Yes, I'm the one learning here. Elle gets some quick math lessons, but I'm being taught patients, yet again.
| Field | Data |
| Title | Homework from the first grade |
| Description | Tens place addition from first grade math. |
| Tags | first grade school homework kids math maths canon powershot 940 IS Houston Texas |
| Link | Link |
| Field | Data |
| Name | Elle and the pillow |
| Description | Elle and her pillow. |
| Tags | kids pillow frustration bedtime canon powershot 940 Houston Texas |
| Link | Link |
My dad may have a stroke when he sees this one. I can't believe that is $150. Crazy.
Played with a USB wireless network adapter today. We have a need at work. It works like a champ. As a matter of fact, it worked better than many built in wireless adapters in laptops. That upsets me. I've read in a couple of places that anything with an antenna will out perform anything without a dedicated antenna. All wireless devices have some kind of antenna. My experience tells me this is true.
When I was in to citizen band radio, I learned just a little bit about antennas. You can have the most massive power amplifier (foot warmer, socks) and get out talked by the guy who has a well grounded top center mount antenna with a stock CB.
The same appears to be true about wireless network adapters. The devices with the antennas tend to be cheaper. I believe this is because they do not need to make it higher quality in order to make up for a hidden antenna. Perhaps this makes the idea of having an antenna seem like a cheap cop out. It is not.
People tag me every five minutes saying their wireless is messed up. The problem is that they have connected to an access point on the other side of the building and every time someone sneezes they get kicked off. Or, they are connected, but they do not get an IP address. Or, Someone switched on a microwave and blew out the entire electromagnetic spectrum for three blocks. Gotta have that burrito right now.
The more I use wireless, the less impressed I am with it. It is unreliable and unstable. It is insecure and probably causes cancer and sterility. I bought a $20 router at the house. It does not have an external antenna. I'm trying to cover my house and not much more.
I use NEdit at home and work. It is a pretty cool editor. It is a bit more like old Windows editors. I'm not married to it. It is just better than some of the alternatives. Don't get Linux people started on their favorite text editors. Many deaths.
The different versions of NEdit use different spell checkers. The old one uses ispell. The new one uses aspell. The aspell package was clearly written by someone for whom English was not their primary language. Some of the keys are simply backwards.
| Field | ispell | aspell |
| Use | Work | Home |
| Replace | Start at 1 | Start at 0 |
| Add word | Add | Insert |
| Ignored | Ignore | Accept |
I'm getting used to it. I like the spell checker in GEdit better. That is all I like about GEdit better though. If I complain about the spell checker in VI.
Down
How do you intend to go out? I didn't know I would plummet. Sitting on this plane surrounded by people screaming and climbing over seats, sucking on oxygen masks, preying. I straighten my tie. clear my throat as best I can in the low pressure. When I meet my maker, I will look the part of a man who cared enough to look a bit prepared. Looking prepared and acting informed open so many doors. Maybe they will open this door too. So what if it doesn't. This is my only play in the game. Sit up straight. Breath. Relax.
Duck
You know when you walk down the street and bump in to someone you know, but then you realize that it isn't the same person?
That happened to me today. Only, the person I thought I knew, but didn't acted like they knew me. Even after realizing my mistake and trying to gracefully bail, this person kept walking after me and trying to talk to me. What are you supposed to do in this kind of situation?
The next time I recognize someone on the street, I'm going to go home and track them down online like a normal person.
Time's getting near to start mowing. It is January! That is just wrong!
I played with a database for a bit today. The grinding sound coming from between my ears and the smoke was annoying. It had been a while since I had put together an Access DB. I was not particularly good at it to begin with.
Had to put tape on my phone today. The back of the case is cracking. It is a cheap after market back that fits over the enormous battery I had to get because the stock battery sucked. Thanks T-Mobile. You fail me once again.
We have a public address system at work. It works through the phone system. Everyone has their own way of picking up the phone and using the address system. The way the big boss does it is pretty much unique. You can hear it every time. Every time I hear that succession of clicks, I cringe and dread my name being called.
The more I read about firewalls, the more I hate them. The moment I start thinking about what is going on and what needs to go on I get a headache. I understand how all the pieces work. I get an idea how to make the changes. How are you supposed to know what to do? There is a philosophy to this. This is like juggling porcupines. It is aggravated by the fact that I only have live servers to play with. It is as much voodoo as skill. They are one of those necessary evils that must be conquered in order to get anything done on a network.
This is not the most miserable weather we have had. However, it is some of the most miserable weather we have had. Good thing it is not supposed to last for a very long time. That is what makes weather truly miserable.
Close, success.
Close, success
They may get arrested, but they are walking away. Didn't look like any one got hurt. Success.
Taking your balloon for a walk. Balloon operator afraid of heights. Taxying.
Same rules as above. They might get arrested, but no one was hurt.
"Where did all that blood come from?"
"That isn't blood."
"Sure it is."
"No, it is transmission fluid. Trust me. Blood doesn't look red when it hits the ground."
"Yah."
The men crouched behind a wall of dirt as the bullets sliced the air above their heads. They had been there a while it seemed. The night was cold, but the first behind them kept them warm.
"When will we get a break?"
"When we make one. No one is going to give us a break. Get ready. Don't slip in the blood."
I stole this idea of a 100 word story from This Blog is Full of Crap.
The words were snarky and snide and rude. His final message, however, left an extra special impression: "I got caught up in the anonymity of the internet. I'm sorry and here is a legit post with my criticisms." Upon opening the pasted link, I was greeted by a nasty pornographic image that would make Sasha Grey vomit into the nearest trash can.
When I later noted to Matt, via Twitter, that my 7-year-old daughter happened to be next to me when I clicked on the picture, he wrote: "lmao. You're so full of ----."
...
Quite frankly, I wanted to hate him. I wanted to bash him. I wanted to plaster his name, address and personal information atop a column on CNN.com, so that when someone Googled his name for future employment, they'd find the words "Sent me a link to pornographic material."
Then we spoke. And I (dammit) liked him. Without invisibility or the support of his 54 Twitter followers or the superhuman powers supplied by a warm keyboard, Matt was meek and apologetic. "I was just trying to get a rise out of you," he said. "You're a known sports writer, and I thought it was cool. That's all. I never meant for it to reach this point."
...
Indeed, along with contacting Matt, I also tracked down Andy, a 23-year-old aspiring writer who tweeted of me: "jeff Pearlman and billy madison share an intelligence quotient (because jeff Pearlman is a f---ing retard)."
When I dialed a number I found for Andy, his mother answered. (I admit, this brought me great delight.) Andy was even more apologetic than Matt -- and more willing to explain his actions.
So many people would say there is not online etiquette. As long as your name and where people can find you are not plastered all over everything you send over the interet, there will never be a sense of retribution. It is the same thing that happens in the school yard. If one kid things they will get away with something, then they will do it. I imagine if enough people get nailed for this sort of behavior, and the news of such gets out, less people will do it. There will always be someone who thinks they will get away with it.
A long time ago I read something about people and how they act. Harsh punishments do not stop people from doing bad things. If, however, the stronger they feel that they will get caught, the less likely they are to do the bad thing. If your real name and home address were plastered on every post, you would be more civil, or not post at all.
I recently added a bunch of people on Skype. This is a waist of time because I have no headset or microphone that works. Something tells me I'm going to need the functionality of Skype in the near future. It is an amazing product. Skype has a great hook as well. The free functionality can be extremely useful on it's own. You do not need a bunch of equipment, nor do you need to sign up for a contract.
The quality of things could be better. I've heard many podcasts for example that royally suck because Skype was acting up. It reminds me a lot of the phone system. Funny that.
I don't really know that many people outside of my circle of friends. I have not had that much use for a webcam. I don't know what kind of use I'll get out of one soon, but it is just one of those feelings that it is a good idea.
There is a headset I've picked out on Amazon. I'm probably going to pull the trigger and get it next month. Not got me a headset a long time ago, but it died because I was using it as a set of headphones. I go through headphones. This time I'm going to only use the headset when I make a call or need that functionality. I'll take out my frustrations on a cheaper less precious set of generic headphones.
You really were one of the folks who tried. You were one of the folks who made a difference for the better. The little bit I knew you, for the short time I knew you, you were a good, honest person who made a difference for the better.
| Field | Data |
| Name | Rolland the Nomad |
| Description | Rolland was a good friend. He passed away earlier this month. This is just a quick toast to his memory. |
| Tags | Roland the nomad friend death toast tribute canon powershot 940IS Houston Texas |
| Link | Link |
I got a full time job in 1994 at $8.50 an hour. It was 40 hours a week. That comes out to $17,680. In 2010 dollars that is $26,013.58. The took I used says there is a 47.1% inflation differential.
In 1996 I started at a big company for $15 an hour. That is $31,200, or $43,360.84 in 2010 dollars.
When I left that large company for a smaller one I was making right about $50,000 a year. That is $55,825.65 in 2010 dollars.
I'm not going to give amounts for the new company. Hopefully folks understand.
In 1988, I got a job at a grocery store for $4.50 an hour. It was nowhere near a full time job, but I'm going to throw it in as a full time job just for fun. Get this $4.50 an hour in 1988 was nearly the same as $8.50 an hour in 1994 after adjusted to 2010 dollars.
Inflation tool I used.
Based on 2010 dollars
| Year | actual | adjusted |
| 1988 | $9,360 | $17,252.70 |
| 1994 | $17,680 | $26,013.58 |
| 1996 | $31,200 | $43,360.84 |
| 2005 | $50,000 | $55,825.65 |
| 2010 | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
This is what some creative people can do with time, effort, a couple stout laptops and some HD video cameras. It almost has the feel that I had when I was playing the game. not quite. People are leaning in to turns when they run for example. That throws everything off. Except for little details like that, it is a great romp.
Fantastic effort. This is better than most of The TV I've watched in the last year or two.
Well, I for one must say that it is about time this whole energy crises and middle east issues all just dissolved to meadows and sunshine. These issues have been dominating the news for quite long enough. I would greatly appreciate more news about traffic jams all tee new bacteria guzzling SUVs on the market.
News: Biotech Company Making Fossil Fuels With a 'Library' of Bacteria
"In September, a privately held and highly secretive US biotech company named Joule Unlimited received a patent for 'a proprietary organism' รข€“ a genetically engineered cyanobacterium that produces liquid hydrocarbons: diesel fuel, jet fuel and gasoline. This breakthrough technology, the company says, will deliver renewable supplies of liquid fossil fuel almost anywhere on Earth, in essentially unlimited quantity and at an energy-cost equivalent of $30 (US) a barrel of crude oil. It will deliver, the company says, 'fossil fuels on demand.' ... Joule says it now has 'a library' of fossil-fuel organisms at work in its Massachusetts labs, each engineered to produce a different fuel. It has 'proven the process,' has produced ethanol (for example) at a rate equivalent to 10,000 US gallons an acre a year. It anticipates that this yield could hit 25,000 gallons an acre a year when scaled for commercial production, equivalent to roughly 800 barrels of crude an acre a year."
Yup. nothing like the interet for the rearing of old jokes. I like this one. I've heard a couple different versions of it.
Green Hornet sucked.
End of review.
"If we could travel faster than light, this interstellar war would be a lot less boring." - On a Blade of Grass - Escape Pod.
The bus this morning had to stop and pick up the dozen or more people who had to get off an earlier bus that apparently had something wrong with it. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Except, the bus then passed us as we pulled away. Sure, something was wrong enough to not want passengers on the bus, but not broken enough to stop the bus from returning to the barn under it's own power. Still, annoying.
I spent most of my day trying to get two computers to talk to each other. It all boiled down to firewall settings. We knew this and yet, we could not do much about it. Every time you start down a path when it comes to modern firewalls, you find yourself falling in to a new trap. It is no wonder that it is a full time job to administer network security these days. It is a nightmare.
Someone was on the top floor of the parking garage running an RC car. It took me a minute to figure out what the noise was. It sounded like one of those high speed racing models. Looked like fun. By the time I grabbed the camera, the person was done and packing up.
While stopping to ponder the universe, I noticed the sunshine reflecting off a flat spot in the concrete before me. The universe can wait. This is beauty. As one learns to think in the languages of machines, the world becomes cloudy and looses the little magic bits. The child sees the sparkles of tiny flat stones in the concrete. The man sees only a road to tread and bills to pay.
Light travels 300,000 km in a second.
That is 300,000,000 m and thus 300,000,000,000 mm.
A gigahertz is 1/1,000,000,000 of a second.
1 300,000,000,000 300
------------- * --------------- = --- = 300
1,000,000,000 1 1
This means light travels 300 mm at one tick of the clock running at 1 gigahertz.
This is just shy of one foot.
Yoville started working on my 64 bit Ubuntu Linux box. I don't know where to go from here. Is this a good thing or not? I mean, I like the fact that I don't have to jump through fifteen hoops to get a Flash game to work, but I am a bit upset because I don't have to jump through fifteen hoops to get some worthless time waisting Flash game to work. I rather enjoyed not playing this game.
I was cornered in to playing it by Nat. She wanted me to help her do something. She has since moved on to other time and money waisting games. I don't want to get in to what I think of this issue. The developers are just thieves in my opinion, taking advantage of people by making the games addictive and getting people to peer pressure their friends in to getting involved.
So, did Yoville fix something or did Flash start working better under Chromium on Ubuntu? This is 64 bit for goodness sake.
Until now, I had to use Wine to install the Windows version of Firefox. Then get the Flash plugin to work under that setup. Then and only then would Yoville start to work. This worked for a couple of different games. Sound never worked properly this way. It would work for a minute and then crap out. I hated the sound in Yoville anyway. Still, it was useful in some other situations.
I'm afraid to go looking for other Flash games or programs that didn't work before. What if they all work? I will not be an outcast any more. I'll be <gasp> NORMAL!! We can't have that.
We have a paging system at work. It runs through the phones. In the lab, I have a hard time hearing the pages. More specifically, I have a hard time telling what some folks say. It isn't their fault. I figured out that some people's voices hit the same frequencies that the fans of the computers hit. I think some people speak in more advantages tones. Other folks can shout and not be heard in there.
We are fixing a new office area at my office. People will be moving in soon. I was down there helping set up yesterday. It was so quite. Everyone else was off working on other bits of the business. I was there trying to get some wireless stuff to work. It was quite. No running equipment. No people or phones. The only noise was me complaining under my breath and the air conditioning emitting a hum.
I wish I had a room in my home I could keep empty. Nothing on the walls. Nothing on the floor. Just walls and me. Nothing kicks my imagination like that. As long as I have the opportunity to come and go when I want, and it didn't start to feel like a prison cell, I think it would be very therapeutic. This would be a great place for the creative juices to flow.
Maybe I can create something like this room. This idea of a blank room makes me think of meditation. That might be what I'm looking for. This is a place to relax my mind and let my conscious self wander around in my own thoughts.
If you saw all my work areas you would think that I have a fear of empty, uncluttered or dust free spaces. I am messy. The mess follows me around. The empty room would have a computer in it shortly. Then would come a set of shelves. That table and chair just showed up unexpectedly. Before you know it, I would be weaving my way through the paths between the clutter.
No, I'm not a border. I'm more just lazy. I have an unfortunate high tolerance for crap. I fell in love with my grandfather's old houses. He had boxes and shelves full of cool old junk. Stuff that was still in some way useful, for the most part. Nothing had a place, but he knew where much of it was. If you dug deep enough, you found tools that were old and rusty or useless. This is why I try to go through my stuff and get rid of useless stuff after a while. A bag full of old useless compute equipment left the house last night. You can't tell by looking at the shelves I pulled all the stuff from.
The rummage was a failure because I was looking for a microphone. I need one for Skype. I've gone through fifteen over my lifetime. I used to have a couple that I had purchased for $0.50 each at a garage sale. These lasted me twenty years. They then vanished. I had a chance to buy a $2 mic on Amazon, but it looked like it sucked. The headsets look useful, but they want $20 for any that look like more than crap. None of the inexpensive ones are stereo. I need to hit some garage sales for a used mic that doesn't suck.
This trek was not so much a trip down memory lane so much as a wallow in the cat hair and dust. I tossed old IDE drive cables, parallel printer cables, cordless phones, mobile phones, broken keyboards, dead batteries and goodness knows what else. This was very noisy. I'm trying to connect with the title of this post. I've gotten off track. I found a couple of lantern mantles, a hot glue gun and some ear plugs. No microphone.
I have this memory from my youth. It is of a line of old houses. The paint was flaking on many. The ground was muddy. The trees had no leaves. The trees were black and had no leaves. The air was clear and cold. The street was dirty. The sun was very bright. The air was wet.
I was with my parents. We were headed somewhere. This was in front of where we lived. I was looking away from the house. I do not remember the house, but I do remember this scene.
The wind was blowing. There was an engine running in the distance. There was a hiss of a busy road. Someone was standing not far behind me talking in that not important way. I do not remember what was said.
There were items in the front yards. I know some of them were toys of other children. I do not remember details of the toys except at least one of them was white and lay across the street.
This is one of the most vivid memories of my very young life. I think I was three. As I get older, I'm sure 95% of this scene is my mind recreating everything as I go. It doesn't matter if I'm honest. The scene is the definition of beautiful.
One thing I know is that everything in the scene is clear as a bell. I had astigmatism even as a child so what I really saw must have been blurry in that smear kind of way that only astigmatism can produce. Not in my mind's eye thought. It is a postcard perfect memory. How awesome is that?
A front rolled in just before lunch today. It would have been awesome to catch a time lapse of it, but I didn't notice it coming until it was really too late. I did have the Flip camera with me today because of DnD. Missed it thought. Drat.
"... or is this just another warehouse turned porn factory?" -Drabblecast.
It took three of us to put together an office chair. Of course, the big boss walks by just long enough to watch me drop the base of the chair while trying to fit bits together. It took three of us to bend the back of the chair to make the screw holes line up. It is a cheap chair. It took a minute to figure out that you had to really smash the leaver the first time to get it to go up and down. I'm sure I came off looking like an idiot. Well, I felt like one.
How many people do you know who listen to poetry occasionally while grinding away at work? Well, if you know me, you know at least one. I listen to a couple of podcasts that have poetry as part of their schedules. I listen to some futon podcasts as well. I drink wine instead of beer. I'm allergic to something in beer. I get sick from it very easily.
I hat to reorder the work light for videos. I did get the bulbs. They kept pushing back the date on the one light. So, I hat to go order the other identical [24~e light that was $1 more expensive. It will end up in a video. Worry not.
WARNING: Complaining ahead.
The UK media is finally realizing that inflation is here and has been here for a while. People gripe that companies and governments are not absorbing part of the strain. Do they forget that there is only one way to make money for a company or a government? They all sit on the tit of the public at large. That is where the buck stops. If it were not for people there would be no money.
Normally, the cost of everything goes up and then the wages of people go up to match the rise. This keeps the economy going because people just refuse to give up their cable TV and corn flakes. The problem is, wages are stagnant this time. People are just not able to afford the same things they got last week as a stable of survival.
In the UK, prices are rising at 5% a year at the moment. Wages are rising 2% at the same time. This means wage earners are loosing ground. They are falling behind. Trust me, something similar is going on in the U. S.. Don't think we are immune. The price of everything I buy every day is going through the roof. It is getting ridiculous.
Our company is having reviews. We got a memo talking about things are tough all over. Don't expect a raise. When I started working over twenty years ago, I made $9 an hour. I wander how far ahead of that, adjusted for cost of living, I am today. I have a family to support for goodness sake.
Then comes the slap in the face. In the same news cast the commentator says "Hey, there is a good side to oil costing so much. You will loose less and we might meet our carbon emission level." Bastards. It is officially convenient that the all these carbon cap and tax markets would pop up just as we see the light at the end of the tunnel from this down turn? People will blame their inability to pay for things on the general economical downturn instead of this new burden that has crept it's way in to our wallets over the last decade.
There is one good thing coming out of this economic down turn. There is a budding movement to tell kids when they suck at something. There are people in educational systems who are saying things like "Not everyone gets a metal for everything." Some people are beginning to think that making kids feel good is not the end goal of teaching them things. Perhaps, children should be expected to perform. If they do not perform at one task, then they should be challenged with other tasks. If you are not frustrated, you are not learning.
It is funny how creative juices work. Some days I have fifteen blog entries poor out of me. Other days I'm lucky to type up a weather report.
Someone said that the third Monday in January is the most depressing day of the year. I suppose that is just enough time to tell that this year is not going to be any different than last year.
3d is a fad. It is a fad in its present form any way. The human eyes do not see in three dimensions. The eyes see two 2d images. The brain generates or imagines a 3d structure. As one object passes in front of or behind another, the imagined structure of the world is honed in to our perception of reality.
The fact that there is a war on was way down the list of reasons why highly skilled and high ranking people are bailing out of the U. S. military. The military bureaucracy and the lack of any intelligence at the top for making decision. Weak leadership at the top was also listed as a frustration.
I need to learn more about Tesla. Not what they have spouted in movies and novels. I want to know a little bit about the man. He is just too out there to not be a time traveler.
I may have to stop listening to conservative talk shows at work. I get all fired up.
A friend of mine came in today. I know he feels terrible. He missed yesterday afternoon for illness. He came in today, I just know it, because he missed three days in January last year and flat refuses to do the same this year. That kind of thing weighs on you the whole year.
2011 is the beginning of a new decade. At the beginning of the next decade, I will be in my fifties. What the hell happened? Where did that red headed kid go? Someone kidnapped my youth. When I go, I want my tombstone to read "Out of my way, I have a deadline." or "I wish I had spent more time at work." or "All I learned I lost. What did I really need to know?" Really, whatever you can afford is fine.
Has human cloning already happened? There are some very wealthy people in need of organs. If not, how much longer to you suppose it will be before this happens?
It is all about the codec.
Containers
Files are files. avi, mov, mp4, mp3 - These are file formats. They have little to do with codecs beyond what is "normally" contained within these file formats. These are containers. These hold the data you see and hear on the screen.
Codec
A codec is the math that is run on the data to make it something that you can store one digital media. The end result is a big pile of numbers that mean nothing until you run them backwards (decode) through the codec and back in to the proper data to display or play on a sound card.
Money
Companies spend a lot of money making a better codec. If you make a better codec the world will create YouTube and pipe it in to every computer in the world. Then, you can drop the hammer and force every one to pay you baskets full of cash or you will turn off the spigot.
The reason there are a million different codecs has nothing to do with which is better or which is easier. It all boils down to money. Which will protect my content and make me look better and thus worth more to every one in the world?
Theora and WebM are free as far as I can tell. I have not done a lot of homework. The quality is not as good as H264 in my opinion. I can't put up an example on YouTube because YouTube converts everything to their format, which happens to be H264 or Flash move format at the writing of this article. YouTube is, however, dropping H264 because of rights.
Apple: The Ambiguity of "Open" and VP8 Vs. H.264 Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday January 17, @12:37PM "With all the talk about WebM and H.264, how the move might be a step backwards for openness, and Google's intention to add 'plugins' for IE9 and Safari to support WebM, this article attempts to clear misconceptions about the VP8 and H.264 codecs and how browsers render video. Firefox, Opera and Google rely on their own media frameworks to decode video, whereas IE9 and Safari will hand over video processing to the operating system (Windows Media Player or QuickTime), the need for the web to establish a baseline codec for encoding videos, and how the Flash player is proprietary, but implementation and usage remain royalty free."
Hit the SlashDot article for a bunch of informative links.
It is the iPhone vs the iPhone. Version vs AT&T. Which is the evil one? They are all telephone companies. Apple is laughing at their customers all the way to the global banking conglomerate. I'm on T-Mobile. They are cutting the amount of data you can use on your unlimited plan. I suppose it is unlimited as long as you stay under the limit.
I work very hard to not fit the frigging mold.
It has become an art to word your insult so it sounds like news.
How many times have I heard the term "Angry Republicans in the House of Representatives." or, something to that effect? The press is drooling for blood. That is what sells information. I can't say that is what sales papers any more. I have a bad feeling that every little thing is going to be blown to crises proportions until there is no media left to shout from the mountain top.
"Those most in need ..." This keeps coming up. The government in the U. K. wants to give people on disability and terminal cancer and such cheaper energy for heat in the winter. That sounds good, but the people on both sides seem to forget that that bill goes to consumers. Turn around and the idea of "higher taxes on retailers" comes out of their mouths with zero regard that it will be passed straight on to the consumer. Keep sticking your head in the magic sand. At what point will someone say "I don't need this?" Well, it happens more and more every day.
It is MLK day. I think Mr. King was a great man. He fought for what he believed in. He made wrongs right. He died in his trek for a better world. I don't get the day off, but my child does. Thank goodness we have someone who is willing and able to watch her. It sounds to me like there is still a wrong that needs to be made right.
Mr. King was a master of words. His words really mattered. Some folks are slopping over with words that cause more harm than good. When you spew hate in your words, when you divide people with your words, when your words hurt people, you are doing more harm than good. Stop it. Causing a divide between groups of people and inciting a riot is a bad thing.
Remember Chat Roulette? Yes, the video chat site with all the exposed male genitalia, that's the one. They have monetized all those freaks. When you go on Chat Roulette, you can flag people for being naked. If they get flagged enough, they get forwarded to a porn site. If they sign up, the Chat Roulette people get paid. Chat Roulette is making a hundred grand a month off these psychos. I've never tried Chat Roulette. This was heard on The Dinner Party Download podcast.
No sooner did I write the above paragraph than someone came in and mentioned Chat Roulette to me. They had just given it a try while setting up someone's laptop for SKYPE. It kind of creeped me out.
This makes me remember that I need to get SKYPE up and running. I don't remember why. I needed to have the web cam and microphone up a while back. It should be pretty easy to be honest. I say that and I know people have trouble doing just that in Linux. Heck, the phones I was looking at the other day had SKYPE software and back aiming cameras to make it work better. Amazon has some for $5 that have LED lights and built in microphones. I may try one of them.
Wish me luck.
We have an ex employee at my office. I noticed that I have his number, but not his email. I've gotten a bit better at asking for data over the internet and such. There is a certain fines to convince people that you are not some spammers, or some phisher looking for too many details.
Me: Hey [name] if this is still your number, may I have your email? -[my name]
Him: Yeah it is. Of course I have to ask you why u want my email.
Me: Shits and giggles.
Him: Sounds like you. [his email]
I had to chuckle.
A pirate walks in to a bar. He is a mess. The bartender asks "What happened to your leg?"
"Arrrr, a shark jumped up and bit off my leg."
The bartender winced and asked "What happened to your hand?"
"Well, I lost that in a sword fight."
The bartender thought he might as well get it all out of the way at once and asked "What happened to your eye?"
The pirate rolled his good eye and said "A scurvy bird flew over and pooped in my eye."
The bartender was taken back a bit. "Couldn't you wash it off or something? How did that cause you to loose your eye?"
"It was the day after I got me hook."
Wet walk in this morning. It was foggy as well. The new light helped direct people around me. Works like a champ.
God bless Steve Jobs. I'm not saying that because I think he is such a wonderful guy or that he has worked any kind of miracle. I'm not a fan-boy of Apple. He has done a lot that affects my life, most of it I consider a good thing. He has health problems and I wish him well, just as one person to another. I pray for people I know all the time. I just don't advertise it on the blog. Please don't feel left out. Jobs will never hear about this prayer.
Whale vomit (ambergris) is more expensive than gold or truffles.
"If you have more possessions than you can carry for a mile, then they poses you." This is an old saying.
I can't complain about work on my Twitter feed because people at my work follow me. Well, they follow that feed. Time for a stealth feed.
Someone said the world population will peak around 2050 at nine billion. A bunch of other people said that was ridiculous. I have no idea. I doubt I'll make it that far based on family history. One interesting thing that came out of the little article was the number one means of birth control in the world. Educate women, and the birth rate drops below 2.1 births, which is the magic replacement number.
Just how fast can a flash flood take out a low crossing. Well, nearly instantly. Too fast to jump out of the way unless you know it is coming. That first wave looks powerful enough to knock a stout vehicle off it's wheels.
I have nothing to add to this except to swear it was not me who wrote the original review.
Just sitting in the office and whoosh, there goes half the cars in the parking lot. What a mess. Several people have been killed by these and related floods.
This is the current output of the test form that I put up yesterday. The form takes up more room on the screen than I really though tit should have. I can live with that if the result is a spreadsheet this easy to output and maintain. Have mercy, this was easy. This is as it should be.
| Timestamp | This is question 1 Please enter short text | This is question 2 | This is a multiple choice questiono. | This is a scale. | This is a simple checkbox. |
| 1/14/2011 16:49:39 | Testing_kelly | Blue | third | 4 | Item 1, item 4 |
| 1/15/2011 18:08:14 | Typed from my iPad | Red | first |
Yes, I'm desperate to put up a video. The goatee is getting out of hand. So, here is a video.
| Field | Data |
| Title | Man trims beard |
| Description | Yup. I filmed myself trimmming my goatee/beard. That is how desperate I am to put up a video. |
| Tags | beard man trim canon powershot 940IS houston texas |
| Link | Link |
I wined yesterday that something was going on in Tunisia and CNN sent me a cryptic email spouting that the Prime Minister was assuming control of the country. Well, now I know more or less what is going on. I stumbled across researched this video and the accompanying news article. Highly informative.
As dusk fell on this gracious, tree-lined capital, Tunis was a city under siege — but the man who had ruled Tunisia with an iron fist for 23 years was gone, driven out by a popular revolt that may rock the entire region. I had landed in Tunis just moment before President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled the country, shutting down the airport and prompting declaration of a state of emergency. I saw a city empty except for the hundreds of riot police occupying the streets. The main boulevard, Habib Bourghiba Avenue, was shut, with soldiers peeking from the gun turrets of tanks, their rifles pointed outwards. The choking smell of tear gas hung over the evacuated streets, where hundreds of shoes lay scattered on the sidewalk having been abandoned by people fleeing a police assault just an hour earlier. Bits of brick broken from large flower pots lining the streets were everywhere, having been hurled by protestors. Young plain-clothes security police outside the Ministry of the Interior building — the power center of Ben Ali's regime — prowled the streets, wielding makeshift batons made of table legs and wooden stakes. See TIME's photoessay "Protesters in Tunisia Bring Down the Government.")
...
As dusk fell on this gracious, tree-lined capital, Tunis was a city under siege — but the man who had ruled Tunisia with an iron fist for 23 years was gone, driven out by a popular revolt that may rock the entire region. I had landed in Tunis just moment before President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled the country, shutting down the airport and prompting declaration of a state of emergency. I saw a city empty except for the hundreds of riot police occupying the streets. The main boulevard, Habib Bourghiba Avenue, was shut, with soldiers peeking from the gun turrets of tanks, their rifles pointed outwards. The choking smell of tear gas hung over the evacuated streets, where hundreds of shoes lay scattered on the sidewalk having been abandoned by people fleeing a police assault just an hour earlier. Bits of brick broken from large flower pots lining the streets were everywhere, having been hurled by protestors. Young plain-clothes security police outside the Ministry of the Interior building — the power center of Ben Ali's regime — prowled the streets, wielding makeshift batons made of table legs and wooden stakes. See TIME's photoessay "Protesters in Tunisia Bring Down the Government.")
My God! I had one of those machine guns. I remember it well. I had no idea it did single shots by lifting the rear site. What a great idea. That should be on real machine guns.
Language warning.
This is someone's home. The guy manages to keep it together long enough to inspect his the outside of the house. At least he had a seconds story to put stuff. I hope it didn't get in there so he can recover as much as possible. Remember, this is an area that is not used to flooding. These folks have to fight droughts on a daily basis. It sounds like many areas had no plan for high water at all, which is almost understandable. Hasn't the world been screaming about changing weather patterns now for a couple of decades? Well, I'm not prepared for snow and ice here in Houston Texas.
Good luck and keep your powder dry.
Several of the Australian vloggers I watch are from this area. This reminds me of Katrina and all the devastation she brought to our coast.
I get the following email from CNN headline news.
Tunisia's prime minister announced on TV that he's taking over the volatile country.
CNN headline news email
So, the Tunisian prime minister is taking over his own country? Are things that bad in Tunisia? I may have to do some homework on this one.
One of my coworkers walks in my office and says "I need a computer named Nancy-812 on the network."
This doesn't sound anything like our naming scheme, so it might be a very old computer or a one off kind of connection. So, I ask him directly "Nancy-812? Is that right?"
"Yup." he responds in a matter of fact tone. Actually, this guy only has one tone and that is it.
"OK." and I start entering the name in the correct field to search.
It is not until this point that he stops and in that classic matter of fact tone says "Oh, wait. It is N-8612"
"That makes much more sense." I say and do the job.
What is the difference between "N-8612" and "Nancy 812"? Say them both to different people quickly.
One of my tasks at work is to setup new machines and resetup old machines. When we get a bunch of new machines in, I make an image so it is easier to propagate the software and settings to all of them. This is a perfectly normal thing to do in IT.
Today, I updated an old image. At some point Yahoo Toolbar ended up installed. I hate that. They sneak in by hiding their install in plane sight. They act like it is not just an advertisement portal stuck at the top of every single page to which you surf. Oh, some poor fools seem to enjoy their experience of being hand held around the universe by someone who is ultimately out to screw you and others who want to screw you out of money.
Of course, I had already made the image. It took two minutes to remove Yahoo Toolbar. I then got to kick off another image build. This takes a couple hours. Basically, it takes so long because it compresses the entire hard drive in to a single file. In this case, the file is about twelve gigabytes.
There is a problem with toolbars in general. They eat up space on the screen for not much return. Someone might install three of four of them and have a postage stamp sized sliver of screen in which to get everything else done on the web. This is ridiculous. I do not even leave the favorites or bookmarks bars up. They are useless to me. They just eat up space.
Once upon a time, Microsoft made a skin for Internet Explorer that they called Media explorer. This thing had a space dedicated to video. Everything you watched on the net was supposed to play in this tiny area. The idea that things on the net are different sizes and that you might not want to watch video at all times and there for might want that space to other things while it was unused did not factor in to their decision. Thank goodness they made this an option. It didn't last.
Microsoft is not the only company to fall in to this hole. it This is a test form from Google Doc seems like everyone and their brother wants to stick their widget on your screen at all times whether you need it or not. Nowhere is this worse than on mobile devices. In Google Maps, you have the search bar across the top of the screen at all times and you cannot turn it off, even if you do not have a search to perform at the moment. People are bitching about this on the net and Google keeps saying it is a feature, not a bug. Oh, and there will be no setting to over ride it.
The marketplace is not hungry for hybrid vehicles.
bleepity bleep bleep bleep.
Inception is not difficult to follow for anyone who has ever exorcised their left brain.
Borders book stores may go under. You can think online purchases of books and devices that display text for reading. I cannot think of the last time I bought something at a bookstore besides coffee.
"Worse case scenario" The game the whole family can play. Prepare for disaster before it happens.
It was cold today at lunch. I went to McD for a couple of chicken sandwiches and a couple of apple pies. I like walking out for under $4. I ate on the roof of the parking garage, like normal. IT was extremely cold on my hands. I was warm in a sweater and coat. The security guard was up there. I have no idea what she was doing, but her cart was there with the little strobes going. Strange.
There is a new camera that is a digital camera that has a built in printer. The brand name will be Polaroid. Lady Gaga is the spokes woman. I wonder how much they will cost. There was something at CES about them. I think this is ridiculous, but it sounds like the kind of thing that will really catch on if people are as stupid as I think they are.
Someone compared banks to casinos. A banker turned around and said, "There are few risks in casinos." Yikes.
10% of the population of the Port-aw-Prince died in one night a year ago.
Thailand put up a ban on logging. A side effect of this is elephants and handlers wandering around some cities, begging for food and basically panhandling.
I got my first vendor pen today. It was for ordering four Dell drive trays. Score.
This is a test form from Google Docs. Please consider just filling in some random information and let me know in the comments if you have any issues. I'm particularly interested in how it messes with the rest of the layout of the blog. Supposedly, it puts together a spreadsheet with the data collected. Not sure how this might come in handy. If it is gone, I probably deleted it to save space in Google Docs. Well, I don't care so much for the space being used. I hate my online system to be too cluttered.
Rayon is made from wood pulp. Learn something every day.
19% real unemployment as determined by including underemployed. Our president has played a lot of golf. These are people who have part time or temporary jobs who are looking for full time employment.
We had a hard freeze last night. Left the faucet dripping. I don't know if this helps, but Ive been taught to do it. I need to send this one in to the Mythbusters.
The dollar is in trouble. No one seems to be worried about the U. S. currency tanking. Well, it will fail. There is nothing but a big steaming pile of Jack backing it up these days. The people in charge seem think the gravy train goes on for ever. It never has before.
We have to test some equipment against 10 megabit network connections to make sure they work. Do you know how difficult it is to find a 10 megabit Ethernet hub any more? Not 10/100, 10.
I wonder what percentage of my work day I spend looking for equipment.
Great time had by all. Well, any one who mattered. Was there drama? Of course there was drama. We are Safe Haven after all. Still, learn to walk between the drops of rain.
| Field | Data |
| Title | Ken's birthday 2011 |
| Description | This is Ken's birthday party 2011. They have a lovely home. I'm pretty sure everyone who showed up had a good time. I did. I just wish I could show all the clips. |
| Tags | birthday party fun family friends 2011 home house fire pit piggyback canon 940IS fort bend Ft bend Texas |
| Link | Link |
I ordered the machine from Directron. I called the next day. It will be ready tomorrow. I called the third day. No one picked up in the three minutes I had to devote to the task. Bill picked me up and ran me over to pick up the box. It was not ready. They are big on getting things out so they threw it together right then. The issue was the extra RAM I needed. Walked out with the box.
Got the system home. Hooked it up to a monitor. Ubuntu would not install. It said something about "cannot mount cdrom". I try the USB drive. Same thing. I decided to try Fedora just to make sure everything on the system works. Well, it did. I then decided to install KDENLive. This is the video software I use. It took me a full day to get it working and none of the codecs worked. Bah. I'm going to make Ubuntu work.
After a bit of research and some trial and error, I found that the "Try Ubuntu without installing" option on the boot uses a different configuration than the rest of the install options. I tried it and it work.d There is an install icon on the desktop after you boot. I did have to remove the video card to get things to install.
The install went quickly. As soon as it was up and running, I set my static IP, installed bunch of software including KDENLive, flash, Chrome and a couple others. Then I put the video card in and got it working through the Ubuntu driver upgrade program. All of this was done in less time than it took me to get one program installed on Fedora. I'm sold again. I reminded Nat to remind me how much I hate Fedora for this reason. She reminded me that I had reminded her of this last time.
I thought about complaining about getting the codecs working on the new computer. It is always something. Right now only the mpeg2 codec really works. The quality blows, but I can get things up on YouTube. I've been here before. I will eventually figure it out.
Announces
I imagine it will take me a while to get the h264 codec working. It was supposed to have worked straight out of the box. I imagine if I were running a 32 bit build, it would have. This will mean I need to get the stable build of the library off the net and figure out how to build it myself. Then comes the effort of getting KDENLive to recognize and use it. It is so much effort for so little return. I has to be done. I need either h264 or mpeg4. I have to get the audio codecs to work as well.
UPDATE
To get h264 and mpeg4 working in KDENLive, go to synaptic and search on ffmpg. Look for all codec packs that say "unstripped" in the title. Select them all. Then, in KDENLive, re run the configuration wizard and restart the program.
Now, I just need to figure out how to get my home key back and I'm in business.
A very dear friend of ours from Texas Renaissance Festival has died. He was one of those people who stayed in garb the whole time. He loved photography and camping with tons of amenities.
His name was Roland. He called himself Roland the Nomad. He drove a big white van that he drove in from Dallas every weekend. He brought extra. He had a good heart. He was a helpful man. He was willing to teach. He was willing to cook. Nat and I camped in one of his tents occasionally.
He gave us a slide show last Faire season on his iPad. He had gone to several shows and gave us a narration of the effort. I really wish now I had videoed the whole thing. He loved people who liked to be different, out of the main stream a bit.
Roland had trouble walking long distances. This is a real problem when traversing TRF. Anyone who has spent a day there can vouch for this. Once, when Natalie was pregnant with Elle, the two of them walked together.
He will be missed.
Getting KDENLive to work.
Find the Fusion Repository web page. Install the repos.
Go here and run the following command to install KDENLive.
yum --enablerepo=rpmfusion-free-updates-testing -y install kdenlive
Run KDENLive.
Apparently the repos for Fedora 14 are broken for MLT. Thanks guys. You suck.
I'm not going in to why I haven't used Ubuntu on this new system yet. I'm sure I'll complain about that later.
We walked to the local Oriental restaurant. They make great lunch dishes. I have no idea how to spell the name. It sounds like "fing ling". They have a hot sauce that is great on rice. Their meat glaze is amazing. There prices are reasonable too. Their egg rolls are okay. I like the place.
The video is just for show this time. Nothing deep here.
| Field | Data |
| Title | Walking to lunch |
| Description | That is pretty much it. This video is to augment the blog. http://plastickelly.blogspot.com |
| Tags | blog plastickelly lunch walking pedestrian cannon powershot sd940is Houston Texas Westheimer |
| Link | Link |
These are lame things. I heard this on one of the year end podcasts. This was one from RRR in Australian.
The VAT (Value Added Tax) in the U. K. just went from 17.5% to 20%. The VAT is basically a national sales tax. A bunch of companies and stores are saying they will absorb the January first jump for a bit to soften the blow. This is a consumer tax. Consumers have to eventually pay it. It doesn't matter how long you wait. Most people do not get an increase in income. Taxes go up and wages stay the same. When you talk inflation, you are loosing money just standing there. People just don't have the scratch to keep buying the same things they used to.
Some folks say we in the States should go to a VAT type tax in the U. S.. You know, I'm all for it as long with the exact same stroke of the pen, they abolish the IRS, at least where wage earning is concerned. The IRS might still have duties for corporations and such. The American public is not stupid. We know our government wants to squeeze us from both sides.
The higher taxes go the larger the black economy grows. That is, the more things that show up on the black market. People start working off the books, because VAT is on services as well. Smuggling goes up. People start turning a blind eye to kit that just sort of turns up. It is a bad deal. There is a point at which people will stop participating in the official market if they cannot compete with the unofficial one. They have to eat.
I still like my idea of a constitutional amendment that says no one is responsible for paying more than 50% of all of their yearly income in taxes regardless of who gets the money or where it goes. So, if stat tax is 12% on income and , local tax is 5% on income, federal tax is 40% on income and all sales taxes come out to say 5% of a person's income (that is 62% of total income), then they would not end up paying more than 50% of their total income on all of it. There would have to be a priority of course. The paperwork would be a nightmare. It might be worth it.
Yup. Thrill a minute at the Kelly compound.
| Field | Data |
| Title | Elle's New Year's Eve 2010 |
| Description | It is just a thrill a minute at the zhsy00001 compound. Elle got to learn how to run the vacuum cleaner and her first sip of red wine New Year's Eve 2010. Music from FreePD.com |
| Tags | New Year's Eve 2010 vacuum attachments learning wine family fun house cleaning Houston Texas TX Canon PowerShot SD940IS freepd |
| Link | Link |
I've noticed a lot of Russians lately. It seems that online video places have large numbers of Russians. I don't know what the laws are in Russia involving videoing people, but they must be more lax than the rest of the world. Every other video that is people having sex in a public place or really horrible car crashes is from Russia. The number of people who are falling down drunk and repeatedly hurt themselves as they say the same thing over and over, while the bystanders laugh, is mind boggling. You would be hunted down in the States if you violated Someone's rights like that.
Recently, one of the vloggers I watch went to visit her family in Russia. Siberia actually. She is a California girl. She now has to deal with -45C temperatures. and Rubles. She showed the isle of the store devoted to vodka in the local grocery store.
There is an unfortunate trend in Russia of people pulling in front of someone and slamming on the breaks to collect the insurance. This causes many Russians to mount cameras aimed out the windshield. This is probably why so many Russian care accidents wind up on the Net.
Another source of online videos are the "roads" in rural Russia. People seem to accept the hared conditions of roads in the outback of Russia. The German army of WWII can attest that Eastern Russia was not meant for traversal during several months of the year. Winter brings mountains of shifting snow. Spring brings bog ... thousands of miles of bog. This leads to huge off road vehicles being swallowed up by rivers and such. There are a couple of normal looking semi trucks fording rivers that I would not want to shoot down in a raft.
Something else that was very interesting about the vlogger I mentioned above, she and her family sang a song while riding the bus to the store. That was really cool. There were a tone of people on the bus. How cool is that? She also mentioned that the food tastes so much better in Russia. She says it is because there are less preservatives. I think that what she is missing is much of the food that I've seen her eat in the vlogs has been fresh cooked by her family.
As cool as it is to watch videos of someone visiting their family in Russia, I still have no interest in visiting. I don't have anything against Russians, I've heard too many bad things about Americans visiting Russia. There are horror stories about being strong armed for bribes. Being targeted for fraud and receiving no support from the local authorities. These kinds of things can happen anywhere. The videos I'm getting out of Russia on the net are not helping me want to know more.
Facebook is valued more than Boeing. Facebook will go public later this year so I hear. There was some number mentioned that sound like fifty billion dollars, U. S.. This is something like $100 per user. I'm calling bullshit on this one because I have not gotten $1 out of Facebook. If Facebook went belly up tomorrow, I would not miss it. I would welcome it.
Five thousand hours of Oprah re runs. No wonder she is opening up a new cable TV channel.
There is a movement afoot in the media to get people to think about housing as a consumable instead of an investment. This is a plot to get people used to moving around to follow the jobs.
We need to start reminding the world of the dark side of Christmas. The imps that will come take bad children away to work in the mines, or sink you to the bottom of the dark pool at the center of a dark enchanted forest where no one will ever find you.
There will soon be a big button on your remote that has the name of a company that you can hit and rent an on demand movie over the internet. It cracks me up how many people I know who are thinking about giving up cable all together for online rentals.
Handling a call where a customer talks to a human may cost between $6 and $30. A call handled by a robot costs between $0.05 and $0.25. They are trying to make the robots friendlier. It isn't really working. The concept of solving your problems by calling someone is on the way out. People expect to fix things via the web or an app now.
One of the podcasts went over all the political people who died last year. It was kind of scary listening to the list. It was impressive. It sounds like that generation from the sixties who grew up protesting is starting to dye off.
China has a choke hold on the rest of the world by supplying cheap labor and raw materials. They have driven many others out of business. This action is coming home to roost. Soon, the rest of the world is starting to get back online. However, an iPhone might cost $900 in two or three years based on these changes.
I've never watched a single episode of Jersey Shore. I hope I never do.
Someone brought this gigantic fruit muffin thing to work, sans label. It sat there most of the day on the counter in the lunch room. I survived lunch, but gave up the ghost when I didn't have change for the candy shelf at about 15:30. Once the first person was brave enough to slice the otherwise unidentifiable lump of brown matter, it went quickly.
Work tasks
Ordered a computer
I ordered a new computer for myself today. It will be done tomorrow, but I don't think I will be able to pick it up until Thursday.
Wow, what a day.
Work
Today was the first day back after a long time off. You know how these things go. There is a huge pile of work waiting for you when you get back. Well, this time is a bit different because the whole company, minus a couple die hards and a couple new folks, get the same week. Very nice because of that lack of pile awfulness when you get back. Huge benefit of working where I work.
We have 10 computers showing up that were ordered late last year. They didn't make it in yet. This gave me the opportunity to get a bunch of other stuff done.
I spent a big slice of my day trying to make an image of a laptop. Semantic Ghost kept eating DVDs. I swapped burners and things started working again.
Played catch up from stuff that I didn't get done last year. Some things are still not done. It sucks. I have a bunch of wireless routers that I was hoping to get set up today, but this will happen tomorrow hopefully. One of the other tasks is a person who has a hard time getting a good signal and I hope this will fix his issue.
One of our users has an issue with his email. I asked him if he was typing or selecting a choice in one of the fields and he told me he was selecting. NOT. I had to bug Dan to get help and it boiled down to a bad text field entry. BAH!
Swapped out a video card for a cruddier video card that had no fan because the faster video card had a noisy fan that sounded like a cement mixer.
Elle
Elle heads back to school tomorrow. I cannot help but think that she is not prepared. Oh, she has her homework done for the most part. She has done a bunch of reading. However, she will be dragging some serious butt tomorrow. Her sleep schedule is off. We have tried to get her to sleep on time, but she wakes Nat up in the middle of the night by talking to herself in bed at all hours. I think I did the same thing when I was her age.
Thumb Drive
I have a 16G thumb drive. I use it at work and at home for all kinds of cool stuff. It of course disappeared over the long week. I left my other thumb drive at work, so no podcasts for me today at work. I've been fretting over this for a while. I would hate to have to buy another drive. I need one about that size for hauling ISO images around, and all kinds of other countenances.
I last remember having it when I switched backpacks Christmas day. My parents got me a nifty pack that is high quality. I'm not used to that. So, I search the old pack. I search the new pack. I dig out my genes and run through the pockets. I look at work today, even though I haven't been closer than riding by on Westheimer since before Christmas. I bugged my mom to look around their place. I turn our house upside down and shake. Nothing.
Nat looks for two minutes and finds it in my new pack. She got $5 for her trouble. That was all I had on me.
Commute
This morning I got to use my new flashlight on the way in. It works great. I shine it on the ground as I have gone over before and it really seems to help me seem to take up more space so people don't get so close.
Fell full on asleep on the bus on the way home. I didn't have any coffee today. The cup I fixed in the morning tasted like monkey nuts. I couldn't bring myself to face another. I got a Dr Pepper on the way home. Nat gave me a ride from the bus stop.
New computer
I have not had a chance to call Directron yet. I have sent them an email, but those tend to get lost on the holiday schedule. I'll have to make time for them tomorrow. I didn't even get lunch today trying to get caught up. I really really REALLY want that new computer. Of course, I want something not so standard so I'll have to deal with humans. BAH!
Tonight
Prey for me to get a good night's sleep. I didn't get a wink last night. I woke up after about two hours and maybe got another hour before heading to work.
Found a new page. FindSounds. I was looking for a Geiger counter sound. Found it too. I haven't looked in to the rights for the sounds. Not sure how sound bites work. Seems like sound effects would be difficult to copyright. Didn't end up using the sound effect. I did end up scouring the search engine for all kinds of wildness. It had nearly everything except a spell checker.
The announcements on the bus this morning were at 1100 decibels. The English announcements sounded like the speaker on a bull horn was broken. The Spanish announcements sounded like the teacher on Peanuts. I'm only sure they were the Spanish announcements because I recognized the voice and timing.
One of the DVD burners at work ate four DVDs. I swapped it for one of the other burners, but I've never had any issues with it until today.
I've heard this story fifteen times in my life. Every couple of years there is some guy who comes along and swears he has invented a car that runs on water. Either, they are all full of crap, or there really is something to this and the people who invent such things get disappeared in one fashion or another. I hope this is the real thing. I hope we all find ourselves running on water in five years. I hope water prices do not go through the roof.
In Afghanistan over 10,000 people died in violent attacks in 2010. The Daily Times reported:
...
xMeanwhile, in Mexico over 13,000 were killed in violent attacks in 2010. The Dallas News reported:
Tell me again we do not have a war going on south of our border? So, the death toll does not make it a war zone. The mass murder does not make it a war zone. The fact that it is Mexicans on Mexicans does not make it a war zone.
Plant something slightly radioactive in the cocaine and dope coming across the border. Go around with a Geiger counter and find out who's nose sets off the alarms. Lock them up.
I'm only surprised that Mexican nationals coming across the border are not granted international refugee status. That would mean they would have to go back someday and they would not get to vote. Nor, would they be aloud to work legally.
IBM Files the Patent Troll Patent
"It's all or nothing over at IBM as the company goes for the gold and files the patent troll patent. Forget the Hyperlink patent or the POS shutdown patent, IBM wants the patent patent. Its idea is centered around an approach to manage patents from inventor training to filing and protection strategies, including competitive monitoring. At least in theory, IBM could get approval to own the idea how to manage patents and make a business out of IP. The next time you file a patent, you may want to contact them as you may need a license to file for filing."
Someone was bound to get around to this. I'm glad it was IBM. Maybe they have the clout to actually break the current patent system and force a fundamental look at the concept of intellectual property. I expect nothing less than benevolence from IBM on this front.
It is 3 AM and I cannot sleep. I have completely lost my ability to keep time without a clock. These things happen on vacation. It is just about time to go back to work. This is a good thing. I have a shit ton of work to do when I get back. It is extra nice taking a vacation when every one else is off. This usually means they didn't just pile up work for you to do when you get back. I've received emails telling me of new systems that have come in. This means I have a pile of new computers waiting for me.
The first thing I get to do when I walk in the door is hook up a new person's computer. I couldn't do it already because the guy who was sitting in the office space had not yet left.
There is a funny side note about this task. All week, I would stop and think, there was something I needed to do right when I walked in the door. What was it?
This would ware on my mind for a bit and I would eventually remember that it was setting up a new computer for the new person. I would then think, Oh, ya that's it. I would not write anything down or send myself an email reminder. Why? Well, because I had remembered the task. Surely I would not forget. At least that is what I would tell myself subconsciously. This happened fifteen times over the course of the week. It will probably happen again when I walk in the door Monday, bleary eyed and ready to pound sand for another year.
So, is the guy who could not remember what was to be done to be called Forgetful Kelly. Or, is the guy who thought he would remember to be called Forgetful Kelly? I think they are both to be refereed to as Dumbass Kelly for the time being.
Oh, I guess I should send myself an email Hugh?
The floats are the most strictly regulated of any parade and all of them deserve prizes for genuine awesomeness but still, there is unmistakable 'all must have prizes' going on. One of those prizes is awarded by the governor of California. It is awarded to the parade float "that best represents life in California." This year the winner is the Sierra Madre association float. It is very beautiful to look at.
One small problem. It broke down. It blocked up the parade route and needed a tow truck to move. While it apparently does happen from time to time, I've never before seen a Tournament of Roses Parade float behind a tow truck. And there goes the float "that best represents life in California" being dragged down the parade route behind a tow truck. Like Bernie, dead but still going through the motions. Someone has posted some video.
Apologies for swiping the whole blog entry.
I laughed for five full minutes after reading this. So, Calli needs a tow truck. How appropriate.
Technology: Chinese Intellectual Property Acquisition Tactics Exposed
"In an interview published in Sina.com.cn, Chinese rail engineers gave a detailed account of the history, motivation, and technologies behind the Chinese high-speed rail system. More interestingly, they blatantly revealed the strategies and tactics used in acquiring high-speed rail tech from foreign companies (Google translation of Chinese original). At the beginning, China developed its own high-speed rail system known as the Chinese Star, which achieved a test speed of 320km/h; but the system was not considered reliable or stable enough for operation. So China decided to import the technologies. The leaders instructed, 'The goal of the project is to boost our economy, not theirs.' A key strategy employed is divide-and-conquer: by dividing up the technologies of the system and importing multiple different technologies across different companies, it ensures no single country or company has total control. 'What we do is to exchange market for technologies. The negotiation was led by the Ministry of Railway [against industry alliances of the exporting countries]. This uniform executive power gave China huge advantage in negotiations,' said Wu Junrong, 'If we don't give in, they have no choice. They all want a piece of our huge high speed rail project.' For example, [Chinese locomotive train] CRH2 is based on Japanese tech, CRH3 on German tech, and CRH5 on French tech, all retrofit for Chinese rail standards. Another strategy is buy-to-build. The first three trains were imported as a whole; the second three were assembled with imported parts; subsequent trains contain more and more Chinese made parts."
They stole a little bit from every one and then offered the victims a slice of the pie if they shut up and went along with it. It isn't paranoia if they really are out to get you. I'm starting to think that the Chinese have it right. Suppress your own people, take advantage of other societies who do not oppress their own people to sell them everything that you can. Steel all the technology you can until you are caught up. Then hold your own markets hostage and threaten the rest of the world with giving their competition all the access if they don't give in and hand you everything you want. Sounds like a plan to me.
I really hate stories like this. It sounds like the officer was gathering evidence around the trailer. Is that evidence legally obtained? What exactly are the property laws for trailers? I wonder if any evidence gathered this way could have been thrown out with the right lawyer.
Lets say the guy in the trailer was an asshole to begin with. Maybe he had ruins with the law before. I still wonder if the evidence would have been held up under scrutiny. I just don't know.
What exactly are you expected to do when it is the police violating your rights and you have no money to get a lawyer and enforce your own right? Well, step one is not to shoot a cop, or anyone else for that matter. Again, I just don't know beyond that one.
We went by REI. Every one has Christmas gift cards for REI. They were burning holes in our pockets. Elle made out like a bandit getting some shoes. I got a carabiner that works well for my keys. It is heavy duty and large enough, but not too much so. My mother got a snazzy flashlight.
Then we hit Academe. It is just down the same shopping strip mall. I looked and sure enough they did not carry any carabiner type devices half as good as the one from REI. They had the typical crappy ones, though for much less money. They did have a choice of belt mounted flashlight holsters. I resisted.
They also have lanterns. There are a couple that have the CFL light bulbs and last like six hours. That is all well and good, but those lights are a pain and don't put up with any punishment. I like the LED lamps they had, but the lumens seemed low on those models. I want a bright as a car light kind of lantern that runs cool, is compact, rechargeable and weather/water proof. Not too much to ask dammit.
My father was not impressed with the assortment of pink firearms available. It just didn't seem right. If there is a market, someone will fill it.
Fun afternoon.
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