Last Night's Moon

Last night, as I walked home, I noticed the moon. She slung low over the horizon in the gloom. She had one sliver of shimmer, a sliver of light closest to the earth.  Below her was a halo of light from a stadium behind a hill. To me, the moon looked like a ball frozen in the air just above the ground. The whole moon was visible as a shadow or a ghost image.

There were helicopters and planes flying over the park near the moon. There were planes and bright stars shining in the same piece of sky. The whole thing looked like a light show put on just for me. How often I wonder how many people driving by at top speed look up and notice the majesty of the night's sky. Then I'm glad they don't because it would take their breath away and cause a wreck. Poor bastards. Last night, I was glad to have viewed such a ponderous thing. I feel like I had the scene all to myself.

I wanted to try to capture the magic moment. I just knew that it would never let me do such a thing. The moment was mine. I was simply not aloud to share it. Apologies.

The moon was hanging out this evening low in the sky, but just as cool. She was sinking in blue. Had I waited, She would have gone to red before fading out at the horizon.

Is bidding gambling?

If you have a reserve price on an auction, starting bids below that price should be fraudulent in my opinion. If you won't take any less than X then X is where you should start. If you are afraid of bids stopping at X/10, then don't put it up for auction, or start the bidding higher.

I know people don't get caught up in the excitement and won't bid as high. That is because they are gamblers who have a disease and you are taking advantage. Think about it.

My experience tels me that there are gamblers and every one else. I've know people who would bet on stupid stuff and got nothing out of the experience unless something was on the line. They insisted on some sort of sill be involved beyond chance. This skill might be bartering or haggling. It might be bidding strategy. It might be picking a stock or choosing the right time. It might be poker, snooker or baccarat over the wheels or dice.

it all smells like gambling to me.

Dungeons and dragons doesn't appeal to me so much any more because I want a good narrative over playing the game. I would almost rather read about a great adventure than play a game within a good adventure. Perhaps I am an anti-gambler. I just don't like risk. I wander if this is the problem I've had with women all my life. That is taking a chance. Perhaps I have simply become far too risk averse. Life is a risk. I cross the street on a regular basis. Tell me a legally blind person crossing the street under the best situation is less dangerous than driving on that street.

Good man bad man

I just watched a police officer die on video. It was dash cam of a traffic stop. I will not post it. This video is by far the most vile thing I've ever seen on the internet. It has nothing to do with the violence and sounds of human suffering. It is the waist and the fact that the officer did not need to die. This police officer died because of too many warnings and too much leeway given to someone acting drunk and belligerent. I hope training accounts for this today. There is only so much rope you have to give a man before he needs to be put down.

If any one wants the link, I will keep it in my notes. It is very hard to watch and listen to. 

The man gets out of his truck. He screams at the police officer. There are obscenaties and the man approaces the police car. The officer repeatedly shouts instructions to the man and the man returns to his vehicle. The officer shouts at the man to get out of his vehicle. The man produces a gun. A gun fight ensues with windows on both vehicles being shot out.

The man charges the police car and lands a shot with the police officer shouting in pain. Further shots are exchanged with the officer calling on the radio for help, obviously in agony. The man approaches the police car and shots the officer fatally. He does not die instantly. The officer moans and the last sounds you hear are the officer gasping for air as he drowns in his own blood.

The man drives off, is caught, and sentenced to death. This is why we have death penalties. This happened in 1998

Deputy Kyle Dinkheller was shot and killed after pulling over a man on a rural road about 6 miles north of Dublin, Georgia. During the traffic stop he called in for backup. Before the backup arrived he was shot by the man with a rifle. He was able to return fire, striking the suspect in the stomach. The suspect was found during a search the next morning and taken into custody. The entire incident was videotaped by a camera in Deputy Dinkheller's patrol car. On January 28, 2000, the suspect was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to death two days later. Deputy Dinkheller is survived by his expectant wife and 22-month-old daughter. Deputy Dinkheller's son was born in early September 1998. The Officer Down Memorial Page

No comment

Notes:

The financial situation in Grease is bad. The country may default and leave the Euro Zone with the bill. This may cause a domino affect across the subcontinent. The situation is bad enough that tax collectors have gone on strike in Grease. That is a bad sign.

I actually used my printer at work for a non bullshit reason last week. I had to track down and print a mailing label to send a laptop back to a manufacturer. Everything else is lists, forms and paperwork.

Activision is the largest game manufacturer. That just doesn't sound right.

I left home this morning at about 06:30. I got to work a bit before 08:00. I leave work around 18:00 and get home around 19:30. Long frigging day.

Joke

Jewish family. The son calls his mother. "Mom, I'm bringing home my future wife. Just to find out what you really think, I'm going to bring three girls home this weekend and I want you to guess which is the girl I want to marry."

That weekend, the mother spoke with the three women on the couch for five minutes and took her son aside. "It is the one on the right."

The son was flabbergasted. "Mom, how did you know?"

Without missing a beat the mother answered "I don't like her."

Toys

Man toys. These are the sorts of trucks that retired rich men buy in order to make themselves feel strong again. I want one for this very reason. We may not be able to park it in the garage, but we coul probably tow the house around with most of them.

Keyboard Woes

While in the throws of figuring out how to fix my video editing woes recently, I caused another issue. I got pissed off and smacked my Dell keyboard. It had given me flawless service for years. The shift key stuck. The only way I noticed was the funny way I was shifting from one desktop to the other. The only reason I've had to cuss this keyboard were the little bumps on the index fingers for the home keys. They were very small and easy to miss. Not bad for $10 several years ago.

I tried the keyboard I normally use for my server, but the space bar requires 4000 N to produce a space on the screen. Actually, I think it is just the left side of the space bar that has this issue. The right side seems to work without hesitation. This key bard also has the back-slash in the wrong spot. You know how the back-space key is extra wide, right? Not on this keyboard. Where the left half of the back space sits on a 'normal' qwerty keyboard, this one had the back-slash key. That was maddening too. Back to the server.

After a quick trip to the attic, I now have, wait for it, a Microsoft keyboard on my machine. Yes, I'm using a Microsoft keyboard on a Linux box. Something about that tickles me. It is a keyboard that my dad gave Nat some time ago. He now uses the wireless version, with the same layout. The left shift key sticks a bit, but that may have more to do with hangining out in the attic for four years than build quality. One of the Microsoft split keyboards had the '6' key on the right hand side. This one has it on the left. That would be a no-go feature.

The new keyboard is about a foot taller, another keyboard deeper, and a bit wider than either of the other keyboards or indeed any of the keyboards I've used in a long time. Please forgive at least some of the typoes recently. I know I'm bad enough even with a standard keyboard that I'm used to.

Back to surfing the net and screaming at my computer for other reasons. Normal operations resume now.

The internet sucks

Most podcasts use iTunes and nothing else. Yes iTunes is a pretty good piece of software, but if Apple decides they do not like you any more, you are out on your keister. Something that I've noticed over and over again is professional podcasts like tech magazines and notable web pages that should know better, screwing up the link that points to their non-iTunes podcast that is in MP3 format most likely. This happens repeatedly and in some cases for weeks on end.

Typically they will point to a web page that holds the link to the MP3. This does not work worth a shit in an aggregate program for podcasts outside of the iTunes sphere of influence.

Not long ago, one of the well known podcasters who runs Geek News Centrel, ran a survey of such quality issues across the podcast spectrum and found that [from memory] about a third of non iTunes links for podcast sites were broken. I believe it. Instead of recognizing an endemic issue, people yelled at him for exposing their own inadequacies and publishing the results. I believe that too.

Recently, Google has squeezed out another social media point of interest. They call it Google Buzz. I'm sure this is in memory of the now defunct Yahoo Buzz from a few years ago. Maybe not.

I hereby refuse to attend or indeed pay any attention to another social network site. I have too many to pay attention to right now. I use Facebook, Twitter, this blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, email, IM, face to face conversations, phone calls, text messages, screaming, smoke signals, preying, body language, dirty looks, smiles, hitting of solid surfices with my head, and TPoT (The Pitching of Toenails) to get my messages across. No more.

I am not going to add another thing to the list until something else falls off the list. When Facebook pisses me off, or Twitter gets banned from the planet again, we will talk.

A heartbeat from the presidency

Biden, like most Democrats, will do nothing, bitch and bitch and bitch, then take credit when someone else gets it right. These are the people in charge of our future. These are the people we have running the place. I wish us all luck in the whole war on terror thing. We are doomed.

Vote Republican/Independent, anything. Get these creepy haters out of the white house.

Like this

Lifted from here.

DnD

Well, after bitching about how little I had to work with and how bad this was bound to be because of it, here it is.

Not many of the jokes come through. I'm not sure what I expected. Note that I had nearly 52 minutes of footage to choose from. Someone who has no affiliation with our group or DnD in general please let me know if this is in the least little bit interesting.

Video

I'm trying to rescue the video I shot of dungeons and dragons this past Friday. I was saying that if I could save 30 seconds I would call it a win. The trouble with this idea is the length of possible clips is long. Too long. The jokes all require setup and a rolling sort of movement through the conversation. The jokes are also nearly all inside, or based on inside information to the group.

I have almost conquered the issue of being able to edit video along side the sound that was recorded at the same time. This sounds like something obvious to any one who has edited video, but not, it seems, on Linux. This is too much to ask.

By fluxing around with the sound settings in each program, I've achieved editing with shitty video and the machine not grinding to a halt and the software not crashing before the end of a single edit. I have gotten the audio to a point I can understand most of what is said. That is more than I expected. I'm used to never getting what I want out of computers running Linux.

Even though I have the editor working to the point of usefulness, there may yet not be a dnd video.

Something else I've noticed about my videos lately a blurry area on the right side of the video. If I remove the wide angle lens I bought, the blurry bit seems to go away. This is annoying because I paid money for that thing. The drop in quality is starting to make me question its usefulness.

Saturday Malaise

Ever have one of those lives where nothing goes your way. Not much good happens and all life eventually dies? I have.

Natalie's mother is very ill. Natalie is a wreck. The doctors keep jerking Nat's mom around and changing the schedule. She has been on a liquid diet and looks very thin and weak.

Natalie asked Bill to bring Elle back so she would have someone besides me around to comfort her. That is a legitimate consern because I'm horrable at that sort of thing.. Now Nat is passed out in her room while Elle watches a DVD at her laptop. Elle did her job. I think Nat is getting some needed rest.

I'm reading blogs and drinking coffee. I took a very long nap and I'm drinking coffee. I suppose boom boom will start up soon. Tonight promises zero sleep. I'm not worried about it. Life is just like this right now. Maybe Kelly 2.0 will have a better experience.

I'm not looking at the numbers any more. It is far too depressing. I cannot edit a video with sound on this computer. It is not the computer, it is the Linux os. I honestly believe there is no way to do it on this OS. Useless.

Film Fail

So I tried to film DnD last night. I failed. I got the footage, kind of. I got the room from one angle. on high. It sucked. I'll have to think of something different next time I try to film something like this.  I have 52q minutes of people yelling at each other and being 10. no point if I'm honest.

Fail!

Notes:

I have a hard time finding motivation to write anything lately. I'm not sure why. It might be the weather. It has been cold and rainy. It may be that winter doldrum that I'm fighting. It might be work. I've been working hard lately. There has been a lot to do. It has been interesting and kind of fun to learn new things. Still, it has taken a bit out of me. It might be that I'm watching videos of people doing silly things like talking to the camera lately. I've been watching vlogs on mass. I'm trying to figure out what works and what does not.

Some video camera had an interesting feature. If you hit record, you had some way of making the camera capturing some amount of time before you hit record. If the camera was on and in a stand by mode, it was really capturing video and round-robin recording the last umpteen seconds that you could add to the beginning of your recording. Interesting feature. I'm not sure how usefully that is. Most of the time I miss a video, I'm miles from my video camera.

Google Buzz seems a couple years late and a couple notches low. I was automatically following people and automatically being followed by like five people. I'm just not interested in yet another social networking gadget t ordeal with.

Macro Money

Some expert who predicted the last couple dips has predicted another dip coming this year. The culprit is deflationary pressure due to people getting pay cuts and inflation taking away any rises they receive. People just cannot afford to keep up their bills. Increasing spending is just not in the cards for most people. This will cause the FED and other countries to keep interest rates low because they will be afraid of slitting the throat of any real recovery. Inflation will most likely go up to 4% before it plummets to nearly negative teratology.

Grease "Must be bailed out for the Euro Zone to continue." That is a frightening statement. Who is going to bail out Grease? Who has the money and will? I think the U. S. should bail out Grease and demand a proxy membership and a veto power in votes. What do you think?

Oil is going to hit $100, $150, $200 over the next couple of years and stay there. The planet is hitting the peak of the amount of oil they can withdraw from the ground and process. No one wants to bring any more capacity online. Biro oil is not working out. No one uses electricity to move cars around on mass. In short, we are screwed. Buy a nice bicycle and get in shape.

This is almost enough to make one invest in canned food and shotguns. "They can all go to hell. Except cave seventy six!"

Chasing the sun

There is no one moment of a sunrise. They give times in the paper, but they do not understand what it means to chase the sun across the sky just to watch it rise and dance a moment with the clouds.

Notes:

I tried to shoot video of the sunrise this morning. I can't decide if it s a wash or if it is worth posting as a 'fail' video. it was just a couple of couple of second long clicks.

I took another quick stab at html 5 last night. There was an update to Chrome for Linux. No go. I did sit down and read the known issues that were on the front page of the YouTube beta test. From memory "Videos with ads will still play in Flash."That makes sense. All those stupid over video ads are in Flash. I wander if that is why no one is leaping to the front of the line to support html 5.

It pisses me off that depression is so many times diagnosed based on what drugs are available. Many of the drugs are no better than a placebo unless the situations are specific. Way too many people are handed a bottle of pills and told to go and sob no more.

Right now U. S. citizens pay 31% (average) of their income in federal taxes. In 20 years, if the current list of political promises are kept, we will pay 45%. Ridiculous.

Had a huge baked potato from the bbq place just down the road. My goodness, it was the size of a football, covered in meat, I smothered it in jalapeños and onions and ate it right down to the skin. I had a bunch of work to do that afternoon and nearly passed out from feast. Not bad for $7.

One of the podcasts I listened to today was talking about scarves. What's fashionable and not. I know, "What the hell are you doing listening to that Kelly?" It got better. Some ballerina in the thirties I believe was famous for warring these long flowing scarves. One day she was driving her new Bugatti convertible and was strangled to death by her scarf wrapping itself around an axl.

The iPhone will soon have an SD card reader (external). The iPad will soon have a camera kit from the same company. Screw you Apple.

A young man found out his twin brother had died in a car crash by readying the well wishes for the other passenger who was also in the car crash. He was reading the Facebook updates. The police were having trouble contacting the next of kin. This is scary that Facebook beat the police to notifying family members. Sad, harsh. I heard this on GNC. I know this just sounds like an urban legend.

One way not to vlog

Lesson learned. Do not click on your own live video podcast/blog.