Arguing Fail

I understand the Ibex better than the guy.

UFO over China

The first sighting occurred at Hangzhou's Xiaoshan Airport, in the eastern part of the country, according to the state-controlled Xinhua news agency.

Eighteen flights were delayed or rerouted and operations shut down after twinkling lights were spotted above the terminal around 9 p.m. July 7, the agency said. According to Xinhua, speculation has centered on a private aircraft. The state-run China Daily quoted a source saying the object had a military connection.

"No conclusion has yet been drawn," said Wang Jian, head of air traffic control with Zhejiang branch of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, and the investigation continues.

...

<0p>Meanwhile, The Shanghai Daily reported a UFO appeared above the city of Chongqing on Thursday.

Witnesses said four "lantern-like objects forming a diamond shape" hovered for an hour above a park.

"I stared at it and it did not move," one resident told the newspaper. "After hovering for an hour, the thing started to fly higher and finally out of people's sight."

CNN

Busy day.

Fantastic Trick

You learn something every day. Someone who has an extra piece of glass and an itchy pare of tin-snips lying around give this a shot and let me know how it works. Ware safety glasses and gloves for God's sake.

Pay Wall Woes

News: Murdoch's UK Paywall a Miserable Failure

from the sorry-rupert dept.

"As part of his war against free, Rupert Murdoch put the Times and Sunday Times of London behind a paywall. Michael Wolff of Newser asks how that's working out for him. You can guess: miserable failure: 'Not only is nobody subscribing to the website, but subscribers to the paper itself — who have free access to the site — are not going beyond the registration page. It's an empty world.' Not that this wasn't entirely predictable."

Slash Dot

I give Murdoch props for at least trying. He is going about it the wrong way in my opinion. Someone needs to figure out how to make money without milking people needlessly.

It isn't that people are used to getting things for free. People are not steeling it. It is that the value of your information has dropped due to competition and explosion of choice in the area. You need to evolve or go the way of the trilobite.

I'm just saying.

Me and Tea

So, we went to Berger King. We asked for iced tea, among other things. The lady taking our order didn't sound like she was in to being there today. Nat and I have had this same discussion with half the fast food places in the Houston area.

The chick is like "It isn't sweet. Is that OK?"
"Yes, thank you."
"So, do you want it?"
"Yes please."

We got home and it was a coke.

Should have put money on it. I've asked for diet tea. I've asked for unsweet tea. I've asked for regular tea. It is always a challenge. It is no particular type of person who doesn't get it.

When I was growing up, sweet tea was asked for by name. Iced tea was just hat water, a tea bag or five and time. That was the magic formula. Nothing special, except it was served slopping over with ice and kept full at all times.

Notes:

"Can you cut police whiteout affecting law and order negatively?". I say not if you let people know in advance.

I got a new power supply for a switch at work today. It is amazing what is available out there. The switches are worth like $80. So, replacing the brick for about $16 makes sense. it is funny how excited I got firing the switch backup. The reason it died is because someone plugged that switch in to the wrong brick and it died after it over heated. Lucky it didn't catch on fire.

It stopped?

BP: No oil flowing into Gulf of Mexico for first time in months as part of test of ruptured well. Watch live on CNN.com

CNN

So, you can go to CNN.com and watch it not leak any more?

This has got to be a first. They are far too proud of nothing happening.

Is the pipe broken below the sea floor? If so, isn't it still leaking down there, thus, the oil will simply ooze from elsewhere?

Are the relief wells in operation, as in draining oil from the sea floor before it hits the open sea?

Lunch conversation

The cats dogs conversation started when Bill made the comment that one of our coworkers was under the table waiting for scraps. The BP conversation started when someone came in to the lunch room to ask a question about a customer and the two people spewed a dozen acronyms. BP dosn't actually stand for anything. That is the company's name.

• Cats vs Dogs
• Dogs are too much work.
• Cats are useless.
• Cats are good for target practise.
• BP
• I heard the cap finally worked.
• I heard the cap didn't work.
• I heard the government made them open the valves for 24 hours just to measure the flow rate so they would know how much to fine BP.
• Sounds like something our government would do.
• I heard there is a break in the pipe under the sea floor so there is not much hope of capping the leak. It will just ooze up somewhere else.

Spy hunt

Deported Russian (Spy?) Worked At Microsoft

subtropolis writes "KOMO News in Seattle is reporting that a recently-deported 23-yr-old Russian man 'appears to have ties to the recently-exposed Russian counterintelligence' (according to unnamed Feds). The article states that he admitted to unspecified immigration violations and was promptly shown the door on Tuesday. It also says that 'Microsoft confirms Karetnikov worked as an entry-level software tester for less than a year.' So, I'm thinking that MS had better take a really good at their logs for that time. He may have got in at 'entry-level' but his abilities may have been a fair bit beyond that. ... Interestingly, his admission to mere 'violations' and swift departure would be right in line with how this swap has gone down. The four Russians who were flown to Britain and the US had to first sign a confession before President Medvedev granted them pardons." The same news is at CBS News, too.

sladhdot

Yes, this is scary. Where are the next batch working? Where is the made for TV movie of this rusky invasion? When lobbyists do this sort of thing they call it a job. When spies do it they call it an incident.

Muscle Memory

Dribbling a basketball. Juggling. Yo-yo. Bicycle. Think about any kind of thing that is very difficult to explain, yet must be mastered through repetition. This involves muscle memory.

It is funny when you learn a new password. I don't know about every one else in the world, but I type it in consciously for a long time and get it right because I have to stop and think about it. Then, as it gets put in muscle memory, I get faster and make many more mistakes. Perhaps there is something to having the pas-phrases that cannot possibly be remembered in muscle memory, thus forcing you to consciously run through it every time.

This is a funny thing, muscle memory. It helps for all kinds of movements. When I was teaching myself nunchucks, I notice early on that if I stopped thinking about what was happening and just thought about which move I wanted to do next, I would throw those things around much more quickly and hit myself in the back of the head much less.

Phone numbers and passwords are a dangerous thing to leave to muscle memory. I can't tell you how many times have I had someone asked me the password to some functional shared account and had to type it in order to remember with accuracy. I'm not the only one. This happened just the other day with someone telling me.

Typing in general relies on the same thing. I cannot see well. I put the keyboard out of sight and have the monitors up close to my face. Some People freak when they watch me type because it seems like I have the entire keyboard memorized. Trouble is, if you ask me where a key is on the keyboard, I have to try to type it to find it.

Even when it comes to the on-screen keyboard for my phone is in my muscle memory. This is not really a good thing because I have such poor eye hand coordination that I get the wrong character and make the same mistakes over and over.

There are places for muscle memory and places to avoid it. Balance is true in all things I suppose.

Notes:

China owns 30% to 40% of the U. S. bond market.

I killed a bunch of ants yesterday at home. Now, I find a bunch of little tiny ants in my office. They are in the walls. Someone warned me they were there. I got bit by one. I wander how they found out.

It took me 45 minutes to set up my own email on a new Windows system at work. Some admin.

The G. G. Liddy show had some black activist on who said basically, if black people think things are bad now, wait until Latinos are on top. From memory "I'm surprised there have not been race riots in Los Angeles." The guy was from Project Twenty One.

I do not need to consume collieries or caffeine in order to function. I do not need to drink a soda, eat a candy bar, consume chips or another cup of coffee after lunch. I did not eat lunch. That doesn't matter. I hereby declare myself immune to low blood sugar. It is my own fault for not eating lunch. I have food, I'm too lazy to fix the food I have and I'm too cheap to buy a burger.

Have I already complained about the spell checker in GEdit that does not work for contractions? Well, I should some time.

There is a book out about living life without air conditioning. The U. S. uses more electricity for air conditioning than the entire continent of Africa (a billion people) use for everything. The book is called "Loosing our Cool." They have dubbed a new disease "Nature Deficit Disorder." I like it. I'm all for sweating like mad and just stinking.

Anchor Baby: When a foreign woman or couple has a baby in the U. S. in order to achieve residency.

I set up a bunch of filters at my work email. Why did I wait this long to do this?

Couple of videos

Poor kitty.

Thieving Alligator! Take that!

Not that I have a problem with sucking coffee through a straw, but there is just something manly about making a coffee cup work in zero G. Once again, coffee contributes to science.

Just kind of cool.

File Filter

Before adding six more criteria.

-------- Summary ---------------------------------------------------------------
Total files processed     > .............................................. 73574
Good files in playlist    > .............................................. 44248
Bad files out of list     > .............................................. 12611
Fantastic files           > ............................................... 5429
Number of Duplicates      > .............................................. 13695
-------- time ------------------------------------------------------------------
Process h:m:s             > .............................................. 0:8:3
Elapsed h:m:s             > .............................................. 0:8:3
Files/second              > ................................................ 152
reg ex count              > ............................................. 317957
CPU h:m:s of this process > .............................................. 0:7:9
-------- Info ------------------------------------------------------------------
Good file                 > ..................................... kelly_good.m3u
Fantastic file            > ...................................... kelly_fan.m3u
Log file                  > ..................... kelly_log_2010-07-12_07-28.log
Directory processed       > ..................................... ['/mnt/music']
Items in kill list        > ................................................ 172
Items in fantastic list   > ................................................. 78
Options                   > .......................................... See below
 ['-o', '-g', 'kelly_good', '-f', 'kelly_fan', '-l', 'kelly_log']
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After

-------- Summary ---------------------------------------------------------------
Total files processed     > .............................................. 73574
Good files in playlist    > .............................................. 42904
Bad files out of list     > .............................................. 14098
Fantastic files           > ............................................... 5415
Number of Duplicates      > .............................................. 13552
-------- time ------------------------------------------------------------------
Process h:m:s             > ............................................. 0:7:36
Elapsed h:m:s             > ............................................. 0:7:36
Files/second              > ................................................ 161
reg ex count              > ............................................. 313496
CPU h:m:s of this process > ............................................. 0:6:45
-------- Info ------------------------------------------------------------------
Good file                 > ..................................... kelly_good.m3u
Fantastic file            > ...................................... kelly_fan.m3u
Log file                  > ..................... kelly_log_2010-07-12_12-52.log
Directory processed       > ..................................... ['/mnt/music']
Items in kill list        > ................................................ 178
Items in fantastic list   > ................................................. 78
Options                   > .......................................... See below
 ['-o', '-g', 'kelly_good', '-f', 'kelly_fan', '-l', 'kelly_log']
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note over a thousand files are added to the bad files list. Note the time and regex decrease. This is because of the way I nested the loops. The more you eliminate from the bad list the fewer duplicates you have to check for.

Podcasts

I managed to blow away my podcasts today because of a lack of a semicolon. I so hate that.

My normal process is as follows.

• Download the files at the house.
• Somehow only download one file and not notice.
• Put them on my thumb drive.
• Forget to put the files on the drive (sync) before I go to bed.
• Leave the drive at home.
• Copy the files off the drive to my hard drive at work.
• Blow away the files.
• Copy all the files to the wrong spot and not discover it for a week.
• Copy the files all to one folder, thus making it a pain in the butt figuring out what file is what podcast.

You get the idea. Ironically, washing the drive in the laundry didn't do crap to the data on the drive. The plastic broke on the back, but my files were still there.

Then comes things that are not my fault like the Gnome interface in Red hat 5.5 that we use at work will not let me remove files, even with rights, from the GUI. I have to remove files through the command line. This makes me do the whole thing from the command line. I must remember not to do command line stuff before coffee in the future.

I'm really starting to understand the attraction to having a dedicated device for this crap. Many smart phones, including mine, allow the gathering and playing of podcasts. I can't get the software to work and I do not have enough memory on my phone to do much good. There is always something. Maybe in my next phone. I'll still be too cheap.

Lament

If only I could sit in the grass and listen.
Where I live is beside a highway.
Beside a field of tall grass, full of bugs.
The ants own my yard.
Soon, I shall take it back. Soon.

If only I could go for a drive.
If only I could ride a motorcycle in the country.
Never been much on horses, but ride a horse too.
Find myself in a stream with my pants rolled up.
Watch the fish pass me by with more important things to do.

What ever happened to summer days playing in the dirt?
What happened to running in the heat?
What happened to waking up early just to be the first in the public pool?
I miss BB guns in walking down the bayou.
I never did steel a kiss from just any girl who would let me.

We played Dungeons and Dragons for entire weekends.
We learned how to program basic and pascal.
We helped poor driveways and build fences.
We did landscaping and mowed.
We taught ourselves to care about money.

Playing from dawn until dusk.
My parents had to beg me to come home.
We would conspire to waist time.
We would dream.
We explored our universe.

Now I'm older, summer is hot.
I miss summer, when it was cool.
I miss youth, a time when I did what felt right.
I'm still alive, does that count for much?
Youth is a state of mind, I need to get out there and play.

Notes:

I heard "The Wichita Lineman" on a TV show this past weekend. it was a modern TV show. That is not the normal fare for hip TV shows. Then I heard it today come up randomly on the music list. 70,000+ files. Wander if there is more to work in the universe.

Got a touch of rain this afternoon at lunch. If I hadn't had my phone with me, I would have just stood there and gotten soaked. It felt that good.

Tried a free form poem today. How long has it been?

A couple of the new young engineers are sick of doing technical writing stuff. "This isn't engineering." Welcome to our company.

Lance! explain this to me

I want to have Back to the Future style hover board by the end of the month.

Bradford Football Disaster

Warning: Graphic tragedy.

The Bradford City Fire Disaster occurred on Saturday 11 May 1985 when a flash fire consumed one side of the Valley Parade football stadium in Bradford, England.

The fire broke out during a football match between Bradford City (the home team) and Lincoln City, on the day that Bradford City were supposed to have celebrated their winning the Football League Third Division trophy. A total of 56 people died and more than 265 others were injured.

This is raw footage from the Bradford football disaster. Most of you have seen some footage of it, mostly in tributes and other compilations. This is pretty rare and raw footage from that tragic day.

Live Leak

I listen to the BBC all the time. I've heard reference to the Bradford Football Disaster, but never thought to hunt down footage of it. I didn't realizde how many people died. If you had so much as a sore toe, it would slow you down.

Worse than Metro

I need to stop complaining about Houston Metro service so much.

I'm starting to feel much better about metro.

Oil price rize

Where have all the oil rigs gone? Where is all their money spent?

Diamond Offshore announced Friday that its Ocean Endeavor drilling rig will leave the Gulf of Mexico and move to Egyptian waters immediately — making it the first to abandon the United States in the wake of the BP oil spill and a ban on deep-water drilling.

...

Once the rigs relocate, it could be a minimum of five to 10 years before they return, predicted Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land.

Fausta's Blog

Hell of a guy that Obama. I cannot help but wander if he is deliberately doing this to th Gulf Coast region to force high paying jobs out of existence in order to weaken Republican strongholds. I mean, that is what makes sense. Isn't it still OK to drill on the East coast, a Democrat stronghold?