Resume
I'm trying to write my resume. How do you sit down and tell God knows who to hire you over every one else in the world? Every job I've ever gotten has been through networking, not a resume. All the jobs I've gotten, I've interviewed in genes and a t-shirt. They always said "Can you come right now?" I'm typing bits and removing bits. It is kind of fun. If I were writing some one else's resume it would be more fun. I realize how crappy my experience is. I know what I'm doing. I would be a handy addition to an IT or support firm. I'm not sure how to say it.

Overnet
Overnet is the P2P software I use to download stuff. I'm not interested in taking any money out of any one's pocket. I'm just board.  You have to be careful if you try the software. You will find many trojan horses and fakes. A trojan horse is a program that inflicts a virus, or hacking software on your computer. A fake is a movie or other data file that is not what it says on the box (file name).  Just typing in a search can return some scary results, most of which are false files. There is a better way to look for files. Some kind soles have put together web pages catering to people searching on Overnet. The most popular of all time was ShareReactor. Unfortunately, this page no longer exists. The kid who ran it got in trouble with his mom, and the Swiss authorities. The creator has a new forum page, but I can't get it to come up. There are other sites still running. ShareConnector has a list of files interface. ShareProvider has a list interface as well. FileDonkey has a search interface. The advantage of using these sites over the search in Overnet is the odds that a given file is a fake is pretty rare when obtained from the web pages. Overnet search just searches anything that comes along. The web pages allow for fake blocking.
I've found a couple of good videos on Overnet. Several are from war plane cameras. I keep running searches for war video. I don't know where this stuff comes from, but it it riveting. Pretty scary stuff. One thing that drives me nuts, is how young the solders sound on the videos.

Firearm information.
I stumbled across this site. It is basically everything you ever wanted to know about firearms. I thought I was a knowledgeable gun-nut. I'm learning all kinds of new stuff.

Damn It
Hey Cynthia, I feel your pain. I typed up some entries for the blog on a break at work today. When I got home the file attached to the email was empty. Humph. I hate computers. It was just some rant about work.

Rant
There is a reason I'm not the one in charge. I have conservative views. There are times I want to hose the whole planet except for those parts of it that serve us. Then, I realize how evil that is and I tone it down a bit..There are times when I want to solve the problem. There is no solution to most of the worlds problems. I still say that the world would be better if all the people just dropped dead. Is that depressing or what? That qualifies as world peace. Right?

Bald
I've cut my hair pretty short in the past couple of months, but I just took it to grade. I laid a razer to my scalp for the first time. I always worried that I had a pointy head. It doesn't look that bad. It doesn't feel funny really. That might just be the razer burn though. The razer burn does look pretty bad. I figured there would be first time troubles. I'm worried I'll get those little bumps from ingrown hairs. I'm sure I'll complain about it in due time. I looked at myself in the mirror and I thought "I feel so . . . so . . . clean."
Now, I just need to drop about two inches around the middle.

Gmail
This is freaking me out.I've only had one bite on my Gmail offer. I thought people I knew would jump at the chance for a Gmail account. Perhaps I underestimate the coolness of Gmail. Perhaps I overestimate the geekyness of my friends. Eh.

Accenture
I remember griping that Accenture got the contract for the Homeland Security border tracking thing recently. I was upset because I had worked with Accenture in a lose manor and I was not impressed. Congress has a problem with the choice because Accenture uses a foreign flag to hide behind to avoid taxes. Some one has to do it. I have not made up my mind whether or not I should be afraid of the government holding all the information about me. There are stories about how people get their information messed up by the U. S. Government every day. It looks like things are going the biometric path. It looks like it will all happen in my life time. I've seen the movies. I know the fears. Face recognition does not work. Ires scans can be fooled. People with disabilities are not always considered. I start to feel helpless when I think of the subject.
My vision of the future is not bleak. I do not think we face Brazil, or The Jetsons, or Futurama (thought I think Futurama is the closest believe it or not). I think we will live in a future just like today, only with more contraptions and diseases with new names. I'm far too tired to continue. I need to write my resume tomorrow..

Good date
We were heading from West Houston to a friend's house in Galveston. Julie needed to pick up a computer from her friend. We seemed to spend time in the truck quite a bit. We liked the time spent traveling together. We would talk while she drove. I cannot drive, so it is a good thing she enjoyed being the one behind the wheel. it was a beautiful day. The drive was nice. When we got to the friend's house we decided to go for a day at the Aquarium Restaurant. We made it down to the front and waited inside the lobby for a while. We were sitting down on a couch. Julie laid her head on my shoulder and fell asleep. We got that "cute couple" look from just about every one who walked by. When we were seated, we got a table right by the window overlooking the sea. It was a breezy day with a bright sun shining high. I don't remember what we had, but it was good. I remember looking at the stingray (I think it was a stingray) swimming up the glass. I remember looking at Julie and wanting so much to love her. When we left the restaurant, we went to a couple of shops then we went to some one's house and hung out for a while.
Julie and I broke up a couple of years ago. When I think of Julie, I remember her smile that day.

I've been asked to contribute to another blog about dating experience. I'm going to put in the above paragraph. Can you believe I've been asked to contribute to anything?

Something I learned today
The guy who did the voice for miss Piggy also did The Cookie Monster.

Work
I love it when a manager sends down an edict to use a batch file to get something done. This manager hasn't looked at a command prompt since Ronny Ray-Gun was in the white house. I know in my mind that a script works better for the need at hand. Scripts allow access to COM and far better error handling. At my day job they insist on using VB for everything. Some things are just not best solved with VB. Other languages have their place. I've heard it is because they want some one else to pick up where you leave off when you finally come too and get a better job. If I walked into my mechanics garage and said "Something is wrong with my car, but you can't use sockets to fix it, I forbid it!" The mechanic would give me the same look I gave the manager who said to use the batch file.

Cynthia's blog
What happened to Cynthia has happened to me, and not just on Blogger. She was typing in a long entry in the Blogger web form when she hit the preview link. The preview came up fine. At this point there is a way back to edit the screen without loosing data. However, she wanted to test out a link she had put on her page. The instant her successful link popped up, all her work was gone. When she tried to go back to the edit screen, her effort had vanished.
This is highly discouraging. I have noticed similar methods all over the web. When entering data into a form on the Internet, it is pot luck whether your data will be there if there is a hiccup in the system. In the past two weeks I have had PayPal fail on me twice when trying to order items from TigerDirect. I ended up having to use a credit card both times.
When she sent me the email, I pulled the male thing and tried to offer her advice instead of sympathy. I just can't take my own advice. I've had this kind of thing happen to me so much, that I use Mozilla Composer to prepare my entries for Blogger before publishing. That and the lack of a spell checker in the Blogger editor make me use an external editor..

Gmail
I have a couple of invites for Gmail. I sent out an email for requests, but I have not received any responses. The first two guys I sent the invite too were obvious choices. I knew they would jump at the opportunity. Now, I'm down the list a bit. I sent out about 10 requests and only one person responded with a "what is Gmail?" email. That's fine. I don't want to send the request out to any one who doesn't want it. If you want it write me at zhsy00001 at Gmail.com. It is first come first serve. I think I have three to give. All I want in return is a promise that you will tell your mother you love her.

OIL (God Help Us)
The BBC has a pretty scary article about the status of the world's oil supply. They say it is going to run out sooner rather than later. This article says most companies are lying about their reserves. That isn't the worse thing. Their article says it doesn't matter how much oil is in the ground, if you can't pump it out fast enough. As soon as supply can't keep up with demand the cost of oil will sky-rocket. The article continues saying the cost of oil is severely under priced right now. If left to it's own devices, oil would be at $182 a barrel instead of the $40 it's floating at now. There are other factors affecting the cost of oil. I think it is getting to that time where we as a species need to find a renewable means of generating energy. Between vegetable oils, geothermal, wind, waves, bicycles, solar, nuclear generators, and all the rest, we should figure something out. There is no silver bullet. We need to use the best device for each situation. People in the desert can't use wind, but they can probably use solar. People in Alaska might need some help from other states, or even Canada for heat in the winter. The trouble is, it is going to take changing the way we have done things for a long time.
I've read some unreliable speculation that by 2008 there will be a pivot in the energy world and the proverbial shit will hit the fan. Some people we might call crackpots today say, by then it won't matter if your car gets 100 miles to the gallon because you still won't be able to afford to drive to work. (I'm not going to link to the site)

Night Vision Monocular
I got a battery. I couldn't get it online, yet, so I stopped at Wallgreens on the way home. They had the CR2 batteries right up front, by the cameras. The monocular is cool, but it has to be dark for it to work. Go figure. I looked around my apartment complex last night and there are too many lights to get real use from the device. There is a little light on the front of the monocular that shines in infrared. You can just make out a faint glow looking into it, but it is almost too bright when looking through the monocular. The model I picked out has almost too much power (fixed zoom) for walking around in the dark. You will still trip over stuff. The street out front of my apartments is too well lit. You can see all the way down the street based on the street lights. In the monocular, you just get a bunch of glare. The alarm clock lights up my whole room. My buddy has a bayou behind his house. I want to try it out there in the rough. There is so much ambient light in Houston that the monocular should have no trouble looking even in the wooded aria. I'll try snapping a photo through it when I find a classic night vision shot of a creepy wood

Iran is next
I know I said Syria is next on the list, but here is a story that says the U. S. should have invaded Iran instead of Iraq. Iran really does have a nuclear program that is aimed toward WMD according to this article. I'm worried about Saudi Arabia. My day job has offices over there. This place works with Saudi Aramco and others in the region.

More on Phones
Some one was just saying the future of phones is to have a mobile of some kind you carry with you, one built in to the car, and another in the house. The difference is, they are all the same number. The car phone would work for whomever is driving/riding along. The one phone would ring for all occupants and allow multiple independent conversations based on what room you were standing in at the time. When you sit down at work, the phone next to you would ring with calls for you. The phones would need a answerer ID in addition to a caller ID to make sure the correct person answered the phone. They mentioned a bicycle helmet with a built in phone (that is already on the market in Japan).

Band in the UK
BT, British Telecom, is about to ban a bunch of child porn sites. Hey, I'm all for stringing sickos up by the short hairs. Next on the list are racial places or religious hatred sites I bet. I want to know where it stops. This activity is unpopular (Thank God). What else is unpopular? I'm sure you can follow a tail of thought that leads to political movements that are deemed unsafe like Al Quida, communism, buying tickets to Cuba. How about sites that show you how to do things like recognize suspicious behavior or defeat ires scans?
The whole freedom of speech thing is scary. To be honest, I want the ban in the U. S. too. RIAA will want to block sharing sites. The movie industry will want to block fan fiction sites. RIAA will not understand the difference between business and culture. They already want your fingerprints to buy music.
You know something I don't see is the credit card companies cutting off these places.

This past weekend
I went to training Saturday. I learned allot. I also learned my camera has a different color LED when the camera cannot focus properly. I sat in my apartment all day Sunday and didn't get much of anything accomplished. I still need a battery for my Night Vision Monocular. I can't wait to play with it. I didn't read any comics. I didn't write to my blog. I didn't order the batteries online.

Phones, Banks and Automobiles
T-Mobile is supposedly the winner in the AT&T Cingular merger. I use T-Mobile. I have to say their signal quality is bad. I used to have Cingular, but I had to get more minutes. I like the quote in that article. "People get used to leaning out their apartment windows to get a signal." I have to do that at work and home. I've looked all over the place for a better service provider. No one is better than the rest. AT&T sucks. Cingular doesn't care if you leave. T-Mobile only works six meters from a tower. All the smaller providers have to pay exorbitant fees to get any kind of coverage area.
I started out with VoiceStream. They were scooped up by T-Mobile. It reminds me of my bank in the late eighties and early nineties. First I was with a savings and lone that went under in that big debacle. Then that S&L closed  I ended up switching to USAA. They are known for serving the military]. All I know is they are stable. Daimler Benz bought Chrysler to form Daimler Chrysler. I haven't heard of any improvement in Chrysler products. I know Chrysler had cars with many cup-holders and Daimler didn't seem to believe in cup-holders at all. I wonder what will come of that conflict.

Spelling
I remember one of my prerequisites for an HTML editor was a spell-checker. For this blog I now use Composer inside Mozilla. It has a spell-checker, but it is a bit lacking. It is still far better than nothing. The spell-checker just doesn't have a large dictionary. When it suggests words, the one you really need may not be there. I find myself using Google to track down the correct spelling. For example, "prerequisites". The word was misspelled and the spell-checker would not suggest anything. Google came up with the correct word on the first try. "Did you mean ..." I still remember looking for the Sweetish car called Koenigsegg. Can you imagine trying to spell that correctly? Google got it for me. The funny thing is, Google only offers one choice for "is this what you meant" and it has nearly always been right. There has got to be some fuzzy logic going on there.

Training
I just got back from training. We went over one of the products for the new company. It has plenty of issues, but there are no show stoppers. Most of the troubles we hit today were infrastructure, interface, and procedure. Those are all fixable. The products will help us provide a solution for document searching. MS wants to get into the search business. They want to add search to the operating system that will allow networks to access and track everything users do and produce.  It doesn't sound too bad. The trouble is, they will not open up the technology to any one else. What I've seen of the new MS technology. it is lacking. MS is trying to mimic Google. However, Google is lacking too. The product we are developing is far superior. Google can be part of it. Ours is far more robust.

Higher Deffinition TV (UHDTV)
This article makes me sick. I read somewhere that the most connected country in the world is South Koria. This is because the dumpped a bunch of money into a brand new network in the last couple of deccaids. They didn't have an existing network to get in the way.  We in the U. S. have to overcome the existing system to improve our phone and Internet. The network would spread faster if the old network was never built. The same thing is happening in th TV world. Between the TV loby and th e movie industry freaking out, we may never get HDTV. Did you know HDTV is 40 years old?

Coffee
It isn't just caffeine. It isn't just the sugar. It is that, and the people who I share my addiction with. We walk to the coffee and chat. We fix our coffee the way we like it. We drink it down and talk about our day. We make plans for lunch. We exchange our thoughts one work and family. The world holds nothing we cannot conquer as long as we have coffee to sip while hashing out our plots and plans. It is not the people in the group. It is not the group of people. It is the comradery. It is the act of group. It is the fun in talking to one another. If there is not some enjoyment, even in labor, people will do something else.

Office
I have a thermostat in my office. It doesn't help me in any way because of the politics surrounding the whole temperature issue in an office. Some guy came through recently and opened up the vents. It seems there are two levels of temperature in my office now. Sweat my balls off, or hang meat. My mother reads this, but I'm not going to clean that one up. She used to work here and probably knows what I'm talking about. The politics enter in because the thermostat in my office controls about five offices. The whole little block of offices in my island are tethered to the little box on my wall. It is not like I'm a tyrant or anything. I suppose I should hang a sign with the names of those whom to consult before you jack with the numbers. Women are the worse. They complain no matter what the temperature is, or is not. "It's too hot." "It's too cold." "I can't feel my legs." Nothing but complaints. I don't care. Change the setting. If any one complains to me I'm giving them your name.

Night Vision Monocular
Well, I received the night vision monocular. I would tell you how cool it is, but it takes a funky CR2 battery. They are pretty common, but they are only sold as camera supplies. I found them online. It looks like Best Buy sells them for frigging $9.99. They average about $5 online. If I get a couple, the shipping won't be too bad each. It sure would be nice if I could run down the street and pick one up though. This is one of those times it sucks to not drive.
The Monocular is made in Russia. That is kind of cool in itself. I started looking the batteries up online and I found them all over the place in Europe. I bet they are like AAs over the pond.

This guy gets it.
He is a college drop out. He is Japanese. He has started several companies in Japan and he runs around the world talking up blogs. I like the outlet, the place to put my thoughts out there. I've only met one person through my blog. I've been doing it for over a year. My friends seem to read it sporadically. I hear them quote my blog every once in a while. That is so cool. The guy in the article seems to think blogs will revolutionize communication. I don't think it will go that far. I believe, as he says, that blogs are one of the things the Internet originally promised.

Work.
We have some test databases at my day job for a new project. We complain all the time how no one around here has a sense of humor or creativity. The databases are Starbucks and Guinness. I laughed when I read that and said the next one should be named Marlboro.
Speaking of testing, There is this project the department at my day job. The project is big for our department. This department is supposed to help develop a new software for Engineering and 3d modeling. We test software, and test databases, and tell about how we want to do things, and complain about fixes, and double check the fixes, and triple check fixes and complain to the vendor about the lack of fixes, and listen to excuses, and then the fixes don't fix anything, or they break something else, or they re-break old problems that other fixes tried to fix. Yeesh. I've been avoiding the meetings.

Iran code.
This story from The New York Times proves there is still cloak and dagger stuff going on every day. Here is what I believe happened. The guy in Iraq, Chalabi, really did tell a spy for Iran that the code they use for spy communications had been compromised. The Iran operative discussed it with his superiors. They decided to both test the story and burn the guy who told them by sending that very information through the compromised system and blowing the lid off the situation. Perhaps it is a complete fake. I would not put it past Iran to have staged the whole thing. Maybe Iran figured out the U. S. had the keys and just decided to incriminate Chalabi. Who knows?
One funny thing. No one is pissed that the U. S. was listening to encrypted communications from Iran. Iran won't even acknowledge it. I just plane expect the U. S. government to keep an eye on every one else in the world. That is arrogant, but the truth..
Of course, it may have been the following email that messed things up.
Operative says to superior:
"Comrade leader,:
It has come to my attention that our encryption system has become compromised and is vulnerable to the evil imperialistic Americans. This information comes from the guy next door. Please advise."
Then he clicks send. Then he sits back in his chair and says under his breath in Arabic, or Farci, "Wait a minute. ... Oh, shit!"
Now, I'm reading about the CIA chief resigning. It is scary that this happens on the same day. So, who was the drunk informant (mentioned in the first article above) who spilled the beans in the first place? The guy who is at the center of this is Ahmad Chalabi. I've heard this guy has been to the White House at some point. The U. S. has dumped $100,000,000 in support for this guy of one kind or another over the last two decades. He has been convicted of bank fraud in Jordan. It sounds like Chalabi is one of the big reasons the U. S. went into Iraq in th first place.

Home and Work
I spend allot of time on the computer. I remember my father and others asking me how in the world I can go home, after spending all day on a computer, and spend more time on a computer. I told them "It doesn't feel like work when I'm at home."  I can tell you, It is like work when it is indeed work. It is frightfully difficult to do work all day, then go home and do more work. I need to take things one day at a time.

Dyslexia and Support
Support calls can be a chore when you have dyslexia. At my day job I have several folks I try to help for whom English is not their first language. They do allot better with English than I do with their language. Anyway, I'm trying to explain to this guy that telling the others to call me is not the best solution. Getting them to email me is best, because I can just reply to the email. I have dyslexia a bit and I know from past experience that is the way to go  While giving him my user number (for the internal email) it takes us about five tries to get things right because of an "N" that sounds like an "M" and an "O" that is really a zero. Case and point. I cannot seem to get it across to him why I need the email though. I bet he thinks I'm being a jerk.

National ID Card
I just don't have a problem with a national ID card. They are one stop shopping for ID theft, but there are ways to make it more difficult to steel it. I say give every one an ID and if some one decides to steel another person's ID take their's away. They get a tattoo on their forehead "ID THIEF!" and they can't get a home. They can't get credit. They can't get a job. They can't get health care. They can't get married. They can't get a movie ticket. They can't report a crime. They have to go do good deeds for food and shelter. People should be scared to death of steeling some one's ID, not getting their ID stolen.

Metrosexual
I looked up an article on the term metrosexual. I herd it used to describe David Beckham. It turns out I'm an anti-metrosexual. A quick definition of a Metrosexual is a straight guy who acts gay. They care what they look like. They care about brand name shirts. They don't get caught with wrinkles. I know a couple of these. I thought about it. I know the brand name of boots I'm waring (Wolverine steel toe), the socks I'm waring (WickDry hiking socks), and the watch I'm waring (a Seiko that I bought myself when I started working about ten years ago). If I looked up I couldn't tell you what color shirt I'm waring.
The program I heard Beckham mentioned was complaining about how he has not hit it big in the U. S. Maybe it is because he looks like a fag, Oh, wait, that isn't PC. How about he looks look a straight guy acting like a gay guy. What is the difference again?

Intel and AMD
You know, I'm just board with new CPUs hitting the market. I wish they would stop putting up announcements in the news. I know they are going to improve things every couple of months. I expect better performance regularly. I know there is pseudo competition between chip makers. I don't care if my computer has one chip or the other until something doesn't work. The weight and ability to play video games is my primary concern when looking at a new notebook. I am only barely considering a new desktop (server) for testing web based utilities. MIPS, MFLOPs I just don't care until my browser takes five minutes to come up, or my MP3 skips, or my game lags. Then, however, there is hell to pay.

Accenture?
The Department of Homeland Security has given the contract to track everyone crossing our borders to Accenture. I cannot believe Accenture got the nod. I've worked with Accenture before. They are professional, but they are incorporated in the Bermuda for goodness sake. Apparently they still qualify as an American company.

Good radio.
I've been searching the net over and I finally found a good radio station. The trouble is, it is in Poland (I think). It is also in Polish (I think). They play allot of English (language) music. The comments are in Polish (I think). I can't even translate the web page wit Babel Fish. Every now and then I get sick of it and have to go back to something in English. I'm sure I'll get sick of it and move on to other stations. I doubt they will be in the States though .People here seem to like, and promote, crap.

Weekend.
Friday.
I worked all day of course. Then I went to the apartment ant got a new video game installed before I passed out from exhaustion.
Saturday.
I woke up around nine o clock in the morning and checked my email. I didn't get much done before going back to bed and taking a nap..I woke up sometime in the afternoon and walked down to the stop and rob for some soft drinks. I then plaid the new video game for a while. I tried to get some work done, but it just didn't work out that way. I'm working tens all week and I knew it Saturday. I don't remember when I went to bed Saturday.
Sunday.
I don't remember much Sunday. I think I may have taken a picture or two for fun.
Monday.
Monday was Memorial Day in the U. S. so I was home. I got hold of a buddy of mine and we ended up playing the same video game and watching some movies. Mostly I read.
That is it. I have a long week this week and training on Saturday. I will not have much of a weekend to recover. I hope I can keep it together for the long haul. I enjoyed the time I spent with my friends. I also enjoyed the time I spent writing in my blog.

First day of Summer.
I think of Summer in Houston as walking from the air conditioning to the heat/humidity and back again. Today I walked out of the office building where I work and my glasses fogged up from the temperature change. it is ironic that this happens for the first time of the year on June first. It takes some getting used to. I remember some one telling me, when they first came to Houston they turned on the water tap and warm water came out. They tried the other faucet and hot water came out. That is pretty typical for Summer in Houston.

Boo
Boo is my friend's cat. Bo is a special kitty. She isn't heroic. She does not have a cornucopia of tricks. I means special as in stupid. She knows where the food comes from and she knows where outside is. That is about it. We joke that she has a three bit mind. Her actions are a dial tone "dooooooo" followed by a "ping" and that is when she turns her head. Everything else is instinct. She has this one thing she does. She will scream as loud as a panther in the middle of the night. My buddy says it will make your skin crawl.

The little green eyes winking at me.
Day and night they stare off into space.
In my darkened living room they watch.
They watch me type.
They watch me think.
They keep an eye on the place when I'm gone.
I can read them.
I wonder if they can read me.
My living room is well attended by the little green eyes.

Social Interaction.
A buddy of mine is trying to convince me to join a social club to get out of my apartment. For example, I only left the apartment yesterday long enough to run to the local stop-n-rob to get some Dr. Pepper and a snickers. I walked, so it doubles as exorcise. She sent me some links, one of which is a nudest enthusiast site, but I like SlashDot's idea better.

Google News.
I've noticed a troubling trend on Google News. They put up links to pay news sites. I don't subscribe, so all I get is a screen that says "pay up or piss off." I wish Google News would give me the option to block these sites from their page when I show up. ... I noticed about an hour later that that particular link was removed and that other "The Street" links did not lead to a pay site. I wander if it was a fluke.
Notice the use of ellipsis points. This is still not the proper use, but it works here.

Grass Root Ethnic Cleansing.
The latest attacks in Saudi Arabia tell me the targets are foreign oil workers. It says in the article that the attackers separated Muslims and non Muslims. As the attackers searched the apartment building, they killed non-Muslims and let Muslims go. This sounds like ethnic cleansing to me. The only difference is, it isn't the government doing it (I hope). I know there are War Criminals who are wanted by the UN and their member nations no matter where they go. I think it is time for a World Criminal. No matter where the wanted one goes, all nations must do their best to hand this person over to the UN/whomever or face excommunication from the member nations.

4 GB Micro Drive.
Have you seen this? The deal is that Creative has an MP3 player with 4 gigabytes of memory. The dirty little secret is, the memory is a standard CompactFlash card type 2. There are all kinds of instructions available to gut the device. The links to the how to are in the link above. It doesn't look that hard. The modified players, the ones that have had the large drive replaced, are on eBay. If you ask me, Hitachi should lower the price of the drive and clean up. They obviously make money on the drive by selling it to Creative at a low enough price for them to wrap an MP3 player around it and sell the whole thing for less than the cost of the drive by itself. I can't find a link to the drive for sale.

Friendly Fire.
Remember that guy who gave up the NFL contract to go fight in Iraq? Well they say now Pat Tillman may have been killed by friendly fire. Man this is depressing. He was defending a convoy. I've read that convoys are th number one thing to get nabbed in Iraq. Some one said every road is thick with highwaymen.
I play allot of video games and friendly fire deaths are common. I know this is hardly comparable, but I have noticed the confusion effect in video games. When you feel surrounded, you become desperate and make poor decisions

Ellipsis Points <note to other blogges>.
Five words ... followed by ellipsis points ... then dribble .... followed by ellipsis points ... then a bunch of .... random rhetorical vomit .... followed by a bunch of ellipsis points .... do not get your point across, it makes you look stupid.
Lay off the incomplete sentence separated by ellipsis points.
Telling people what you had for lunch is a blog, but not very interesting. Telling people about the cute girl you saw while at lunch is OK. Telling people about the politics surrounding lunch is sometimes interesting. Don't read off a laundry list. Say how the situation made you feel. Talk about the history behind your opinion. Support you bullshit with links. To quote Ren, Say something intelligent!"

Basement.
I was watching the Simpson's. This is the one where Homer is a superhero named Pie-man. His lair is the basement. They have the washer and dryer down there. I miss basements. I remember walking down the steps to the basement. It was stone and the walls were large stone. My grandmother's house had ugly fake-wood paneling and a tile floor. There was a whole another house down there. I live in Houston. We cannot have basements here. The water table is too close to the surface. You would just end up with an indoor swimming pool. I had a bunch of adventures in basements. We have slabs in South East Texas. Slabs are no fun once the house is built.

Terrorism.
It is going to happen. I bet it is not going to be a huge bomb or another plane. I bet it is going to be a series of suicide bombings and maybe some kidnappings. So far this kind of attack has been in other countries. I fear it will start in the U. S. soon. It is so very cheap and difficult to prevent. you can't protect everyone all the time. There are any number of ways to fill the hearts and minds of Americans with terror. Kidnapping doubles as a revenue source as well.
I'm sitting here reading news, looking for stories that will compliment my paragraphs above. There are so many, it is depressing. Every news agency has multiple stories on the subject.

Why I cannot go Linux on my desktop.
I have become highly reliant on software that reads to me. My favorite at the moment is ReadPlease. There are many for MS, but  i can find none for Linux. Nothing even close as a matter of fact. It is how I read the large news  stories I link in my blog. It only reads text and is quite finicky on what it accepts from the clipboard.
When I cannot read something using the program above, I use the magnifier in MS. It moves automatically with the mouse and follows you as you type. It is pretty useful. The Linux equivalent is not the same thing at all. There is a program called XZoom, but it cannot be compiled on a modern distribution.
It is only a matter of time before this stuff is addressed. I use Linux as a server every day.

Crabby <from email>
I'm in a crabby mood today. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around anything. It is 10:00 and I've been at work for four hours. It is a Friday. The two people who tell me what to do all day are gone. It is a three day weekend. Yet, I'm in a bad mood. It is stress. This time it it evening job stress. When I get home, I just want to collapse. i haven't been able to do that lately. The only bit of fun I have lately is griping at everything and every one in my blog. I'm off to lunch in a bit and I hope my day will pickup (my attitude anyway) after that.

Ferocious.


Three day weekend
Today is the Friday before Memorial day. I have friends going to the beach. I can't imagine taking on the beach. It is supposed to rain this Monday. Houston is like that. Some other friends are headed to Chicago in a week. Another friend is headed to Big Bend park (actually she is there as I type). She should have a blast. Big Bend is not crowded at any time. My parents are headed to a park Wet of San Antonio for the weekend. I have some work i would like to get done. I may not leave my apartment this weekend. A bunch of people took today off. I have a hundred hours of PTO (Paid Time Off), but nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to go with.

Lunch
Who am I supposed to go to lunch with? Here the last couple of weeks I've felt the sting of politics at my office. There is a group of people I have been going out to lunch with for a while. Not every day. I enjoy getting out of the office. I need the interaction to be honest. I don't get enough people time in my day to day life. I've recently started coming in a half hour earlier so I can take the full hour lunch. Many tell me that it doesn't matter. The time at lunch is forgiven. I will not allow myself to give in. I have to make up the time  That is a different story about office politics.
This story about office politics involves two companies. I finally have a conflict between the two groups of people I work with. The funny thing is, I don't think either set of people really cares. it still bugs me. I am paranoid about social stuff.  I have no idea how to handle the situation. I've been splitting my time. The only reason I go from one group to the other is a need to spread myself around. Play the social butterfly. I will start to limit the number of days I go out to lunch to about two days a week. This will not only save me some social trouble, but some money as well.
A third story about office politics.
Today at lunch I had a disaster socially. it wasn't that bad, but it makes me really uncomfortable. It is one of those situations where you confide in some one and they think you want them to do something to fix the trouble. I told person one that I didn't like person two. Is that not how all of these things start. Why do I tel any one anything? We all had plans to go to lunch. Person one was off to pick up her boyfriend and person two was supposed to give me a ride. Now I have a serious conflict. Person one insists on taking me and making her boyfriend drive himself. Ironically, we end up in a booth and, naturally, I end up sitting next to person two. It isn't that I hate this person. I just find her annoying and cant look her in the eye without wanting to turn and walk away. This is another good reason to stop going out to lunch.

Monday Number Four
Lately every day feels like Monday. I've taken to numbering the days as Monday(1), Monday Number 2, Monday Number 3 and so on. I carry on writing programs. I carry on testing. I carry on the paper work. I would say I need a change in my life, but I fear change. I'm terrified slightly more by change than I am at things staying the same.
This bleeds over into my every day life. Work is my everyday life. I want more than that. I want to let some one into my life, but again, I fear change more than I fear the status quo. I need to embrace change. Pretty heavy stuff for a Monday Number Four morning.
So, what do I intend to do about it? Well, I intend to get out of the apartment a bit more often. I intend to force some changes upon myself that I know I need to make.

War
There is a debate on the BBC (Five Live) today about the many wars around the world that are forgotten. There is a show on this evening in England that covers 16 wars on one specific day all around the world. On of the countries is Laos. A woman plants a device at the side of the road while her fellow soldiers protect her carrying muskets. The army they fight has armed attack helicopters. Yet, they fight. There was a quick debate if humans (men) are predestine to make war. One of the issues is the definition of the word peace. as the absence of war. This implies the default is war to some.

Groundhog
My day job has a fence all the way around the complex. There is no real way for pedestrians to enter the place except through the vehicle gates. That is another issue. There are apartment complexes on both sides of the property. One of the apartment complexes actually built buildings right up to the edge of the property. The fence is only between the buildings. One wall of the buildings is on our company's side. A result of this is people's windows open to this company's property. Some air conditioners are open to the parking lot and must be accessed from this company's property. It floors me that this company let this sort of thing happen. It is a blow to safety and security. Whatever.
Anyway, as a result of having these apartments so close, a buddy was walking through the parking lot and saw a domestic groundhog/hedgehog/rodent of some kind washing itself in a puddle. He mentioned it in passing about a year ago and the image in my head is still there, bright and clear. I don't even know which parking lot he was walking through, but I can see and hear the little animal splashing around in my head. I wonder if it made it back home.
This is the same guy with a story about raccoons that will put in stitches when he tells it  He and a bunch of buddies went camping at a state park. They didn't realize it, but they were near the campground dumpsters. This didn't faze them until, late in the evening, the raccoons walked through their camp toward the dumpsters. I wish I could  properly describe the sound he makes when he tells this story.
He will say something like "We are sitting around the campfire and we hear this rustling in the bushes. Then, we hear this sound like irrirreeerrirreeeer ..." He describes being besieged by raccoons on their way to the dumpster. The sound he makes will kill you. (You should hear the computer read that. It is pretty close.)

Cool Stuff
I've often wandered if i could find my way around Springfield blindfolded (as long as Maggie is not on the road). Now some one has gone through and put together a full map of Springfield USA. That is so cool. I wish I had the time and gumption to do stuff this cool. All I do all day is work and ... ummm .... watch the Simpsons. I plan on having this thing open the next time I watch an episode so I can follow along with my finger and find out what kind of job these guys did.

Buddy's new car
My buddy got a new Audi Allroad.  It is basically an A6 with a bunch of extras. Sweet machine. I like it better after he had the bumpers painted. We went to lunch this afternoon. It has nice pep. the air suspension adjusts all the time, but you can't tell.


500 Megapixel
I'm a photo nut, or I would just let this one slide by. They are going to strap a bunch of camera receivers together and get a single picture together that can be scanned and compare the light given off from stars. The experiment is supposed to prove the existence of dark matter. Well, well, well. Are they finally going to give up on the concept of dark matter when it is prove to be crap, CRAP, CRAP!?

Friend's Mail this morning.
It is 7:30 AM and a friend of mine who will remain anonymous (Anna)  just sent me the following email.

ahdjfk lh luguyf tytyd urt drxjvkgf iu foufgluf.

I think it is a bit early for this one. (the green was my idea) I prescribed three cups of coffee, stat. The spell checker doesn't like that line one bit.
Anyway, I haven't heard from her again all day. I hope this wasn't some stroke induced cry for help.

More on GMail.
I've found a couple of solutions to my previous troubles.

• You can type in names in the To field to get multiple entries. It has an auto-complete feature that kind of works. I have a hard time remembering people exist thought. I really need a checklist. My opinion of this work around is "eh!"
  
• The address book (that still does not let you select many people for one email) is sorted by name again. My opinion of this fix is " ... "
  
• I got an email from staff that basically said I'm stuck with the sent items just sitting in the sent mail folder. My opinion of this work around is "muueeeheuuuuuheeeekkkh"

My overall impression is good. I still want some features. The performance of the mail is great. I've only noticed twice when it took me a couple of tries to get in the system. Honestly, Hotmail has done worse in the same period of time and it has been out for years.

Large, Large Format  Photos.
This camera is pretty sweet. Here is the real link. This is an invention that was brought into being by an artist. Read the article for descriptions of the resolution. They said you can count the shingles on a barn at 1.2 kilometers. I can't imagine taking a portrait with this thing. It is too much for that. You would literally be able to count the fine hairs of your eyelash.
I can also imagine dragging one of these to a party. What kind of flash do you use with this thing, a  nuclear bomb? It needs gobs of light I'm sure. Daylight is probably required. I hope this guy makes money off his invention. It normally happens that some one, in marketing or sales, steels the idea and patents it before the real inventor can work out the bugs.
I've heard of a camera that took a one meter by one meter (yes, meter as in 3.x feet) negative image. The camera was designed to take pictures of a one meter by one meter piece of artwork. The Sistine Chapel used it to record the art before renovation. The camera was purpose built for that use.
I've looked at the Canon Digital Rebel
This is the Canon 1Ds, the real deal. The resolution is 4,064 x 2,704 (11.0 million pixel). If you dig deep enough you can find the sample photos. Nice. One problem, it is $7500 to start. That doesn't include a lens. I've never considered a life of crime until I read about this camera. I downloaded a sample picture and it was 5 megabytes. There is a system in place to digitally sign the photo when it is taken to prove it has not been edited. I got to get me one of these.


Seventeen Years
The Cicadas are back. Some sports guy wen through some stuff that happened in the same year as past Cicada upheavals. The Sox did pretty good in 1919. They would consider an every seventeen year win a streak.

Server <geek speak>
So, I'm trying to set my server machine up so people can store pictures there. I have to figure out how Apache rights work. The glitch I'm hitting is allowing people to log in via FTP and dropping off pictures with the appropriate group settings and rights so Apache can read everything. I don't want to start a business or anything. I just want to learn how to do it.
I did figure out how to get Samba to default to a specific group on a file share. The trouble is, my user name is listed as the owner of every file. Apache either needs to own the file, or have he apache group associated with the file. I haven't had a chance to test my adjustment yet. I may gripe about it again later.

Work
I was looking for some code to swipe from an old project to use in a new project this morning, when I discovered all the files from the old project were gone. Wait a minute, that project has not been distributed yet. I emailed the people responsible for distributing the files and ask them WTF? "Oh, that is how we do things now. We are cleaning up after ourselves." He gives me a link to the files on their distribution system. Hey, that's great. I'm poking around. Poking around. ... Where are a bunch of the folders? Oh, they are in the wrong place. That will not due. Just about now, I start getting the phone calls "Hey Kelly, that package that came in this morning doesn't work, WTF?"  I stop answering the phone and settle in trying to fix the problem. I end up getting the files pulled from tape. They were back in place in a couple of hours. That has got to be a record for our IS people. Hopefully, the project is winging it's way to the Philippines for distribution. That is where the IS people work for beads.
Actually, they are very good at what they do. Of course, what they do is bill the company for everything they can get away with. I may be mistaken, but it sounds like the company still pays them even if they don't fulfill what they said they were going to do. One side effect of this is they will never tell you no.

Blimps, In Space?
Apparently some one figured out how to simply rise to orbit with a blimp and a light bulb. Remember those laws of physics I was talking about in a previous post? This is the way to do things. Not this specific method, I mean using the things around you to your advantage. Now, if we could figure out how to float on top of gravity.