Getting Dark

2010-10-21

Just last night I mentioned that it was getting dark earlier every day on Twitter. It is one of those things that you notice all at once even though it took a while to happen. It was dark this morning on the way in to the bus stop. The sun was just coming up as I walked from the bus to work. The clouds were glowing with that purple read of pollution. The air was humid, but not too hot. All the grass is dying. These thing signal the oncoming of winter. Nothing new.

I feel the same darkness coming for our country. The U. S. has been in charge for over a hundred years. I fear that I will live to find myself in this glorious nation during a very dark time. Worse, I fear we as a people of a nation will simply let all the bad people have what they want.

The darkest times are always ahead. We are people, not animals. We are people, not machines. I get the distinct feeling that I am being corralled in my own home and country. There is nowhere to go. There is no good place for refuge. There is no escape. This means we have to make our situation the best we can. We have to find ourselves in a good situation when the situation is found to be bad.

What preparations to make? Who is a good person to have in your corner when things get bad? Why bother? The only plans that I have rely on society existing in a stat that allows me to survive. That is, I need a store down the street to keep it's shelves stocked. I need a bank to exist to allow me to make payments. There is just not enough to go round if these things break down.

Nat and I ran out of money this month. We have nothing left over. We have to put gas and groceries on the credit card for the rest of the month. Everything keeps getting put off to "next month". There is no next month. We will be just as broke then as now, if not even deeper in dept. We grew up in the eighties. No one prepared us for this. We had a choice of collage and jobs. The shit was never supposed to hit the fan.

What I'm trying to say her is that the bad guys win. I am broken. I have failed to keep myself in a state where I can survive the bad times. There is no backup. There is no plan A much less plan B. When bad things happen, we will simply fall like so many millions of masses. It just might kill us. At least I had a chance to make it better. At least I had a chance to be a better person a better survivor a better planner and a better man. Dark times are here. Look around. Funny how it snuck up on us.

On a lighter note, I stopped listening to political podcasts today. I don't know how long this will last. I figure I'll start again after the election. This is an election I have no intention of voting in. My vote means nothing. They are all crooks. The destiny of our planet has been decided long ago. I have lost all faith in all political systems. I have faith in God. I vote for God.

Separation of church and state

There is no separation of church and stat in the U. S. Constitution. The first amendment text is below.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances

Note "respecting and establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". This is not a separation of church and state. This says two things.

• Congress cannot force a religion on you.
• Short of things like sacrifices, Congress cannot stop you from following your religion.

That is it. The concept of "separation of church and state" is false. People who spout this mantra have an agenda other than protecting the rights of U. S. citizens.

If there is a separation between church and state then zoning laws cannot control where you build a church. The laws governing land ownership do not apply to churches. Those laws apply. You wouldn't want a church coming in to your private property and telling you to get out so they can build there. so,

So, where is this line? Is the line in the same place for all religions? Is it the same for Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Witches, Snake Charmers, Satanists, Jedi, or people who claim to worship badgers? Can I make a religion up on the spot that only has two commandments, free beer and to never pay my taxes again? I bet quite a few people turn up th the meetings.

Freedom of religion is not freedom from religion. People who hate God or have a problem with their birth religion get really touchy when even reminded that there are such things as religion. They think that every little reminder is bound to be offensive to someone and should be removed. This is an anti-religion religion and these people are puritans. I would like to be separated from these people sometimes.

Frigging curbs

Nat gave me a ride in this morning. I had some food to bring for lunches. On the way, Nat pointed out a pickup pulling on to the median for no good reason. The median is overrun by tall grass. It was a personal truck, not a white work truck. This reminded me of all the times I've been in a vehicle that has climbed a curb or median.

Brian Notling and I drove over a median exiting a hole in the wall restaurant on some side street. We would have had to go all the way to the light to turn around. Screw that.

Cynthia W. and I were in her Honda when an ambulance came up behind us. She pulled on to the median to get out of the way. I was very worried about her low little car, but it did just fine.

My father and I were in a Jeep in the Medical Center. I needed to make an appointment either before or after my eye surgery all those years ago. My dad took a left over the median where a left turn lain was for the other way. This happened right in front of a cop. We went on our merry way.

I was riding with Greg in his Ford diesel. I don't remember where we were going. We were on a country highway. There was a wreck and the cop was directing trucks across the median ditch patch the wreck.

I vaguely remember blatantly plowing over a curb in Adam's old Buick. Surely it was more than once. We must have done it in his Acura too. My recall is failing me.

Playing CB tag requires many curb hops. I can't remember the specifics. Going hunting or shooting or just offroading with people makes for dozens more curb hops. These are not as bright in my memory because they were part of larger efforts.

Other left!

Yikes. What gets me are the couple of people standing at the corner who nearly get flattened.

TV as a monitor

When I was a kid, I had a Commodore 64. It plugged straight in to the TV via an RCA cable. The same thing happened with the Atari. My dad complained that the switch the selected the two inputs was causing the picture to blur.

Today and over the last couple of days, I've been trying to get a couple monitors in one of our conference rooms to work on a PC. They are some LCD TVs that advertise they work on computers. They have VGA connectors and HDMI connectors. I have tried both the VGA and the HDMI from a DVI video card. They all work, but some better than others.

One of the TVs has a delay in the motion no matter how I change the settings. It has a PC game mode with a setting that says something like "high speed" that still has a nasty delay between the movement of the mouse and the motion on the screen. The other TV defaults to a PC mode when you plug in a VGA connection, but must be set to PC when using an HDMI connection. This makes me worry about what happens when you loose power. I didn't have time to play with it any more this afternoon.

The top resolution of both monitors is 1920x1080. That is just not good enough for monitors as large as these. They should be 3000x1500 (whatever the magic numbers are) or better. I'm not the first to complain about HDTV causing monitors to top out at a specific number with resolution. You practically have to buy a monitor designed for medical equipment to get a large screen with higher resolution. The stations used by the folks who fly UAV recon and attack aircraft use extremely high resolution monitors.

Mexico

• The cartels have people on the border to make sure any one trying to cross border pays them a tax. The cartels are doing a better job of policing the U. S. Mexico border than either country.
• Governess, police chiefs and U. S. diplomats are being shot in broad daylight.
• Kidnapping is an industry. It is only a matter of time before this sort of thing starts happening on U. S. streets.
• The cartels set up check points and look like military. Wen the cartels are looking for someone or something, they go door to door and do not stop until they are satisfied.
• The press is scared to report anything bad going on. The cartels have their own press secretaries. In some cases, stories are run past the cartels and the press has come right out and said they will comply if the cartels just tell them what they can and cannot pursue.
• No one wants to go to the police because they are either another branch of the cartels or worse, on their own with no backup.
• The cartels make blockades where they car-jack people and use the vehicles to block roads to protest arrests.
• There are heavy weapon shootouts in the middle of the day, downtown in many cases.

Some say that the drug wars going on in the northern part of Mexico are a revolution in disguise. The locals in some cases prefer the courts that have been set up by the cartels over the current government because the verdicts are more fare and more likely to be enforced. 105 tons of marijuana were recently seized on the way to California.

Soon it may be legal to grow you own pot in some states. Most people in Mexico blame the demand for drugs in the United States for the money that pours in and corrupts capitalism in their country. I have a hard time arguing with this. We have outsourced our illegal drug production with frightening results. This has not worked out for anyone. I'm still not convinced making some currently illegal drugs legal will fix anything. It would be nice to have the tax revenue.

No more to conquer

Two thirds of the taxes you pay today go to servicing the national debt. That is, two thirds of the taxes you pay today go only to pay the interest on the national debt. Who is making that money? International banks.

Insurance, The Stock Market, Social Security, they are all Poncey schemes. They all depend on more people coming in than going out. They all depend on income today to pay what is owed yesterday. They all have to grow to survive, even if they get too big. Too big to fail means we need new people. Right now, the entire banking system of the world is in a state where they are being propped up by tax payers, and not their own investments. When people ask me what to invest in I say MREs and ammunition.

The old definition of a depression is four consecutive zero growth quarters. That simply will not do these days. The numbers keep telling us we are not in a depression or even a recession any more. We are all better now. Things are all peaches and cream. That is, unless they are not.

They can only take it all. They can only have everything all at once. Once this is done and past, where will they go for more? What will they do to pass the time when there is not one thing left to pass from another to them?

Notes:

I don't even feel the walk in any more. Even if I'm not feeling 100%, I still make it to the bus stop without much to do. There have been times I had to stop and sit down on the ground to rest while walking in the heat. I wonder if I'm in better shape or just pacing myself better.

Someone tweeted that they have people in the office who talk four notches above inside voice on their mobile. I have to agree. I fantasize about whistling very loudly to get their attention and screaming at them. Which is self defeating.

headed to California stopped on the road like a traffic ticket. It is a mess.

I'm really thinking about getting the $10 a month version of NetFlix. This lets you stream a bunch of stuff and get one disk at a time in the mail. Not too shabby.

Elvira, still got it

I need to find her show. I love those old horror shows.

Writer's Block

Writer's block is really when you have a story line going and you cannot move forward on that story line. What is it when you just have nothing interesting to say? I hit this point in nearly every blog entry. That is just how it goes. It is a rare occasion when I have to go back and shorten anything because I think it is too wordy. Far more often, I must read and add a line or a paragraph to clarify something. Sometimes I think I put some details in and realize only after a reread I completely missed some important point.

You would think anyone could just sit down at a keyboard and keep pounding the keys until the perfect novel or story or at least blog entry were on the screen blinking back at you. This is not how it is done. There must be writers out there who do this. There are just too many books on the shelves of Half Price Books for this not to have occurred. Most of the interviews I've heard have writers telling the tail of woe about having to have people how love them lock them in an empty windowless room with a laptop and a toilet and feed them through a notch in the door.

This is the sort of motivation that I would need to do any kind of serious writing. Just having time after work to knock something out is not good enough. I would have to be trapped and under the gun to really make magnificence from the dribble that pours from me on a daily basis.

There are reasons for writer's block. Stress, outside influences, distractions, poor diet come to mind. Well, these are excuses anyway. There is no generic root cause in my opinion. The fact is the words and thoughts are not coming. The important thing is to get the words down. Get the words down. Get the words down. Put them on the page. Make sense of things later. Edit, edit, edit, then edit some more. Get the words down. If I had a memory maillot, I would hit every one reading this paragraph with it to help those words sink in.

How important is it to you to have written? Writing is not the goal. Having written is the object. The strategy is to get the words down. The tactics, well, the tactics start with hitting the keys or putting a bit of weight on the pencil while scratching it around the page.

the self same rule goes for making videos or audio. Do it. Then worry about it sucking. Fix it and then worry about others liking it. Trash it later after starting it again. Edit, edit, have a shot of your favorite whiskey and edit some more. When it is still crap, blame everything and every one. Curse the heavens. Then, get started on the third rewrite.

Notes:

I'm still sore from Faire. At one point during packing up I re-through out my shoulder pushing a huge wooden box in to a trailer. It is the one in the video I called a coffin. It was full of about three hundred pounds os camping type stuff. Still, it is good to be sore for a good reason. It was fun and worth the packing. Yesterday at work I had to crawl around under a bunch of desks and lift a 56 pound monitor. My shoulder spoke to me, but functioned.

I listen to a bunch of politically oriented blogs and podcasts. This really sucks when it comes to election time. They all run the same frigging 5 or 8 stories over and over. Each commentator attempts to out fact the other and get some exclusive. I'm so sick of the same people getting raked over the coals and people complaining about those people getting raked over the coals. There needs to be a limit. Someone talk about something else. What else is there in politics when there is an election on the horizon?

Pseudopod Rocks!

You can slice layers between brain material and as long as blood vessels and some major connections stay in tact, the bit of brain left on the outside will remain alive. This then becomes a living bit of brain matter, thinking on it's own.

One of my coworkers will come out and camp at Faire this weekend. He is all about percussion. He wants to play at drum circle. There is a hierarchy out there so he will have to be careful not to step on toes. He is a better drummer than any one I've heard play out there. I hope his experience is favorable and makes him want to be a regular. I want to reminisce about my first memories of camping at Faire. I'm just too busy and distracted to do so. One of these days.

My shoulder hurts. I have a nerves tick that makes me stretch the tendons in my shoulder. Now, I've thrown it out. God is telling me to motivate myself to stop with the frigging nerves tick. It is unnecessary. It only does harm. I can do this. I can stop the tick.

We have a sort of shed or closet in th back we call The Cubby. It is just sort of a useless room where stuff gets dumped. I used to set up computers in there, but I have an office with room now. I was quite worried that a bunch of the computer bits would start to vanish after I was not frequenting the place so often. It is true that some bits have grown legs, but the freaky thing is that more stuff is turning up. There are monitors that were not there before. There are cables galore left lying on the Table and unsorted on the shelf. I turned around today and a couple Dell face plates were lying there that didn't fit any of the computers I put together. It is like a black hole of computer equipment back there. I'm not complaining.

Nothing else to say today. Shame. I'm so interesting too. =]

Weekend

Friday evening, I don't remember Friday evening. I vaguely Remember existing last week at all. There must have been something going on.

Nat came home from Faire long enough to take Elle to a kids party. A friend' of ours has two little girls. Their birthdays fall close together. They like making them Halloween themed parties. This worked out well.

Nat and I drove up to a dozen kids, half a dozen adults and half a dozen teens all doing their own stuff. The adults were cooking and preparing. The teens were decorating. I shot video. Oh, and ate. They had corn dogs, one of my weaknesses.

Much of the video was crap. People said things I didn't want out.

SPAM

Today, we got a spoof mail from someone trying to either get a government web page's information or cause the web page to go down. This is a common business to government web page. One of our people in the know tried to sign in to the real page and found it was being slammed by people trying to check their information.

The email was a cut and paste from the email that normally comes from the web page. The words that were changed, were misspelled. This is an indication that the mail you are looking at is not from a practicing company. This is also why it makes it through the mail scanning software. If you have an exact copy of the email from the wrong place, it will get caught and flagged. If you misspell just enough, it may very well not get nabbed by the filters.

The whole idea of SPAM mail pisses me off. SPAM everything pisses me off. Forums, Twitter, Facebook, they all suffer the same issue. Someone is trying to sell you something or trick you out of information. They do this for their own monetary gain. It is ugly. There are bad people out there trying to get you.

How to stop it? Diligence, persistence, Doing your homework. These, unfortunately, are the same things that make the spammers successful. For every trick the good guys come up with to limit spam and scam emails, the bad guys will counter in same. There is not nearly as much money in stopping them as there is in doing it on an individual level.

Computes get better every day of catching this stuff and figuring out how to stop it. Computers get better every day at figuring out how to get round the filters. People are less and less willing to sit down and hammer through the mountains of data.

Faire vid

Texas Renaissance Festival 2010 second weekend Sunday 2010-10-16. Good times had by those with a talent for it. Drama abounds, but not in my vids dammit.

Showing a little bit of the camping experience. Good food if you are willing to bring and cook it. Good times if you can get past the drama of people being people. Fire breathing and impromptu entertainment by talented people.

Not sure what happened to the music. You cannot her it with my camera. It was plenty lowed.

Met some awesome new people. Ran in to old friends. Talked, videoed, and hung out. packed up camp. Walked around the camp ground in the dark like I always do. The video is useless. I would need some kind of night vision to catch it and that would ruin the experience. You have to be there to catch the moon light and the under canopy night lighting.

Field	Data
Title	TRF Camping 2010, second weekend
Description	Texas Renaissance Festival 2010 second weekend Sunday 2010-10-16. Good times had by those with a talent for it. Drama abounds, but not in my vids dammit.
Tags	TRF Texas Renaissance Festival camp ground camping 2010 Canon 940 Texas
Link	Link

Kid party

Nat, Elle and I made a party for a friend's little girls. This is a combination birthday and Halloween party. The girls are cool with it so it all works out. This video is all about the kids having a good time. This is an awesome family. I'm so glad to have taken part.

I hope everyone likes the video. Enjoy.

Field	Data
Title	Kits birthday party
Description	Nat, Elle and I made a party for a friend's little girls. This is a combination birthday and Halloween party. The girls are cool with it so it all works out. This video is all about the kids having a good time. This is an awesome family. I'm so glad to have hard part. I hope everyone likes the video. Enjoy.
Tags	Texas Pumpkin carving contest fun kids birthday party Halloween Canon 940
Link	Link

Researches say the darnedest things

Meta-Research Debunks Medical Study Findings
"From The Atlantic comes the story of John Ioannidis and his team of meta-researchers, who have studied the overall state of medical research and found it dangerously and widely lacking in trustworthiness. Even after filtering out the journalistic frippery and hyperbole, the story is pretty disturbing. Some points made in the article: even the most respected, widely accepted, peer-reviewed medical studies are all-too-often deeply flawed or outright wrong; when an error is brought to light and the conclusions publicly refuted, the erroneous conclusions often persist and are cited as valid for years, or even decades; scientists and researchers themselves regard peer review as providing 'only a minimal assurance of quality'; and these shortcomings apply to medical research across the board, not just to blatantly self-serving pharmaceutical industry studies. The article concludes by saying, 'Science is a noble endeavor, but it's also a low-yield endeavor ... I'm not sure that more than a very small percentage of medical research is ever likely to lead to major improvements in clinical outcomes and quality of life.' I've always been somewhat suspicious of research findings, but before this article I had no idea just how prevalent untrustworthy results were."

SlashDot

Do not trust what people say. Whether it is on the internet or in print, trust your gut. Just because there is a number next to it doesn't make it right. There are three kinds of deceptions used on mass numbers of people. These are 1) Lies 2) Dammed Lies and 3) statistics.

Surveys can be skewed by question language.

Research results can be skewed by estimates within the research.

There are a million ways to play with the numbers. People play with the numbers. There is so little money in research and so many research projects that go nowhere that the value of the played with numbers goes up greatly.

Just cramming numbers in the middle of sentences makes some people more likely to believe the premise of the statement. It matters how often, loudly and the amount of conviction in your voice. This lesson was learned by Hitler. He used the idea of ramming information down people's throats repeatedly and saying it like you mean it to bring the world to war. Lying works when done properly.

Clip Vid

Shot some very random quick clips today before, at and after work. Just trying to get something up for people to ignore. Hopefully, I'll have something good to up up after this weekend. There is some kind of kids's party this Saturday. Maybe I'll get a party trick or a game or something. It should be fun.

I'm inflicting this upon the world for one reason and one reason only. Everything goes on the blog.

Field	Data
Title	Something to ignore
Description	Shot some random clips before, after and after work today. Just something for people to ignore.
Tags	work clips ignore canon 940IS Houston Texas
Link	Link

Just for shits and giggles. Here is the pile of files that went in to makeing this video.

total 1.4G
drwx------ 2 kelly kelly 4.0K 2010-10-15 23:46 ./
drwxr-xr-x 3 kelly kelly 4.0K 2010-10-16 00:05 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  20M 2010-10-13 19:28 01_acadamy_01.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  78M 2010-10-13 19:30 01_acadamy_02.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  18M 2010-10-15 23:19 01_intro.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly 177M 2010-10-15 07:45 02_fount_01.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly 9.2M 2010-10-15 08:30 02_fount_02.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  17M 2010-10-15 23:19 02_fount_intro.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  15M 2010-10-15 23:19 03_monitor_intro.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  15M 2010-10-15 11:04 03_monitor.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly 638M 2010-10-15 12:12 04_randals_01.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  53M 2010-10-15 12:20 04_randals_02.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly 140M 2010-10-15 12:24 04_randals_03.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly 8.9M 2010-10-15 23:35 04_randals_intro.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  24M 2010-10-15 12:35 05_lunch_01.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  36M 2010-10-15 15:53 06_fount_03.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  19M 2010-10-15 18:14 07_chopper_01.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  25M 2010-10-15 18:15 07_chopper_02.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  14M 2010-10-15 18:15 07_chopper_03.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  35M 2010-10-15 23:35 07_chopper_intro.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  16M 2010-10-15 19:16 08_plane.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  50K 2010-10-16 00:08 2010-10-15_day.kdenlive
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  42M 2010-10-15 23:53 2010-10-15_day_youtube.mp4

Computer stuff today

HTML editing

I completely give up on WYSIWYG HTML editors. The only one that doesn't suck is Dreamweaver. I cannot afford it so back to using a text editor. I do not even like the text HTML editors on Linux. Blowfish does not offer suggestions. At best, it tries to make the closing tag when you type an opening tag. This is more annoying than useful. At this point I just want a programming text editor.

At work, I jot down some notes and finish them up at home in the evening. I have to remember to mail the HTML to myself at home. Tables have given me trouble with hand written HTML in the past, but it is better than OpenOffice.org's web editor which refuses to make any text without it being wrapped in paragraph tags. This can through tables in to disarray. Paragraphs go haywire. You change one thing and everything else may be affected.

Yesterday I used OpenOffice web editor and things went OK. The HTML editor drops bits like the end embed tag from a YouTube video. The funny thing is if you copy and past the WYSIWYG part and avoid HTML completely, the YouTube videos work. Not sure if Blogger is fixing this for me or if the Editor leaves the end embed tag in place if you avoid the HTML view part.

Now, I'm just typing in the text and adding in the tags in a text editor. It doesn't even matter which one I use. There a wars fought and lost over which text editor to use on Linux. There is something empowering about just typing in the code as you go. It takes longer. It may not be as fancy as the auto formatted stuff. It works for the most part. Anything you use over and over, you can make a template. When I talk to people who do web editing daily, they all and I mean all edit the HTML at least some of the time. All the WYSIWYG seem to modify the code. They capitalize tags or un-capitalize tags. They drop things on the floor. They loose all the tabulation. They swap one kind of tag for another. These changes are usually in the name of some some standard or another.

HTML all the way! Of course, next week I'll change my mind again. Stay tuned.

Laptop utilities

It took a laptop three hours to run a drive check at work today. I had to leave it running over night. Because I have to lock it up, I had to walk it to the lock closet on battery. It was only at 53% when I left.

At my old employer, we only had laptops. There were precious few desktop kinds of computers around. You had to have an exemption kind of reason to get one. I had two laptops assigned to me. This is because I had to constantly restage one of them for software install setup. The other was my normal workstation. When it rained, it poured. It seemed like I had weeks go by where I had no install work to do and then I would get five all at once. It never failed.

Semantic Ghost

Used the real Ghost CD today. First time in years. Iv'e been using G4L Ghost for Linux for several years now. I had a situation where I needed a feature that G4L does not support as far as I can tell. I needed to burn some computer images to DVD instead of a drive or network. This is a pretty slick thing to do when it comes to people leaving the company.

You have to install the software on a Windows box. Then you have to create a boot disk using that software. They give you all kinds of choices. You can even add an image right on the boot disk if you are in to that sort of thing. It has been such a nightmare getting the boot disks part of things to work in the past. It is really nice having a company just make a utility that gives you the GUI. It is about time.

I need to start using this software more often. It is pretty cool. The open source rip off of this software is pretty darn cool too.

USB drive cables

The company ordered a couple of those USB to SATA/IDE/Laptop_IDE cables that I raved about a while back. The one I had purchased is going back home with me. People were fighting over it. These things are $14 well spent for an IT person.

They let you burned DVDs, mount drives, copy large stuff all over the place even faster than the network will let you. They are slow, and a bit awkward to use. Many machines will not use the devices plugged in to one of these cables for a boot device. Tons of issues. They are still worth the $15 or so online.

Someone asked me what kind of USB drives to get. I recommended these cables. This way, you can use all kinds of drives to move stuff around and you are not locked in to one drive type or size. They work with legacy equipment too. Flexible is good in IT.

Notes:

The walk in this morning was beautiful. Some day soon it will get cold. Then it will kind of suck. The best walking morning is that day where you are just a bit chilly, but not cold. You will warm up as you walk of course, just a smidgen of breeze, clear sky, sun coming up. The grass crunched from dryness as I walked. The cars didn't run me over. It was nice.

Wow! Mark Levin with a toothache is like seeing the devil walking toward you with a clipboard in his hand and a smile passing his lips. It is something to behold. The audience should pass the hat.

At lunch today, I ran over to Randal's for more bread, lunch meat and relish. I like dill relish on sandwiches. I like both on hot dogs. Well, I like one or the other about the same on hot dogs. There are five or eight sweet relish choices for every one dill relish on the shelves at Randal's.

The thought of universal health care that really works scares me. If it did work. If somehow, we were able to make it work, that would be heaven. Well, it would be heaven to a lot of people. It would be Utopia. Once people have achieved this thing, they would sacrifice nearly everything else to keep it. I suppose this is the idea behind pushing it.

The divorce rate has been on the decline since 1979. Marriage rates have been falling at a steady rate. it is not a higher number recently than ever before. People are living longer and just don't need to get married like we used to.

Let The Right One In

Link

This is one of the most amazing films I've seen in years.

SPOILER ALERT!

This is a story about a twelve year old young man who is a reject in society. He is the victim of stronger people. He is a follower. He is a loaner. He wants to kill people for revenge. He is a latchkey kid. He has time on his hands.

The girl is a vampire. She must kill to survive. She has all the typical strengths and weaknesses of vampires. She has one extra attribute. She is a very old twelve year old girl.

She also has a man who is with her. He kills for her and drains blood into a bucket for her. He disposes of bodies. He signs the checks. He rents the apartments. He makes the daytime arrangements. He loves the girl with everything about him. He cannot think of betrayal. He is a victim of her power. She needs him. Her life would be hell trying to maker her way without an adult walking around in the daylight taking care of the day to day overhead of life.

This show is so very sad and triumphant. If you sympathies with the boy, he both wins and looses. He is happy and yet sad. He has a rough life. He has no one on his side. He needs a savior. He needs a leader.

The man is a servant. He is loyal. He is getting old.

The girl is a predator. She plays the victim to lure men to their deaths. She kills ans plays a bit with her prey. She revels in the mess of it. She doesn't notice the smell.

When the man begins to fail, when the man just gets old, she finds the boy and prepares to replace the man. The man knows he is to be replaces. He loves the girl so much that he stays loyal. He can do nothing else.

She lures the boy. She reals him in. She devours the old man when he is caught. She does it with little passion or loss. She gets the boy to help her lure a victim to his death. He watches her kill the victim and when she comes to him after, with the victim's blood on her lips, she kisses him and seals his fate. He was falling in love with her. Now, they are intertwined. Their destinies aligned.

He will make a magnificent familiar.

This movie is brilliant not because it is about vampires or teen angst. This show is all about the relationship and sexual tension between these two twelve year old characters.

I wanted to believe that she loved him too. I wanted to believe that the smile on his face was more than her blood tugging his strings.

Country related nicknames

Name	Nickname	Notes
Sandy	Sandyland	Simple, but kind of works.
Kenneth	Kenneca, Kennamin, Kenafornia	I'm at a loss.
Lance	Lancvia	Lance had a better one. I can't remember it.
Adam	Adamalia	I don't like this one.
Laurie	Laurovia	Roll the tung on the 'r' with a bad Slavic Accent.
Brean	Breanastan	My best work yet.
Kelly	The Cynical Surely Republic of Kelly	The CSRK for Short. Doesn't roll off the tung.

Just having fun. Any more out there?

Politics

Warning! Opinions contained within. You have the opportunity to stop now.

The president

"There is no such thing as shovel ready projects." How many times did you use that term to sell your agenda? Are you a lyre? Are you an idiot? Are you naive? Are you a stuffed suite? Are you qualified to run a country?

The word “bipartisan” is a fancy way of saying “Shut up and think what I want you to think.” “Stop questioning what I want.” “Every one else agrees with what I'm saying.”

Money

Ceasing private pensions, the scam goes like this. Run the world economy in to the ground. Inflate amount of money in the world. Deflate the value of currency throughout the world because countries have no choice if they want to compete. The true value of everything is not money, it is labor. Pensions have invested in failed banks. Investments like gold and homes and even education are devalued by over production and quick failure. Where is your pension?

You know you have been screwed when they start making statements like “Think how much worse it could have been if ...”

Future

"November is coming." This is a conservative mantra for the moment. I just don't think it is going to be the landslide. I also don't think the Republicans will make much difference. I'm not the only one who thinks this way. Someone went over the list of contested seats in both houses. It just doesn't sound like a tsunami. It sounds like a bigger than normal mid term swing.

Linda McMahon has spent $20,000,000 of her own money to campaign in Connecticut and is loosing in the polls. She is not the only one having trouble with a constituency that has loved them for a long time.

The Tea Party

Spontaneous grass roots movement. It is headless. It is made of people. It is only as organized as it needs to be. The money is all over the place. The people are paying for it themselves. It is conservative. It is hard work. It is difficult. It is difficult to define. It is peaceful. It is lawful.

Joe the plumber. Jane the pilot. Me. We are not a rebellion. We are the people of the United States and we are fed up with what is going on in our government. This country is run by the people, for the people. This is how it is done.

Mailbox Size

I hate being the mailbox Nazi at work. Every couple days I send out a mail telling people to shrink their email box. Some people are very upset that they have tried to shrink their mailbox and it just keeps growing. I have to attempt to explain that it is an ongoing strategy to keep the mailbox under control.

The strategy is to keep your mail under control. Some tactics are below.

• Personal Folders

  • Make personal folders

  • Create rules to move mail from your mailbox to the personal folders automatically

  • Get in the habit of moving things to the personal folders

• Know what to delete and when it is gone

  • Empty your trash

  • Figure out where your backup trash folders are and empty those

• Learn how to check your mailbox size

• Get important information out of email

  • Rely more on the archive server.

  • Don't rely on searching your inbox for important information. Keep it elsewhere..

There are probably a dozen more bullets I'm not remembering here.

Microsoft Exchange Server is a nightmare to support. Email was one of the first killer apps of the Internet and thus, it was the learning experience for the first generation of software engineers. The concept of email is flawed. It is too easy on the user to send an email. It is too cheap. If they had charged for email from day one, the current internet would look much different that it does today. Email is a vast pile of one way of communicating that has been comity-directed to death. It has suffered scope creep. It has been taken advantage of and turned in to a place where people fear to tread.

The licensing for Exchange server is ridiculous on top of everything else. It is more expensive to give people more space on your own server on your own hard drive. This is insane. There are other options for an email server besides MS Exchange. The only trouble is that they are not MS Exchange. Many of the utilities and fancy email related crap is designed to only work with MS Exchange and Outlook. Who's fault is this?

I even put together some docs on this subject and sent them around. Yes, I'm aware of the irony of sending an email with attachments complaining about mailbox size. I don't have any choice. This is just how work is done. We depend greatly on our email to do every day business. I understand how difficult it is for people to track their email size and worry about it when there is so much else going on.

You don't even need to use your inbox. You can set up rules to move all of your mail straight off the server to a local folder. If anything happens, your mail is backed up on an archive server. The archive server is a pain to use, but it works. you can search the archive. you can search local folders. Make local backups. Move the important stuff out of email. What makes you think your email is more safe than you hard drive anyway?

One thing I cannot provide for people is a web folder in which to hold information. People tell me they have really important information they need access to outside of work. This is perfectly valid. These things happen and need to be dealt with. Maybe your email is just not the proper tool for the job. Maybe we need to invest in something.

What do other people use. Well, it seems like every other small company is using online email. I spoke with a friend who works for a company with about twenty people. They use some service online that is similar to GMail. They pay per person and per amount of space used. They have extra accounts for special needs and distribution lists. That sounds to me like a plan. I bet they spend less per year than the cost of an MS Exchange server. The trouble is, that stuff and services that only work with MS Exchange do not work with their service either.

I believe GoDaddy offers some kind of email server package. I may look in to the cost of this. One would have to have internet access to get to that sort of thing which is not always an option. There are a million options out there that won't work the same as our current setup. That doesn't make them bad or wrong.

Notes:

One of the bad things about riding the bus is the smell. There is not one smell. There are many. The other day, there was a guy who stunk of cigarettes so bad it curled thee hairs in your nose. Some days it is kids who have messed themselves. People have any number of smells on hot days. This morning it was a woman waring some kind of perfume that reeked of vanilla and formaldehyde. It made me dizzy.

It seems like half the folks in our company have a KVM. In many cases, me included, if you have a Windows computer reboot while not aimed at the monitor on the KVM, the default resolution will through the monitor out of sync when you try to switch to that computer. This means you get a blank monitor. There is nothing wrong except a temporary incompatibility between the settings on the computer (video) and the capabilities of the monitor to auto-sync to those settings. Is there a $20 KVM out there that will fix this problem and use DVI and USB? No. There is not.

Did you know the new Microsoft phone OS is out? I missed it too. Yawn.

It needs to be as much or more work to make a living by not working than just working.

For some reason, I'm trying to use OpenOffice web editor again for writing the text for this blog. I keep coming back to OpenOffice. Not sure why. The editor is at best mediocre. Embedded objects don't work. The formatting of paragraphs translates funny. There are all kinds of issues. I have noticed though, that I type in much more text when I use a WYSIWYG editor. I'll just have to keep playing with it. All the other editors on Linux seem to suck worse. I think what did it this time was wanting to put together a table with some simple formatting.

Today was the last day for one of the guys at work. He was one of the people I liked and respected. No offense to any one who has left who I didn't say that about, but here it is. He had an official lunch yesterday. I missed this because the email made it to me as gibberish. He had another unofficial lunch today at a restaurant I like. I missed it because they left ten minutes before lunch time.

Notes:

I listen to Alix Jones and NPR. NPR is easier to ignore while listing to their propaganda than Alix Jones. This is quite a spectrum. I want to listen to opinions I agree with and disagree with. Both sides of the spectrum have both elements.

Messing with notebooks today. People return them after using them around the country. They are in all kinds of shape. Some people just send them back as is. Some clean them off before sending them back. Some activate passwords in the BIOS. There is just no real protocol.

Spent a good deal of today buying cables.

Nat got me some powdered sugar donuts from the Mrs. Bards store. She got me two bags. I've eaten enough to choke a horse. I gave away most of the donuts today. I walked around from office to office on the north side and handed them out. That still didn't kill the bag. I left the rest in the lunch room. They finally disappeared. Still have a couple at the house to finish.

Strategy vs Tactic

Tactics are how you achieve strategies. That statement is not always true. Strategies are not plans. Strategies are not really goals either. Strategies are a way of looking at things. Strategies are a kind of filter or a focus that allow you to use resources, plans, goals and tactics to change things to be what you want them to be.

Budget cuts and taxes are tactics. A balanced budget is a goal. The thing with dates and time lines is a plan. How to govern is the strategy.

Working for a living is a tactic. Planning your life for your success is a strategy.

Dieting is a tactic. Eating healthy food is a tactic. Exorcise is a tactic. Living longer and staying healthy longer in your life is a goal. Changing your life to be a healthier person is a strategy.

Suicide attacks are a symptom of people feeling they have no way out.

The next time someone asks you to do something you do not want to do, tell them that this tactic does not fit your current strategy for achieving your end goal. When they ask you what your end goal is, tell them it is none of their business.

Ubuntu 10.10 second look

Some good some bad.

KDENLive

The slightly newer version of KDENLive available on Ubuntu 10.10 now supports the audio codec that my Canon uses. This means, I can just drag a file off my camera on to the hard drive, then straight in to the KDENLive software that I use for editing. I can skip the step of converting the audio track to MP3 that I've had to do since I got the camera. I forgot how nice it is to do this. The Flip worked, but I carry the Cannon 940.

H264 works! Well, sort of. It is not grayed out. It rips the video just fine. The sound comes out like a robot voice. I'm sure this is a setting or value out of place somewhere. This could probably be fixed with a tweak in a config file somewhere. Ubuntu is notorious for not fixing anything until the next major release which, injects a ton of little shit.

GPodder

GPodder is broken. It has all my paths. It downloads the podcasts. It does not find any devices. Not only does it not find any devices, but the screen under properties where the settings are supposed, there is a link that say something like "Go here and bitch until they fix it." Classy.

I can still go manually copy the downloaded files from the storage folder to the device. The device is a USB thumb drive that I mule back and forth to work where I listen to the podcasts.

Mouse Pointer

The mouse pointer size works on my desktop, but my server, which I connect to via VNC, it does not. Not sure what all that is about. The video card may actually have something to do with it.

Conclusion

Eh. Shit happens. I'm so happy the video editing is working better that I'm calling it a win. Baby steps.

Family fun

Came home and opened a locked desk and did a cartwheel. Yay us.

I was highly tempted to edit out the grunt while doing the cartwheel. You viewers are highly lucky I'm so lazy.

Title: Fixing a desk and cartwheel

Description: Just getting home and performing a honey-do for the Mrs. Then did a cartwheel for the hell of it. Pretty good.

Tags: cartwheel Houston Harris county Texas family fun fixing desk

Link

Tennis Elbow

The day is short.
Life is short.
I rush and rush.
The world is going to be here without me.

Is there anything worth having that must not be taken?
Is everything in the world a commodity?
Are all things worth fighting for?
Is anything?

Some days I wish there were less of me.
Most days I wish there were more.
I am what I am and I ain't no more.
The great philosopher Popeye said.

Have you ever longed for quiet?
Is there such a thing?
I've longed for peace on my journey through life.
One day I'll get it.

Notes:

This morning was a rough walk in. Nothing bad happened. I'm not feeling well. I was sweating the wrong kind of swat. The day was not hot or sunny, yet I had the fever sweats and that shaky feeling one gets.

The phone, the phone, the phone is just ringing. We don't need to answer, let the motherfucker ring! The word 'motherfucker' was in my spell checker. =\

I got on the elevator this morning and met my doppelgänger. He was bald, about my age, about an inch taller, had a bit of a stomach, was waring tan shoes, was waring a horizontal striped white shirt with a dark collier. His pants were slacks, mine are jeans.

Burning a DVD ISO larger than 4.4G in Windows. This example is burning a Windows 7 beta. The method should be sound for other DVDs.

Rack fail

Someone said this was a service fail. No, I would say it is a lift or rack fail. I've had friends of mine who are mechanics say those things are highly reliable, if you do the maintenance. No one does the maintenance. It doesn't look like any one got hurt thank God.

Looping violinist

Awesome stuff.

Notes:

The walk in this morning was unmemorable. It is supposed to rain today. The grass is getting high enough to call the Highway Department again. The median is all but impossible to see over when trying to turn left. One more thing on the list.

I'm learning how ISP calculate bandwidth. It is really chick-shit, but I can't think of a better way of doing it.

nslookup is command to tell you what computer an IP address belongs to. It does not guarantee that the computer using the IP really belongs to that IP. There is spoofing, old reservations, the DNS server is out of date, the DHCP system is just plane wrong. any number of reasons that a computer will claim the wrong IP.

got some more bread and lunch meat for the lunches this week. I'm going to run out of relish before the end of the week. Need a better place to shop besides Randal's.

41.8 million people on food stamps in U. S., a record. Twenty straight months of record food stamps numbers.

Spent a good portion of my day setting up computers and running Windows update on several machines.

Ubuntu 10.10 first impressions

It is the same.

>$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=10.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=maverick
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 10.10"

The mouse thing I had troubles with in the past seems to be fixed. This should have been done months ago in the old version.

Looks like there has been an update to the Kdenlive version. It also looks like the H264 rip has been un-grayed. Can't wait to give that a shot.

Toyota videos

Cool stuff. I just like 4runners.

Balls to the wall in Russia

Holy shit. I don't know what else to say.

• Slow start. Take your time to get the gloves on. Safety first.
• Threading the needle while people are changing lanes in front of him.
• Doing full speed between the rows of cars.
• Ducking around the outside of trucks at speed.
• Passing in oncoming traffic, while accelerating, while weaving. Wen things get tight, pop a wheelie. The cars going the same way look like a blur.

For comparason

This is "Ghost Rider". There is some speculation as to who this is, but he runs through Europe at a high rate of speed and shoots videos of the experience. The European cops drive slopw crap cars and stop for little birdies crossing the road.

The video at the top if this page is in Russia. Below is an example of what the cops will do to catch someone who is driving a bit sloppy, pedestrians be dammed.

They just don't leave much to chance. I hope the folks crossing the road are surrounding aware and quick on their toes.

Babby Otters!

Ever wonder where the idea of dog squeak toys came from? Wonder no more.

Wooden bowls

My dad will get a kick out of this.

Nothing funnier than force jokes

Yup, I'm a nerd.

I haven't laughed until I coughed, then laughed until I coughed again in a while.

Log 2010-10-09

12:00 - Lunch with parents and Elle at Denny's.

14:30 - Best Buy to lick all the new cameras. Saw my first 3D TV. Was not impressed. The glasses didn't fit over my glasses very well.

18:00 - Uploaded YouTube video about a fender bender.

19:30 - Watching Resident Evil Aftermath. Uploading daily log.

Didn't go to work today because I needed the day off dammit. Spent most of the day ripping the same video several times in order to get an idea how the settings affect the outcome.

Ripping video

I took this afternoon and ripped the same video several times in order to figure out what compression rate to use for future videos. I've noticed some pretty bad blockyness in dark scenes on my videos. I don't think the two pass option is much worth the time it takes to run, but I do believe sitting down and ripping the same dark video over many times at different settings is worth it to find out what works. My poor computer may buy the farm, but I need a new one regardless.

Camera

Canon PowerShot SD940 IS. Set to video mode and no settings changed that I can think of. This is not a high end video camera. It is highly convenient and takes fair video. I wish it took linger than 10 minute video and that the optical zoom functioned while shooting video.

File Size

This video is a hair over two and a half minutes long. The top one below is the source video. Note, it has about another 30 or 40 seconds of video.

-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly 604M 2010-10-09 11:41 wreck_2010-10-08.mp4
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly 201M 2010-10-09 12:42 wreck_2010-10-08_youtube_10000k_1pass.mp4
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  27M 2010-10-09 12:09 wreck_2010-10-08_youtube_1000k_1pass.mp4
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  23M 2010-10-09 12:23 wreck_2010-10-08_youtube_100k_1pass.mp4
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  43M 2010-10-09 15:38 wreck_2010-10-08_youtube_2000k_1pass.mp4
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  82M 2010-10-09 15:21 wreck_2010-10-08_youtube_4000k_1pass.mp4
-rw-r--r-- 1 kelly kelly  82M 2010-10-09 16:10 wreck_2010-10-08_youtube_4000k_2pass.mp4

Above is the size of the video. This is the same video ripped over and over with only the bit rate was changed. The image quality veris greatly. Look at my right cheek and forehead in the following videos. The pixelization shows up worse in those spots. I'm going with 4000k 1 pass. It makes a bit larger file, but I'm going to live with it.

Screen Shots

100k_1pass

1000k_1pas

2000k_1pass

4000k_1pass

4000k_2pass

10000k_1pass

straight off the camera

Wreck this morning (Friday)

No, not us. This was Friday 2010-10-08. I walked past a wreck this morning. It looks like a kind of bad fender bender. There was an ambulance. The video is nothing exciting. I thought I would put it up regardless.

I heard a siren just as I started walking on Westheimer. It sounded far away. The lights were visible even to me the whole way up. I assumed someone got pulled over. Traffic started freaking out instantly. You could tell people in high vehicles were jockeying for position even far back. People in cars seemed to love that empty right lane until they got close. You know how it goes.

The intersection this happened at is a bad one. People turn right on red out of the second lane as well as the first (from the right). This is illegal. You cannot turn right on read except from the far right lane of vehicle traffic. If I'm wrong let me know.

One the way home, same intersection, a car turns right out of the middle lain of Westheimer and cuts off someone in the next lane nearly causing a wreck right in front of me. It makes me wish I had a video camera I could just shoot video with every day on the way home. It would have made a great addition to the above video.

Title: Fender Bender

Description: No, not us. I walked past a wreck this morning. It looks like a kind of bad fender bender. There was an ambulance. The video is nothing exciting. I thought I would put it up regardless.

Tags: car wreck aftermath fender bender Harris County Texas

Taking the high road

Linux: Ubuntu Won't Moan To EU About Microsoft
"The company behind the Ubuntu Linux distro says it has no plans to follow Opera's lead and file a complaint against Microsoft to the EU. Ubuntu 10.10 is the most 'consumer-friendly' version of the Linux distro to date, but it faces an uphill battle against Microsoft's marketing machine. Even high-profile supporter Dell has dropped Ubuntu machines from its website in recent months, while continuing to remind visitors that 'Dell recommends Windows 7' at the top of every PC page. 'I don't think we've ever considered [an EU complaint],' said Steve George, vice president of business development at Canonical. 'The improvements we're making to Ubuntu ... are a better route for us to reach out to users and get a bigger user base.'"

I'm writing this blog on a Ubuntu 10.04 machine.

I'm not sure Ubuntu is the some user friendly Linux. Nor do I think it is the best Linux for the broadest list of uses. I do use Ubuntu at home because it does what I need and it works most of the time. The biggest place I want improvement is video editing and video card support. Sounds still sucks. These are things that Linux in general needs to improve.

Windows 7? I have only used Windows 7 for about an hour. I've installed it on some test machines at work. It looks like Vista with some options removed. I hear some of the driver problems have been solved. I also hear it does not support a swath of old hardware. I cannot blame Microsoft for that decision.

Something that the whole webbook debacle has taught me is that people don't know what they want until what they have does not work. Webbooks just don't have the horsepower to do much beyond surf the net, hit twitter, and check email. A friend of mine had one that would not play a hulu video for more than about half an hour before crashing. Dell said that was acceptable performance. I disagree.

Download the live CD and give it a try for nothing.

Notes:

On the walk in this morning I shot some footage of the cars running past. It is completely useless. I cannot afford to go do anything. I'm stuck at the house. I not only do not get to go experience things, but I cannot afford to video anything cool either. I work. I commute. I sleep. There is nothing else. I'm killing myself to work more. Yay me.

There is a massive shift in power moving from the west to the far east. China is keeping their curacy low. This means their goods and services are cheap. People flock to China for those goods and services. We may be facing a world devaluation to China's level. This will cause an equalization of sorts, but will kill trade. The U. S. has been screaming at China for decades. Most of he world is now chiming in. China is basically telling the rest of the world "We win." The rest of the world is having to catch up.

Set up a computer with two 48 inch monitors (TVs) hooked to it. Might try to find out if I can blog a pic.

When using a PDF printer, use "printer quality" and not "screen quality" to get better image output. The files will be larger, but it is worth it most of the time. The different quality settings are really a hang over from the days when emailing files was limited to teeny tiny pictures.

I was in the middle of a bunch of really stressful crap. I had a podcast running in the background. I was not really paying attention. Well, after listening to it for about an hour, I realized it was a message from the podcast people for some contest. The whole thing lasted about two minutes. I had the player on repeat by mistake. This tells me how much I absorb listening to podcasts at work.

Hit and run

"Enough of this round-about bullshit!!"

No idea where or when this happened.

TV

TV viewing is up. Why? I don't remember the last time I sat down to watch a TV show. I might play one in the background while doing something else on the computer. You know things are bad when one of the big TV execs says TV is entering a new "golden age." This means TV is doomed.

All the media companies are trying to figure out a way to get me to sign on for a monthly fee to access the same thing I can get one every other service for less money, maybe even for free. The act of sitting down at a specific time to watch something is dead. Even the TV companies are starting to figure this out. Time shifted viewing is the norm, regardless of method.

In many cases people have given up watching a TV series to play an engrossing long term video game. How many people stopped watching how many hours a week of TV to play WOW alone? How many say they are watching TV while they are really playing a MMORPG?

People used to n

Gold vs Canned Food and Shotguns

They are talking about a "Gold Bubble" out there in podcast land. The people hocking gold are distinctly not talking about the gold bubble.

Alix Jones (correction, Alix mentioned "Gold Bubble" recently. I just caught up to the podcast.) and GGL are notably silent. Some other folks though, are mentioning the old heavy yellow rocks just might go poof. It might get cheap enough to put it in teeth for goodness sake. Not sure I buy it. I don't buy gold either. I cannot afford the 1 gram sliver that you can buy in some vending machines around the world.

Some say people are buying gold by the ton. There are stories of gold vending machines in Texas. I heard a while back that gold vending machines were in airports in the middle east. Why not Texas?

I hate to say it, but gold is only valuable because people say it is. The material has some pretty cool properties. The biggest of which is that it does not tarnish, even over time. The same is true of diamonds, platinum, name your raw material. I would get more use out of a $1300 pile of manure than a $1300 oz of gold. At least the manure could help the grass grow.

If it indeed boils down to it, take a survival class for $1300. Learn to plant care for a food garden for $1300. Figure out a skill that will be useful after the crash and spend $1300 pursuing it.

Hell, fire building may come back in to fashion. There is a guy I have subscribed to on YouTube who makes three videos a week on lighting a fire in different ways with different equipment. It is very educational. He is not a pyromaniac, he just likes making it work many different ways. He is doing a lot better job at it than I.

Gold just doesn't seem to be the way to go for life or death kind of survival. Someone please explain it to me.

Lunch conversation

We went to an outside sitting place today. It was in the shade with no bad smells wafting around. No jerks making noise, besides us. No crazy people trying to talk to us. The breeze was blowing and the food was outstanding.

• Horders, the TV series.
• One of the guys has a dad who is a notorious horder
• The people on this show are simply irrational. If you clean up the homes, they are right back about a year later. The people doing the show kind of suck at what they are doing because they have screwed people in the process of trying to help them and their families.
• The food in Houston used to be different. Food has become Yankee-ized. There are still a couple of restaurants were you can get it done the old way when we were growing up.
• The subject of porn came up. It was a funny anecdote.
• TRF. They are planning a trip next Sunday. I will not be there.
• Video games, though not that much.
• Sports, though not that much.

My milk connection vanished

This guy named John at work has been bringing in milk every week. We were talking one day and he basically says it costs as much for a gallon as half a gallon, but he hates waisting the extra milk. I, being green, offer my morning coffee as a solution for the dilemma. I've been using his hard earned gallon of milk for my morning coffee for better than a year.

The bastard drug up. (mumbling) 24 days of vacation. (mumbling much more loudly) What about my needs? (continuing to mumble) That is 192 hours of vacation his first year. (pausing a moment to ponder that thought)

I wish him well. He is good at what he does. The new job sounds right up his ally.

I'm the most obvious choice for those using many of his skills to come to for help. I'm already doing most of my old job, some of a couple of other people's jobs and now I worry I'll get a slice of his duties piled on top as well. No extra pay of course. No extra time off. I can't wait for things to get better in the economy.

So, I'm taking my coffee black for the time being. I like milk in my coffee most of the time. When I am sick, I like it black. The rest of the time I like a ton of sugar and milk in my coffee. I cannot consume that coffee creamer stuff for very long. If I do, bad things happen to my digestion.

Notes:

There is a car insurance company that (Notice I didn't say who. A car insurance company is a what, not a who.) I have to give props to for at least trying to make creative commercials. I've even one of them on this blog. I'm fed up of giving them free advertisement. Nat and I do not use their services. Still, like the attempt at creativity.

I listened to a ghost story from PodCastle. Loved it. I'm not much for ghost stories. This one was just plane good.

Learning about SSL certificates. Yikes, they cost a lot more than I thought. I didn't notice any discounts for non-commercial certs either.

www.freakonomicsradio.com There is a Freakonomics podcast coming. Awesome. I loved the book, but I fear that the podcast will not have the same punch. When it is up and running, I'll most likely give it a shot if I remember.

New Zealand counts 50% of their carbon footprint from livestock. They are all up in arms about finding a vaccine that will get the cattle and other creatures from producing quite so much methane.

I haven't made a long blog entry in quite some time. I just don't have the will. I'm on a new kick of having the attitude that I am not tired. The word tired has a negative connotation. When I say I'm tired, I'm saying I'm unwilling or unable to do something. That is bad. I can be sleepy. I can be worn out. I refuse to be tired. I also wonder how long this will last. From now on 'tired' is a dirty word.

The geek world is a buzz over the Apple TV. Well, the trouble is, only the reviewers are jumping. Developers and consumers are just past jumping on the latest new thing. Who the hell can afford it? There is just too much going on to get all excited for some new Apple product. It is a TV for goodness sake. Yes, it does some cool stuff. Who the hell watches TV any more?

I used a 3.5 floppy today. I feel dirty. I had to track down the 3.5 USB floppy drive and a blank disk to boot from and flash a shitty motherboard. All the major manufacturers have USB or at least CD bootable systems. Not these guys. It is definitely retro walking around the office with a floppy and drive (even if USB) in my hand.

Network troubles

Walked in this morning to a network issue.

"Hey kelly, The database is down and email is not working well." says the user.

"I'm on it." says I.

I started pinging around. Maybe it is trouble with one of the switches that died last week. More pinging. More pinging. Restart some switches. Isolate systems and section of the network. Davide and identify. Where is the dead line? Where is the dead switch? Where is the dead computer?

It boiled down to rebooting a file server. Things started working for the most part.

The database that has our computers and connections listed in it will not come up. I cannot look up a machine if the system goes offline. I thought I had written down the machines I needed to worry about, but of course, I do not have them all in that notebook. Thus, I do not have the one I need. How in the world can you keep that kind of information in a manner where it is both accessible and maintainable? Why, a database of course. A database which is ... wait for it ... on the network. It still ended up working out.

Our time clock runs off a database as well. How else would you do it? Anyway, the service that runs on the server machine has to write the updated data out to a table so the display machines around the building can display the data in a human readable way. This was not updating. It took me and another guy an hour to figure out where the script was that does this push. I now have it written in my notes. It tuned out to be a pretty obvious spot. It was just a matter of running through the fifteen obvious places.

This is the typical day of the IT person. This is normal. Parts of the network bombing out and having to track down the same switch by hand that was the problem last week is just how it is done. By the time 14:00 rolls around, I'm ready to keel over. I'm there until 18:00.

Now we are talking adding VLAN setup to the mix. VLAN switches are great for limiting traffic. We attempt to do this now via other means. Sometimes things work well. Other times things blow up in our face. VLAN setup is just one more tool in the box. It is not a silver bullet by any measure.

teachers

Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach. This is an old saying. It is rude, and it is only right about as often as it is wrong.

The order of filtration in university major for people with some propensity to math is as follows. Engineering, Computer Science, Liberal Arts, Education. I'm missing one in the middle.

If the market were not saturated, the pay would be higher for teachers. If the teachers were paid more, better qualified people would participate in education.

There is a huge movement to fire teachers who do not perform. They are firing teachers an hiring them back. They are watching their teachers and making sure people are teaching the kids. Maybe, it is not the students all the time. Maybe it has something to do with the teachers.

I had a couple of good teachers. One was a political science and government teacher. The other was a special education teacher. They both taught me to question and find answers. Research and find answers. Learn.

It is a very good thing to learn to question and find answers. This is very difficult to do in math. How do you find the answer to a calculus problem? You look up the problem and follow the instructions for finding the answer. In history, writing, government, the answers are not so black and white. It amazes me how many teachers never got that fact.

for the most part, I could not pick most of my teachers out of a lineup.

Lit air

Rain in the blinking neon light.
Any color you want so log as it is green.
The very air glows with the light.
Like a scene from a bad movie.

People walk past the sign.
They turn colors and glow as they pas.
The noise of the rain and the sign battle to be heard.
What ever happened to dark?

Notes:

It took twelve days to catch John Wilkes Booth.

The lunch conversation was bad. I hate football season. No one even talks about football any more. They all talk about fantasy football. People don't mind watching the game on TV. They don't bother going to games because it is so difficult to check stats while the game is going on.

One global government, of at least Europe and the U. S., by 2025.

Cap and Trade, taxing the air you breath. Next you will be taxed on what you think.

"Banking is not a business that is a normal business." Heard from a banking expert being interviewed on the BBC. This is saying that banking is too important to be left to the open free market. Banking needs to be part of the government.

2800 stimulus jobs created for a wind farm in west Texas. 400 of those jobs are in the U. S.. The rest are in China. We got truck drivers and lawyers working over here. Way to spend my taxes you assholes! (Summery from The G. Gordon Liddy show)

I listen to a podcast called The Gamer Wok Hour. They are all about games. Except, when they talk about Glee for an hour of the weekly show. These geeks sounded like fourteen year old girls. (mocking) "Oh, did you hear such and such song." "Oh, my god I almost died." "Ya every one at worked loved it". Blah. Drop a set you nerd losers. Get over Britney. Yee-gads!

Camera clamp

It looks like someone else invented exactly what I'm lloking for when it comes to mounting the small camera in the car. Link

Bastards.

Notes:

The walk in this morning was beautiful. There was a chill in the air. Just enough chill to make it a comfortable sweat free effort. Nice. The sun rise was pretty cool too. I didn't get a picture. I just wasn't in the mood. Thought I'de mention it. Today is going to be one of those days I envy the guys working on the fountain out front.

There is something going down in Europe. There is speculation that there will be a Mumbai type attack somewhere in Europe, specifically in Germany. Some say the warnings coming out tell them that the bad guys are in place, supplied and waiting for a go. I have no idea how accurate any of this is. A travel advisory has been issued. "Don't stick out." seems to be the message. Scary stuff.

This weekend, I tried to figure out a way to hook my camera to the car. I want to take a video and make a time lapse. There is nowhere to just sit the camera. We already have problems with stuff stuck to the dash via tape. I'm looking for a clip that I can put a tripod screw on for clipping the camera to a surface. I've found some monopods that clamp, but they are expensive and seem designed to fit on car windows and something hard. I need a heavy duty Acco clip or something to that effect.

Walked over to Randell's and spent $13 or so for a loaf of bread, dill relish, mayo and lunch meat. You have got to be kidding me. That is high as a cats as. The cost of everything is going up. The walk was nice. I couldn't get upset for having to run across the street. On top of that, they were all talking sports back at the lunch room so I don't think I missed anything.

The G. Gordon Liddy Show had a Toys R Us ad. Didn't expect that.

It is so often that I do not know when things are going wrong until they have stopped all together. Someone's laptop is acting funny. I need to take it for an hour or two to figure out what is going on. They will not give it up. They will not give it up until things just don't work. This happens with engineers, sales, management, every one. No one is immune. Not sure if it applies to all resources or just computers. I only deal with the latter.

Birds

Went in to work today. Wrote and tested 4 lines of code. For some reason, there were a bunch of people there. Had several distractions. I hate that. I go in on the weekends to not deal with every day work distractions.

While waiting at Wendie's across the street, I got really board and shot some quick footage of the little scavenging black birds. I shot the guy walking in the median with a sandwich board. I don't want to advertise his wares so I'm not putting up the video. Still, he reminded me a bit of the birds in his pacing walk and he kind of looked annoyed that he has to stoop to this level to make a living. God bless him.

No intro this time. Just didn't have the drive.

Title: Walking birds

Description: While waiting at Wendie's across the street, I got really board and shot some quick footage of the little scavenging black birds. I shot the guy walking in the median with a sandwich board. I don't want to advertise his wares so I'm not putting up the video. Still, he reminded me a bit of the birds in his pacing walk and he kind of looked annoyed that he has to stoop to this level to make a living. God bless him.

Tags: Wendie's birds walking Houston Texas Westheimer board bus stop waiting

link

Simple adventures

Title: Minor adventures

Description: The progress on the fountain out front of our building at work. Quick trip to the Salvation Army.

Tags: Salvation Army Houston Texas

Notes:

One in every four homes for sale in the U. S. last quarter were in some stage foreclosure. how messed up is this?

I've been sick for a month. I cough and sneeze. My whole head is just a mess. The bad spots travel from the lower left of my through to the lower right. It will be at the top next week. My nose is sore. My throat is just generally dry and sore. My ears itch. I'm really really really sick of being sick. I wonder what percentage of my life I spend dealing with sickness and allergies.

Ever had goosebumps? Millions of years ago, humans had much more hair all over their bodies. When you felt a danger, tiny little muscles in the skin tightened. This raised the hair and made the body look a bit bigger and a bit more apposing. Animals can still do this. Humans have lost the hair, but not the muscles. -Dr Karl.

Here lately, I've been sticking my camera in my pocket over lunch. I have yet to even think about whipping it out for anything. That time is a stress walk off period. Not sure if talking to a camera or if videoing anything would be a stress reliever or causer. I have taken pictures over lunch before. That seemed to be fun.

Wow! I just heard someone on NPR complain that the polls are full of crap. Pardon me while I pull my jaw off the floor. NPR seems to be one of the biggest poll-whores ever. Everything they talk about has a poll attached to it. I suppose the news that most polls say conservatives are on the rise and both parties will suffer in one way or another is too much for the liberal echo NPR to take.

I really hate the new carr insurance commercials.