with in another country.
The automobile came about after steamboats and locomotives. However, the automobile caused a different change. It allowed people to live in the country and commute straight to work in the city in a timely manor. Trains were slow and only traveled between stations. Automobiles changed the way cities are designed. We have more highways than railroads it seems.
Let's take the airplane. Well, I don't have to talk about the airplane, because it is obvious how that changed the world. I bet I can hop on a plane a be anywhere in the world in a couple of days at most. That is if I use commercial flights. It would be even less time if I were able to charter one of those top secret supersonic corporate jets they don't want you to know about.
Medical advancements, well, you have one there. We live longer, we take more risks. We pay more in insurance and legal fees than at any time in human history. That has changed the way we live too.
There is a myth that a patent official said "Why do we need a patent office, everything that can be invented has already been invented." in the 1800s. I heard that statement when I was a kid. I am 35 and only just looked it up to disprove it.
What I'm looking for is one single point along the design path that will pivot the direction of advancement. I'm looking for the warp engine, the transporter, the replicator. There is absolutely no reason I couldn't sit in my underware and do my job from home with a network connection and a phone. No web cams please. It is simply the fact that people haven't been raised doing it this way that prevents telecommuting at my job.
Thanks for the comment. Please, keep them coming.

Firewall Settings
Here is a high level view article that gives some good advice on setting up a firewall. No details. This is the 300 meter level. I was just trying to figure out how to let Ping through my firewall. It has something to do with ICMP. I'm going to have to go play with the system and figure it out. Below are some rules for setting up a firewall from the article.

# Anything from inside the network is allowed out. This empowers employees to have full control to use whatever services they might need. # All access to the firewall itself is blocked from the Internet. Almost all access to the firewall is blocked from inside the network. The only people with access to the firewall should be the firewall administrators, and this should be done through some secure authentication mechanism such as two-factor identification tokens, smart cards, and finger-print scanners. # Allow SMTP messaging services for both Internet and internal users to pass through your firewall--this is required for you to receive and send e-mail. # ICMP services should be turned off to prevent utilities such as ping to pass through your firewall. Many hacker and scanning programs use ping. # You should block Telnet access to all internal servers from the Internet. At the very least, be sure to block Telnet access to your DNS server to prevent illegal zone transfers, and to prevent hackers from taking down your entire network. If your internal users need to come in to your network from outside the firewall, you should be using a VPN client, or other secure authentication system. # If your Web server is outside the firewall, consider blocking HTTP from reaching your internal networks. That way, if any employees are running Web servers for internal use on their desktops, the services will not be visible to the outside Internet. If your Web server is behind the firewall, you need to allow HTTP or HTTPS through for the Internet at large to view it. Therefore, I'd generally recommend putting Web servers outside the firewall. ZDNet

More on Dell
Delivery Details
UPS came back Wednesday evening and picked up the other lady's computer. She had called and left a message earlier that day. Thank goodness that is over with. She has her computer and I no longer have the headache. I think she figured out what happened. I didn't notice, but her computer's box said 2 of 2 on it. She also ordered a printer and some speakers that were shipped separately. That is probably why the guy brought both boxes up to my apartment. He looked quite frazzled. I bet he was working a double.
Installs
I'm installing the long list of software I use on my new computer. Open Office, ReadPlease and about nine hundred other software packages I will have on the machine before I consider it work ready.
Moving hardware
I had three computers plugged into one outlet. For over a year, I've been telling myself that I should move the computers over to the other wall and at least distribute the load a bit. Well, I did the move and ran one of my "wireless-less" cables across the room to connect them to the network. One of those machines is my HTTP server, It is not on the network at the moment. I'm waiting on a switch. So, no pictures on the blog for a little bit.
Firewall
I have some trouble getting the Windows Firewall to work. It is a configuration thing I'm sure. I'll write more on it later.
Earphone Jack
This machine has something that I've been looking forward to for a long time. An earphone jack on the front. It is built into the case. When you plug into it, the speakers cut out. I think they cut out. I haven't actually plugged in a speaker yet. They are on their way. It shocks me that it has taken this long for the feature to catch on with large distributers. This seems like a no-brainer.
Monitor
It turns out the flat panel monitor I ordered is not digital. I must have been reading the wrong description. I was disappointed. I sold the monitor to a buddy at work and ordered a Sony that does it all. I figure you can use the monitor for about two computers. In the future you may be forced to upgrade every time because I believe the standard computer will be a notebook design. The desktop's days are numbered.

Pakistan Nuke-Capable Missile Test
Everybody has got to get into the act. Iran recently admitted working on a nuclear capable missile system. India tested one years ago. This is a dangerous game of one-up-men-ship. I have to admit, there is no deterrent like a nuclear deterrent. I honestly believe Iran, Pakistan, North Korea and others are itching to get nuclear weapons to prevent being invaded by the UN or the U. S.

Pakistan test-fired on Wednesday a nuclear-capable, surface-to-surface ballistic missile, capable of hitting targets deep inside arch-rival India. The military said Pakistan had informed neighboring countries about the test -- a practice also observed by India, which regularly tests its own nuclear-capable missiles. ... Islamabad says its missile program is indigenous, though experts say Pakistan has received Chinese and North Korean help. Reuters

MMPOLG
I've recently lost two friends (temporarily) to online gaming. They play Ever-Crack II constantly. When they are not playing the game, they want to talk about the game. I can't even get email responses. They spout stats and scenarios off like any one who does not want to spend $15 a month plus $50 for the game would care. I don't have cable because I'm too cheep. I'm not coughing up doe to get hooked on a massive time suck. I complain about not getting anything done now.
I'm glad they have fun with it. I have seen them do this kind of thing before. They have meetings in the virtual world. They make battle plans off line. They discuss advancement strategys. That is all well and good, but I miss my friends.

A word of warning to anyone new to the genre: these games require a lot of time and money to fully enjoy. There's no "game over" screen, and the goal is personal growth, not a high score. Think of them as never ending virtual fantasies where you and thousands of other players, similarly sitting in front of computers, can interact and take part in a larger, overarching story. ...  One thing that always helps me gage games is what I'll call the time test. It's simple: If a game holds my interest for at least an hour, I know I'm on to something good. That happened with both of these games. With "World of Warcraft," about five hours passed before I thought to check the time. "EverQuest II" was similarly engrossing, though by the end I had much less to show for my efforts. Like a carrot dangling in front of a horse, these games always promise something better over the horizon. Yahoo AP

I have a cousin who runs a company. He would play Ever-Crack while at work. Hey, he is the CEO. Who is going to complain?
The friends I mention above are a married couple. I just pictured them having kids and all playing Ever-Crack VII together. That may be a better thing than it sounds. Kids have far better eyesight and reaction times than adults. When it comes to action games kids win most often over adults hands down.  However, in strategy games, I wonder if the adults who have been playing for ever, will have the advantage. That is worth pursuing in my book.

Honor Killing
I've heard of this for years. It has been shown in some movies. The idea is that men dominate women. That just isn't true. Several culture still condone female circumcision and honor killings. It is all so barbaric. I have reservations about male circumcision. I just don't get the point anymore. My religion does not require it. Anyway, here are some quotes from an Reuters article.

U.N. estimates show that more than 5,000 women are murdered every year in "honor"-related violence, but the real number could be much higher, said experts at an international conference near Stockholm, which ended Wednesday. Horror stories of women and even girls as young as seven being beheaded, burned to death, maimed, beaten, raped, forced into suicide or mentally abused underscored that patriarchal violence against women pays no heed to religion. ...  "Islam as a reason for the honor killings is rubbish," Nilofar Bakhtiar, adviser to Pakistan's prime minister on Women's' Development, told Reuters. She blamed such violence in Pakistan on "the feudal tradition, the culture and the tribal system." She said that men found it "very convenient to say that what they don't want to do is against Islam and what they want to do is in the name of Islam."  While most cases are reported in Muslim countries, "honor" violence also occurs among Christian families, delegates said. Yahoo (Reuters)

It is not Islam that promotes honor killings, it is a bunch of back-water hillbillies who refuse to acknowledge their responsibility to protect those weaker than themselves.

Got the Dell
So, The UPS guy shows up and drops off the boxes. I tear into one of the boxes. I pull the computer out. I realize, it has a modem. I didn't order a modem. I then realize, there is a flat panel in the same box with the computer. I ordered a 17 inch, not a 15 inch.  What the heck is going on here? Then my eyes slowly pan over to the other box. There are two full computers here. A quick glance at the label shows the box I just opened is for Clara in an apartment a couple of buildings over. I walked over there, but she wasn't home. I left a phone number. It didn't even dawn on me that the two boxes were wrong. Even though they were exactly the same size. I'm still used to the CRT engine blocks that we had to ship in the past.
I also noticed the monitor is not digital. I sold it to a buddy and ordered another. It should be in next week. I also ordered some speakers. This box has 5.1 surround sound. I at least want some speakers that put out the correct channels. Dell wanted $100 or more. I picked some up for $50. We shall hear how well they work. Argh, this thing has serial ATA connections for the hard drives and one ATA 133 connector (pins kind of thing) for the CD/DVD. That means I'll have to find some rails for the drive to sit next to the DVD, and I'll have to replace the current CD/DVD instead of just adding another drive. The extra 160 Gig drive is ATA 100 (133) only. Oh, well. No big deal.
The trouble is, after dealing with these minor difficulties, I'm out of gas. Now all I want to do is read a few blogs and hit the sack. With all the talk about get sleep or get fat lately, it is probably a good thing.

Speaking of Technology
Vehicles mounted lasers are finally making their way to real life battlefields.

Two of the heavyweights of the defense industry are teaming up to develop "a laser armed combat vehicle," Baltimore Business Journal says. Northrop Grumman, which is building the Army's Tactical High Energy Laser, will put together the ray gun. United Defense, maker of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, "will develop a hybrid [gas/electric] combat vehicle that would carry the laser weapon," according to the Journal. ... More importantly, electric-powered lasers are finally starting to build up the power they need to work as weapons. In a few months, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore national lab and elsewhere plan to test a 25 kilowatt solid-state laser. If those trials work out as expected, the Defense Department will then start handing out grants for a laser with a hundred kilowatts of power -- that's widely-considered the threshold for ray gun action to begin. DefenseTech

Enemy Propaganda TV
I read this article on Little Green Footballs and I just couldn't believe it was true. It is. Read the article and gasp in horror.

At the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a look at the Islamic hate speech of Hizballah’s propaganda organ: Beacon of Hatred: Inside Hizballah’s al-Manar Television. LGF

String Theory
I was reading this article on NYT hoping for something new, some hint of consolidation. What did I get. Five web pages full of squabbling scientists and indifferent journalists.
Some one needs to solve some fundamental problem. We need some new brilliant leap forward somewhere. Something positively exciting has got to come about soon. The last thing that had this feel was the X-Prize. This doesn't affect every one on a daily basis. I'm talking a replacement for cars, or the TV, or the washing machine or something fundamental to our lives every day. We wake to a world where we do the same thing all the time. We need something to change everything all at once. Something as basic as the phone, or the automobile, or electricity, or indoor plumbing. Think of the world before any of those things. It is considered a "different time". People haven't changed much in the last 150,000 years according to fossils. Only the technology has changed. It is time for another one of these changes.
I suggest that the Internet is one of these fundamental changes.

Songs

Artist:	Neko Case [ Search RP ]
Song:	Things That Scare Me
Album:	Blacklisted [ Search RP ]

Artist:	Vince Guaraldi Trio [ Search RP ]
Song:	Linus and Lucy
Album:	A Charlie Brown Christmas [ Search RP ]

Winds of Change and The Nation.

In an era in which most U.S. population growth is occurring in the South, West and heartland, American liberalism is defined by people in the Northeast. At a time when rising tuitions are pricing many working-class Americans out of a college education, the upscale campus is becoming the base of American progressivism. The Nation

This is from a very long article. It is well worth a read. I am getting tired of people trying to figure out what went "wrong" or "right" in the election last month. It is, Leave it alone.

Disk World
I'm looking into Disk World. I've heard it described as a parity of all the SciFi fiction of the eighties. Sounds like the setting for me. I love eighties Anime and moves like Alien and Blade Runner. This vision of the future is probably not the way things are going to unfold. I've come to the realization that a bunch of corporations and capitalism will be the first entities other intelligent life forms run into. Some one with the title of "Sector 19 Regional Manager" will be the first to shake the tentacle of an alien, long enough for the photo-opp anyway. Then the marketing people will take over. There is more of Dilbert than Star Trek in our future, I fear.
Does any one out there have recommendations for this and other series?

I Learned Something
"al-qaeda" means "the Camp".

Dell
Some one came by the office today asking about Dell computers. They want to do video editing. You don't really need that powerful of a computer. You need lots of hard drive and gobs of RAM. You also need a fair to good video card. I don't know if Dell offers the video card you really need. Apparently, Dell is no longer offering the monitor deal I snagged.
I've been thinking that this could very well be the last desktop computer I buy. Desktops are not miles ahead of laptops any longer. You can get some portable desktops (big laptops) that are upgradeable and lugable. I bet in two years, when I decide to upgrade again, there will be better alternatives than another desktop.

More on the Lost Bomb

Police say the explosives, which were not accompanied by a detonating device, were slipped inside a small dark blue suitcase on a baggage conveyor belt. One sniffer dog detected the package, but police lost sight of the suitcase when they went to pick up a second dog that was supposed to take part in the exercise. Reuters

<bad French accent> Idiots, I told you not to put Clouseau on K-9 detail. </bad French accent>

eBay
You know, i need to go buy some little thing on eBay. I then need to turn around and sell something. eBay has become a modern cultural icon. It seems like every one I work with has had transactions on eBay. I know one guy who bought some ceramic figurines for his mother. He ended up getting some duplicates. When he sold them again he made money. He ended up buying more and just turning around and selling them as soon as he could. No one around me has done large or expensive items. It's great for getting rid of clutter..

Sunday
I just got back from my friend's house. I fixed the computer in no time. We ate. I spent the rest of the afternoon playing with their two year old daughter. Kaitlyn (I'm not spelling it right). She like holding your hands and walking up your legs to do a flip. She just gets the biggest kick out of that. It was fun.
It's times like this that I want to have kids.

Tillman
This  sounds just bad. I know there are confusing situations in combat. I've never even been close to being under that kind of stress. I play first person shooters. My life is not on the line. I still find myself and buddies in the same safe, warm, well fed room, to be in complete agreement on two diametrically opposite plans of action after discussing it for ten minutes. It doesn't take much for people to loose touch with the plan. Even the relatively minor stress of playing a video game can teach you that lesson.

It took the Army a month to change the record to show that Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals defensive back who gave up a $3.6 million contract to become an Army Ranger, was killed last April not by Afghan guerrillas but by his Ranger colleagues. Even then, the statement by Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr., head of the Army's Special Operations Command, gave few specifics of the corporal's death and implied that he was trying to suppress enemy fire when he "probably died as a result of friendly fire." ... Tillman's group moved toward the north-south ridge to face the canyon, and Tillman took another Ranger and an Afghan ally down the slope. "As they pulled alongside the ridge, the gunners poured an undisciplined barrage of hundreds of rounds into the area Tillman and other members of Serial One had taken up positions," the Post said Army investigators concluded. It said the gunner handling the platoon's only .50-caliber machine gun fired every round he had. The first to die was the Afghan, whom the Americans in the canyon mistook for a Taliban fighter. Under fire, Tillman and almost a dozen others on the ridge "shouted, they waved their arms, and they screamed some more," the Post said. "Then Tillman `came up with the idea to let a smoke grenade go.' As its thick smoke unfurled, `This stopped the friendly contact for a few moments,'" a Ranger was quoted as saying. Assuming the friendly fire had stopped, the Ranger said, he and his comrades emerged and talked with each other, the Post reported. "Suddenly, he saw the attacking Humvee move into `a better position to fire on us.' He heard a new machine gun burst and hit the ground, praying, as Pat Tillman fell," the Post reported. The Ranger said Tillman had repeatedly screamed out his name and shouted for the shooting to stop, the Post said. He and others waved their arms, only attracting more fire. Tillman was shot repeatedly by rifles, finally succumbing to the machine gun. Early in the firing, the Post said, the driver of one of the Serial Two vehicles pulled out of the canyon and recognized the parked U.S. Army vehicles in front of him. "The driver shouted twice: `We have friendlies on top!' ... Then he yelled several more times to cease fire, he recalled. "`No one heard me.'" Yahoo News (AP)

Lost Bomb
Oh, here we go.

Police at Paris' top airport lost track of a passenger's bag in which plastic explosives were placed to train bomb-sniffing dogs, police said Saturday. Warned that the bag may have gotten on any of nearly 90 flights from Charles de Gaulle, authorities searched planes upon arrival in Los Angeles and New York. ... A "momentary lack of surveillance" led to the bag being lost on a conveyor belt carrying luggage from check-in to planes. ... "Indeed, it's possible that someone will have a surprise when he opens his bag." USA Today (AP)

OK, they do say that there is no way to set off the explosives. They were set up strictly to get the dogs to respond. Still, it sounds pretty bad.

Blockquotes
Is any one out there confused by the gray boxes? They are block quotes. I'm trying to remember to put the link to the original story in the lower right hand corner. Any suggestions? Too many quotes? More of anything, lesss of something?

Off
I'm off in a minute to help a friend with her computer. I put in a hard drive a couple of months ago and now her CD ROM is puking every time she trys it. Some one else has put in a power supply since then and I wonder if that might have had anything to do with it. I don't mind helping her because she is cooking stir-fry. I mentioned before I will do computer work for a home cooked meal. Wish me luck.

Darn-it!
I ordered a Dell. Why didn't any of you people stop me? I was going to wait until after Christmas, but my current second machine is giving me trouble and my laptop won't run any of the recent games. I got a 3.2 GHZ processor, 1 gigabyte of RAM, 160 gigabyte hard drive, and a 17 inch flat panel all for a grand. Not bad. What finally convinced me was comparing the price to machines I could build myself. I went and priced parts. It didn't come out to much less than the Dell. Particularly the monitor. They started the "free upgrade" thing again which I figure saved me about $150 or so.
I've had good luck with Dell computers. I hope it sticks. The first thing I'm going to do is put another hard drive and DVD burner in it. I just  can't stop myself.

MP3 Player
Remember the MP3 player I bought? Listen to this. I was at work Friday. I had just walked in from the bus stop. I get to my office. I grab the MP3 player, having listened to NPR on the whole way in, and try to turn it off. That sounds simple enough. But, wait. The light is still on. The drive is running. I can feel the ever so slight vibration. That should not happen. None of the keys respond. The thing is locked up. Nothing seemed to work, so I though it in my bag and got on with my life. Eventually the battery wore down. I charged the device back up and it seems to be working again. That really pisses me off. Stand alone devices should not lock up. They should be exhaustively tested and rendered reliable. I bet the frigging iPod would not have done this.
The whole interface on this thing just seems "hokey". It just feels like some one threw it together on a weekend for pocket change. It was cheep, but it shows. The drive capability seems to work great. The music plays with no skips. The unit seems sturdy enough. The buttons work OK. They are kind of funny feeling. There is no way to run the device without looking at it. When it licks up, it isn't worth a dime. I have to recommend that people pass on this one.

Saturday
Well my appointment helping some one fix their computer has been moved to tomorrow. I went out with some friends this afternoon for lunch.
Ever-Crack
The talked extensively and obsessively about Ever-Crack 2. The could not help themselves. They tried talking about work. Soon enough, we found our way back to Ever-Crack. They tried talking ab out food. We worked our way back to Ever-Crack. One of my friends said something like "Kelly should have known this was going to happen." Like I care. They all seem to have fun. They want me to become as immersed as they are. I just can't bring myself to play those games. If you don't go the extra mile of doing out-of-game research, you will be stomped in the virtual world.
After lunch
I am burning some data DVDs. I'm watching some old X-Files episodes. I don't have to go to my friend's place to fix her computer now. I don't know what to do with myself. I suppose I'll keep up the good work.

New Computer
I keep hitting Dell's web site looking for deals. Over the Thanksgiving break, Dell was running an offer that basically threw in a free flat panel monitor. It was pretty close to the computer I'm looking for. Dells are so expensive for the numbers. They make great machines. I recommend them all the time. I missed the deal over Thanksgiving. Now, the prices have gone up. What is a geek to do? I hate buying off the shelf. I want "my" computer. I'm tired of building them. I always manage to get lazy and screw it up somehow. The ones I build always run hot, or develop a legion of gremlins. I'm going to wait until Dell runs another sale.

Old Leather Jacket
When I was 19 or so I got it in my head that I wanted a leather concert jacket. It was this biker type jacket that actually had zipper removable sleeves. I'm just trying to think why someone would cut the sleeves off their leather jacket. Well, The Who were coming to the Astro Dome that year. The jacket went on sale and I ordered the official tour jacket. $200. I got my parents to put it on their American Express Card. My dad said "wait till the bill comes in to give me the money." He has always been a fair man. I got the jacket and loved it. I'm waring it as I type. It is freezing in here. When the bill came in, the company had double billed us. My parents contested the charge via American Express. The company apparently double billed everyone, because they went out of business. My parents never ended up paying the bill. I never even went to the concert.
On a different note; Recently, Cynthia and I helped Katelyn put a blog together. She has recently given it up and gotten on with her life. Well she just turned fifteen. Which means my jacket is older than she is. I bought it in the Spring. She was born in the Fall. Yee-gads, I'm old.

Pedestrian Points
I've ridden with several people who say things like "The chick pushing the baby carriage is worth double points." I have said stupid things like that myself. The simple fact is that people behind the wheel of a car feel a superiority to those walking down the street. Our cities, particularly Houston, are designed for cars, not pedestrians. Someone is paying attention. Some cities are trying to make a difference. I say the change needs to come in those who drive, not those who walk.

A private study released Thursday concluded that sprawling, newer cities in the South and West tend to be built with wide, high-speed roads that are especially dangerous for walking. "So much of our transportation system is designed for cars and only cars," said Anne Canby, president of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, which issued the report. The group advocates balanced transportation. ...  "Wide roads, speeding traffic and a lack of crosswalks or sidewalks can make walking a deadly activity," the report said. "There simply are not enough pedestrian facilities." ...  "It's changing the culture so the person in the SUV on the cell phone knows that it's their responsibility to stop and respect the pedestrians," Yahoo News (AP)

It is just like everything else. It takes a huge stack of bodies before any one pays attention. Tobacco kills more people than guns. Drunk drivers kill more people than died in some wars. One child stubbys a toe on a slide in Kentucky and they are all band.

Ornethopter

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a nutty professor and his flying machine. This is straight out of one of those old Disney flicks from the fifties.

"It feels like going over a speed bump every second. It is a little like being on a vibra-bed," DeLaurier said. "I don't think the ornithopter will have any practical advantages for commercial vehicles." Nonetheless, microplanes with flapping wings could prove to be of interest to the military, because such a vehicle can achieve lift quickly. Ornithopter drones can also hover. SRI International and the University of Toronto a few years ago created a hovering plane called the Mentor for a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency project. CNet News

Song

Artist:	Pearl Jam [ Search RP ]
Song:	Nothing As It Seems
Album:	Binaural [ Search RP ]

Better War Through chemicals
Our tax dollars at work. I've heard of LSD tests on soldiers to see if they could ignore weird stuff happening all around them, ignore pain, ignore the fact that they were in a war, and keep fighting all the time.

If it's good enough for ravers, it's good enough for G.I.s. That's the thinking, apparently, behind the Army's decision to test the animal tranquilizer Ketamine as away to soothe injured soldiers. The drug – known in the clubs has "Special K" – has been reducing party-goers to gurgling blobs for more than a decade. This year, the Army has been running final, phase III Food and Drug Administration trials on a quarter-dose nasal inhaler of "K," to see if it can substitute for morphine. . . . THERE'S MORE, DUDE: Back in '64, the Army decided it'd be a good idea to give 60 of its soldiers inhalable LSD. DefenseTech

Here is a copy of the PDF document from DefenseTech telling about the experiments on soldiers in the sixties. It is hard to read. Would someone please read it and summarize in the comments. Thanks.
Hey Crispen, you should dig that crazy declassified LSD stuff.

Tank Silencer
I'm not sure what this thing really is.

My buddy Rob found the "tank" here. I've found this image in a couple of places. No one seems to know what purpose the cylinder performs. If it is some sort of test device, why paint it camouflage? It has me stumped. Those little brackets on the top of each section of cylinder must be crane mounts. I can't explain it, but it just looks like those things are full of compressed air, like inner-tubes. If that were the case, the metal structure would not look so stout.

Strange that it looks slightly like a fallous! Maybe it's a pun about the army playing with their weapons? The Humor Archives

Here's another photo that's doing the rounds on the internet. It's captioned 'Tank Silencer'. I have no idea what this device is actually used for, but somehow I don't think it's a tank silencer. So this would be a case of 'real picture, false caption.' The Museum of Hoaxes

Some one please find this thing out there and let me know WTF!! it is.

Boxing Day
What the hell is Boxing Day? It is the day after Christmas.
Why do I mention this? There was a murder of two police officers in England last year on Boxing Day. It was a top story and about the hundredth time I heard the term I had to go look it up. It was a particularly brute murder involving an audio recording of one of the officers begging for his life before being shot in the head.

A former US Marine was found guilty today of the cold-blooded murder of traffic policeman Ian Broadhurst on Boxing Day last year. David Bieber, a bouncer and steroid abuser who is wanted in the US for a murder plot, was also convicted of the attempted murders of two of Pc Broadhurst's colleagues. . . . [The jury members] were unaware that he was a drug dealer who had fled to the UK from Florida where he was wanted by police over a plot to hire a hit-man to kill a love rival. He was also suspected of hiring the same gunman to murder his former girlfriend, but the attempt on her life failed. news.Scotsman.com

West Texas
I have a buddy who recently went to some park in West Texas for a 3 day hike. No, I didn't go. He will not give me a written description of what happened, or I would quote him here. Check out the full list of pictures (Click on the image).



Please take a look at the pictures and let me know what you think. I will probably strong arm my friend for something in writing to post here. From his verbal description it sounded like a challenging blast. Mostly he described the feel of being miles from anywhere in a place that took hours to drive to.

They hiked through a cloud where everything was so wet that it seemed to sweat right in front of your eyes.
They camped twice, having to bring everything they needed the whole time including water on their backs.
They saw plants that only exist on the mountain where they hiked.

I went hiking in West Texas many moons ago. It was a life altering experience. I have to say, I'll never do it again. I'm not sure I'm glad I did it. It's done. I survived. I am glad these guys went. Some of the guys on this trip go hiking all the time.

Song

Artist:	Hank Dogs [ Search RP ]
Song:	18 Dogs
Album:	Bareback [ Search RP ]

Firefox
This guy has a review of Firefox. I like his list of must have extensions. I use Image Zoom a bunch as well.

Wrong
I wonder down the street listening to music. Maybe it was the news. I was listening to myself. I was listening to those little gut feelings. God is perfect. God can do anything. If I ask God to fix me, and God does not, then God does not want me fixed. I must fit God's plan somehow. I've said before that it is God's plan, not mine.
Life is too short to feel like this all the time. I cannot just get over it. I've been like this all my life. Perhaps I just don't know how to be happy.
Oh, well, I'm off to pay bills, do the dishes, finish laundry, mope around, climb the walls, scream at God and fall asleep worrying about death, all the while afraid to live.
I'll try to stop whining about this stuff. It does help to write about it.

Al Quida in Texas
From Out of Water

When my unit was conducting vehicle checkpoint operations is Iraq we came upon numerous vehicles with Texas registration. We would take pictures of the registration stickers for later investigation. Seems pretty clear how this particular vehicle got to Fallujah: stolen in TX, taken across the border into Mexico, put in a sea-land container and then placed on a ship, shipped to Egypt/Lebanon/Jordon and sold on the black market, bought by terrorist, driven to Iraq. Out of Water

I remember reading years ago that vehicles taken off the streets of my fair city of Houston have been tracked to the Mexico City police force, Sandinista Army, farm vehicles in the Australian outback, and now to the mean streets of Iraq. The blog link above quotes a story that says a Texas registered SUV was being stripped and filled with explosives for use as a car bomb in Falluja. It was found in a mosque. Houston has one of the highest car insurance rates I've heard of. Something like one in five Chevy trucks will be stolen that is registered in Southeast Texas. I wish I knew where I read that. We are supplying Central America and apparently the Middle East with affordable transportation.
Dammit, I'm sick of being mocked and taken advantage of by the rest of the world.

Russia's anti missile missile
Russia has a system similar to the U. S. missile protection system in the testing faze.

Russia has successfully tested a modernized anti-ballistic missile at a range in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, its defense ministry says. . . . The test suggests Russia has a working system in place around Moscow as the US presses ahead with the deployment of its new anti-ballistic missile (ABM). BBC

It seems that many countries get bent out of shape of a defensive anti missile system. They know it will just make the U. S. and now Russia more arrogant and self confident when pushing other countries around. There is some treaty this stuff violates from well before people thought it was feasible. Oh, and from long before Iran had intercontinental ballistic nuclear weapons. Oh, wait, Iran doesn't have those yet, they are just doing research.

In 1995, Iran signed $940m in contracts with the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy to complete a commercial nuclear power plant, and instantly became part of the nuclear weapons proliferation puzzle. Why, the experts began to ask, would Iran, a nation with huge supplies of natural gas, commit itself to an expensive nuclear power program that could not possibly generate electricity as cheaply as its natural gas program - unless of course the real plan was to gain the capability to make its own nuclear weapons. Guardian

Between Iran, Pakistan  and North Korea, it is no wonder the larger "super powers" are antsy. Maybe there was something to that whole "Axis of Evil" thing. You think? It sounds like the Russians could have saved themselves some headaches and just not sold a bunch of nuclear stuff to Iran in the first place.

Now it makes sense.
I wondered why Israelis were so upset by this story from The Guardian.

Of all the revelations that have rocked the Israeli army over the past week, perhaps none disturbed the public so much as the video footage of soldiers forcing a Palestinian man to play his violin. . . . The rightwing Army Radio commentator Uri Orbach found the incident disturbingly reminiscent of Jewish musicians forced to provide background music to mass murder. "What about Majdanek?" he asked, referring to the Nazi extermination camp.

I remember a scene in Schindler's List (Oh my God, I spelled that right on the first try) where this was depicted. Now I'm torn.

Lease
I have to give my apartment  complex notice by the end of December. The bastards want sixty days notice, or they charge you an arm and a leg. Who let that bill pass? Well, I HATE moving. I mean, I HATE moving. I would love to stay, except for the neighbors. They are mean and loud.  I want to buy a new computer, except I live in a shitty neighborhood and I don't want the DELL boxes to show up at the front office. I HATE moving. Now I have a one in a million chance at a job down town. I would love to live in the city. Well, except for all the people. Stuff is nice, but the people get in the way of it all. Rent is due day after tomorrow. I promised myself I would write a letter requesting my rent amount for next year on December first. That way, I'll have a one time shot to go looking around for another apartment, and some time to pack and higher some movers. I HATE moving. Some one needs to come up with a prohibitively expensive business plant that simply moves you in one shot. They show up in the morning and take your keys from you at work. They disappear for several hours. They don't bug you with any details. You simply show up at your new place. They hand you the key and you hand them a check. Behold, you are moved. I HATE moving.

Ukraine
The Ukraine is in some real trouble. Every one is worried about the money. Two guys have claimed victory in the latest presidential election. There is evidence of fraud in the election. The Ukraine has a bunch of cheep experienced labor and Russia (supported by one of he "presidents") and Europe (supported by the other "president") both want the country in their flock. If something doesn't give soon, it is going to be a nasty mess.

Work Email
Didn't I just gripe about my work email going down? Now, I'm really stuck. I have no idea where I left off on stuff. I leave that kind of information in the Outlook task list. I leave it there, because the company says to do that kind of thing. The email came back online after a while, but the network ground to a halt with loud squeaks and clunking noises.

News Updates
One thing I noticed this weekend, MSM (Mainstream Media) didn't update many of their web pages very thoroughly. Until about 10:00 Monday, Reuters didn't have a single RSS feed update since the 23rd. However, the blog-sphere was updated pretty religiously. True, not every blog was updated every day, but many were. At least one had a guest author because the regular author was in Libya on assignment. I was joansing for news and my only fix was blogs.

From Little Green Footballs

A masked Palestinian woman helps a boy to hold a toy gun near other children during a rally in support of Hamas movement in the northern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Jabalia.(AFP/Mohammed Abed)

Yes, this kind of makes me ill. Someone has to show you how to hold a gun. My parents taught me. This is a display of children holding guns to make a political point.  I've never met any one raised in the Middle East who was willing to tell me about their childhood. I have to say, this photograph is beyond my tolerance level for culture shock.

Songs

Artist:	John Anderson [ Search RP ]
Song:	Seminole Wind
Album:	Seminole Wind [ Search RP ]

Artist:	Portishead [ Search RP ]
Song:	Glory Box
Album:	single [ Search RP ]

Poker
Poker was fun. We played Texas hold-em. When I was out I went in and watch SciFi channel on a 61 inch TV. Nice evening.
I'm not sure what age every one was, but we all seemed close. The p;lace we plaid was one of the guys houses. He is single and has a really nice house. The one guy who was married there seems to have had a hard time of it. I won't go into details.
I lost $20. I gave up and went and watched SciFi on the 61 inch TV. Did I mention that already?

Life
I'm watching the Incredibles. I've missed my calling. I should have been a super villain. I'm already good at rants. I have a good hair style for the job. I'm strange and might qualify as the "quiet" type. Most of my big schemes tend to fail in the end. I'm a jerk. I'm on the edge. I'm a loner. I have a dark sense of humor. hmmm. I need to update my resume. Oh, and get one of those snazzy outfits. And, I need the whopping great bags of money it takes to build and maintain a layer. I'll need minions. I'll have to find some cool top secret technology too. This could work.

Saturday
I hope something interesting happens today. I'm getting anxious. So far today I've accomplished nothing. I can't even bring myself to fold the cloths in the dryer. I haven't even eaten the customary sandwich.
My parents are trimming the hedges in the front of the house. I'm watch Anaconda (4 I think). Poker is tonight. Well, we hope.

Links / News
It's a Dan-derful Life from IOWAHAWK (I found it on Little Green Footballs)

Turkey Day
It was great. Ate too much, drank three glasses of wine. Watched a bunch of TV. Shot the breeze with friends. It was great.

Song

Artist:	Fairport Convention [ Search RP ]
Song:	Matty Groves
Album:	Liege & Lief [ Search RP ]

New Flashlight
I ordered a new LED flashlight. I have to say, it is the brightest LED I've ever seen. It has a nice field and been. I do have a fixation for flashlights. It says water proof to 100 meters. That at least means it will not go down with the first  drop of rain. We will see how many hours of useful light I get out of it.

News/Links
Here we go (Iran)
Iran refuses to allow inspections or to shut down several centrifuges. I could have told you this was coming. They close their governing house (parliament) with official chants of "death to America" "death ti Israel" and those in Europe think they are going to comply on one damn thing? The Europeans didn't even require Iran to stop a Plutonium system. Who's side are those guys on anyway? ... Well, some one is keeping watch.

Song

Artist:	Greg Brown [ Search RP ]
Song:	Who Woulda Thunk It
Album:	In The Dark With You [ Search RP ]

Artist:	Be Good Tanyas [ Search RP ]
Song:	Rain and Snow
Album:	Blue Horse [ Search RP ]

Boring Day
It has been the most boring day. Even the news is boring. It feels kind of good though. It's raining outside. It is muggy and not too warm. I did one load of laundry. I made it to the store for bread and the like.

Lawyers and Blogs and the Truth, Oh My
I'm noticing several blogger talk about receiving letters to stop talking about (criticizing) what someone says. Some one writes something in a blog about a web page, then the web page owners get a bunch of lawyers and try to shut the bloggers up. It cracks me up. The web page folks spout some bullshit about politics and then get all pissy about some one calling them on it. They should save the lawyers' fees and spend more money and effort checking their facts. "We don't need to tell the truth, we need more lawyers." It is that pesky constitution again.
Every word you write on the internet is immediately ready for criticism. I think these people are more used to writing books. There, you are able to complete a complex thought before every one starts bitching that you are full of crap. Grow up, don't lawyer-up. You are free to say quite a bit in this country. People are free to say you are full of shit to.

Thanksgiving
Tomorrow is Turkey day. I'm off to a friend's house to enjoy a sort of traditional turkey dinner. I did the same thing a couple of years ago and it was a blast. There will not be any where as many people this time. Just a few dregs of social misfits. I will be the only one there without a significant other.

Wish and Wonder
It's cold outside. I think that is appropriate for Thanksgiving day. I wish I could say I was packing for the family trip to wherever. My wife is putting the kids to bed. I finished my honey-dos today so I'll have a day to myself when we get back. Or, maybe I wish I could say that I was working on my PHD over the holiday, or volunteering to help someone. Maybe building a house with Carter.  Maybe in Iraq, a career officer, squatting in a hole somewhere looking forward to my turkey flavored MRE. I'm half way up the scale. I'm not homeless and I'm not Trump. I am a member of the great and powerful American middle class. We make America possible. And, I'm holding up my end all alone. My luck, I'll have to be a pallbearer at my own funeral. Did I wish at some point to do it all myself? I bet I did. By mistake, I said that I wanted to do it all myself. To prove that I could. Well, I've done it. Now I wish to do it alone no more.
God, I wish I had someone to share tomorrow with. You know what I mean. Someone special who finds me special. What happened? Where did I go wrong?

P. S.
I tried not to type the above paragraphs. I stopped and deleted them twice, but they just kept coming back. Sorry.

Links
Simpson's personality test.
Bob Marley.

WOW
I've been looking for news about new energy sources. This blog (Winds of Change) has compiled quite an amazing list of recent developments. I don't have real idea of what will go in the tank of your next car, or what will generate the electricity in your home in ten years. They all sound like good ideas to me.

Writing
I have a friend who recently asked me about writing. She thinks she can write. That is all it really takes. I don't know if I can write well or not. I put the words down on the page. Now there are software based systems to write for you. These systems are in their infancy today. Most people are not creative. I suppose computers will not be required to achieve a genuine or unique thought either. The publishers would hand you a bowl full of fingernail clippings if you were willing to pay for it. They are in it for the money.
I enjoy writing. I am enjoying typing this right now. I don't really care if any one is reading this or not. I used like having it out there.
The one thing that I've always wanted to do is write fiction. The trouble is, I'm not very good at it. Perhaps practice would help. I'll spare you from proving my point. I enjoy reading sci-fi, but I'm terrible at writing it. The only thing I seem to be good at is writing anecdotes. I wrote a purely factual account of meeting a cat a couple of months ago. I got some positive response. I enjoyed writing it too.

Smoosh
I walked over to my friend's cube at work today. It is Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I'm taking tomorrow off, so this is my Friday. I had already gotten most of my work done for the day. It wasn't even lunch time. We chit-chatted about inconsequential stuff for a moment and I noticed her tweak one little rod on her desktop toy. It is one of those magnetic rod and steel ball constructor set doo-hickies. I have one much like it. She looked at the toy with quiet awe. I reach over as smooshed it flat (no harm done). Her heart skipped a beat. She gasped. and you would have thought I kicked her dog. I made some goofy construction that I knew she would instantly undo when her will came back. I'm glad we have a long break before Monday. Though she has already rebuilt her masterpiece, she will not forgive me by Monday.

Oceans
I learned a fact a long time ago. If you drop a basketball into a puddle of water and pick it up. The damp on the surface is deeper than the Earth's oceans, relatively speaking.
If I were able to shrink the earth down to the size of a basketball, how much would it weigh?

Links / News
What is wrong with letting Amtrack go out of business? What is wrong with the government taking it over (nationalizing it)?
VR Helmet Comparison Chart

Plane Crash
What did I just say about a plane crash? There was a bad one in Houston today. We heard about it at work this morning.  The weather is nasty. We speculated on what might have caused the trouble. It turns out, George Bush senior. was scheduled to take that plane on a business trip. That is why it was flying into Hobey Airport.  The plane clipped a light pole on the Beltway. Those things are quite high, but not so high you would expect planes to clip them. I wonder if it hit the pole after something else caused it to loose altitude. That was a corporate jet. I've heard those things are pretty reliable. I might be wrong. Here is another opinion. (from the Daily Brief) People have horrible opinions about this.

European opinion.
I've said many times that we should not take the Europeans opinions too seriously. Europeans are going to do what the Europeans do best, sit on their hands and bitch until America bails them out. Here is another opinion. (from Tim Blair)

Asshole
I hope this guy (the fan who threw the cup) gets seriously smacked by the legal system. I don't care who did what, players, who make millions, should never go after a fan. If the fan pulled a knife, or gun, I would say different. The guy threw a cup of ice. Look Mr. Multi-millionaire, (wait, not so much any more (hehe)) give it a rest and be the bigger man. You have a million impressionable kids worshiping your every move. Looser. I wish they would fire you and sue you for the hundreds of millions this may cost the NBA.

Ah, it is Us vs Them
Even a tolerant people will tern on the intolerant. When people who think they are the most welcoming folks in the world find themselves under siege, they will tern. They will defend their homes with the same ferocity as grisly will protect her young. It cannot be the people on the other side of the world in trouble. It cannot be people they do not know who are threatened. It must be them, their children, their way of life, their existence, their place in history, their legacy, and not one item less. They will tern, unless it is too late, unless they have been terned against.

Links
Some disturbing pictures from Falluja. (Thanks Cynthia)
A cool Flash experiment showing a battle in ASCII format.

Artist:	Ollabelle [ Search RP ]
Song:	Soul Of A Man
Album:	Ollabelle [ Search RP ]

Poker
We are going to try poker again this evening. ... Holy crap. I typed that last sentence and my phone rings to cancel. It terns out we have no real place to play. That is freaky. We will try again next Saturday.

Ordering Food.
No poker tonight. I had my mouth all watering for something bad for me. I figure I'll order some Chinese food. I call the place up and an Arabic guy answers the phone. Hey, it is the 21st century. I start placing my order. He doesn't speak English. I mean, not at all.  I can hear people in the background speaking English and Chinese. Never mind. I call another place that delivers subs. It is another Arabic guy. He speaks more english, but not enough to get the whole "no tomatoes" concept across. BAH! One more try. I call a third place. This one is a pizza place that also does subs and salads. A (cute sounding) Mexican girl answers who speaks better English than I do. I can't wait to find out if there are tomatoes on anything.