Surface Tension
Ever have something stuck inside that wanted to come out. But, you don't know what it is. it is a bit like someone banging on a door. you can't tell who it is. All you know is someone wants on the other side. There is a banging in my head. Some idea wants out. Every time I sit down to jot down some notes, nothing floats up from the depths. I'm left with the surface of the sea and no idea what lies beneath.
Then comes a heavy base riff from a dark song by a dark band. The base pounds low and loud. Louder than the knocking of the idea. It stirs the water in my mind. The waves reveal the tops of mountains. Will this help? Is this how drugs help people who call themselves artists? I'm glad I'm a programmer. We only need caffeine and video games to stir things up.
As the sun sets on a clear blue ocean a sailer might see what is under a calm surface for just a moment. The under side of the water just might reveal it's world. Then the sun falls. The image is gone. Until the next time.

Ride home
It is so cute when Elle sings along with the radio.
Elle - "I love this bar ...."
Nat and I - "Aw, that's cute."
Elle - "Save a horse ride a cowboy."
Nat and I - "HEY!!!!" click.

Amazing Grace (the movie)

All I have to say is they better not mess it up. I love this song. I sing it in the shower. I sing it walking down the street. I sing it to God and the weeds. Looking at the preview, there is just too high a pedestal to climb.

Crowd and Conflict
No kidding it was a record crowd this year at the cook-off. Every place was packed to the teeth. To invoke an old colloquialism "every swinin' dick in town" was at the cook off.
I have great respect for the folks that put up all the booths and run things. It was just plane nuts. Nat went Friday and had a great time. We went Saturday night. We got out there too late. Most of the food was gone. It was still a ball. We didn't even wonder around much. Nat and I went to the carnival looking for hot dogs. We found a place, but I just couldn't wait in line. I'm kind of glad I didn't stay because I would have probably decked the guy in line behind Nat. I took off and found my way back to the general area of the booth I was looking for. I found the kiosk that had the list of names and a map of booths. I waited and waited for every one else I got up to it and then someone else came along and i walked away like I found what I was looking for. I came back and the same thing happened again. I waited and returned, and finally got a few moments with the map alone. I studied it and noticed that I was about 30 meters from my destination. I had been walking around right past it. I'm surprised no one noticed me walking around aimlessly. I found my way back to the place where all my friends were hanging out.
I was just lucky that the name of the booth was low on the list. Otherwise I would never have been able to read it. The "You are here" arrow was right at the middle of the map. Otherwise I would have been unable to tell where I was. So many things pointed to the fact that I should have brought my frigging bag. I would have had my little binoculars. I would have had my camera.
Let me explain why I didn't have my bag.
So, did I mention that the place was crowded? Yes, I must have. Well we drove around five different parking lots. Nothing. We tried the parking lots at the site. Nope. Ken found a place on a side street two full lights away from the dome parking lot. Oh, on the other side of the dome. We parked. and Ken drove every one back to the dome and dropped every one off. I road back with Ken and we walked from the Wellness Center to the Cold River booth. I looked all around the reliant Center, I finally found Hepburn street. It is to the upper  right. We cut through the park and walked down behind the apartment complexes. Fortunately, Ken got a ride back to the cars from Niki. He and Niki came back and got every one at the gas station.
Ken and some of the others wanted to go to an after hours club. Thank goodness the folks we gave a ride to (Elias and Wisper) Just wanted to play the fogy card like us and go home. That is not the end of our adventure.
As Nat came around the back side of the mall, she noticed blinking lights in the distance. She said "It looks like they are right in front of our house." She cuts a left a block early and we snake through the neighborhood. As we pull around the last corner, our house in sight, there are the lights. They are indeed right in front of our house. We both thought for sure it was the racers again. A young boy died a few months ago just a block down. That would not be the cause this time.
Nat and I walked over and asked some people about it. There was a stabbing and possibly a shooting. You know how these things go through the old telephone game. Nat found a great little article about the whole thing this morning. Life Flight flew at least one away. There were at least four ambulances. There had to be a dozen cop cars.
It took me an hour or more to wind down after Nat and I decided to come in for the evening. She and I wondered what probably started the whole thing. Then, we went to sleep.

Phone
My mobile phone has been messing up lately. Turning off or locking up. The other day the alarm didn't go off and I nearly over slept. I've swapped phones with one of Nat's old phones. She has a newer phone. I'm just trying to fix my problem without spending any money. This phone is almost identical to the one I had. The only differences so far have been cosmetic. I think it is physically a little bit bigger, but not enough to notice.
Switching was easy. There was a 'save to SIM' option for all the phone numbers. Other than that, I just popped the backs off the phones and moved the little card from one to the other. At least that part is easy. So far so good. I've used the phone a couple of times. I remember Nat having some trouble with it so the idea is not perfect.
I would love to get one of those cool phones that does everything. I saw a lady on the bus the other day playing a game or something on her phone while she waited for her stop. She got a call and did something else on that little computer.
I made a list not too long ago about the perfect PDA and all the features it should have. I still can't do my taxes on it, but I'm sure someone chained to a coke machine in a dungeon is working on that.

Endian
I have a friend who says if he had the opportunity to go back in time and kill one person it would not be Hitler or any evil leader for that matter. It would be the person who came up with the concept of big endian - little endian. He has spent most of his career sorting out problems with this concept.
The real trouble is that one way or the other has no real advantage. just pick one and go with it. It is a bit like having having a log series of telephone cords. These cords all have two prongs and can plug into the next cord either way. At any given moment, a million people are accessing these cords and moving them around. The conversation that comes out of the cords is forwards only as long as all the place where the conversation hops from one cord to the next are all facing the same way. Or, the combination of flips just happens to accidentally flip the conversation back before it is  heard by the recipient.
The conversation I heard yesterday ended with some one stating that many people just plane avoid the issue because there is no way to win and make every one happy. There are so many dynamics and so few people are dealing with the issue that it will never be solved. It will always be an annoying back-burner issue that no one wants to deal with.This is just another layer of craziness that will never get "fixed".

Lungs
Sickly lungs run in my family. Right at the end of last year my father ended up in the hospital for pneumonia. I have been battling bronchitis most of my life. I had a pretty bad bout last year. I only recently got over another cough. That is the trick though, I never really get over the cough. Just ask any one who hangs out with me. I cough all the time. I've noticed several people around me who do the same thing. My friend says he and I have the same sounding cough. I have isolated it to the diaphragm cough. That is the one where you take in a big breath and let it fly with a burst of air while constricting the throat. This is different from a normal cough only by intensity and the distinctive sound of someone's head nearly flying off from pressure.
This last time I went to the doctor, I got a chest X-ray. My lungs looked relatively clear. The top of my lungs looked over expanded according to the doctor. I think that is a symptom of coughing your whole life. He says it sounds like I have asthma when he listens to my lungs, but my breathing test shows I have plenty of capacity. My lungs are not knotted up enough to diagnose asthma. My body is reacting to some kind of allergen. Heaven knows what.
So, I'm on a new batch of pills and a powder based inhaler. They are antihistamines. No antibiotic or steroid this time. That is a good thing. I think the inhaler is doing the trick. The pills are not doing anything I don't think. I heard on NPR the other day that doctors are starting to recommend that people flush their nasal passages with a salt solution designed for the sinuses. Not nasal spray, the kind that flush the area. That sounds disgusting, but it sounds like what I need. When I get my check next month I'm going to look for the stuff they talked about and give it a shot. it doesn't sound pleasant, but I'm up for it. Besides, it might work. One of my friends said it worked for them. I'm sure I'll blog about it.
Nat and Elle keep coming down with a cough too. It has got to be Houston. We have crappy air here. I've been coughing since I was a kid. I moved here when I was a kid. It comes and goes. It is amazing how tired it makes me. I wonder if the treatment above will help the snoring any.

Quiet Bigotry
I was listening to NPR this morning and between their self promotion of digital radio I noticed a new term (new for me) being used to describe Iraqis killing Iraqis. Sectarian Cleansing. The war stirred people up and moved them around. They had to move on short notice. Some just plain had to flee. People who came to Baghdad took over houses that were abandon. The Iraqi police are going to crack down on squatters. NPR calls this Sectarian Cleansing like they support segregation of religions groups.
In order to better mock NPR, I've come up with a few new terms of my own to help identify groups that need killing cleansing.

Sectarian cleansing: People of the wrong religion.
Ethnic cleansing: People with the wrong family tree.
Chromoptic cleansing: People with the wrong eye color.
Ryonoic cleansing: People with the wrong shaped nose.
Tonedefnic cleansing: People who like bagpipes.
Humorothic cleansing: People who tell bad jokes.

You get the idea. Besides, I like bagpipes.

I remember in high school a teacher who was Jewish had to tell a student that calling a Jewish person a Jew is OK. He had apparently only heard the term as derogatory  I bet he had heard all the jokes that started something like "a [ethnic slur], a [ethnic slur 2] and a Jew walk into a bar." How did that happen? People hate Jews so much that the proper name for the religion's followers has itself become a slur. Is this a South thing? I wouldn't doubt it. The term "jew" used as in haggle helped kept a candidate for Texas governor from winning the election several years ago. Well that and comparing the weather to rape. The guy was a redneck.
This kind of thing is what I've always called quiet bigotry. The kind of bigotry that keeps people from communicating. The kind of bigotry that stops people from finding their way in life. It is just plane ignorance. I felt like this is the sort of thing that I heard on NPR this morning. Just plane ignorance.

Ubuntu Box
I have a web server sitting next to my desk at home. It is the machine that holds my home page and many of the pictures seen on my blog. It is an old PC from my parent's place. I put Ubuntu on it. Something happened to the Ubunto CD so when I try to do apt-get updates, I get errors. I'm downloading the new Ubuntu CD which should allow me to upgrade and hopefully fix the apt-get problem in the same swipe. Hopefully it will not affect the web server or data on  the drive.
I'm thinking hard about fixing Nat up a computer to replace hers. I cannot bring myself to buy Windows again for the same machine that we already had windows on so I'm probably going to make her use Linux just because it is all I have right now.

iPod bikini

From Geekologie. I figure this goes along with one of my recent posts. hehe .. hehehe.

Great News for people with Eye Trouble

A bionic eye that can restore sight to the blind should be available commercially within two years, scientists behind the revolutionary technology announced yesterday. The artificial retina has been cleared by US regulators to begin trials on between 50 and 75 people suffering from two of the most common causes of blindness, opening the way for millions more to benefit from similar implants in the future. If the research progresses well, a device could be on the market early in 2009 at a likely cost of about £15,000, said Mark Humayun, Professor of Ophthalmology at the Doheny Eye Institute, part of the University of Southern California. ... Professor Humayun said that it would also work better for people who have been able to see as older children or adults, than for those who have been blind since birth. Times Online

Well folks, this is the real thing. This is the beginning of the end of most kinds of blindness as we know them today. They are right to call it a bionic eye. That is exactly what it is. This one is promising because it is not trying to fix the eye or retina. It is replacing them both entirely. The fact that it is wireless is good too. I cannot imagine catching a wire plugged into my brain on a nail and ripping it out.
Honestly, this is the announcement I've been waiting for all my life. It is not miracle. It is not a one stop fix everything technology. It is not and probably will not surpass the ability of the human eye for a long time. But it is a start. It is the key step that many new innovations will use as a starting place.
I knew that as America gets older something like this would happen. When it comes to medical advances, numbers matter. I picture people warring these things in public in a couple of years. I picture a couple friends of mine warring them too.

No one will ever win this fight.

There is no more widely believed proposition in world politics today than that solving the Arab-Israel conflict would contribute to world peace as nothing else could.  It doesn't matter where you stand on the conflict.  Republicans and Democrats, Western European democratic leaders and Arab despots, the EU, the UN, Israeli leaders, Jews of the world - for all of them, solving the Arab-Israel conflict is the holy grail. ... Let's begin with Israel where it is not hard to see why solving the Arab-Israel conflict spells catastrophe.  The only way Israel can achieve peace is to disappear.  The Arabs make that clear, no matter how much the rest of the world and indeed the Israelis shut their ears.  The Hamas government on Israel's border makes that crystal clear, without any of the peace-in-English, war-in-Arabic obfuscations of the Arafat era. The conflict is not about territory occupied since 1967, but about all the territory Israel occupies. .... If solving the Arab-Israel problem is the path to perdition, what policies can productively be pursued  in respect to the Middle East?  Deterrence? Exploiting divisions within Islam?  Military action?  Supporting internal dissidents within individual countries?  Sharply curtailing Muslim immigration to the West?  A crash program to develop non-mid East energy sources? A combination of these? Other possibilities? We are in for a long struggle against a resurgent Islam and there are no Five Easy Steps to End the Islamic Threat. This said, it is past time for some genuine realism to be brought to bear in thinking about the problems of the Middle East, not the false kind James Baker represents.  Putting the idea of solving the Arab Israel conflict in the diplomatic trash bin should be the first order of business. American Thinker

I'm telling you there will never be peace in the Middle East until one or the other side is wiped out.

iPod gadget

OhMiBod is a sleek, sophisticated new generation of vibrator that combines elegance of design with the excitement of your favorite music. The audio enabled integrated microchip allows the OhMiBod to vibrate to the beat and rhythm of your music while you listen. omibod.com

Mom! Don't follow that link.
Every one else, it is a pretty cool idea. It is not just for iPods. It will work on pretty much any headphone jack. That makes it compatible at both ends.  =]

Customer comment (from the site above)

I actually gave the OhmiBod to my best friend for her 21st birthday and she absolutely loves it! She said it works great with Madonna's new CD and she's not sure anything she could ever get me will match up to it, so she thinks she'll just get me one for my birthday too. So thanks a lot. It was a huge hit!

Music
I added the functionality to my music script to create a fantastic file. I've filled out the list a bit. I also added a simple duplicate finding routine that checks for duplicate file names. It only does the file name at the moment. Some duplicates slip through, but not nearly as many. I've spot checked the duplicate file and sure enough the files are there more than once. The sheer number of duplicates is frightening. 12556 duplicates out of 53537 total files including non music files. That is like one fourth.
There is an interesting side affect to removing duplicates. I notice the more obscure songs play more often. Mostly common stuff gets copied over and over. That moves their play time up artificially. This is not such a big deal. It does affect which artists I put in my fantastic list. I stop and think to myself "I'm going to hear them more often." This keeps Weird Al among others out of that list.

Output
-------- Summary -----------------------------------------
Total files processed   > 53537
Good files in playlist  > 32633
Bad files out of list   > 6557
Fantastic files         > 3882
Number of Duplicates    > 12556
Elapsed seconds         > 520.85
Files/second            > 102.787750792
----------------------------------------------------------

-------- Info --------------------------------------------
Good file               > kelly_good.m3u
Fantastic file          > kelly_fan.m3u
Duplicate file          > kelly_dup.dat
Log file                > kelly_log.log
Directory processed     > /mnt/music
----------------------------------------------------------

Fantastic list
"Alanis Morissette",
"Anna Nalick",
"Alison Krauss",
"Audioslave",
"/Beck",
"The Black Crowes",
"/Blondie",
"/Bluegrass",
"Bonnie Raitt",
"Bjork", "bjork",
"Butthole Surfers",
"/Cake",
"Concrete Blonde",
"Cowboy Junkies",
/Creed",
"David Allan Coe",
"Dave Matthews",
"/The Doors",
"Dixie Chicks",                                 # Amazing artists, lousy politics.
"Fiona Apple",
"Eric Clapton",
"G Love and Special Sauce",
"/Garbage",
"George Thorogood",
"/Jewel",
"Johnny Cash",
"Kittie", "kittie",
"Kid Rock",                                     # Marginal
"Linkin Park",
"Lisa Loeb",
"Lucinda Williams",
"George Thorogood",
"Matthew Sweet",
"Mazzy Star",
"Moldy Peaches",
"Natalie Merchant",
"/Nirvana",
"No Doubt",
"Norah Jones",
"/Prince",                                      # Yah, I like prince. =\
"Primus", "primus",
"Rolling Stones",
"/Sarah McLachlan",
"Sheryl Crow",
"/Staind",
"The Scabs",
"Tracy Bonham",
"Tom Petty",
"Tom Waits",
"/Tool",
"Ugly Americans",
"Veruca Salt",
"/Whale",
"Willie Nelson",
"ZZ Top"

Bad list
"/U2",                                          # Fuck U2.
"/Rush ",                                       # I'm tired of Rush.
"/Classical/",                                  # Not at work.
"pimsleur", "Pimsleur",                         # Not unless I'm in the mood for a lesson.
"/Luca Turilli",                                # Just annoying.
"/jazz", "Jazz/",                               # Just because Jazz drives me nuts at work.
"Barry White",                                  # I like Barry White, but not at work.
"Destiny's Child",
"/George Clinton",                              # So 80s and he came out in the 90s.
"/Damnation_History",                           # Religious nonsense.
"FetenHits",                                    # Too many shitty songs.
"Cradle of Filth",                              # Blekh!!!
"/Starship",                                    # Over plaid.
"Quad City",
"Love Tractor",
"grand Funk railroad", "Grand Funk Railroad",   # Soooo sixties.
"Matisyahu",                                    # Not my taist.
"Motley Crue",                                  # Reminds me I had long hair once. =[
"/Living Colour",                               # I didn't laugh at the show aether.
"Bombtrack (live)",                             # This track is both preachy and messed up.
"More Bounce To The Ounce",
"Boyz II Men",                                  # Too happy.
"Kansas", "/Yes/",                              # Too ... much like Rush.
"Menudo",                                       # Give me a break.
"Less Than You Think",                          # Sounds like a busted washing machine.
"/Moby",                                        # Who?
"Funk Box",
"/Emperor",                                     # Makes me want to burn kittins.
"Radiohead and U2",
"/Spice Girls",                                 # You have got to be kidding me.
"Arular [2005]",                                # Because they support terrorism.
"Culture Club",                                 # Oy!!
"/N.E.R.D.",                                    # Yeesh
"/Trivium",
"/In Flames",
"/Killswitch Engage",
"/Project 86",
"/Ultimate Fakebook",
"/Urge Overkill",                               # There are like nine copies of this song.
"/Sinch",
"/Spineshank",
"/Skinlab",
"/Silent Hill 2",
"/Sevendust",
"/Dimmu Borgir",
"/Liars Academy",
"/Element Eighty",
"/Blindside",
"/Emperor",
"Deftones - 10 - Mx",                           # A mile of blank in the middle.
"/Iced Earth",
"/12 Steones",
"The Beta Band",
"- Moby -",
"The Mighty Mighty Bosstones",                  # I just don't like the guy's voice.
"/Dimmu Borgir",                                # Makes my throat hurt.
"Disgustipated",                                # Another disturbing distracting song.
"Mohammed Rafi",                                # Distracting. Too early sixties surf movie.
"Funkalicious",                                 # I've herd it.
"Funkadelic",
"Funky Homosapien","funky homosapien",          # Just, no.
"To All the Girls I",                           # Yuck.
"/Bill Evans",
"/Anthology 1992-2002",
"/Basement Jaxx",                               # Too dancy again.
"08 - Ignoreland"                               # One of the copies skips like mad.
"Red Red Wine", "RedRedWine",                   # The reason I wrote this script.
"Tool - Aenima - 14 - (-)Ions",                 # This song is disturbing.
"_U2_",
"/John Frusciante",
"13 - Proud Division",                          # Song is messed up.
"Built This City",                              # This song is so over.
"Tripping The Light Fantastic",                 # Too dance-ish.
"/Dio",                                         # Who ever listened to Dio?
"2525",                                         # The most depressing song ever written.
"/GRP All-Star Big Band",                       # Not my bag.
"Saturday Night Live"

Cold
It is cold today in Houston. There was a record low over night. It is about ten degrees colder this morning than it was yesterday. It feels warmer. That is because it is below freezing. The moisture has moved out of the air for the most part. The wind is not blowing very hard. The sun is just came up over the Target parking lot. It is supposed to get up to the fifties today.

Glasses Came in
Nat and my glasses came in. I like mine. They are about half as large as I thought, but they work. I mean, they are small. That does make them light. They look OK. I intend to only use them as a backup for the contacts so we will see how it goes.
They fit under the safety glasses. They ride kind of high so I can look under them to read easily. That is a good thing. I'm tired of bifocals. It is nice to have something comfortable to change in to when my contacts get the better of me.

Well Done

This took some effort. Well done.

Big Hole in the Water
No, not a boat. Just a cool looking drain hole. How often can you say that? I had to link to it. I want some better prospective. I want them to shove a pickup down it or something.

And off again

They landed it yesterday just to do some normal maintenance. Here it is taking off again, the next day or two later. It appears to be from a flat trailer behind a pickup truck.
Link

Breathing
I went to the doctor. I do not have asthma, though I do have some kind of long term bronchitis. I looked at the x-ray and saw no clouds or anything. You could see the little tubes at the bottom mostly. That means they are clogged with glop. The doctor gave me the same treatment that one would take for asthma. I'm supposed to call him back in a week and let him know how it goes with this medicine.
So, I stop taking the stuff I was taking over the counter. The only thing that was working was the expectorant. I am tired of coughing. That is the truth. I know Nat is tired of my coughing. I'm sure my coworkers will be happier if I stop coughing.
I'm sure I'll blog the results.