Little Notes

The light behind my house

So, Sunday afternoon, Nat and I both hear a loud "GZZZZT!!!" noise behind our house and our power flickered. Nothing caught on fire, but the light on the building behind my house, and the lights that were on inside are all dark now. I hope those guys who were cleaning out the place didn't cross-wire the lights and AC. The last thing we need is an industrial strength blaze a few meters away.

Internet Radio no more

Following the expiration of the act, the RIAA and a new player SoundExchange launched a successful litigation before the CRB, resulting in a ruling that the internet broadcasters would now pay a monstrous fee structure, retroactive to 1/1/2006. This egregious ruling would slam internet broadcasters with fees similar to that paid by music download services along with retroactive fees to January 2006. The actual fees for a successful station like RadioCIA would increase by 2000%/month along with a one-time retroactive charge. Furthermore, the monthly fees would escalate for a period of years to even more stratospheric rates. The net effect of this mafia-like extortion would be to immediately shut-down all but the largest, corporate streaming stations. The majority of these being the larger terrestrial broadcasters currently streaming their content. Again of note, is the terrestrial portion of their broadcasting does not entail any of these royalties, remaining status quo.

Please visit the SaveNetRadio website for additional information on saving another valuable choice for everyone.

Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler

Bad news. I like internet radio. I particularly like Australia and British morning shows and local news from around the world. If people can't get American stations, they will just get it all somewhere else. Worry not. Oh, and listen to their commercials.

Guns Don't Kill People

As you may have noticed, other than the MSM scare campaign about high-cap magazines that has now been thoroughly debunked — as well it should be since it, in the finest tradition of “professional journalism”, was founded on nothing even resembling facts — they’ve also been working themselves up quite a bit over the truly frightening characteristics of the humble 9mm Parabellum round, or “Euro Pellet” as we like to call it around here.

The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler

"Euro-Pellet" HA!!! I love it.

The 9mm round was invented in the late 1800's. It is not a high powered round. I'm surprised it went through as many doors as it did in the Virginia Tech shootings. It is the "standard" sidearm for the U. S. military, though I've heard some keep different rounds on hand. I said before that the shooter either was a good shot or put out a bunch of ammo. It appears the latter was true. He shot people as he walked around the room and then went back in at least one case finishing people off.

Personally, I only like the .45. I have one for home defense. I use .45 hollow points. They are not the biggest round you can put in a pistole, but they are one of the biggest that will not also take out an entire wall in the process. .45's have a history of not going through walls that well. They are short and fat and have less penetration that their mass of led or volume of bang implies. In WWII soldiers noted charging enemies high on coke being knocked on their butt or sent spinning to the ground after encountering a .45 slug.

I've heard the .40 is a good all around round. I haven't had the chance to try it out. The numbers round good.

Mostly, I try not worrying about it. There are any number of opposing points of view. It gets to me when people try to say that a specific gun or caliper of weapon is to blame for anything. There are calls to ban .50 caliper weapons when .22 or .25 probably kill more people than all the others in civilian conflict in the U. S. They are typically easier to conceal and quieter. Some countries have a minimum size of pistol you can legally purchase. That makes them harder to conceal. That makes more sense to me than worrying about the size of the bullet.

Wonder where I got this. It is a great comparison. I've wanted to make a picture like it for a while.

Pleasent

I tried to post this on Goblin nation because one of the guys took a great picture of a bald eagle. I couldn't get the forum to accept the code.

Bitch Session

The sun came out once in a while today. That's how it is some days. The traffic is nuts today. I don't even know why. Is it me, or is it getting worse?  Wednesday, when my sweetie picked me up, we had to snake trough the neighborhood to Richmond and still got caught in a snarl of cars and angry people. Why do people let it get to them? It's traffic. That is what it is supposed to be like. If it weren't a pain in the ass, what would couples have to talk about when they got home?

Houston is spread out over a wide area. Every inch of it is either a place to drive to, or a piece of ground devoted to cars. You know, I've complained about this quite enough on my blog. It will never get fixed. It will only get worse. I'm afraid the solution is $10 a gallon gas. That would do the trick. More people would work from home. Public transportation would finally take over. We could rename the place to Utopia.

And, I'm a republican. What else would I fix while I'm blathering on?

• Foreign Aid: I have no idea what to do about that. It sucks that the rest of the world hates us and half of them stand daily at the US tax payer's tit.
• American Idol: abolished. Keep the losers under wraps. Tell people they suck before they darken my screen.
• Drunk drivers: Put a bounty out that pays people who turn in drunk drivers. $1000 every time someone is convicted to whoever turned them in.
• Lawsuits: Looser pays court costs.
• Taxes: Flat tax.
• Illegal Immigration: "WALL!" Why are people so freaked out about walls? My house is made of walls. I only let people in when I want them there. If someone just climbed in the window without permission, I'd shoot them.
  
• Over crowded prisons: Start throwing them over the WALL.
• Medicine: Abolish all forms of malpractice insurance. Don't let hospitals or employees carry any kind of insurance. The prospect of being ruined in one fell swoop should keep them on their toes.

But, then what do I know? I just keep my ears open.

Lunch Conversation

Well, all people talked about at lunch was shop and home stuff. Some spoke of sports and the soccer practice several of the folks up here do just for fun. We spoke of having beer on the school property where the soccer practice takes place and what the tickets might be like. It was Lone Star beer too. If you are going to get in trouble for it, at least have a decent tasting beer on hand.

That was about it. I tried to keep up, but I was falling asleep. I ended up walking around the parking garage for a while. I had planned on talking to Nat over lunch. It is nice having unlimited network minutes. She was busy helping a friend. I wish she would blog about it. it is so nice having someone out there having fun.

Oops

I think I was supposed to use heading 2 on those last couple of posts. I'm not going to fix it. It is all part of a growing process.

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Most designs don't need more than that.

The trouble is I'm writing this stuff one place then posting it to another. I do not get a real preview until the code hits the blog. I could download the template, copy the style code, do some local testing, and make changes, but that takes effort. I guess you could call this a test  post.

Web Knob

Things I've learned about web editing recently.

• Frames: Bad idea.
• Too limited in design of a page.
• Too much opportunity for things to go haywire when someone changes their fonts or browser size. I use frames on my page and I hate them.
• Frames don't work on most portable devices.
• Shit disappears.
• Templates: Bad idea.
• An amazing idea in the first days of a project. Get out of hand quickly.
• You can't apply one and then modify it in place, then re-apply it later.
• Cant get rid of the damn things and leave the code behind.
• Layers: Bad idea.
• Replaced by CSS
• Tables: Good for some things, not whole pages.
• Look good on paper.
• Cause headaches when you start setting too many limitations.
• The site Looses flow of information easily. It is like everything is written in stone.
• hard to modify stuff across an entire site once stuff is in place.
• CSS: Better than most of the above.
• Solves most of the problems above.
• Won't allow real code to be placed, just attributes.

CSS it is. Head First is good book to get a head start on (X)HTML and CSS. It walks you through scenarios and shows solutions. It is a bit slow for someone who has a clue about editing HTML and the sort, but a great walk through. Advanced users need not apply.

LOST

I do not complain nearly enough about the TV shows I watch. Here goes.

Spoiler Warning

Last night (2007-04-25) was the best episode of LOST in a while. It was highly boring right up to the last couple seconds. The woman from the helicopter let the chubby buy know that wreckage was found from their flight and it was said to have no survivors. That sucks. That is a major turning point really. Quite a revelation. The crash victims are being held captive by the Others. The crash victims are being experimented upon by the Others. The crash victims are being played. It is really time for an out and out revolt. It won't happen. Pussies. I'm the hot head. I'm not sure what they could really do anyway.

The Others cannot have children without the women dying. That is the story any way. If true, they need a group of people to use as lab rats. How convenient that a plane load drops in their laps. I would call them straight up evil, but I'm not sure I wouldn't do the same thing in their position. They are dying out. What should they do to survive? Well, it all boils down to which side you are on. One has to win and the other lose. Anything in between is unmanageable. So, what happened to the crash victim's children? Are they on the island?

The crash folks have been on the island for 90 days. Now, there will be a loss of hope of rescue. They have to face the prospect of living on this island at the whim of the Others. Quite the nasty situation if you ask me.

I don't think I've found myself hoping a series that I like would end before. I hope the creators and producers all have an end-game in mind right now. I hope things get pulled together in a way that frigging makes some sense. I hope the guy with the neck cancer gets his in some mind-bendingly offal way. The only character I have any sympathy for is the chubby guy. He seems to have suffered hardships for not much gain. yet, he keeps a pretty faire attitude about it all. not bad considering he is off his medication.

I suppose I'll keep watching, despite myself. Hey, at least I'm not blogging a bout American Idol.

Sick and Tired

There was a story on NPR this morning about kids listening to music too loud on their iPods. The experts said that ringing in the ears meant hearing loss. That is very true. I've heard that many times. The whole story reminded me of my grandfather. He went through WWII. He had three ships shot out from under him. Then he went into aviation. He flew Corsair airplanes. Those are the ones that had such a huge prop, they had the bent wings to keep the prop from hitting the ground. he told stories of flying around Washington DC towards the end of the war on patrols. He got spot-lighted and might have gotten shot down if he hadn't gotten the hell out of there. He also landed on carriers. He made an emergency landing in Galveston at one point after the war.

Then he got old. Then one day he went shooting with my dad. He had hearing protection on, but it didn't work for some reason. From that day on, he was very hard of hearing until he died a couple of years later.

I remember listening to him tell stories when I was fifteen.

Weather This Morning

They have been warning about the weather for days. "It's going to hit Wednesday morning. Driver safe."

I got up this morning and turned on the news. I watched the radar and this huge yellow and purple blog headed right for us. I can tell exactly where our house is because the map now reflects the street next to us.Ś The one all the racers charge up and down. It's on the map between a couple of freeways.

I can hear thunder an d see lightning flashes. At the same moment on TV the yellow bit is approaching the curve where we live. It was kind of cool watching the monster in the radar image scratch and crawl across Houston. The news people have folks stationed at key intersections standing in the rain watching commuters splash their way to work.

Now it is over. Well more or less anyway. What will they have to talk about?

Learning
I'm starting to figure out that it really is up to the student to learn something as apposed to the teacher teaching something. I suppose there are arguments that say it takes both. I think the student must be willing and deliberately intend to walk away from the experience with something new. The only other ways of teaching are to coral someone in to a corner where they must perform or suffer some kind of downward consequence.  I just haven't noticed the reward model working when it comes to knowledge transfer. The best way to get someone to pass a test is to guaranty humiliation if they do not.
Weight Watchers works by parading people over a scale and shouting out numbers in front of a crowd.
This is why I'm a terrible teacher. I am impatient. I hate repeating myself. I can't wait for it to sink in. I have poor communication skills. I don't sense when someone is lost.

Tasks
So, I was handed an entire web site at work and told to "fix it." I'm a dead man. I haven't a creative bone in my mouse hand. I've looked at what I have to work with and I cringe.
Creative freedom ... BAH!!! Tell me what to do.
I'm sure I'll figure it out. It is a bit like any change. I have some learning curve to over come. The HTML that  I've modified in the past has been from a stable start. This is not quite a rewrite.
On a good note, maybe I'll learn how to spiff up the old blog and table-bound home page a bit.
Well, I found only two HTML editors recommended. They both suck. Amaya is not so bad. None of the editors I found can hold a candle to Dreamweaver. Not by a long shot.
I'm screwed. I'm reading about limitations to using Dreamweaver under Linux. Great. They just need to port it.

Just for Fun
I got this in an email today. I haven't forwarded an email in quite a while. Even if these are fakes, they are well done. I have no idea where these came from. I have no idea if any of them are real. I have no idea if anything is copyrighted. Just look and giggle.

In the beginning
And God said, "Give Kelly a break. Let him have a Sunday afternoon with Elle. Just kicking it and watching cartoons."
Good God. Thanks.

I wish I could send Tedd a couple of cartoons.

Surrender, day one

Clinton promised, “As soon as I take office, I will begin to bring them back home.” Times-Republican

And I thought Carter was a pussy.

No Good patents
Software patents only hurt people who use software, not so much the people who write it.
Microsoft has been pushing for stronger software patent rules. MS wants to protect what they create. That's great. MS is finding that they are the target of more "protection" than they dish out.

"As reported by Info World, Microsoft was issued a cease and desist order on February 7 of this year by Vertical Computer Systems. The order was for patent infringement by the current implementations of the .NET framework. Both the .NET framework and Vertical Computer Systems' site flash use XML to create component-based structures that are used to build and operate web sites. Vertical Computer Systems is requesting a full jury trial. If VCS prevails, .NET technology implementations as we know them may completely change and Microsoft would probably have to pay out a hefty sum." Slashdot

That is one example. Now for the one I fought with all week.
It turns out that MS lost a lawsuit with a company that had a patent on how browsers use objects. Objects are all those things that make the web more than words and pictures. Flash, Java, PDF, and any number of other things that depend on how MS Internet Explorer uses objects to get their job done.
I had to get a Flash object up. I ran smack in to this trouble. Any time you have an object that pulls in something from outside the browser you get a huvering message that reads "".
I had to deal with a problem that the biggest software developer in the world could not deal with. I wonder how much money MS spends on lawyers and lobbyists every minute. I bet it is more than I'll make in a lifetime.

Microsoft Confirms IE Changes in Wake of Lawsuit "On Monday, Microsoft verified that it will be making what it calls "modest" changes to Windows and IE to meet the requirements of the jury verdict against it in the Eolas patent infringement case. Microsoft says it will finish making the changes to IE and Windows by early next year and will provide developers that use IE technology with documentation to help them modify their applications, Web pages, and browser plug-ins to work with the new plug-in scheme, which affects all Web pages that use plug-in technologies such as Adobe Reader, Apple QuickTime, Macromedia Flash, RealNetworks RealOne, all versions of Java, and Windows Media Player. A preview of the new user experience shows the user being prompted to confirm loading of each ActiveX control." Slashdot

OK, I have no idea how to explain this.
Imagine you are a web browser. Your user asks you to pick up a cup of coffee. If you lean over and pick it up, you are now violating this patent. You, as the browser, have to ask another program to hand you the cup of coffee. I know. It doesn't make sense. Software patents rarely do.
I wish I had paid more attention to this a long time ago when I read it.

NASA Nut-Ball
It must be stressful because people are freaking out at NASA. I have a buddy who works at NASA and is near the complex where the guy barricaded himself this afternoon. So, I call him up. He says "Hi Kelly, just a sec. I have to barricade this door." I started laughing, but more from fear. he is the quiet type. never dated much.
He was joking. He would bring a Samurai sword, not a gun. We agreed that would be different at least. I haven't had a good laugh like that in a while. I needed one.

Contacts in my Dream
So, last night I had a dream. It apparently was zipping along boringly until I looked in a mirror. My contacts were turning black. They were turning my eye black. They were dirty.
I popped them out and took a look.It was the size of the lid on a peanut butter jar. It was nearly opaque with dark coal colored goop. I tried washing one of them with the contact fluid. It gave off glops of stuff. It turned the sink dark colors like a dirty toilet. It was getting bigger and blooming like a filthy plastic flower. It was the size of a dinner plate in large leaves of now clean clear stuff that contacts are made of.
I ended up planting it to grow a contact plant. Good way to save money. I wonder if they will be my prescription. I woke my self up laughing at myself.

Nat says I laugh sometimes in my sleep. What the hell kind of dreams are these? I suppose it is better than nightmares. Drivers Nat up the wall though.

Written 2007-04-18 (I didn't get on the computer last night)
Virginia Shooting
It is the same thing over and over. There is just not much new.
The guy's parents were "devout" Christians. He had problems with Christianity. Who doesn't? I have problems with Christianity. I believe in God, not so much religion. I don't go nuts.
The media has softened on the criticizing the school a bit. It is still there. They keep talking about some kind of air-raid sirens and not using email to warn people because only people online can view it in the short term. They had an interview with a student who said she heard an announcement over the athletic PA. Some collages have an automated call system, but most people probably have it set to call their home number and not the phone they have on them. Some people don't have mobile phones. I agree with the cops that say there is just no way to get every one to run and hide all at the same time.
There were stories about some of the students who died. The one that got me was a guy who was an athlete who was killed while holding a door shut with his body. The gunman shot through the door and killed him. I wonder what percentage of people died or were injured that way. 9mm are not known for their penetration.
No mention of where he got the gun that I've heard. Did he buy it and wait the five days/ He had the legal right to do so apparently. Did he steel it from a cop car that morning? I want to know.
I haven't had a chance to read any blogs since this thing started. They always have the best info. They are typically willing to speculate and project information more than the media. This is changing. Blogs get Fisked often and they are starting to do their homework before posting more often. That is a shame really. I kind of miss the jumping the gun conspiracies that got posted. I suppose some integrity is a good thing. Who knows.

Web Development Without Web Access
I'm the only web developer in history who does not have internet access. I have to run back and forth to a lab when I'm working on the web pages. EVERYTHING to do do with web development assumes you have internet access and just provides links to the documentation in stead of the documentation. They only give references to data in stead of data. They link to each other for examples in stead of just quoting. It is maddening. Even clicking on help in some of the programs wants to bring up an internet link instead of a help file.
I'm going nuts.
I have to email myself stuff and shuttle information back and forth. Then, I find one link that I need to follow. Well, that is another trip. The lab is not far. the trip is not difficult, but It is just a click verses:
# Copy the link to an email and send it to myself.
# Locking my machine
# Walk to the lab area where there might be someone who needs to ask a question, or someone in the hall who needs something and there I happen to be.
# Log in to the internet box.
# Bring up email
# Log in to the email.
# Click on the link.
# Find out it isn't what I needed, or maybe it is.
# Double check if there are any other resources I will need (hardly ever fruitful)
# Close email.
# log out of internet box.
# Wonder back to my office after hitting the restroom or grabbing a soda. Get stopped in the hall again.
# Logging into my workstation.
# Stare at the email for a moment trying to remember what I was doing.
# Read three lines. Try to apply what it says. It is wrong, or not right for what I needed.
# I need another link.
It is maddening. And this is if I do not get side traced by someone needing my vast gray-database. (brain)