This is one the best videos of a tornado that I've ever seen. It is from a surveillance camera apparently mounted on the side of building overlooking a parking lot. The information along with the video says the building was damaged, but there were no injouries.
Red Hat 9 was the last free version of Red Hat if I remember correctly. Once upon a time, The Red Hat name was the name in open source. They went enterprise and made a name for themselves. I use Red Hat products every day at work.
At home, I use Fedora products. The latest version of Fedora is
Fedora 9. It is riddled with beta software and poorly thought out
construction. I've had several pieces of software break either in whole
or in part since Fedora 8. It has become clear to me that the Fedora
name has become a beta test of Red Hat's next release. I imagine that
Red Hat 6 will look very much like Fedora 9 with a few bug fixes and a
minor face lift.
Firefox 3 is beta and useful. It has some interesting changes and
some annoying ones. Not a bad choice for a new OS output.
KDE 4 is beta and is completely useless on Fedora 9. KTTSmgr worked
fine on Fedora 8. After an upgrade, it is broken to the point it no
longer works. It isn't like I don't need this software, or that it is
just one of the conveniences of computing. KTTS is the software that
reads text to me aloud. I need that as much as I need a functioning
keyboard or monitor.
Same is true with KDE itself. All I have to do is select a different
theme and X collapse.
It is highly frustrating that Fedora is pulling this kind of crap. I
sit at my desk looking at an error on my screen and wonder if I should
have tried a full install from scratch. That does seem to fix most
things wrong with upgraded units. However, when I think about the
effort involved in that effort, I wonder why I'm not going to Ubuntu, a
distro I've had good luck with in the past and know has a history
working upgrades.
So, where does this leave me? I'm typing on a computer that is
partially broken and no idea if it will ever get fixed. When i download
an official release of an operating system, I want something that
works. If I want cutting edge, I'll go looking for it. I complained
when Fedora waited like six months to go from Firefox 1.5 to 2.0. Those
were real releases of the software, not betas.
What are these guys thinking? For no good reason, they take their and many other people's lives in to their hands and just for the hell of it, drive down the wrong side of the road. Any one know where this is.
The story behind this walkway dates back to 1901 or so. It is a bit breezy for my taste. It looks better than many of the video game traps I've had to traverse in virtual lands.They should copy this thing before the restoration in ... whenever the local government feels like ponying up the dough. In Spain, that could be a while.
Our company is expanding a bit. We had to double the space for the
snacks. The company sells us candy and other assorted junk at cost. It
is on the honer system. They got some new stuff in too. Three kinds of
M&Ms. Peppermint paddies. We get free sodas too. Not sure where
that came from. It is a great way to gain a ton of weight. I'm over
there twice a day. Once for a soda and once for a snack. I heard on a
podcast today that the
obese children rate is leveling off. It must be the cost of food.
Thanks to Justin for the modeling. Justin is one of those folks who
has the permanent jitters. He is full of energy. He hits the snack bar
a couple times a day as far as I can tell and is skinny. One of the
lucky ones I suppose.
That looks pretty violent. To think, my shredder has a hard time with three sheets of paper.
I made a quick recording on my phone and emailed it to myself this morning. The recording was to remind myself of something I wanted to blog about later. When I listened to the recording on my computer, I pictured myself at about 22 or so with a full head of long red hair, clean shaven. That must be the picture of myself that I use as my soul's avatar. I wonder if that makes a difference when I die? Will that image of myself matter?
I'm probably in better shape now than I was then. I walk more.
Nothing trumps youth for health. There are few seventy year olds who
could beat themselves at twenty beyond the advantage of experience. It
is true that I have a bit more around the middle now than I did then.
In Eric the Viking, the gods are all ten year old children playing games with the lives of mortals. All the people who go to Valhalla become play things for the gods amusement, or maids. That is a very interesting interpretation. It has stuck with me long after the movie played. At the end of the movie, they all end up going back to Earth. They are all going to die one day. I guess they must all convert to another religion to avoid Valhalla at that point.
My perception of myself definitely makes a difference here on Earth. It deeply affects my attitude. If I have a fat slob image of myself, I will probably do things that end up leading to my fulfilling that persona. If I have a masculine strapping lad image, then hopefully, I'll head for that goal. It makes a difference in the basis I start from for many decisions throughout my day. Everything I eat to how I carry my stride when I walk will be affected. Most people have a defined self image. They do everything in their power to attain it. Nearly no one knows they do it.
This one is a bush next to my bus stop. I yelled at it a couple weeks ago because it got in my way. It rewards me by blooming pretty.
This is a sign that it took me like a year to read. It is attached to the same sign pole the bus stop sign is on. I was worried it was some kind of notice that the rout would change or something.
Random trip to Jack in the Box.
I had a Hot Wheels vehicle that looked a lot like this. I played
with it until the wheels fell off. I hope they get the same mileage out
of this SUV. That is a pretty cool trick. I've seen RVs with motorcycle
on the back. There are more cool cars in our parking garage.
And my parents are in the smack dab middle of Kansas this week. Worse tornado season in memory. Sometimes I wonder about those two. I got a call the other night that my dad had to park his truck under a neighbor's carport to get it out of the hail.
How cool is this? I want the Myth Busters right on the 2 liter plastic bottle myth today. I'm thinking the dumped bleach will cause damage to the earth in some way. There is always a trade off. How expensive is Clorox these days?
The freedoms of children. What they say. Where they go on a Sunday afternoon. Elle is on a spaceship that looks a lot like our couch. I offered to be the navigator.
If only it were raining outside. That would make the game complete. We spend far too much time inside. We are lost to our cool air and entertainment centers. Elle knows better. What happened to my dreams. Oh, yes. I found them.
Next week worries me. Tomorrow worries me. I know not what new
things have plans for us. what webs weave the powers in our path? Why,
why? Shall we find our way? Will we fall? We shall fly. The world will
slip by. The sun shines with our without us, but we give off our own
light.
Sometimes we want tomorrows to hurry up and get behind us. Then, of
cause, too many have. Life is like that. You get what you want only to
figure out it was all crap and you should have stopped to smell the
roses.
The pin of a grenade is the smallest piece of mettle that will bring a person's life in to focus for the shortest period of time that seems like the longest. I remember an episode of MASH where a patient had a grenade and every one had to look around for the pin. I remember a show where Japanese soldiers killed themselves by activating pinless grenades and holding on to them too long. There was an episode of the Simpsons where a soldier died because he monologued too long. In True Lies, Arnold's character pulls the pin on a grenade and then lets the 'spoon' fly before he throws it. I had learned about spoons before this. It was nice to get that little detail in a major picture. The best movie grenade line was in Spies Like Us where Chevy's character holds on to a grenade too long, but then throws it at the bad guys. It lands in a box of grenades, so there is no hope of throwing it back. That is still a funny scene.
Apple, pickle, tomato, popper, there have been many names. They all go boom.
Someone has a problem with Obama's race. Someone is really worried
about it. I'm not. I don't like Obama's policies or his willingness to
talk to our enemies. I don't like how much he reminds me of Carter. I
have a problem with the politician. Hillery has all but said she thinks
Obama will be assassinated before the convention.
The only people I hear talking about Obama and assassination are
other democrats. If Obama is assassinated, God forbid, I will loose all
my faith in this country. Not her ability to protect someone, but the
people who cast shadows on her soil. I don't like Obama, the man or the
politician. I'm glad he has the opportunity to run. I'll support him to
a point if he wins. I mean, I may vote against everything he puts up,
but I'll support him as a president. As much as I ever did Clinton any
way.
Hillery is really starting to scare me. I blogged a bit ago about
how I admired her ruthlessness. I do. It is starting to show through
the thread bare seems holding her career together. Ruthlessness is best
served in secret and behind closed doors. Hillery is just starting to
look desperate. That isn't a good look for a politician.
I wonder if the YouTube War will affect Hollywood. Every time I watch a movie and a person is A) blown back by a gunshot hitting them or B) the gunshot that hits the hero makes a louder sound than all the rest, I cringe.
I remember my dad building a ramp for us kids to jump. He built it from plywood. We put it on the sidewalk out front of our house and jumped it many times. The entire neighborhood showed full of kids showed up to try it out. Even ... kids from other streets. One of the young kids who had only had experience with crappy ramps built by other kids asked how strong it was. My father, being my father, went and got the Yamaha 125 cc endureo dirt bike we had at the time and jumped the ramp without so much as a creek or mark left on the ramp. From that day forward the kids of the neighborhood were not allowed to play with my dad any more.
Good times. Wish I had a video camera back then.
Reality really does flow based on a balance of opportunity cost. It doesn't matter how much you pondered an apple vs an orange. The calculations were done for you by every person and fly, earthquake, sunshine, and all other factors that affected the orange and apple. What mystical fruit went extinct before humans cast shadows on the hard dry ground? It is that story you kind of hears that a butterfly flapping it's wings in the amazon triggers a path of events that start a hurricane. Or, the red paper clip guy.
The book Freakonomics opened my eyes to how the study of balancing
opportunity costs can be applied to other things.
Capitalism uses/relies on this balance to work. Communism and
Socialism other single pile efforts are doomed to fail eventually.
Cuba, the last holdout of true Communism just allowed people to buy
home computers and mobile phones.China hasn't been Communist in a
decade or more. No state can supply everything it's people will want or
need all the time. People must be held responsible for their own
survival and happiness. That way, when they get neither, it is their
fault and not the state. The state must survive.
When I took a class in economics, my professor did not get this fact
much less teach it. That class could have changed my life,but it just
detracted me with formulas and a woman crying during our final.
Everything and I mean everything you do and see and hear and feel is
filtered through your brain. Your brain throws out 99.9& of all
the information that comes in and only hangs on to the important stuff.
Isn't that great? You have to learn (program a filters and procedures)
how to do things. As you learn (program filters procedures) your brain
brings about a set of actions based on past experience and, in the case
of intelligent life, things other people tell you or show you.
That last one, ... what people tell you or show you, is a bit
sketchy. I believe one only learns based on experience and
visualization of things that people teach. I only have my experience to
fall back on. If someone tells me something, I can only learn from it
if I imagine myself in the situation, and performing a specific way.
Otherwise, it is in one year and out the other.
When I go to put my foot down on an unfamiliar trail, I scan the
area and eliminate all the dangerous places. This makes my choice of
where to put my foot limited. If my filter eliminates all places in the
direction I'm going, then I have to stop moving forward and consider
a
different path to my destination. This is opportunity cost analysis. If
I cannot put my foot down in a place aloud by the filter in my brain, I
cannot move forward. If there is no alternate path, I must reassess the
filter I use to take the existing trail, even if there is a danger
involved. I may have to abandon my goal if things are bad enough. That
is part of the filtration process. Is my end goal worth all this
trouble?
Movement in nature, like a rock falling off the side of a hill,
seems random, but if you look close enough you can find the cause and
effect matrix that lead to that rock falling at that moment. Endless
sun and rain, hot and cold. Any time you cannot find the matrix, it is
called faith. When the opportunity cost of the rock staying in it's
spot is greater than the opportunity cost of it rolling down the hill,
it rolls.
It seems sciences have come about because people had needs.
Mathematics seems to have come about as a science only because people
had math problems in their heads and needed a way to write them down.
Mathematics is more a means of communication than a science. Of course,
that is what science is, a means to communicate highly extract ideas
and concepts to other people, to teach really. physics came about as a
way to apply math to real world ideas, if not real world itself.
Economics came about more as a way to make money based on the realities
of commerce and greed. It is not so much a way to teach as a way to
take advantage of data. Biology is about understanding the mechanics of
life and could be called the foundation of medicine. Quantum, well, who
know what will come of quantum. Perhaps ascension. Engineering is not a
science. It is a religion based on math, physics and uncommon sense.
Economics should be a science if it is not already declared one.
I came home today and got past the same AT&T hole without a
single vehicle passing me by. Three lanes of nothing until I was well
past. I walked in the house and found my family in pretty good cheer.
Elle and I had a discussion about politics and individual freedom vs
the greater good. Well, something about the playing with rubber balls
any way. Nat is in to her TV shows. I'm on the twenty first century
idiot box. Work is still there. There are a couple of bucks in the bank
and it is the end of the month. It is warm outside. It is cool inside.
The cat box is cleaned out. The trash is taken out. Elle is in the
bath. She says she brushed her hair real hard, but it's still wet. The
cats are off sleeping somewhere. The racers are nowhere to be heard.
The grass is cut. The sky has pretty clouds just floating about for no
good reason. The wine is good. The cheese cake was good.
I won't say we are in heaven, but you can see it from here.
I'm sticking with the theme tonight. Not much else going on. Having tea. Watching an old episode of Dr Who. Nat and Elle are watching TV. I learned that Vista home does not come with remote desktop. Vista sucks. I think I'm finally sick of Chick Fillet.
Someone tries to throw a flash-grenade into a room, but doesn't quite make it. The training exorcise is bright to a sudden halt. This is why you train. Think of the potential catastrophes this sort of screw up could lead to in a live fire situation.
On this note, I need to keep my head in the game better. Stress management and multitasking are not my highest cards.
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