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LiveLeak really needs to do something about their messed up video aspect ration on their embed script.

I'm also getting fed up with people who film things on their iPhones and hold the phone sideways. The phone is smart enough to point that direction up, but you get these hard t owatch sideways videos that make you feel like you are looking out a door frame on to the world.

Still, this is not a bad video. The idiot in the stolen car, well, I hope it is stolen the way he is treating it, has a very near miss. This could not have been planned. without some video tricks.

Steroid

Here is something kind of scary. Remember I got a steroid shot for my sinus and chest cold. They are supposed to help you heal. Well, my back had been hurting for about a month. It is the old neck injury I got from a car crash back in 96 or so. I've blogged about it before. It is when my first wife and I had to rent a Ford Explorer when the Escort was in the shop. We got rear ended and tossed around inside the cab a bit. My head was turned when we got hit because the Mustang that hit us had slammed on the breaks and made a loud screech. I really think this made everything worse. I wish I could say, just go limp, but who the hell is going to think of that when you want to see the wreck that is about to happen?

Ever since about a week after that I have had a spot in my back that hurts occasionally. My neck turned just right will set it off. At some point about a month ago I slept funny and have had a constant irritation in my back no matter how I slept or how I turned my head. That is, right up to about six hours after the steroid shot. I'm fine now. No wonder people get hooked on that stuff.

Here is a video that should scare most off of steroid use. Don't watch unless you have a strong stomach.

ABZ (Aggressive Belief Zealotry)

There is a problem with Politically Correct Sp each beyond the removal of human sensitivity and emotional attachment. The terms you decide to go with must be generic enough not to single out people who have not yet been officially diagnosed with a label. That is, people should not be offended until someone in an official place of power has dubbed them with a term. Yet, the terms have to be catchy and buzz-word capable so politicians can use them in speeches to group people without actually grouping any one. If it helps a politician speak loudly about nothing, it is a win.

Not all Muslims are terrorists, but nearly all terrorists of late have been Muslim. The Oklahoma bomber is the only exception that pops in to my mind. If memory serves, that was in retaliation for the Branch Davidians that were slaughtered in 1995.

This new term would have covered them as well as all the religious zealots out there.

The term ABZ (Aggressive Belief Zealotry) identifies any one who believes in anything enough to take action that bring harm or damage to property in order to further their cause.

The term ABZS (Aggressive Belief Zealotry Syndrome) refers to the condition and list of symptoms leading up to taking such actions.

There you have your buzz-word  You have your generic term that refers to believing in anything strong enough to bring harm or damage to property and you have your psychobabble term to identify people who show signs of falling in to that category even before they do anything. This will allow people to talk about bad people with a term that does not identify the reason for their belief, only the strength of that belief and the potential of directing that energy toward harm or property damage.

We should immediately stop using the term War on Terror and start pushing the idea that believing in something is fine, but bringing harm to someone else or damaging property in order to get your message across is bad.

ABZ and ABZS might be abused and applied to gang bangers who tag walls. These folks could then be put in the crime database and hit with terrorism level surveillance. There are million examples I'm sure. 

By attacking the conviction and depth of the belief and not the belief itself, the political correctness of the attack may be held in good standing even though the result of profiling and singling out would be the same. Once labeled in a manor that is politically correct, people will not fear singling out terrorists and dealing with them appropriately. There will be some blow back because so many ABZS sufferers are Muslim, but that can be hand waved as targeted hot spot. The abuse of the term will only serve to diversify the community of people settled with it.

When life hands you lemons

Blame the lemon lobby.

Find the deepest lemon pockets and sue.

Start an anti-lemon blog.

Taste one of the lemons and follow life around mocking everything they say in an exaggerated pucker lemon voice.

Patten jack-o-lemons. Make a fortune and buy life's employer in a hostile takeover. Then, make life get lemon aid every hour, on the hour. 

Firefox is pissing me off

Firefox on Linux has some genuine issues. I'm using Ubuntu and the version Firefox that comes with the stable updates. Ever since 3.0 I've noticed the same issue. It is getting worse and it is pissing me off more and more. I'm learning how to use Chromium-Browser. I do not like using Chromium-browser because it is Google. It kind of pisses me off too, but I can live with it until either Firefox get's its shit together or Opera does. Opera has it's own set of pains in my ass.

The Firefox issue is the same one I've complained about before. At seemingly random intervals the browser simply takes a break and hammers my system. This happens on all open windows at the same time. It makes videos running in Flash skip. It makes my typing erratic. It grinds my machine. The issue causes full crashes. It get worse over time. Blah blah blah. I'm sick of dealing with it. Linux needs to focus on a different browser to be the default.

Opera seems to work. That is, Opera does not have the issue listed above. Opera does have issues with cut and paste and in Google Docs which bites me in the ass when I blog. This is unacceptable. It is a list of simple interface issues that keeps me from using Opera as my full time browser. Otherwise, I would love to. It is open source and other wise as fully usable as functioning Firefox on the same Linux system.

What happened tonight sent me over the edge. I have to jump through a couple extra hoops to blog from Chromium-Browser, but it is doable.

There I was using Chromium-Browser for everything except blogging. That is three tabs open. One on Gmail. One on Google Docs at the list of documents and one tab for my current day's blog entries. That is it. It doesn't seem to matter what I'm doing. Like I mentioned, the issue is kind of random except for the fact that it gets worse over time.

It used to be that if I shut Firefox down and then started it back up again, the problem would be fixed for some time. Not tonight. No. I tried this and it didn't seem to be working. The problem just came right back with a vengeance. I gave up and killed the running copy of Firefox and switched to editing my blog entries with Chromium-Browser regardless of the speed bumps.

After running for quite some time, Chromium-Browser was running well. It seemed to be hitting the CPU a bit hard. I have several copies open. I have everything running and if Chromium-Browser hits my machine hard while working, I'll forgive it for now.

I wanted to know what part of Chromium-Browser was hitting the CPU. It had to be Hulu. I killed the Hulu tab and the machine was still making noise. The fans do that. It is a massive drain on my sanity, but I'm too broke to fix or replace the problem. So, what is hitting the browser?

The next step in the diagnosis is to run 'top' and figure out what process is eating the system alive. <yelling> It was Firefox!!!! </yelling> Some retarded zombie process of Firefox was pulling 99% of on CPU, because Firefox is THANKFULLY nut multi-threaded. Otherwise Firefox would have been bogging my machine.

Firefox on Linux SUCKS!!!! Fix it or fix Opera. Opera will be easier. There is less wrong with it.

Base Jumping from that Dubai tour

The Burj Birdmen from Jan-Paul Bednarz on Vimeo.

This is awesome. I would never do this sort of thing. I might even complain about it when it is done in the U. S.. When I was a kid someone jumped off the 20 Vision tour or what ever it is called now days. They got busted the moment they landed. It still made for interesting conversation at school the next day.

Big rig ride

I have no idea why I like this.

Haiti pre-quake medical stats

Haiti is in agony; the earthquake has destroyed its buildings, homes, lives. But with regard to health care, there wasn't much to destroy in the first place. Even before the quake hit the capital, leaving its hospitals "abandoned or destroyed" the country's medical infrastructure was in shambles. Three fourths of the population had no access to any kind of health care as of 2008, according to the International Crisis Group. There are no emergency wards to speak of in the country, and only one doctor for every 3,000 citizens, compared with seven docs per 3,000 people in the U.S. Private hospitals charge fees that put decent medical care out of reach for everyone but the Haitian elite, and public clinics, according to an April report from Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF), "are often plagued by management problems, strikes, and shortages of staff, drug, and medical supplies." It's no surprise, then, that despite Haiti's recent strides toward a more stable society, the country had what MSF's operation director called in April an "immediate public health crisis" long before the quake. Life expectancy is 61 years (Americans, on average, live to 78), and out of every 100,000 pregnant women, 630 die young of complications, a rate 50 times greater than it is in the U.S. Haiti's infant mortality is the worst in the western hemisphere, at 60 deaths per 1,000 births, compared with U.S. rates of 7 per 1,000. A third of babies are born underweight. Malnourishment, according to MSF, is "endemic." Almost 4 percent of people have HIV, compared to 0.3 percent of the U.S. population. In the slums, there's open sewage; everywhere, there's undrinkable water and the malaria-bearing mosquitoes that breed in it. NewsWeek

It sounds like Haiti's plan for disaster recovery was to depend on the kindness of every other country in the world. Not a good plan. What will the death toll be? I shutter thinking of the stacks of bodies that were on the streets in some of the internet videos. The looks on people's faces were as devastated as their surroundings. Someone was noted for asking [from memory] "Where are we going to bury all these poor people."

The remainder of the story quoted above is about the global recession and general apathy that people will have because, let's face it, people have their own problems to deal with. It is day three and people are complaining that the news cycle is moving forward.

Welcome to the 24 hour world. Actually, you are lucky to keep someone's attention for three consecutive uninterrupted minutes these days. Everything is here today and gone tomorrow. So many people, organizations, companies, products, events, and family are all clambering for every moment of our existence that the competition is killing us. Politicians complain that they have to compete with celebrities for the attentions of the Paparazzi. Parents who want celebrity status make outrageous claims that their kids are in a run away balloon to make the evening news.

How can a natural disaster hope to contend?

Day so far

I got up today and couldn't breath worth a dang. For the last couple of weeks, since the first, I've had one or two symptoms of illness. It all started with a sore throat and some chest congestion. That seemed to go away after some expectorants and lots of water. The cold never really went away. I battled it with gargling, the nose flush thing that Nat got me. For a while, it was looking good. Funny how a week can go by between paying attention to these sorts of things.

Last week my health seemed just fine. I had a runny nose and a cough. Nothing big. Then, the last two days, I'm tired and ready to pass out after exertion. My head is stuffed to the ... gills. My throat is raw and my cough is too frightening to describe. I missed Tuesday. I missed today. I hate having missed two sick days this early in the year. It just rubs me wrong.

The doctor gave me an antibiotic and a pill cough medicine. I'm going to continue taking the expectorants and decongestants. They will not conflict with the prescriptions.

The thing that seems to have given me a second lease on life is the steroid shot. My god I feel fantastic. Well, compared to how I felt a couple hours ago. my symptoms are still there, but I don't care. I have some energy and my back stopped hurting. It is a good thing those shots are not readily available. The abuse would be proliferate.

It cost $103 if memory serves to get out of CVS. They carry polarized fit over sunglasses. I'll have to remember that. I wonder if the Democratic Republic of Obama health care plan will help that cost out in the future. Somehow I doubt it.

I've had days like this.

Called T-Mobile

I called T-Mobile and asked about my phone and warranties and the whole bit. Remember the GPS is dead on my G1. I like the phone. I've been paying a fortune in insurance on the phones. It is nearly a thousand dollars between Nat and myself. They are going to exchange the phone. If they don't like what they see, they will charge me $100. I don't think any parts are missing. The phone has not gotten wet or anything. There are no cracks or anything. I'm sure the exchanged phone is refurbished. I'll deal. Half the functions on the phone use the GPS. 

Wish me luck.

Notes:

Now that Chrome has adblock and flash-block ad extensions, it is worth using as a primary browser on my Linux box at the house. Everything works. I'm still missing the copy-html, but I'll live. Firefox seems to be getting worse, not better. It crashes and grinds to a halt after less and less time it seems. Opera has some issues that prevent me from using it as a primary browser. Chrome is really the only other choice on Linux as I find it. Trouble is, Chromium blows when it comes to making blogs. Nothing pastes with the proper formating. You have to jack with the cod a bunch to get what you want. You can't keep links when you try to use google docs as a repository. It cracks me up that google docs works worlds better with Firefox than Chromium. Get on the stick Google.

For some reason my computer at work stopped automatically mounting flash drives and anything USB honestly. It is amazing how much of a pain in the ass that is. I have no idea what service to restart to get it back up and running.

Haiti's GDP is %80 foreign aid. Much of the economy is barter and there for not kept track of and taxed by the government.

Nat thankfully gave me a ride to work this morning in the rain. We caught Kasia walking in. Nat would like the world to know that she does not look like she just had a baby a couple months ago. Kasia mentioned that her cloths let her know every day.

Wire frame Lambo. I heard about this on Cafination.

Barter with your bank

A friend and I were talking about winning a million dollars in the lottery. Even at 4% which pays like $40,000 a year, you have to put $30,000 back in to keep up with inflation. It looks like inflation is going to go up much higher than interest rates. Banks only give special deals to rich people who they think will bring more business in to the bank. Lottery winners are not on the 'in' list.

Basically, you can't win. Inflation exists to keep working people down. Think about it. Barter has no inflation. If there are many sharp stones around and few shiny stones, the rate of exchange of sharp stones to shiny stones will increase. Inflation. If the demand for pelts drops and the demand for salt goes up, the rate of exchange of pelts for salt will drop. Deflation.

Guns vs butter.

Try telling that to your bank. Try telling that to the tax man. Governments hate barter because they make no taxes off the transaction. Hillery Clinton said it best. "We tax everything." Every time money moves our beloved government takes a slice. If you leave your money sitting, inflation eats it alive. You have to struggle just to tread water. That is how the government likes it.

If you have an economy based nearly very much on barter you end up with Haiti. Millions of people with few government amenities and little regulation, such as building codes. When something bad happens, you get a poor response and much more damage than might have been. In the good times less than half the population had clean drinking water and less than a third had proper sewage.

Balance is the key.

Movies of late

There is some blow back against special effects and CGI. Some say 3D is finally going to take over and suck. There are so many gimmicks to distract from the bad movies that keep coming out of Hollywood. I'm not the only one who thinks 3D is an attempt at DRM (Data Rights Management). It is to prevent people from being able to just copy movies and distribute them.

I haven't seen a 3D movie. I wanted to go to a 3D movie last summer. Never made it. I wasn't bothered which one to go watch. Elle saw Up in 3D. Nat and i managed to miss all of them.

The experience of eating at Alamo is better than watching a movie in 3D. I would happily watch a 2D movie in a theater where I can have a beer and a BLT while watching the movie. Maybe even finish up with a slab of cheese cake. Worth it.

Besides, I do not want to deal with the glasses. I ware glasses to see and I've heard bad things about doubling up to watch a movie. Not every one's eyes are exactly 2.5 inches apart. The formula just doesn't work for every one. I've heard good and bad things about the technology from a dozen sources. I have no idea if it will work for me until I try it for myself.

Now 3D TVs are coming out. There are a couple of different technologies. There are a couple polarization mechanisms. Sony has a blinking glasses system that sounds interesting. The one that works and does not need glasses is some sort of laser technology that is supposed to be out in a couple years. Pilots use helmets with double heads up displays, one for each eye, that work fantastically from what I've read.

This is just one more way being legally blind is going to bite me in the ass.

Somewhere I read that 2009 was a very good year for movies monetarily. I believe it with ticket prices. Theaters need to remind themselves that they are a cheap way to get out of the house and not an social institution that is too big to be bypassed for some new distraction.

Barter with your bank

A friend and I were talking about winning a million dollars in the lottery. Even at 4% which pays like $40,000 a year, you have to put $30,000 back in to keep up with inflation. It looks like inflation is going to go up much higher than interest rates. Banks only give special deals to rich people who they think will bring more business in to the bank. Lottery winners are not on the 'in' list. 

Basically, you can't win. Inflation exists to keep working people down. Think about it. Barter has no inflation. If there are many sharp stones around and few shiny stones, the rate of exchange of sharp stones to shiny stones will increase. Inflation. If the demand for pelts drops and the demand for salt goes up, the rate of exchange of pelts for salt will drop. Deflation.

Guns vs butter.

Try telling that to your bank. Try telling that to the tax man. Governments hate barter because they make no taxes off the transaction. Hillery Clinton said it best. "We tax everything." Every time money moves our beloved government takes a slice. If you leave your money sitting, inflation eats it alive. You have to struggle just to tread water. That is how the government likes it.

If you have an economy based nearly very much on barter you end up with Haiti. Millions of people with few government amenities and little regulation, such as building codes. When something bad happens, you get a poor response and much more damage than might have been. In the good times less than half the population had clean drinking water and less than a third had proper sewage.

Balance is the key.

Triumph

The first climb is exceptional. The second climb is outstanding.

Notes:

I was sick yesterday. I am still sick today. I went to work all day.. I lasted only because of Tylenol Cold and Sinus. I'm on drugs. Working while sick is better than watching daytime TV.

Pragmatism. that is why Democrats are gathering around the majority leader, Henry Reed.

There is another Star Trek movie coming. I think they said summer 2012. This will be Star Trek 12. I wander how long it will take to have more movies than TOC (The Original Series) episodes. If memory serves, three were 64 episodes.

My twitter feed has become a Zombie story on the run. I put weather reports on Facebook. Everything else ends up here.

My phone not having GPS is pissing me off. It is amazing how much functionality of the phone depends on those elusive satellites. I have over a year left on my contract and new phones are hugely expensive buying off the shelf. I think I can fix my phone for $50 or $60, but do I want to? Is it worth it?

I saw Saw Six near the seashore. I never saw 3 or 4, but six is here. What happened to 5? Who cares?

Cowardice

I'm a coward. I am not so concerned about being a coward. I only fear being discovered.

I'm afraid of normal every day things like doing homework, and coughing too hard.

I'm afraid of popping my ears when I blow my nose because that is not good for them. 

I'm afraid of doing too many push-ups as I age. I'm afraid of doing too few push-ups while aging. 

I'm afraid of religion because I do not know which one is right. I'm afraid they are all all wrong.

I'm afraid of choosing the wrong mobile phone carrier because even if I live to 100 that is 1/50th of my life.

I'm afraid of having the wrong footwear on when the world collapses.

I'm afraid of joining a group on Facebook that makes me looks stupid.

I'm afraid of letting Elle surf the net.

I'm afraid of setting habits that people in the neighborhood might exploit.

I'm afraid of crossing the street even when the light is going my way.

I'm afraid of being a bad friend to people who deserve a good friend.

I'm afraid of not paying my own way.

I'm afraid of catching something every time someone coughs because I have in the past.

I''m afraid of being attacked because of the color of my skin on the bus.

I'm afraid of being a bad parent, husband, son, employee, Christian, home owner, geek, and coward.

I'm afraid I will never stand up for what is right.

I'm afraid I will miss the call.

I'm afraid the world will not know my name. I'm afraid the world will know my name.

I'm afraid the sky, the U. S., the west, the Earth is falling in to a pit of chaos.

I"m afraid of family getting sick. I'm afraid of me getting sick. I'm afraid of friends getting sick.

I'm afraid of that what I eat is killing me. I'm afraid of smoking, even though I never have.

I'm afraid of germs, virus, inoculations, ignorant indecisive scientists, and doctors who just know they are God.

I'm afraid of pretty women. I'm afraid of all women. I'm afraid of social awkwardness and saying the wrong thing.

I'm afraid of mediocrity and fame.

I'm afraid that Google will never learn how a spell checker is supposed to work.

I'm afraid that I will miss the greatest video opportunity.

I'm afraid I will accidentally film my own death.

I'm afraid the freedom of speech will only apply to those who say what every one else agrees with.

I'm afraid that everything will be copy righted or patented.

I'm afraid that human kind will simply stop wanting to survive and thrive.

I'm afraid I'm done. =]

Solving the Cube

This is one of the guys I work with. he is brilliant when it comes to puzzles and problems. He is right handed. I've noticed several patterns in this video. He looks at one side and manipulates the top row first. IF you look closely he flips the top to one side and almost in the same motion flips vertical columns one way or the other. Then flips the top side back to get a look at the new set of patterns. He rolls the cube around until he recognizes a pattern, orients the cube and repeats the moves until he gets the desired effect.

I used to think that people who could solve a cube in a very short time kept the whole cube in their mind and speed through several operations until they knew how to solve the color scheme. I was wrong. It is a collection of patterns and responses that achieve desired effects. The collection of patterns grows and is culled over time until the cube becomes a two minute distraction.

This theory mens there is hope.

Each corner of the cube has three colors. Each axis of the cube is fixed. You know what color is going to be round the corner of each side. Once you run through the patterns in y9our head, you start to realize there are only a few ways for each piece to fall in to place and a billion ways for them to fall out of place.  I worked this out many years ago when I took a cube apart to find out how it worked. There are patterns of movement that allow you to swap the corners of a solved side around so they line up with the correct middle color. The same is true about swapping middle side pieces. My friend her is a master. of pattern recognition. I'm glad he is on our side.

Evening tweets

Zombies held at bay for now. Stay tuned. It will be dark soon.

Making a run for it. Warm dry place to sleep or death!

Stopping fore supplies. Must stay wary.

Found food, warmth, family. Made it to the safest place I could. Will get a good nights sleep. Zombies be damned.

Ignore the gentle wrapping on the window seal late at night. There are terrors about and no good cane come in that way.

Story ideas

Story ideas for family and friends.

Mike: drives for the president.

Adam: saves the world by learning something and applying that knowledge.

Sandy: prey's and receives

Natalie: slays a dragon.

Elle: saves a school mate from drowning.

My next door neighbor: finds redemption and becomes a good father.

I got an imagination for my fortyth and drive for my forty first birthday. I'm asking for talent on my forty second.

Say it loud Newt

I can't touch that. We Americans need to make it clear that we are a we and we are not going to take it from them any more. Stop voting for who is pretty and says pretty things and vote fore someone who you would want to counsel your children on life and a career.

Ken's Birthday

X-Box

Opening cards

A couple of quick videos of Ken's Birthday party yesterday. More to come, slowly. There are a couple photographs. I just can't get motivated today.

I could tell you what Wisper is showing Ken on her phone that makes him say "ow", but then I would have to kill you. There were of course many missed photographic and video opportunities. It was not a wild party. It was fun. I enjoyed the company, cats and the wood burning stove on the driveway.

Thanks Chris for the Whataburger. I owe you a dinner.

Hey Adam ...

How to Brew a Good Cup of Coffee from Ben Helfen on Vimeo.

You are a coffee snob. Try this method of making the perfect cup of Joe and let me know how it goes.

Better wide angle review

Fine, I suck at reviewing things. This guy did a much better job of showing what the little wide angle lens that I got can do. I'm off to a birthday party this evening and I hope to get a couple shots worth posting.

For the moment, my goal is to simply get more media up. As I go I intend to learn more about it and make it tiny bits better as I go. Expect a bunch more bad stuff up before anything worth a damn falls in to place.

ignorance is bliss

Heaven and hell and indifference are in the same place.

They are all part of ignorance.

You cannot dream without ignorance.

If you know then there is nothing left to dream.

Dream about heaven, hell and indifference.

Ignorance is the fuel to dream.

Do not take from the tree of knowledge.

Stay and dream.

What's in a name?

The spelling of a Middle Eastern name is why no one knew the nicker bomber had a valid entry visa for the U. S.. I wonder if the middle eastern names will get standard spellings after this. That or an algorithm for finding similarly pronounced names with different spellings might be in order. There is technology that does this in other programs.

It is always going to be something trivial and stupid that lets the bad buys through. People think of all the big complex things and try to counter them or at least deal with them in some way. It is the simple stuff that bites you in the ass. The devil is in the details. How old is that saying? It is true in spades in an information age. This is just one metric. Who knows what little detail will cause the problem next.

the difference between steel and iron is that you do not knock the charcoal off the steel between foldings from the forge. Simple. it took thousands of years to catch on. With all other metals, you need to go ahead and knock off the charcoal. Iron/steel is different.

Maybe some people need to be treated differently than others. These differences will are defined by some kind of attribute like shifty eyes, clenched hands. nerves tick or any million actions that people perform every moment.

I like a formula that I heard on on a podcast. If you have 100 people in line for a plane, you have a maximum potential of 100 terrorists to filter. You have a nearly infinite number of ways a terrorist might sneak something on the plane to cause a problem.

Apartments

For years in Houston, I wondered why all the apartment buildings were going up. Every block had a new apartment complex on it.  No one was tiering down apartment buildings. When it happened, it made news.

Now that we have had real estate bubble burst, you would think that more people would leave houses and go to apartments. That hasn't really been the case it turns out. People don't have jobs. They have to move in with someone else or back home with their parents. Now there is a renter's market. Not just in Houston. I'm hearing that this has been true all over the U. S..

So, someone saw the housing bubble burst coming. They invested in places to rent. Makes sense. They are getting bitten in the ass for it.

More than once, I've felt a twinge for not waiting to buy a house when all the fist time buyer incentive stuff kicked in recently. I would not have gotten a loan I think. The price of my house keeps dropping. I'm not selling, so that will just save me in some taxes to be honest. I am very glad not to be in an apartment.

I hated renting only because I felt like someone had me by the short hairs. now it is just a Home Owner's Association. That is not as bad. I look forward to a day when I'm am totally out from under the umbrella of someone else telling me how to live on my own property.

Good Morning

We left one of the sinks dripping last night. We have some exposed pipes outside that are just plane difficult to cover. That is wistful, but works. It is only a couple nights a year. It is less wistful than the pips breaking. Less expensive too.

Speaking of pips breaking, Elle's school had a new fountain out front. Some sort of pipe had broken right out front not far from where we drop off Elle every morning was blowing a cloud of water all over a tree that had icicles all over it.

Nat had gone out in the freezing cold before every one got up and gotten pancake breakfast meals. We got to eat breakfast as a family this morning. How cool is that? Thank you Sweetie.

Notes:

My cough is still going. I feel much better. Nat's head still hurts. Elle feels pretty good too.

Work was not as nuts today. It was nice to have a  day where nothing really blew up. the last couple of weeks of last year Where nuts. the vacation was nice. The first week of this year has been pretty stacked. I finally got a day where I could stop and think and plan.

Elle was born back in aught-two. Or is it naught-two?

Predictions for 2010 from random blogs and podcasts

• Twitter will get snapped up by Microsoft or Google and will suck even worse.
  
• Blockbuster will go belly up or get bought and still suck.
  
• Chrome will pass Firefox in use.
• There will be some sort of social media that links people who live next door to one another.
• iTunes develops a flat rate plan for all the media (with limits I'm sure) you want.
• People realize how boring Second Life is and it folds.

Voting Democrat

One of the conservative blogs asked "What would it take for you to vote Democrat?" Their answer was stupid, but I thought about it for a minute. What would it take? What is my price?

I'm a life long Republican. I get ten days of vacation a year. If the Democrats got me twenty days of vacation a year, I would vote for the bastards. For a while any way. That is my price.

Software Version Numbers

A.B.C.D

A) Major version number
B) Minor version number
C) Patch number
D) Sub patch number (internal really, nothing to see here)

Sometimes I wish I could video our work discussions to explain to the rest of the world how developers think.  Today we had another talk amongst our developers in the long, long, long never ending quest for the perfect method of defining the version of a piece of software.

The way these things work is we stand in a circle and throw ideas and what-ifs back and forth in order to come to a conclusion on which number deserves to be incremented in the version. This sound like a very minor detail, but it can have major consequences.

General questions defining how to increment the numbers.

• What is a major/minor change?
• Define "sub patch".
• What numbers will customers care about?
• What should we be able to tell by looking at the version number only?
  

Every time you have a patch or a major upgrade headed out the door you go through the following list. They are in random order and have no priority over one another. They must all be gone through. I'm sure I'm missing half of the bullets.

• In which branch of the software development tracking database is the code going to reside?
• What does it fix?
• Does that look like a fix to the customer?
  
• What is the change compatible/incomputable with?
• What will it break?
• What behaviors will the customer have to change?
  
• What will customers have to do to adjust things?
• What will this cause us to have to adjust in the future?
• What industry standards are we hitting?
• Just because it is better doesn't mean people want it.
  
• What needs to be tested?
• What needs to be documented?
• What do we say in the release notes to sell this change?
  
• Will it piss marketing off (a valid concern)?
  
• Existing customers
• New customers
• Competition comparison
• Nag, nag, nag!!
  

"It is just a spelling change!" or "It isn't the same piece of software any more." It doesn't matter really.

It seems like we have this conversation every time we need to make a release. One of the developers said he will add ten more minutes to the seven days he of work hours he has spent on this topic over the last couple years. I'm right there with him.

I made an analogy that is apt for every one of these conversations. We all stand around and throw things back and forth until we feel like we are done and walk away. It is like a band of jugglers who all work in tandem to keep the pins in the air. The conversation is not done until we are all in sync.

Deadlines are a whole new matter.

Even on a patch release x.x.X.x, developers have it in their head that Tuesday at 15:00 is when they can check in the 3600 lines they have changed. They do not take in to account the four hours of documentation and building just for the release. That makes it Tuesday at 19:00 when the package hits the Site for download. That is really Wednesday at 08:00 for customers. Oh, wait, there are four days of testing that need to take place and we forgot to change a bunch of stuff in the user manual. That makes it Monday at 08:00. Meanwhile, the developers are working on the next minor release x.X.x.x.

"We already had the meeting for the next minor release x.X.x.x. That means all those changes will make it in to this version right? "

"NO! dammit! Remember those four days of testing and user manual changes?"

"Oh, we need to add one little spelling change to an error message." This is a valid thing to do, but you have to consider that it will cause all package to be rebuilt and even though they come from the same code base, they are now no longer the binary packages you tested for four or more days. You might have to do some testing over again. Is the change worth that many labor hours?

I'm skipping over the word "merge" on purpose because it causes me pain.

Social Sites

Twitter and Facebook are loosing their luster for me. I'm getting tired of reading them and I'm getting tire of writing comments on them. I just don't have anything interesting to say to be honest. The one liners were cool for a while. I'm short messaged out. What I have to say doesn't fit.

This doesn't mean I'm going become any more of hermit than I already am. I'm just not going to stick with hourly updates on every one. I've been checking both about once a day recently and I'm much happier with what I'm learning about people.

Now I'm upset that I paid so much for my phone. The Facebook programs I've tried suck. The web page on my phone blows. You can't get to the videos properly. Pictures look funky. It takes forever to load. All of that will get worked ou in the wash soon. Either phones need to run Flash or Flash needs to get replaced by something much much better all together.

Too many people are happy in my circle. I enjoy people who are mad for tweeting about how miserable they are and how every one is pissing them off. When they get happy for whatever reason I don't want ot follow them any more. This has happened a couple times. Fames people are usually boring in my experience..

Spammers and advertisers are rapidly catching up to social media. Every company got a web page. Every company has a fan page on Facebook and now they all have twitter feeds and blogs. I just don't care about what you have to say. Get off my internet!

I've already griped about the sand box affect of these sites. It seems like they, Facebook and MySpace, are getting worse at providing so many services you would never want to go to any other site. you cannot then reference your content from a third site like a blog on a different service. Someone has to pay for the bandwidth. It still pisses me off.

Notes:

When I was in middle school, I never thought I would make it to 2000. Now it is 2010. Funny how long it takes to go from 1999 to 2000 and from 2009 to 2010. it has been nearly a week and if I'm not paying attention, I still get it wrong nearly every time.

The Windows 7 call center has been about half as busy as Microsoft expected. That doesn't mean there are less troubles. There are many other ways of getting information. There are even Twitter bots answer questions.

George Lucas' dog, a malamute, was inspiration for both Chewbaca and the name Indiana as in Indiana Jones.

Coke  and Pepsi have the same pricing consultants.

Printer at work

I fixed a printer problem today. Well, it fixed itself while I was standing there. One of the guys at work had recently upgraded his video card ant the printer had stopped working. Here are some contributing factors.

• The printer was connected through a USB to old twenty some odd pin printer port connector.
  
• He had two USB to serial port adapters he uses on a daily basis.
  

He had tried everything.

• Unplug and replug all the connections.
• Try to reinstall the driver, but no devices show up in the device manager.
• Turn everything off and turn everything on.
• Different USB port.
• Heaven know what ever else.

I'm standing there scratching my head trying to think of something else to try. Those USB to printer port gizmos are built in to USB drivers on that OS so you shouldn't need a driver. Besides it was working fine before we added the video card.

Time to start over.

1. Leave the printer on.
   
2. unplug the USB bits.
3. Remove any printers listed by windows that pointed to our device.
4. Turn off the computer.
   
5. Turn on the computer, let it boot all the way and make sure no ghost printers show up.
   
6. Plug in the printer side of the connection.
   
7. Then plug in the computer side (USB) and hope the computer says "device found".

It did. The driver was already installed so the printer just came up. Nice. Kelly saves the day by starting over. I'll take it.

I'm not sure how adding a video card could cause the USB devices to shuffle. I fear the PCI ID numbers may have readjusted after adding the card. That means the USB path was the same but some direct addressing mechanism in the printer driver lost track of where to send things. That or turning the computer on and installing a new drive for the video card just knocked something in the registry or plug and play hardware tree out of order. Who knows?

Why did this work? Because this is how the programmers intended it to work. You almost have to think like a developer. They are not setting things up so you can start the process in the middle. Many times you have to get back to zero state and walk through the whole process because some little required automated step will be missed unless all the steps are passed through from the beginning.

Notes:

So much time off that I forgot to download a new set of podcasts for today. I never checked Dilbert or UderFriendly the whole time.  I walked in to work and got to work. Nothing new really. I think I learned something today. I don't remember what it was off the top of my head. I'm sure it was worth the effort.

I heard a poem about a child who had his eye put out by a broken glass beaker. I need to find some safety glasses for Elle.

I miss having an office where I can hide. When I worked at my old employer, a huge company, I had an office so out of the way that you had tome come see 'me' to find me. No one stumbled across my presents.

Inventory at work. Yuck.

Heard an interview with a podcaster who only does Roman history podcasts. It sounds painful if I'm honest.

The Republican party needs to split. We need the Evangelical Christians on one side and every one else who feels like theiy have conservative values. The democrats would love this I'm sure. it needs to happen before conservatives will have a functional party.

Cat vs Christmas tree

OK, not really. Cool video though.

All in a name

Here are a few of the names I've heard tossed against the wall for the guy who hid a bomb in his underpants and tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Eve.

• Pantie bomber
• Nicker bomber
• Underwear bomber
• Skivvies bomber
• Ballux bomber
• Testicle Terrorist
  
• Fruit of the boom
• Tighty-Kaboom

We had to take our shoes off after the shoe bomber. How many jokes can be made for having to go commando through the airport. I for one am going to ware a kilt and not much else if I ever have to go through an airport in my life again. I heard the TSA stopped confiscating cigarette lighters only because they had trouble disposing of 22,000 lighters a day without causing an environmental disaster.

Video Comment

I got a comment on my latest video on YouTube. Someone asked where I got the lens and how it fit. It is a bit stressful getting comments. They so easily turn on you. It seems like most people who leave comments are just about to be a bastard. I like comments like this. I don't mind answering them. I am so often tempted to just turn them off on the blog and on most other social media. That kind of defeats the point, I know, but it is still a temptation.

Comment

JustinBustin22 

where did you buy that lens? and does it fit around the entire lens or is ti partly on the glass?

Response

zhsy00001

I got it at Amazon for under $30 drive out. The lens mount sits on the outside of the glass. it is a small metal ring with adhesive on one side. Make sure you center it. I figure if I have to take it off, the glass at that spot of the Flip doesn't have to be clear or unscratched for the camera to work properly.

Goals for today

I wanted to put all the receipts away for 2009. This is more trouble that it sounds. I had a foot high pile of everything that was not immediately tossable I had to sort and put in the proper folder in our file for 2009. That took a couple hours.

Then I paid bills. This requires writing a bunch of checks. Putting everything down in a computer ledger and a paper ledger for the checks. I still have to stamp and mail the envelopes, but all else is done for the moment.

Did a load of dishes. Trash.

I did not get another video shot. I did not get to the yard. I did not get the cat box done, but that might be next. Then I might write a blog entry. This one does not count.

The day is not yete done.

Some movies

Kid taking his dad's Porchia for a spin. He claims he hit 170. He almost wipes out.

Airport scanners

Trains in Tokyo

Moment of impact. This one is long and has people getting hurt. it is one of those train wreck videos. Watch at your own choice.

Quick camera test

Found this little baby online.

Nat put the little metal ring on the Flip for me. There is no way I could have gotten it center. She did a great job.

Nearly all the other options require you to glue a 30.5 mm mount on the front of the Flip. This is certainly possible, but it looks like a tiny camera stuck on the backside of a small lens. That kind of mount would allow for a huge variety of lenses from different manufacturers, but who needs it? It is a snapshot video recorder and I just needed a bit more wide angle to get the content of a room I'm standing in.

I pop the lens off and on a couple times during the video. The lighting was poor,but that is the best time to get poor lighting results. Most of the time I use this camera is indoors in poor lighting. The magnate mount seems solid enough for walking around. I've looped the lanyards together so the lens will not have far to fall before it is caught.

Remember

I wander if it is just double letters. Google, Yahoo, Twitter. Or the oo sound. YouTube. This would not explain Wikipedia or Bing. Perhaps it is some sort of rime or poetic attachment. Some say the concept of poetry is to remember. A stitch in time will save nine. That sort of thing. Maybe it is the act of remembering. Maybe none of the other stuff matters as long as we remember the association with actions.

Google has become a verb. That is a heck of a way to remember something, when it has become a word or an action.

How can I use this to my advantage? The first thing that comes to mind is camping on a URL until someone comes along and wants it. That has been done so much that there are rules against it now.

It is not good enough to have a memorable or even appropriate URL. It has to catch. Something has to draw people to it over and over.

Maybe the days of a good URL are over. I mean, who goes directly to a URL any more? People hit up their friends for a link and when that fails, they try searching on Twitter for what their friends and complete strangers are saying about the subject. Then they hit YouTube to find out if there are any instructional videos. After four hours of watching puppies and car crashes on YouTube, they have forgotten what they were looking for and wind up on Amazon in a vain attempt to satisfy their needs through consumerism.

I'm not going to say where they end up if that does not satisfy their needs.

Price by ml

Shamelessly lifted from Geekology

I'm not surprised. The Geekology writer said he is going to start printing everything in the blood of his enemies. Sounds like a plan to me.

Big Brother gets what Big Brother wants

Using Fourth-Party Data Brokers To Bypass the Fourth Amendment from Slashdot by Soulskill An anonymous reader writes "Coming out of Columbia Law School is an article about commercial data brokers and their ability to provide information about individuals to the US government despite Fourth Amendment or statutory protections (abstract, full PDF at Download link). Quoting: 'The Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment does not protect information that has been voluntarily disclosed to a third-party or obtained by means of a private search. Congress reacted to these holdings by creating a patchwork of statutes designed to prevent the government's direct and unfettered access to documents stored with third-parties; thus, the government's access is fettered by various statutory requirements, including, in many cases, notice of the disclosure. Despite these protections, however, third-parties are not restricted from passing the same data to other private companies (fourth-parties), and after the events of September 11, 2001, the government, believing that it needed a greater scope of surveillance, turned to the fourth-parties to access the personal information it could not acquire on its own. As a consequence, the fourth-parties, unrestricted by Fourth Amendment or statutory concerns, delivered — and continue to deliver — personal data en masse to the government.'" SlashDot

This is something that Big Brother wants. To the people in charge of our government, it is just obvious that any available avenue to tracking information on people will eventually lead them to complete control of those people. What they fail to understand is the price for this control is a loss of will. The society becomes an ant hill with drones going about their business. Any one who comes along as an individual is squashed and eaten by the other ants. There emerges another class of leaders who get whatever they want while someone else pays for it.

It never lasts forever. Eventually, the queen dies, the workers revolt, another insect comes in and takes over, or some jerk with a spray bottle of poison decides to take back his yard. 

One by one our rights and freedoms vanish. One by one people who stick their heads above the crowd are shouted down by the very people who need the new ideas to survive. One by one the things we depend on every day are controlled by the very people who control everything else. How much power and money can they control? Well, all of it. Then they start in our future dept and run that up to the stars.

When are they satisfied? Never. They cannot be satisfied. They must be stopped. For, as soon as one member of this greedy elite falls off the wagon, then more try to climb on so they will not ave to be part of the victim class any longer. The only escape is to become the bad guy.

Multiple terrain

Now that is how to get around in the swamp.

New Year

Ah, nothing like waking up at 14:00 on the first day of a new year. Some say a new decade. How does that work again?

Although any period of ten years is a decade,[1][2] a convenient and frequently referenced interval is based on the tens digit of the calendar year, as in using 1960s to represent the decade from 1960 to 1969.[3][4] Often, for brevity, only the tens part is mentioned (60s or sixties), although this may leave it uncertain which century is meant. These references are frequently used to encapsulate pop culture or other widespread phenomena that dominated such a decade, as in The Great Depression of the 1930s. For example, the decade commonly referred to as the "two thousands" ended on December 31st, 2009. Some writers[5] like to point out that since the common calendar starts from the year 1, its first full decade contained the years from 1 to 10, the second decade from 11 to 20, and so on. The interval from the year 2001 to 2010 could thus be called the 201st decade, using ordinal numbers. However, contrary to practices in referencing centuries, ordinal references to decades are quite uncommon. Wikipedia

I for one look forward to my forties. When we mottles get to about this age, we start to hope that things don't change. Typically it is all down hill with health and sences. I plan on taking it all in stride and rolling with the punches. Some stuff will work out and some stuff will not. Life is too short to be pissy all the time.

2010

Here is to thinking better of the year.

Here is to feeling better about the year.

Here is to drinking more wine and less soda.

Here is to eating more cherries and fewer fries.

Let go the year behind. She is done and pass the baton.

Let go the year behind. She did her best and will not cry.

Let go the year behind. She thought us plenty.

Let go the year behind. She only took what she needed.

Here is to rolling with the punches.

Here is to helping and hurting those who needed it.

Here is to getting enough sleep.

Here is to making truth out of dreams.

Happy New year.

Coffee

Nat got me some flavored coffee for Christmas. It turns out I have been making the coffee far too strong. Of course, I only learn this on the last package. Jack Daniels was the best. I've seen these packages before. I don't think I've evr had one. The Irish Cream one was pretty good as well. The other two were eh.

I keep hearing conflicting information about caffeine. One minute it helps your pancreas and other bits.the next minute it jacks up your blood pressure. No one knows whether it is a good thing or bad.

The thought crossed my mind to try to kick the habit over this week plus that I have had off. It is getting old to wake up every weekend with a headache. Just a soda will kick the shakes most of the time. I like coffee. I like caffeine. It is my vice. It is my addiction. I can kick any time I want to. I just don't want to DAMN IT!!!

Sorry, that is the caffeine talking. God! I love that stuff.

Optical illusions

The first is crazy refraction.

The second is digging out a piece of wood and and painting it.

They both work very well.

Iran Riots

Warning: Violent!

This is about the worst (most graphic) video I've seen come out of Iran. There was one where some cops ran over people who were protesting and just kept going. There were some where the cops just gunned some people down. There have been many of people getting the snot beaten out of them for speaking their mind.

I worry that this kind of thing will start happening in the U. S.. I worry because with every new rule that comes up where U. S. citizens cannot speak their mind without fear of our government further limiting our freedoms and retaliating against people who speak out, the closer we get to blowing a gasket and resorting to violence. Recently the Tea Party protests that were all piecful as far as I could tel have been called "right wing extremist" and worse by people who disagree with their outlook.

Since when does it matter if the people in the news papers and TV news agree with people? Since when do they have the right to pick who gets to execute their freedom of speech and the right to gather or the right to complain. It is all in the adjectives. You cannot get a degree in journalism unless you are miserably left and proud of it. You cannot get tenure at a university unless you drink the liberal left coolaid. Prove me wrong.

The Democrats will not be in power for ever. The Republicans were not in power for ever. Ramming health care down our throats is going to last forever. Giving illegal aliens another amnisty is going to last forever. Ignoring Iran and playing games with terrorists instead of killing them and making sure every one in the world knows they lost is going to last forever. I feel a split coming. I do not know where the fissure lies. I do not know what side is what or when. I fear that this country that I love will end up a broken third world shit hole where we have to drag our leaders out in to the street and hang them weeks after every election.

I really want to be wrong.

Drowning Kittens

I'm ashamed to say it, but this is the funnies thing I've seen in a while.

Found while searching on "Drowning Kittens". Seems appropriate.

Sing it!

Now it's stuck in my head.

Jet boat crash

It doesn't look like anyone gets hurt.

You know, I'm starting to wonder if they should put up some kind of barrier around the whole damn track so one of these things does not end up in the next county when it takes a bad turn. It looks like this guy clipped a muddy spot and just went sailing. OK, bad pun.

How I rate YouTube videos

I don't rate most of the time. If it is a crash video or someone getting hurt, I don't bather. If it doesn't grab me or is just a one off video I wasn't really looking for I don't bother very often. I typically rate videos when I do a goofy search and get goofy results. I typically only rate videos from people and not from organizations.

There are some rules that I seem to follow most of the time. The truth be told, it is entirely an emotional response to the video. If I feel good or accomplished for watching it, it gets a better rating. If I feel tricked or upset, the rating goes down.

Things that move rating up

• Real people doing real things that ended up getting caught on video.
• Laughing at funny things.
• Happy endings. Nothing makes me want to rate a video with 5 stars like triumph. Someone trying something difficult and then achieving it with a "Hazah!" from the crowd.
  
• I love it when I learn things. I like instructional videos even if all I learn is "I never want to do this." or even if they are boring. Just as long as I learned something.
• Action. Do something that made the time and effort of breaking out the video camera worth it.
  

Things that move rating down

• Rap Music. I don't like rap music much. It is appropriate on some videos. It has to really fit the video though before it will not count against the ratting.
  
• Quality counts.
• Too dark or light or hard to make things out.
• Laughing over the sound.
  
• Bad aspect ratio.
• Mobile phone sound and 1.5 frames a second. Why bother?
  
• Bad zooming. Some people should have their thumb taped to their palm when handed a video camera.
  
• Putting people's lives in danger without good reason.
  
• Laughing at people getting hurt or humiliated. I watch crash videos. I do not like laughing at them or others doing so. If someone is caught with their pants down (it is an expression) and laughs along with the video, I don't have a problem with it.
  
• The video doesn't really match the search.
• Advertisements. I'm glad YouTube and people make a living on the service. I'm not talking about deliberate advertising. I hate being sucked in to a video that I thought was cool and it turned out to be an ad. That pisses me off.
• Aftermath videos. I want the action, not the aftermath of action. Sometimes they teach you something so that is good.
• Talking heads bore me for the most part. Put it in a blog or something. This is why I do not watch Sunday morning talk shows or the evening news. The professionals bore me.
• Shaky camera. I know I'm the worse one at this. Still, it counts.
  

Other things that matter

• People I know typically get better ratings regardless of quality. I like being invited in to their world for a moment.
  
• Filming your response by flipping the camera around is on most every video it seems. I know it is common. I have a hard time with it. Some people are good at it and others are terrible. This action does elicit a response from me good or bad. When someone films themselves laughing at something I didn't think was funny, like someone getting hurt, I want to punch them in the face.
  
• Cute animals or animals being animals. Sometimes this gets to me. It does the job of tugging at my heart strings and other times it just turns me cold. Not sure why.
  

Example:

I'm on vacation this week and I'm up at 5:00 watching YouTube videos for no good reason. I typed in the search words "dirt bike snow" and I got the following video on like the third screen of choices. I had been rating videos all the way along tonight. The vast majority of my ratings had been 3 stars or "eh!' The following video got a full 5 stars because I laughed along with the rider. It looked like fun. Heck, I even left a comment. It is the exception, it violates several of the rules, that proves the rules. Besides ... I want a ride!

Stuff you read at 03:30 on vacation

I did the math a couple of years ago and came up with the following statement. The Earth travels through it's own diameter around the sun about every six and a half minutes. Well, according to Wikipedia (under section 'Orbit') It is closer to seven minutes. So, I wasn't that far off.

Funny what you look up at 03:30 on a Wednesday morning on vacation. I think I would do well in retirement.

The orbital speed of the Earth averages about 30 km/s (108,000 km/h), which is fast enough to cover the planet's diameter (about 12,600 km) in seven minutes, and the distance to the Moon (384,000 km) in four hours.[8] Wikipedia

The more I read these numbers, the more I realize the speed of light is damn slow. I feel like I'm stuck in a universe filled with molasses.

Bucket of eyes

Photovoltaic Eye Implant Could Give Sight To the Blind on Tuesday December 29, @02:27PM MikeChino writes with this snippet from Inhabitat: "Researchers at Stanford University recently announced that they have developed a new artificial retina implant that uses photovoltaic power and could help the blind see. The problem with previous implants was that there was no way send power to the chip in order to process light and data inside the eye, so the new device uses miniature photovoltaic cells to provide power the chip as well as to transmit data through the eye to the brain. The new device has great promise to help people afflicted by the loss of photoreceptor cells by using the power of the sun." SlashDot

Amazing news. I cannot wait until I can chose a wide angle or tellaphoto focus and record things with my eye implant. Of course, I'll need a nice microphone somewhere as well. Get to work on that one you crazy scientists.

In Blade Runner, the scientist who did the eyes made me cringe.

New Rules

Adobe Flash To Be Top Hacker Target In 2010 An anonymous reader writes "Adobe Systems' Flash and Acrobat Reader products will become the preferred targets for criminal hackers [pdf] in 2010, surpassing Microsoft Office applications, a security vendor predicted this week. 'Cybercriminals have long picked on Microsoft products due to their popularity. In 2010, we anticipate Adobe software, especially Acrobat Reader and Flash, will take the top spot,' security vendor McAfee said in its '2010 Threat Predictions' report (PDF). 'We have absolutely seen an increase in the number of attacks, around Reader in particular and also Flash Player to some extent,' CTO Kevin Lynch told reporters at the Adobe Max conference in October. 'We're working to decrease the amount of time between when we know about a problem and when we release a fix. That used to be a couple of months; now it's within two weeks for critical issues.'" SlashDot

Enough with Mr. Nice Guy. I say there must be a measured response to these attacks. Regardless of method or even reason, when someone uses their knowledge of software to harm others, it should be treated with the same set of rules that is used when someone steels money or murders someone across international lines. If it were not for Microsoft's ineptitude in dealing with people who use their products for evil, people would not be so ready to surrender their time and resources when they get hacked.

If it were not Adobe, it would be someone else. What company is laxed in keeping up on the latest terroristic technique for wrestling control of computers away from their users is immaterial. The fact that it happens every day needs to become the focus. Enforcement of existing laws, new laws that make sense, and perhaps some good old fashion retaliation are in order.

Peep Show

My God. I could do better than this. This is what Brit TV has come to. I'm disgusted.

The entire series is a collection of one uncomfortable situation followed by an even more uncomfortable situation. It sounds like U. S. TV except it is some how even worse. That is saying a lot. At least they cuss. I mean, that is the one thing that thickens the fourth wall with U. S. TV. No one cusses properly.

I give absolutely zero shit about any of the characters. I wish them all harm. I enjoy when they hurt. I do not like enjoying with someone hurts. TV should not make me feel dirty. Even if they are cussing a blue streak.

Kelly's Law

Existence is greater than all that is written.

Or.

Existence is greater than all that is imagined.

No, The first one. I can imagine existence, complete or not and define it as "The Universe" or "The Cosmos" or come up with some sort of googolplex word to define it. but I cannot describe it completely in words or media of any kind. I cannot lay down a trail of frozen bits of reality, words or media, that will do justice to the complexities of existence. For, once written down, they become part of existence and must be described.

Tactics

A little urban tactics primmer while on vacation. I've read stories about the one point harness vs two point harness. It is nice to have someone demonstrate it. I would love to go though something like this if I were not legally blind. I have a feeling that I would like paint ball. Alas, vision is typically a requirement in such endeavors. Maybe in my next life.

Kelly 2.0.

Household computers

Ted gave Elle his old laptop. It is a dell with XP. It is not an old computer, but it has some issues. That is completely normal for an old laptop. That is just a symptom of having everything in one package. Not everything is going to work forever. My mother's old laptop has a bad USB port. No bit deal. Ted's old laptop, having traveled all over the place with him, has a couple lines running up the screen and no battery. That is par for the course. No big deal.

However, the OS on the system is broken. Ted said something about "Disable the handicap setting." I have no idea what he meant.

The symptom is the keyboard does not work when the login screen comes up until a beep is heard. Well, it doesn't work even after that. It is not just the keyboard on the laptop, any keyboard fails. The laptop keyboard and external keyboard work fine to get in to and around in the BIOS.

Ted, what did you do?

I booted the laptop up on Linux and everything seems to work as expected. It is a setting in XP. I do not have an XP key so I cannot just reinstall the OS. That would be illegal. Elle wants to play a bunch of Windows games so there is no point on installing Linux. The laptop is kind of just sitting there for now until I can get some tools from work and run the repair scripts on it. That will not happen until after next Monday if I remember.

One good thing that happened out of this is that Elle cleaned up her computer area. We filled two huge boxes of junk and got them out of the house. Elle does not know this, but we intend to throw most of the crap out. Some will go to the kid's resell shop down the street. The clearing allowed me to put my father's old computer in the place of the broken computer. It still has a copy of XP on it and runs pretty well. Elle can play her games.

Eventually I'm going to have to get some nanny software on that box so we can get Elle online. Her school has a login to some web page they want her to use to run some program for teaching.  I do not understand what they are after. If you ask me, first through third grade should be pencil and paper topics only. What do I know?

Pyrites win again

MOGADISHU, Somalia - A band of Somali pirates split a $4 million ransom to release a Chinese cargo ship and 25 sailors after two months in captivity, one of the hijackers said Monday. The EU Naval Force said the bulk carrier De Xin Hai was released outside of Hobyo, Somalia, on Sunday. The crew and ship are in good condition, the force said. China's official Xinhua News Agency said the ship and crew were now under the protection of a Chinese naval fleet after an early morning rescue. It did not give further details about the rescue. The De Xin Hai was the first Chinese vessel to be hijacked since China deployed a three-ship squadron to the Gulf of Aden last year, joining Britain, India, Iran, the U.S., France and other countries in anti-piracy patrols. ... Pirate attacks in the area nearly doubled in 2009 over a year earlier, despite the deployment in December 2008 of the European Union Naval Force - the first international force specifically to counter Somali pirates. A Somali man who said he was a pirate told The Associated Press that pirates were paid $4 million to release the ship and crew. "We have been given the ransom money, checked it, counted it and shared it among ourselves," said the self-proclaimed pirate, who gave his name as Ahmed Afweyne. Somali pirates have been paid more than $100 million in ransom over the last two years. After the release of the Chinese vessel, Somali pirates hold eight vessels and 213 crew, the EU Naval Force said. Military Dot Com

Stop paying these bastards. Start killing more of them. What other industry in that part of the world pays $400,000,000 in a couple years and as far as I can tell just doesn't kill that many people.

It is going to take two stacks of corpses to stop this. One stack of dead crewmen and one huge stack of pyrites.

Killing Ants

It is the middle of winter here in Houston. It is a bit chilly, but not so you would notice. I need to mow and weed whack, but I need to kill me a bunch of ants first. I have about ten huge ant piles in my front and back yard.

My property is built up about two feet from the base land. I assume this is for drainage. The ants love the soft soil and build mounds clear to the hard clay beneath. I have to stab down with that prybar to the deepest depths I can and spray poison as deep as it will go. Then stomp the hole I made shut so the fumes will travel through the mound.

The poison I'm using is called Triazicide. It claims to kill just about anything that crawls or slithers. It is about the most poisonous stuff a home owner can get.

Am I evil for imagining the ants screaming and little ant air raid sirens going off as they speak in dubbed Japanese while fleeing Kellyzilla? I think not.

Rabies

On average, 55,000 people worldwide die from rabies every year, but only two or three of those cases happen in the United States, thanks to widespread vaccination of domestic animals and availability of post-bite treatment for humans. Today, when Americans die of rabies, it's usually because they didn't realize they'd been bitten until it was too late—which is to say, when they first noticed symptoms. See, we know how to prevent rabies, but we have absolutely no idea how to cure it. In fact, we don't even really know how it kills people. Despite (and, perhaps, because of) its status as one of the first viruses to be tamed by a vaccine, rabies remains a little-understood disease. It's a mystery that makes doctors understandably nervous. Just a week before I found my bat, some friends of mine in St. Paul had woken up to find a bat in their bedroom. Being asleep is one of those times when tiny bat teeth could bite you without you being aware of it. My friends had to get post-exposure prophylaxis, a treatment designed to neutralize any rabies virus in your system before it has a chance to reach your brain and develop into a full-blown infection. BoingBoing

Hmmm. Maybe I should have gone to the doctor when I got bit by that dog a couple years ago. Sounds like I was/am quite blessed. Thanks God. You are aces.

YouTube Subscriptions

When I subscribe to someone's video repository, I get their new posts put up in my subscription area. I can even get an email sent to me if I wish that will alert me that there are new videos. Hey, that's great. There is no way that I can tell to remove them from the subscription list except to click on the new videos from the subscription list.

If I am logged in and watch them organically, they are not counted off. If I click on them from the email they are not counted off even if I'm logged in.  If I go to the person's profile page and watch the video it is not counted as watched. Now, all that is bad enough. However, the videos I have watched from the subscription page and had knocked off the queue have shown back up kind of randomly. I have to click on them and start the video and then kill it to get the video knocked off the list.

This appears to count as a view for the person which is not so bad I suppose. It is, however, not a real view and the advertisers may like to know that some of those numbers are just people trying to clean up their subscriptions.

As I Google my way around looking for information on YouTube statistics, I get nothing but people complaining and trying to complain inelegantly about the mystical YouTube back end database. There are questions as to how YouTube counts video views after a video hits certain milestones. Apparently, videos stop counting at some point and then leap forward in the numbers after some maintenance mechanism plays catch-up. It has something to do with load balancing and world wide distribution mechanisms.

Over all, it seems to work.

When pictures are legal

I've been trying to figure out when someone can force you to take a picture or video down off the net. Every one has an opinion, but no one has the facts. Here is what it sounds like to me after a couple hours Googling.

• If the person has an expectation of privacy, they can sue you to get the media taken down.
• If the person has no expectation of privacy, they can sue you to get the media taken down.

Clear as mud?

Here are some details that may or may not be true. I can't figure it out.

• If your feet are on public property like a public road or sidewalk you can snap or film away. People have little to say about what is visible from the road or other public access.
• If you use some kind of technology to, for example, look through walls then you are violating the rules.
• If you take excessive media of someone that may be harassment even if it is by the letter of the law.
  
• Bridges and some public transportation are illegal because of terrorism laws.
• If you are on private property (like TRF)
• The property owner has to post signs telling you clearly what you can and cannot take media of. The precedent of letting and indeed encouraging people to take pictures has been set. I would imagine the camp grounds and internal portions of the park are considered public accessible land for purposes of media.
• The Patron's camping and the inside of every shop is a matter of posting signs and individual shop rules.
• Inside a closed up tent or car is about as much expectation of privacy as one can get out there.
  

Like I said, don't take any of this as gospel. I have no idea how close I am to the truth. It doesn't matter what you do, if someone gets pissed at you about media you post, you will either have to give in or get a lawyer.

Nothing like hot chocolate

I wonder if the international meetings where hot chocolate is served if more peaceful decisions are made.

If the chocolate and milk are mixed correctly, anything is possible. It even symbolizes the balance between three universes. Milk, chocolate and heat combine to make an elixir of pleasant The world will never know something this simple that is any better at making a bad day in to a good one.

Some might like marshmallows. Some like coffee creamer. Some prefer chocolate milk cold. Some, Elle, like white coco mix that has no chocolate in it. No milk for that matter, but it ocupies the same space in existence.

How long has humankind heated food, or obtained milk from whatever animal? How long have we had chocolate?

Perhaps, hot chocolate is the pinnacle of human achievement. What have we done that is better? I mean think about it for a while then answer.

RC plane and fireworks

OK, there is a good use for fireworks yet. Whomever came up with the idea to shoot fireworks at an RC plane and get a POV movie should get an award. This is just too cool. Appologies for the aspect ratio problems. I blame LiveLeak.

Is any one else out there impressed with the whole RC plane with a camera thing or is it just me?

Afghanistan Christmas

Nothing I can say would top that. Please pass it along.