Slashdot has a review of an interesting new keyboard. The idea behind this keyboard is to completely change the way you type so as to remove the risk of repetitive stress injury. It seems interesting, although I have little interest in relearning how to type. It's also quite expensive at $695.00.
However, I found this part amusing:
Despite--or maybe because of--the OrbitTouch's similarity to the female anatomy, it's very comfortable to use. Your hands rest very naturally on the twin domes.There is also a warning that the domes should not be twisted. Good advice in most cases.
A man who carries a cat by the tail is getting experience that will always be helpful. He isn't likely to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn't likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!
-- Mark Twain
I've come to feel like I should try to update this site at least once per day. Unfortunately, between not getting enough sleep lately (my sleep habits are still turned around) and the onslaught of allergens, I've been too tired to come up with anything interesting. My allergies are usually kept under control through Claritin, except for certain short periods when things get really thick in the air. Right now is one of those times. The cottonwood trees are spamming the environment with massive quantities of white cotton-like "fluff". So much, in fact, that some people's yards look like they've been dusted with snow. While I haven't been sneezing constantly, it's still left me feeling physically drained.
So, until this subsides, things might be a bit light on this site.
As I've mentioned here a couple of times I have been on the Atkins plan since September (down 82 pounds so far). After the initial two weeks, I've generally been pretty free from the old cravings. However, there are times when you miss some of the old stuff you used to have. So when I got an email from the Atkins Center this morning, this cheesecake recipe caught my eye.
It usually takes me a couple of attempts to get these things right, and I can never complete the recipe as easily as the people on TV do. While they make it look simple and clean, I make it look complicated and messy. Fortunately, no permanent damage has been done. Right now, it's cooling in the refrigerator, per the instructions. It didn't look quite like the example shown on the Atkins web page, but at least it wasn't a smoking ruin. :) I guess the proof will be in the eating, which I'll try tomorrow.
I'd noticed that some people on various weblogs didn't like the new Matrix movie. I generally tried to avoid their reviews, because I didn't want to get into spoilers, but I suppose that the overall tone lowered my expectations for this movie. This was helpful, because with that in mind, I generally liked the movie. I will be going to the next one, if for no other reason than to find out what happens.
There were a few things that bothered me about the movie, though (although they aren't really about deep subjects like governments like some other bloggers have had). First, while the effects were really good, I hit a saturation point where it just felt like it was all gratuitous. I realize the Matrix allows for superhuman feats of strength and agility, but it started to get in the way of the story line, rather than being an integral part of it like in the first movie.
While I realize that anything is possible in the Matrix (as opposed to the dirty and messy real world), there was one thing that bugged me about the freeway scene. As far as I know, new motorcycles are always transported in big wooden crates without batteries or gas. And with these high-end bikes (like, for example, the Ducati 996), I think the dealer also has to attach the fairing. The idea of transporting a bunch of Ducatis on a car carrier just threw me (maybe people do this in other parts of the country, but I've never seen it). I know, in the midst of all the other improbable crap that happened in that sequence, it's a small thing, but it wrenched me out of my suspension of disbelief.
And then there was the ending. I won't say exactly what happened (in the hopes of not spoiling things), but the idea of the Matrix always seemed to me to be that one could do just about anything inside, but out in the real world everyone was human and subject to the laws of physics. It looks like the movie makers decided to take a different path, although we won't know for sure until the next installment.
My sleep cycle got really turned around last week from staying up late so much. I slept really late on Saturday and then ended up staying up until 2:00am again. The rain and thunder didn't help much (at least it was good that we didn't go camping; that storm was what my Dad would have called "a gulley washer"). Yesterday I cleaned and rearranged from the moment I got up until around 5:00 pm. I promised some friends that they could have my old computer desk. The only drawback was that I still had a bunch of junk in, on, and around it. I consolidated all my computers onto a single large table and put together a printer stand so my huge printer could sit by itself and not waste space. The only real frustration was that the stupid wireless print server doesn't seem to work (I realize now that I should have noted that the wireless print server was a "future" enhancement to my network in my earlier posting where I showed the network diagram). It says it's sending the job to the printer, but nothing happens. Worse, the printer sometimes gives a comm error on startup. I've tried a new cable as well as turning off bidirectional support on the printer. The printer was working before I started this, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. As a test, I'm going to hook it up directly to the computer again. If that works, I'll have to send the print server back.
What the hell were these boneheads thinking?
HAM sandwiches are off the menu in Hume. Council staff have been ordered to stop serving ham and pork at hundreds of events out of respect to the area's large Muslim population.What a freakin' wanker. This is asininity of the first order. If there's an issue with some people who won't eat ham, then serve an alternate selection for those people. But don't be completely stupid and ban a food just because of a minority. It's too bad it's illegal to beat stupid people.
Hume chief executive Darrell Treloar said he had ordered the ban because 12 per cent of the area's population -- and two councillors, including the mayor -- were Muslim.
"Rather than having a situation where staff or members of the community are made uncomfortable or put in a position where they are unable to participate in the meal we share, I felt it would be better to remove the meat," he said.
"Instead of ham and cheese sandwiches, we can have tomato and cheese."
You can have my ham when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers...
The folks at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications are experimenting with the use of the Sony Playstation 2 as a computing platform. They've gone as far as creating a cluster of PS2s. While this may sound weird, it actually makes a lot of sense. The PS2 contains a custom CPU that is optimized for vector calculations (which are used quite a bit in graphics programming). Further, a Linux kit is available for the PS2 that allows it to be used as a general purpose computing node. The price-to-performance ratio makes it quite attractive, if the full potential of the chip can be obtained.
Besides, this is the sort of thing appeals to a geek on a deep level. There's something about taking something and doing something useful with it that it was never intended to do that brings a real sense of accomplishment.
Link via Slashdot.
The camping trip was postponed (my friend's mother is sick) until next weekend, and I have to work again tonight (we finished at 1:30am last night). I'm dog tired right now and not looking forward to being up until 1:00 again tonight. But at least I can try to sleep in tomorrow. It's amazing how the anticipation of such a small thing could seem so satisfying.
It's all for the best, though, since I probably need to take care of a few things tomorrow (and it'll let me get better prepared for the trip next weekend). Hmmm... I could even go to the gun show in Ft. Worth. Maybe I'd better not, since I'd probably just end up buying another gun (I have zero self-control at gun shows). Frankly, I don't know where I'd put another gun if I bought one. My little gun safe is already crammed to the gills (not like that's a bad thing, though :) ).
The saga continues. The last problem was they were missing more files, which didn't show up until they restarted the server. When they looked in the directory, there weren't any files when there should be 10 XML files that are used for configuration purposes. What really chaps my ass is that there's a step in the installation instructions that explicitly tells them to extract those files into that directory. The installation should have been a pretty simple five or six step affair.
So far, it's gone like this:
Installer: Server's restarted. Try it now.
Me: Not working, giving an error.
Installer Getting an error in the logs. <error text>
Me: You're missing some files.
Installer: Checking... Yep, there are no files there.
Me: Section 4.2 of the install instructions says to extract those files into that directory.
Installer: The files are extracted. I'll recycle the server.
...ten minute pause while servers restart...
Installer: Servers are up. Try it again.
Me: Still no go. Same error.
Installer: Getting a different error in the logs..
Me: Looks like the proxy server isn't running now.
Installer: The proxy server has this error in the logs... <error text>
Me: It's missing its properties file.
Installer: I'll check..... I added the file.
Later... Rinse... Repeat...
I'm the first one to admit that I'm not one for the 'great outdoors'. I like to get away from time to time, but I want to be able to retreat to an electrified and air-conditioned lodging at the end of the day. My idea of roughing it is staying somewhere where I have to use a dialup internet connection. :) I've always had great respect for someone who could pack up everything they need for a week and go off into the woods and come back alive and well.
I was invited by some friends to camp out at Lake Texoma this weekend. I'll be driving up there Saturday morning and coming back sometime on Sunday. I'll be going to the range this afternoon, working tonight, and then preparing for my trip Friday night. Given all this, I suppose I won't be updating this site much until Sunday (unless I get stuck waiting on the installation people tonight).
It turns out that my instinct concerning our deployment date was correct. They spent most of yesterday getting that last component running. They had missed some more files when they released the code to the read-only filesystem. They had also misconfigured some settings that took a while to track down. This gets pretty frustrating, because the instructions for those settings are clearly given in the installation documentation. The other thing that is frustrating is that the deployment people aren't giving our application their full attention. The original person got called off to work a severity 1 problem for someone else, so they brought in someone new. While he was competent and did manage to resolve the problem, it took a long time because he wasn't dedicated to our project. He was constantly being interrupted by other issues.
The final result yesterday was that we found some further misconfigurations in the settings that will require a restart of the servers to fix. Because of the rules that they impose, restarts have to be done at night and they have to get permission ahead of time. This means that we will only be able to restart the servers tonight. Therefore, I have to be online at 9:00pm tonight. I can only hope that they work faster than they did the night before. Provided they have fixed the settings correctly, I will be able to get on the new system and run some testcases to verify that it is functioning correctly. Once that is done, we'll let the customer know that it's ready and they can start their acceptance testing. If that works out, the proxy changes will be done next Thursday night to make the site live.
Of course, given the problems we've had so far, I'm not even going to hazard a guess whether we'll actually make it this time (the original schedule called for user acceptance testing to complete tomorrow morning with go-live tomorrow afternoon).
This means that I may have to cut my shooting session short today, in order to make it home in time to get online.
After the previous post, we had one subcomponent that needed to be run, but the run failed, due to a file not being found (again). The servers that our app is run on use a read-only networked filesystem to store code. The people who run them have to follow a process of extracting code and releasing the files to the production filesystem. Something in this obviously failed, causing some files to be missing. This isn't something we've ever had happen before, and I'm tempted to blame operator error. But I did learn that the guy doing the install is also their on-call guy this week. He'd been working 16 hours yesterday, so it's likely he missed something. I feel bad for him, but at the same time, it's delaying the deployment of our application, and we have to answer back to our customer. Anyway, by the time we got to that point, it was 2:30am (3:30am for one guy who's in Atlanta), and we gave up for the night. We were supposed to start again at 9:00am, but the deployment guy got called out on a severity 1 issue, so we're on hold again.
Meanwhile, I feel like warmed-over death after only getting about 4.5 hours of sleep. This is pretty frustrating, since our code has been through three test cycles and has been installed a number of times along the way. We're confident that the code is OK and that our installation instructions are good. It's just been a series of unforseen obstacles.
Sometimes, it seems like no matter how well planned and run a project is, it just has a dark cloud hanging over it. We've had screw-ups from inexperienced developers, hardware failures, and various other setbacks, yet we managed to pull the schedule out of the fire through extra hours (and good planning on the part of the project manager who allowed some "contingency" time in the test phase). However, it's out of our hands now and we're dependent upon the group hosting the application to get it installed. All we can do is watch and offer advice and observations. Unfortunately, I think we're going to miss our deployment date, given the current situation. It's just a feeling right now, because it's still possible to hit it, if everything comes together just right. But I'm not very confident, and when it comes to project estimation, my gut feel is usually pretty close.
It turns out that the deployment guy messed up the extract of the code, such that some files were missing. We don't know how this happened, and it's too late to spend a lot of time worrying about it. At least it's working. Now all that's left is some quick testing to make sure that everything is running correctly.
The installation of this one last component is not going well, since it's giving a weird error that no one has seen before. I'm sitting here listening to the deployment guy drone on about all the stuff he's done, while my tech leads are trying to work things out. I think part of the problem is that he did some weird stuff with symlinks that is causing all this grief, but I'm too damn tired to gripe at him about it. If this goes on much longer I'm going to have to glue my eyelids open.
Unfortunately, I feel that dreary dead-tired nonsleepy state coming on (the one where it's way past time to sleep and you enter that weird area where you can't sleep anymore).
Jeff Soyer at Alphecca points out a truly bad segue from a local news broadcast. Having grown up in East Texas, I can attest to the inexperience of most of the news crews at these local stations. If you really want to see raw inexperience in action, try watching the 6:00pm newscast on Saturday.
I'm sitting here waiting on the installation of our application, which means I have to be online, but I'm not really doing anything. Earlier today, one of my coworkers asked me about my home network and I ended up drawing the diagram on the whiteboard in my office. In the interests of killing time, I pulled up Visio and created a network diagram.
Click for obnoxiously large size.
What was the point of this post? There is no point. I'm bored and pointless...
The whole issue of religion in school is one of those things that just makes me want to scream in frustration. It's like watching a car wreck as it happens, but in this case, both drivers are drunk.
The latest example to catch my attention concerns a case in Belle Fourche, S.D..
The mother of a Belle Fourche Middle School student has complained to the district after her son came home with a Bible that he said had been passed out in the school hallway.Interestingly, the ACLU was OK with it.
"I was out of town. I came home, and it was sitting there in my house," said Bonnie Matthews. "I questioned my son, and he said a man just handed it to him at school."
When she contacted the school, an official said told her the Bible came from the Gideons International organization, which distributes Bibles throughout the world.
Matthews said the official told her school policy has allowed such distribution in the past, but that the school itself was not involved and did not sanction it.
Jennifer Ring, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in North Dakota and South Dakota, said distribution of religious materials in school is a form of free speech and religious freedom.This caught my attention, because I was behind a pickup truck yesterday that had the phrase "ACLU is bound for hell" on the back bumper (and it wasn't a bumper sticker, but instead was made from individual stick-on letters). I know that the ACLU attracts a lot of detractors, but there are times when they're a necessary evil. I just wonder what they did to tick someone off so badly that they'd feel the need to make a sign on their vehicle. I suspect it was something to do with prayer, given the message (and the other stickers on the truck).
But it should only be done with clear conditions. School officials should not be involved, the school should not promote any religion, and there should not be restrictions on the types of religious beliefs expressed, she said.
"The ACLU is a big defender of religious freedom, as long as the regulation isn't one that allows only one religion, as long as it's open to everybody," said Ring.
My personal belief system is that I don't believe, but I don't necessarily disbelieve either. I'm an agnostic (alternating between apathetic ('I don't care.') and militant ('I don't know and you don't either.') ). In any event, I will be up front and say that I have some antipathy towards organized religion of just about every stripe. I distrust any organization that wants to control my life (and that includes government as well, so I'm an equal opportunity pain in the ass). But over time I developed defense mechanisms (after once being "saved" as a naive youth by some evangelical door-to-door Baptist types, which East Texas is lousy with). I've come to an uneasy truce with religion (or at least I don't go into a frothing rage when people try this crap with me now).
But regardless of my position on religion, I never minded when people gave me bibles. Maybe that's because I'm something of a bibliophile, and free books were cool (regardless of the subject). Anyway, I think that both sides of this issue have a lot of crap to take the blame for. The religionists bother me because they seem to think that just because a majority of the people (or so they claim) are on their side it makes it OK to have organized prayer in schools. The anti-religionists bother me because they're a bunch of whining crybabies who can't be bothered to teach their children to resist programming. This would have been a good chance for the woman in this article to teach her child how to evaluate ideas in the context of her own beliefs.
But ultimately this fight is unwinnable. No one will ever be satisfied by the result, because they aren't looking at the fundamental problem. That problem, as I see it, is that public education has a fatal flaw. What we're seing in so many places (religion, sex education, testing, etc) is that the public school system cannot respond to market demand. It must attempt to cater to all needs and all tastes (as well as all the additional crap that has been thrust upon it over the years). What we're seeing here is a frustration of market demand because of the government imposed monopoly in education. If people's demands are frustrated in the marketplace, eventually they will look for other routes to get them satisfied, by force if necessary (either the courts or the tyranny of the majority) if there are no other outlets.
If we'd get past the idea that education must be public, we can start to look at satisfying the needs of each stakeholder. If some people want prayer and bible studies in their schools, that can be handled. If others want 'just the facts', the market will provide for it. But until then, we're going to witness the various groups fighting over the public school agenda like a pack of crazed pit bulls over a hunk of meat.
I just read an interesting posting at Samizdata.net concerning intellectual property and libertarianism. The author goes over the basic types of intellectual property for the purpose of trying to make some observations about libertarian reaction to music file sharing. I find myself torn on the subject of file sharing. I think that rampant file sharing is theft, but at the same time I think that occasional sharing is actually good for the industry (for example, maybe I make a few files available to select friends of some artist that I found interesting in the hope that my friends would like them too; if I'm right, it's possible that those friends will buy that artist's music). Is that an intellectually consistent position? I don't know. And I don't much care. I want to see the artists get paid for their work, but there are probably other economic models that will come to pass after a while (which may see the big record labels go the way of the dinosaur).
But the mention of patents and software touched on one of my pet peeves. I understand the reasons for patents, and I actually think some software patents are good (and I've even considered submitting for one through my company, although I haven't had time to persue the process yet). However, one of the first software patents that I learned about, and the most egregious example of the genre, was the one concerning the use of XOR for screen cursors. In 1985, Autodesk was forced to pay $25,000 to license the XOR patent.
To understand the absurdity of the patent, one must digress into computer geek land for a bit (or 8). Bitwise XOR is an operation that can be used to "flip" all of the input bits so that the output is the "opposite" of the input. XOR stands for eXclusive OR. The easiest way to think of it is to remember the phrase, "one or the other but not both". Some examples:
0 XOR 0 = 0
0 XOR 1 = 1
1 XOR 1 = 0
10011001 XOR 11111111 = 01100110
01100110 XOR 11111111 = 10011001
In the old DOS days, the cursor was simply the inverse of the character that the cursor was on (and each character was displayed in a single block on the screen). Each character was composed of a set of pixels, with one bit representing one pixel (i.e black screen with green pixels). If the bit representing the pixel was one, the pixel was on. If it was zero, the pixel was off.
Since the bits represent the pixels, using XOR (with a mask of all ones) caused all the pixels that were off to come on and the pixels that were on to go off (see the last two examples above). The simplicity of the operation was that it was the same operation to make the cursor blink on or off, and it was efficient, since the operation could be performed in hardware.
So why was this patent bad? Because the operation was so simple it was something that any programmer would eventually come up with after a little thought. In fact, it was almost a math exercise, which as noted in the Samizdata article could perhaps be thought of as a discovery, rather than an invention.
I think part of the problem is that the patent office doesn't have the training in many cases to recognize the difference between a simple algorithmic technique and a truly novel and new idea. The other thing that bothers me is how companies will suddenly "discover" that they had a patent on something important and try to blackmail the industry into paying for it (*cough* GIF *cough* Unisys *cough*).
It looks like the administrators at The University of Arizona just don't get it.
A UA graduation tradition has come under heat in recent years, but this year, President Pete Likins is serious when he says no tortillas at the ceremony.Offensive? What do Hispanic people think about this?
Last year, Likins asked graduates not to throw tortillas. However, since many ignored the request, Likins sent out a formal letter to the class of 2003 stating reasons why tortilla flinging is inappropriate for the 128th commencement ceremony.
Both Likins and Provost George Davis have said tortilla throwing harbors undertones of racism, and can be offensive to not only some students, but to guests as well.
"More than being a safety issue, this behavior is disrespectful to many of our Hispanic and American Indian community members, who feel that throwing tortillas is offensive to their cultures," Likins stated in the letter.
Both e-mails have received criticism from students who believe that a ban on tortillas is also a ban on an innocent tradition that is not meant to send racist or violent signals.Like so much politically correct crapola, this oily concern for the feelings of others simply masks their real agenda, which is that they don't want to be embarassed in front of the governor and a senator.
Carlos Ramirez, a Hispanic graduating history student, called Likins' e-mail "ridiculous."
"It's like saying you can't throw sandwiches because they represent Caucasians," he said. "You can't throw Frisbees, so you throw tortillas because no one can get hurt."
Members of Chicano/Hispano Student Affairs said they know that the tortillas are not tossed to offend, but rather, as a celebratory representation of the community.
Marisol Diaz, a CHSA retention specialist, said that although the tortillas might seem offensive to the administration, she has heard no complaints about it from any students, faculty or staff.
"They do it everywhere," she said. "I have gone to a lot of high school graduations where they throw tortillas, and most of the people doing it were Hispanic."
Likins said he also fears the tortilla throwing could get out control, causing someone, namely Gov. Janet Napolitano or Sen. Jon Kyl, who are both speaking at graduation, to be hit.This sounds like it's a long-standing tradition that is going to be hard to kill. And the administration doesn't have much traction on this one. It just makes them look silly. But these are probably people who piss into the wind and wonder why it's raining when there are no clouds in the sky...
I find myself in a pensive mood today. I've been thinking about my father lately. Tomorrow will be the tenth anniversary of his passing, so I suppose it's natural that he'd be on my mind. My experience with my father is probably a bit different than that of others with their fathers. He was 58 (my mother was 22) when I was born and he retired the summer between my first and second grade years. I saw a lot more of him as I was growing up, especially during the summers, than those whose fathers were a lot younger.
My father was born on November 11, 1911 in East Texas to a family that made its living farming (mostly growing cotton). His father was an abusive alcoholic and a gambler, who lost the family farm in a card game. This forced them into sharecropping to survive, and my father and his brothers were put to work in the fields picking cotton at an early age. My father turned 18 in 1929, the year the Great Depression started. That was also the year that my grandfather chased my grandmother out of the house with a shotgun in a drunken rage. She took my father and his brothers to Ft. Worth, where they struggled to survive. My father managed to find a job as a bicycle messenger for Western Union to help support the family.
One of the things that I noticed as I was growing up was that his experience in the depression affected him for life. He was always concerned that we had enough to eat and that everything be fresh. I think this was because they had to make do with very little during that time. I recall one of his quirks was that he was obsessed with buying the freshest possible bread (this was a reaction to being forced to buy old, leftover bread since they couldn't afford better). When I was growing up this was before they printed expiration dates on the bags of bread. But he somehow learned that they had color codes for the twist ties (which represented the day of the week it was made) and he also memorized the delivery schedules. I vividly remember being embarassed one day when he almost got into a fight with the bread delivery man because he was picking through the loaves looking for the ones with the newest color code (which were on the bottom, of course).
It was during that time in Ft. Worth that he managed to find work as an apprentice in heating and cooling. This would later become his career, and he would work his way up to the position of Chief Engineer by the time he retired (which means that he was responsible for the entire physical plant for a large building).
My mother was my father's fourth marriage, and we were his second family. It's strange to think that my father was 30 years old with a wife and baby when Pearl Harbor was bombed (I also have a half-sister who is in her 60's now). He had vivid memories of that day, which I suspect that everyone who lived through that time had. At the time he was working in Washington, DC in one of the federal buildings. Because of his age and family status, he was deferred from being drafted. And because of the shortage of people caused by the war, he was hired by a chain of department stores to do maintenance throughout Texas (Dallas, Ft. Worth, San Antonio, Houston, etc) for the rest of the war.
One of his strongest qualities, though, was his work ethic. When he retired he definitely didn't stop working. We left Houston and moved to East Texas and rented a house and 7 acres. He promptly bought a tractor and went to work, cultivating that land and growing corn, peas, sweet potatoes, watermelons, etc. I think he may have been trying to recapture something missing from his youth, but I also think that he didn't know what to do with himself without work. When he wasn't working in the fields, he was doing side jobs for people. He could do just about anything: plumbing, electrical work, carpentry, and of course heating/air/refrigeration. The downside, though, was that he would sometimes work too much, ignoring his health. He'd been diagnosed as a diabetic a couple of years before he retired. It was controllable through diet and medication, provided that he remembered to come in and eat and take the pills. Often he would go out in the morning and not come in until dark. Later, I think this habit caused the medication to stop, or perhaps it was just aging, be he was required to use insulin. This only made things worse, since he was still just as stubborn about not coming in until the last minute. One time his blood sugar level was around 40. We were surprised that he made it back in.
But some of my best memories of my father are when he would take me to work with him. From a very young age my father never talked down to me and he would answer my questions as best he could. He would also explain all of the equipment that he was working on, even though I was only five or six. I suspect that OSHA would have a cow today, thinking about a kid in the machine room of an office building. But my father trusted me and he knew that I wouldn't touch anything. When we lived in Houston he worked for a property management company that handled a number of office buildings. He was one of their senior engineers so he was sometimes called to consult or in one case he was called in to set up the engineering department of a building that was just being finished. I remember being able to go up to the top floor of one of the Texaco buildings before it was finished (but the windows were in, so it wasn't like we were just hanging off the side). I was amazed by the view. I also go to on the roof of another building he worked at. I think that it was this experience that allowed me to be comfortable working with technical information later on in life.
Unfortunately, I turned out to be just as stubborn and impatient as he was, which made for some rocky relations during my teen years. I don't understand why I was so angry back then, it all seems silly now. When I left for college, we were somewhat strained, although not as bad as it had been. While I was in college his health started to decline (he was 77 when I started school). By my senior year in college, he was in really poor health, suffering from heart problems and diabetes. He also had what the doctors called 'senile dementia', which means that he would do or say strange and bizarre things for no apparent reason. But the biggest problem with diabetics at that age is that wounds don't heal quickly, especially in the extremities. A stubbed toe becomes an infection, which leads to loss of the toe.
By the summer of 1992 the doctors were forced to amputate one of his legs due to an infection which was a complication of diabetes. And by the beginning of 1993 he lost his other leg for the same reason. During all of this I was finishing school and I started my first job, so I wasn't around much, just on some weekends. I had a hard time seeing my father in that condition. I don't know how my mother handled it, I just know that she's amazingly strong to have cared for him as long as she did (with the help of my sister she cared for him at home until late in 1992).
My biggest regret is that by the time I could appreciate my father he was no longer himself. I wish now that I could have known him as an adult. I never got a chance to tell him that I loved him because he was gone too soon. And that's a regret that'll be with me for the rest of my life. For those of you who managed to read all of this, remember to tell your parents you love them. You never know if you'll get the chance to do it later.
Well, all that waiting around was for nothing. The people who run the servers where our app is being installed didn't do enough planning amongst themselves, causing the deployment to be delayed until Tuesday night.
I've now wasted the day for nothing.
I'm still bored, I've read all the blogs in my blogroll, and everyone I wanted to call seems to be out (actually doing stuff as opposed to sitting around at home). So, to pass the time I thought I'd do the Saturday Scruples.
I noticed a little while ago that I passed 20,000 hits. When I started this it was more or less just for me to vent about things that were pissing me off, and my audience was limited to just a few friends and family. I'm pleased to see that people are taking time out of their day to visit my site and read my rantings.
I've had to be "available" today, since our application is being installed this weekend, even though I'm not the technical contact and I can't fix anything if it's broken. I think it's one of those "feel good" kinds of things. Regardless, I'm stuck here until they're done.
My company gave me a new laptop yesterday (Thinkpad T30--2GHz/1GB RAM), so I've been passing the time transferring all my stuff from the old one (a two-year old Thinkpad T21--800MHz/768MB RAM) and installing all the software that I need to do my job. I'm currently at my "command center" with three computers in front of me (the old laptop, the new laptop, and my Linux system). If that doesn't define geekiness, I'm not sure what would (I suppose I could bring in the laptop from the living room and fire up the game machine to make it five, but that would just be excessive :) ).
It's amazing the amount of stuff that I needed to install, and some of it will have to wait for Monday, when I get back to the office and use the CDs I forgot to bring home (I can get to online images that my company has for internal use from here, but I'm not sure I want to download three products that require 400-500MB each). On the old laptop I went through all the installed software listed in "Add/Remove Programs" and created a Word document with the status of each one (i.e. already installed on the new one, no longer needed, to be installed). The list is almost two pages long (which would put it around 100 entries, although I'm too lazy to count it :) ).
If I didn't have to stay here, I would have gone to an early showing (12:30) of The Matrix. Oh well, I guess I'll try again next weekend (maybe some of the crowds will have thinned out by then).
A few quickies...
This post from Bitter got me to thinking about a related issue concerning firearms. I'm pondering the ramifications of giving access to a firearm during a training session to a person who has been prescribed antidepressants. Texas law is certainly not clear (at least to me) on this issue, but more importantly, I want to be as careful as possible. In fact, Texas law only addresses this issue in relation to the CHL statutes in a section on whether "a person is incapable of exercising sound judgment with respect to the proper use and storage of a handgun" (Section 411.172, Subsection d of the Texas Government Code). Further, it never addresses the issue of depression or treatment for depression. Instead, it includes this catch-all phrase (Section 411.172(d)(1)):
has been diagnosed by a licensed physician as suffering from a psychiatric disorder or condition that causes or is likely to cause substantial impairment in judgment, mood, perception, impulse control, or intellectual ability;This one will definitely require more thought. On one side, you don't want to give access to a gun to someone who could be suicidal. At the same time, you also don't want to deny knowledge of gun handling to someone who is actually interested (either for safety or self-protection reasons).
Update: Another thought occurred to me after I wrote this. I wonder if any gun owners have avoided getting help for depression for fear of losing their CHLs (or even their guns).
Intuit has finally come to its senses regarding its stupid activation mechanism for TurboTax.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based software maker will discard its so-called product activation feature, the company announced Wednesday when it reported third-quarter earnings.All that the activation feature did was generate ill-will, complaints, and calls to tech support. I know that I don't like to pay for the priviledge of being treated like a thief. In fact, I resolved never to purchase another piece of their desktop software (of any kind) as long as they continued using this activation software (and I only reluctantly used their online tax filing software, after I couldn't get their competitor's product to work).
"Intuit has a long heritage of doing right by customers, and some of our customers didn't have the great experience they expect from Intuit," Steve Bennett, chief executive of the company, said in a statement. "Therefore we've decided to discontinue product activation next season."
The introduction of product activation technology in TurboTax for the 2002 tax year also failed to deliver the additional revenue and profit growth the company had anticipated, Bennett added. Even so, Intuit reported revenue rose by 29 percent and net income more than doubled in the quarter ended April 30, compared with the same period a year ago. The company said growth was driven by gains in its TurboTax business, which brought in $313.1 million in revenue for the quarter.
Product activation is a controversial antipiracy approach that locks a piece of software to a specific PC. Intuit's version, developed by Macrovision, runs in the background on the PC and checks for a unique activation number generated when TurboTax is installed and stored on the PC's hard drive. The technology is intended to prevent customers from printing or filing returns from any PC other than the original machine that was used to activate the software.
Customers complained, however, that the technology could make it difficult to continue using TurboTax if they were to acquire a new PC or hard drive. Many customers said they were annoyed that the product activation mechanism continually ran in the background, even when TurboTax wasn't being used, monopolizing a small chunk of their PC's memory.
And I don't like the product activation crap in Windows XP, either, but their market position kind of forced me into using it (that and I didn't want to have to deal with wiping and reinstalling my new laptop with Linux).
Now, perhaps I'll consider purchasing Quicken again, since my foray into using Money ended badly. I'm trying to find a good solution to keeping track of my accounts. Despite being a techno-geek, I still maintain my bank account via an old-fashioned check register (and such high-tech devices as a pen and a calculator). I ordered the BankOne branded version of Money (it had a 30-day free trial and was $29.99 if I wanted to buy it, as opposed to $59.99 normally; although now I see that Amazon has it for $19.99 after rebates). Unfortunately, Money ate my data file after about a week (it was just gone, nowhere to be found). That really ticked me off, since I'd spent a lot of time entering all of my account information and financial data into it.
Ugh. I sense that today is going to be one of those looooooonnnnnggg days. I couldn't get to sleep until sometime near midnight and I woke up at 4:19 (that number is burned into my brain now) and couldn't go back to sleep.
I'm now hearing "Your Cheatin' Heart" in my head, specifically, these lines:
But sleep won't comeNot that I've been cheating or anything, it's just that the lyric popped into my head. My brain on four hours sleep is a scary place.
The whole night through
'Cause your cheatin' heart
Will tell on you
A final post before I go to bed (hopefully to sleep for a change).
Jeff, at Caerdroia, has a good (albeit technical) explanation for understanding men.
Men are heirarchichal.This definitely appealed to my inner geek. And like computers, fiendish complexity is a function of utter simplicity.
We are object oriented.
We define our schema in a file, whose syntax is very simple, but which requires several reboots and much swearing before it will really take full effect - little bits of old schema definitions end up cached somewhere in memory, and only come out when the right branch of a particular algorithm are triggered.
I guess high schoolers are just as randy as ever, but now they're getting it on tape.
Eight Duncanville band students have been suspended for allegedly participating in a lewd video in which girls showed their breasts.I guess this will teach them to be more discreet if they want to get away with something like this in the future. :)
Duncanville Independent School District says the high school juniors and seniors -- 7 girls and 1 boy -- were suspended even though administrators didn't see the tape in question.
The band was in Corpus Christi May 3, when a chaperone saw some female band members reviewing a video playback on a camera.
Some of the students admitted participating in the video.
The school superintendent says a chaperone destroyed the tape.
When I heard about this asinine Oreo lawsuit I was appalled. Apparently, I'm not the only one. Jeff Soyer has a few choice words for the bottom feeding scum sucking lawyer who initiated the suit.
I would never condone violence against anyone, and I certainly would not encourage anyone to do same. But in my opinion, that is, just speculating -- fantasizing as all of us do -- on what would make this a better world, and in excercising my First Amendment rights to speak on someone who has through his own actions become a public figure, I hope Stephen Joseph trips on a clump of dirt somewhere and falls into a bottomless pit.But he also has some important things to say about the whiny baby culture that we seem to be turning into.
If that's what our society has come down to (and apparently that is what most liberals would like) then life isn't worth living. We will never explore the stars because no agency could possibly afford the liability insurance for such a project. We will never again become strong as a species because no lawyer or politician (aren't they both one and the same) will allow us to. If we now need to ban Oreos cookies because they represent a threat to us, we will never amount to anything.This is something that's been bothering me as well. Only if you're hurt through no fault of your own should you be able to sue, and then only for whatever is needed to make you whole again (or the equivalent, if it's not possible to do so). Otherwise, shut the hell up and deal with it. The world is a dangerous place and to try to make it otherwise will turn it into a lifeless dull hell of endless regulation and prying nannies.
Update: Little Green Footballs has picked up on this, and Laurence Simon left this in the comments. That St. Claire safety sign maker comes in pretty handy.
In my previous post I mentioned my friend with the computer problems (who also happens to be the one I wrote about on Sunday). She's been under quite a bit of stress for the past few months as she has been finishing up her undergraduate degree. I've known her for nearly 14 years now, since we met when we were both in school at East Texas State University (now Texas A&M-Commerce). She quit school about the time I graduated and went out into the "real world". A few years ago she decided to go back to school.
We're both the same age (10 days apart) and sometimes we think spookily alike. But what's more interesting is that sometimes I just get a sense that something's wrong and shortly after that she'll either send me an email or call. Or more interestingly, one time I had a dream that she needed my help and it was at the exact time she ran into the problem (it woke me up around 11:00pm one night, just a few minutes from the time she sent me an email).
I know that a lot of people refuse to believe that these sorts of things are possible, writing them off as coincidence or delusions, etc. However, I've encountered enough weird stuff in my life so far as to think that it's the height of hubris to think that we know it all or to completely rule out such things. My belief is that these things are actually natural phenomena, it's just that our science is not yet advanced enough to understand them (hence the title of this posting). Of course, that's just a belief, and I can't prove it.
I also commented the other day about coincidence, concerning getting an email from a friend I'd been thinking of contacting. When I mentioned this in my reply to him via email, he replied:
You know, I don't know if I'm so quick to dismiss things as "coincidence." I've seen some things that have concretely made me believe that there are things at work that we're not aware of...whether it's God or temporal distortions or little green men screwing with our heads who knows (but, any of these answers would be fascinating to KNOW for certain that they exist).It would certainly be fascinating to know that they exist, but I suspect that that would open up a whole new set of questions to ponder.
The ways of technology are mysterious, but one rule that you can count on is that the chance of technology failure increases in direct proportion to the importance or need for that bit of technology. When I turned my cell phone on at 7:45 this morning it almost immediately buzzed and beeped (causing me to nearly drop it), indicating that I had a voice message. Since I tend to use the cell mostly for outgoing calls, it usually means that something's gone wrong if I get a message on it.
A friend of mine had left me a message at 11:30 last night wondering if there was any way to recover a file. She was working on her last paper (at least until grad school) and her laptop appeared to have lost it. When I called her, it turned out to be worse than that. The file was corrupted and portions of the paper were missing. At that point, the only suggestion I could offer was to try to recover from the .TMP file left behind by Word.
I feel bad for her, because this laptop has been a pain since she got it about two years ago. It's a Sony Vaio that came preloaded with Windows ME. It tends to freeze, it has trouble writing CDs with my Iomega Predator USB burner (the Predator worked fine on my laptop, though), and sometimes it doesn't want to shut down (one time I had to pull the power cable and remove the battery pack to get it to stop). I think the thing's possessed by some kind of malevolent computing demon.
Now that school's over, she's asked me to reinstall it in the hopes that it will be more stable. I'm going to exorcise that demon with a dose of XP and the latest BIOS updates and drivers.
Weird Al Yankovic has finally released a new CD. Poodle Hat will be out on May 20th. My copy is already on preorder at Amazon.
We learned today that the top U.S. officials in Iraq are being replaced, including General Jay Garner.
Senior U.S. officials say they are unhappy with the pace of reconstruction in Iraq and the negative media attention that has been getting. By replacing the top tier of the U.S. civil authority in Iraq, as well as several other senior members of the civil administration team, the Bush administration hopes to speed up Iraq's post-war recovery.While the reasons given above may well be the truth, this makes me wonder if something more was about to come to light.
The installation of former State Department official Paul Bremer as chief of reconstruction efforts, supplanting retired General Jay Garner, is only the tip of an abrupt wider shakeup affecting many of the senior-most officials in the U.S. civil administration in Iraq.
Baker's job with COLSA was to inspect the work being done on a major segment of the missile-defense program. "He would eventually discover a handful of contract arrangements that 'smelled of shenanigans.' Each of them involved work being performed by SY Technology, a California-based defense contractor. ... "Maybe there's nothing to all of this, but I don't like coincidences.
Another thing the arrangements had in common was that each involved a contract being negotiated on a sole-source basis, rather than through competitive bidding. And SY Technology had been taken over a few years back by retired three-star Gen. Jay Garner.
Baker says he was first alerted to the questionable contract arrangements in late December 2001.
That month, the Space and Missile Defense Command announced it intended to award SY Technology a five-year contract in the amount of $48 million. The defense command claimed the contract was being negotiated on a sole-source basis because SY Technology was uniquely qualified to do the work. Baker disputed the notion, saying dozens of other contractors were equally qualified.
It turns out that the call for tlhIngan (Klingon) interpreters was a joke of sorts. Of course, the computer industry has been ready to deal with this sort of situation for a couple of years. The Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA) has assigned it the language tag i-klingon for use in locale-sensitive code.
Klingon is interesting in that it is an actual language that can be used for real communication. The writers of Star Trek wanted it to make sense, so they consulted a linguist (Dr Marc Okrand) . After the publication of The Klingon Dictionary: English-Klingon Klingon-English in 1992, some people got together and created The Klingon Language Institute .
As they say, you haven't read Hamlet until you've read it in the original Klingon. :)
A word of caution--the Klingon Language Institute seems to be run off the world's slowest server, so some of those links above may take a while to open.
From what I can see, though, the most important phrase you can know in tlhIngan is "nuqDaq yuch Dapol", which translates as "Where do you keep the chocolate?"
I wonder what the tlhIngan phrase for "Trek geek" is...
Qapla'
It would be an absurdity for jurors to be required to accept the judge's view of the law, against their own opinion, judgement, and conscience.
-- John Adams
I had a discussion Friday afternoon with a friend of mine concerning her sister. I'd noticed that she had seemed depressed the last couple of times I'd talked to her, and she has also been acting kind of erratic for the past couple of weeks. She just got out of a bad (and abusive) relationship and moved in with my friend. Now she's already talking about moving out (she's only been there about three weeks). And she's already got some guy she's interested in (she said something about him being a musician). This all seems way too soon, given all that she's been through already. She also complained to me that she's broke until her next paycheck on the 15th, yet she had money to go out drinking on Wednesday night (and to spend on her car).
My friend told me that her sister had stopped taking her anti-depressants. She complained that she didn't have the money for them. My friend is also concerned that her sister may be on drugs (which is where her money may be going). I guess this puts a lot of her behavior into perspective, but it's really sad to see someone with so much potential waste it this way. I know that she's intelligent and capable of doing a lot of things, but she just doesn't seem to believe that she can do them (and now she doesn't seem that interested in it either).
Sorry if this post was a bit confusing, but I intentionally tried to avoid naming either my friend or her sister (or to give enough information to identify them).
This made me furious. These useless pieces of crap need to be rounded up and shown to the door. And we need to make sure that not one red cent of our money goes to these sorry bastards. All they seem to be good for is sitting around berating the military and preening for each other. If they had any concern for the people they're supposed to be helping they'd be out there actually doing something instead of wasting endless time griping at the military for their supposed abuses.
It's funny (in a humorless, droll sort of way) that the military is doing more to help than these NGOs who are supposed to be in the business of helping people.
Damn useless pricks.
I decided yesterday morning that I would go to see X2. I'm usually not a big fan of movies based on comic book characters, and I was only marginally interested in the X-Men series. But I saw the original X-Men movie and it was pretty good. I'd also heard a lot of good things about X2 from various bloggers, so I was hopeful that it would at least be interesting.
Now that I've seen it, I'd have to agree with them. Overall it was very good. In fact, I stayed in my seat despite needing to go to the restroom for the last hour because I didn't want to miss anything (not that you particularly needed to know that :) ). And I didn't expect to end up feeling bad about what happened to one of the characters at the end (I won't say more, since it would give away too much for those who haven't seen it).
I also saw the trailers for The Hulk and Matrix Reloaded. I'll probably go to the new Matrix movie, even though I was disturbed by the first one (the scene where they showed all the people in the rows and rows of little pods freaked me out). As for The Hulk, I'm not so sure. It was directed by Ang Lee and it appears to be very action-oriented. I'm not sure how I feel about that. But I still may see it, if for no other reason that it has Jennifer Connelly. :) And I may also want to go see The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as well.
Lately I've noticed an annoying trend where theaters are showing commercials as part of the trailers. I've gotten used to seeing promotions for upcoming movies, but the commercials bother me for some reason that I have yet to try to fathom. Anyway, that Powerade commercial based on The Matrix was very annoying.
I usually try to get to the store early enough on Sunday to beat the church crowd before they overrun the place. I also try to avoid them because they seem to drive like maniacs. I got out too late today, leaving right around noon, which means that some of the local churches were just getting out. These people will pull out in front of you, dart across the road, speed up to get in front of you and then turn right (without signalling), and a whole host of sundry other traffic offenses. There are three big churches that I have to pass by on the way to the store, and they're all located within a block of each other. It's like running a gauntlet in that area.
What I'd like to know is just what the preachers are telling these people before they leave? I can hear it now, "Ladies and gentlemen, please open to the book of NASCAR....".
Last week I was called in to examine the code for a project that had just entered the test phase. Apparently one of the developers was disgruntled and reported his "concerns" about the code quality to management. That's the sort of thing you come to expect from time to time, so it wouldn't have been a big deal if that's where it had stopped (coders are a prickly lot, and managing them has often been compared to herding cats). Unfortunately, he also told someone who told an executive, which is when the excrement came into contact with the rotary airfoil device. :) The project managers needed to be able to come up with something to appease upper management and convince them that the code was OK. At this late phase, my thought was that the best proof of the code's quality would be whether it passed testing or not, since the time to inspect the code was during the development phase (and they had done peer reviews, where the developer in question had ample chances to make his concerns known). However, sometimes the appearance of doing something is more important that what is actually done. Therefore, I was assigned to review the code.
The code consisted of 340 Java files, so there wasn't a chance in hell that I could manually inspect those in the time I was given (I was given a week, but I was only able to spend about 50% of my time on this). Fortunately, we have a site license for Jtest, which when combined with our own coding standards rules gives pretty thorough coverage of the code (including dynamic analysis to find uncaught runtime exceptions). The only downside is that this kind of analysis is very nitpicky. Those 340 Java files generated over 11,000 warning messages.
Of course, that kind of number sounds very alarming at first. And it's not something that you want to feed to upper management, lest they get the wrong impression. As an example, many of those messages have to do with indentation or style standards. While I consider those important to readibility, they don't materially detract from the code's function. So, I had to grovel through all of those messages and categorize them based on severity. When I was done, it turns out that there were only a handful of items that were severe enough to consider errors (like using "=" instead of "==" in a control statement).
That's the kind of mind numbing task that leaves you drained, so when I left work on Friday my eyes were glazed over. I went home, grabbed a cigar and poured myself some Jack and cola and did absolutely nothing. And I stayed away from the computer most of Saturday as well, which is why I hadn't updated this site since Friday morning. I just didn't feel like I had anything worth saying.
I got busy with work, and I'd had trouble sleeping the night before, so I just didn't feel like posting anything yesterday. I feel a little guilty, because I've begun to feel like I should post something each day.
I've noticed that I seem to get instances of deja vu most often when I'm really tired. Maybe that's when my brain is most likely to form these random associations. I had a really strong one yesterday. For me, it's most often a combination of emotion and vision that triggers it. I was waiting for a code scan to complete and reading something online while waiting. I was thinking that I really needed to get that code scan finished so I could report the results, but that this stupid slow computer wasn't going to finish in time. This, combined with the text on the screen, triggered a memory of the exact moment, and I was convinced that I'd been there before (or perhaps I'd dreamed it). Or maybe my brain, in its sluggish state, confused the new memory with an old one.
I also had a weird coincidence this morning where I'd been thinking about sending an email to a friend of mine. When I opened my email this morning, he'd already sent me one. I've always wondered how that works.
Stephen Green's earlier post about Steely Dan's new CD reminded me that although I like most of their music I've never bought any of it (and no, I haven't downloaded it either). I quickly rectified that situation by preordering the new CD as well as ordering some of their previous ones.
I have to say, though, that Amazon makes this entirely too easy. I'm afraid to total up what I've spent with them over the past year.
It looks like Doubleclick and the others of their ilk can't resist the lure of knowing everything about you.
Condé Nast owner Advance Publications, for one, recently began testing a product from Tacoda Systems that promises to compile detailed information about the Web site visitors of its Advance Internet news network.There's a reason that these kinds of tracking systems were met with such an outcry when they first came out. And frankly, I don't give a rat's ass how many so-called "safeguards" they add to it, I don't trust them with my data. A company has to have a lot of trust and goodwill built-up before I will knowingly allow them to have this amount of data about me.
And it's got company. Tacoda, launched by the executives behind Internet ad network Real Media, said it has so far signed up at least 10 other publishing customers, including Weather.com, USAToday.com, Tribune Interactive and Scripps Networks.
Tacoda's technology is designed to give Web publishers more insight into their visitors so that they can better target their ads. At its full potential, Tacoda's Audience Management System can create profiles that include a person's age, gender, location, billing address, e-mail address, Web surfing habits and subscription information to offline publications. To do this, it draws from data-mining technology, tracking software such as cookies and Web site registration information.
Just last week, the company signed a deal with ad technology provider DoubleClick that could further boost the two-year-old company's profile among Web publishers that want to court advertisers with better audience-targeting tools. The deal essentially makes it easier for companies that employ DoubleClick's widely used ad-serving system to also use Tacoda's profiling software.
But more importantly, where might this data turn up in the future? The government would love to get its cloven hooves on this data through TIA if it could, which is brought up by a privacy advocate in the article.
Smith said he had little concern about the practices of Web publishers collecting data on consenting individuals in order to send targeted advertisements to them. But the nut of the privacy issue, he said, is that anytime profiles are amassed, there runs the risk that they could fall into other hands.No, I don't trust these bastards with this data and I don't trust that it won't end up somewhere it doesn't belong.
"If you're just going to show ads with them, that's no big deal, but what else is going to happen with them? Will law enforcement get their hands on them some day?" he questioned.
A pox on all of these wankers and their apologists.
At least I was able to hit the range today after work and play with my Springfield and Kimber. There is something almost zen-like about shooting. It was hot and stuffy in the range, but I didn't notice until I quit shooting. Shooting forces you to concentrate on the gun and the target--putting all that other crap out of your mind.
Today was one of those surreal days where despite the technical and professional stuff working out, nothing really registered, as I was distracted by something that I was told this morning. I won't go into the gory details, but I guess it confirms that I was a damn fool for thinking certain things. Oh well, c'est la vie.
I was reading the latest rant from Rachel Lucas and her warning to her dog Sunny about her upcoming bath reminded me of the dog we used to have when I was growing up.
Her name was Missy, which came about as a weird variant of "Messy" (which we called her because of the deworming she'd had before we got her from the shelter as a puppy).
This dog had the habit of going into the nearby pasture and rolling around in cow manure. Then she'd come home and rub up against you. You wouldn't realize you'd been "tagged" until you noticed the smell. She also had a pathological hatred of baths, to the point that the mere mention of the word would send her into hiding. I'd have to drag her out from under the table and carry her to get a bath.
I miss having a dog.
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
| Level | Score |
|---|---|
| Purgatory (Repenting Believers) | Very Low |
| Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) | Low |
| Level 2 (Lustful) | Very High |
| Level 3 (Gluttonous) | High |
| Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) | High |
| Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) | Extreme |
| Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics) | Extreme |
| Level 7 (Violent) | Very High |
| Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) | High |
| Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous) | Moderate |
Hmmm.... It appears that being a non-believer puts you at a serious disadvantage in this test.
I've seen a number of postings on a variety of weblogs about the latest craptastic idea that is infesting the collective brain cell of the RIAA. I'm not likely to download music, and I'm even less likely to run some unknown EXE file like "SILENCE" that RIAA is working on (this one will erase all the music files on a computer).
If something like this were to somehow get onto my system, I'd be extremely pissed. Why? Because all of my music files were fully paid for by me (all 4736 of them). I've only ever downloaded one song from an MP3 site, and the only reason I did it was that I was a fan of that band and I wanted their new single which wasn't yet available to purchase. I had the CD preordered, so it wasn't like they were losing a sale.
I understand their worry about widespread downloading. However, I'm strongly of the opinion that a little private sharing actually helps music sales, at least among people like me. But the RIAA's heavy-handed tactics are in serious danger of alienating the people like me, who are their serious customers. I currently own 366 CDs, and I buy 20 to 30 per year. But I do have to admit that I'm tired of getting CDs just for a couple of songs. What I want is an online service that lets me buy the songs I like (which is why I'm watching the Apple offering, although it'll have to come to the PC before I have anything to do with it--and it'd be preferable for me if they had a Linux client, although I can live without it). However, it must be unencumbered by silly DRM schemes. I'm perfectly willing to pay for my music, but I am most decidedly not willing to pay for the priviledge of being treated as a potential criminal.
If they'd put together a service where I could get high-quality MP3s (or any other open format) that I could use as I see fit (i.e. on my computer, in the truck's MP3 player, etc), I might actually buy more music. As an example, there are a number of pieces on SomaFM's Secret Agent Lounge stream that I'd buy if they were available individually. But I am not as inclined to buy a whole CD from these artists, as I haven't heard of most of them before. However, I would be inclined to purchase a few of their other songs to try them out.
Of course, the RIAA is going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into this model, because it means they won't be able to pass off a bunch of crap mixed in with a few good songs and charge $15 to $17 for it. It means that the end-user (I hate the word 'consumer') will get to pick and choose based on their tastes. Ultimately, it may have the potential to make the music industry stronger, but only if the music industry gets ahead of the curve. If they fight too much, they will lose their core customers through alienation.
Electronic distribution of music is a train that is leaving the the station. The RIAA has a choice: be on the train or under it.
Can I say that I hate phones? I find them very frustrating because so much context is lost. Even normal vocal inflections can be missed, because the 4KHz bandwidth loses high and low tones. I have to work really hard while listening on the phone; much harder, in fact, than I would talking to someone in person (even if I'm not looking at that person). I also happen to think that this is one reason that cell phones are so distracting to people who use them while driving.
The other thing I hate is when people don't call you back after saying that they will...
This guy can't seem to understand the whole personal boundary thing.
Raymond C. Dublin rejected a deal yesterday to spend another six months behind bars for allegations he sneaked up behind a Woonsocket, R.I., woman last year at Save-A-Lot supermarket in Bellingham and licked her toes, court papers show.At first, I was mildly amused, but then I read this:
In 1991, he was convicted of first-degree sexual assault and sentenced to 15 years with 10 to serve; in 1998 he was convicted of second-degree sexual assault and sentenced to 15 years with five to serve.He's quite vividly demonstrated that he can't be trusted to live in free society. Why is this guy still running around on the streets?
It's definitely spring in East Texas:
I started to post the real Friday Five to make up for my timewarp from yesterday, but after the first one I gave up. That numeric progression trick is just too hard (i.e. I can't think of that many damn songs). That, and I couldn't make up my mind on the first one (name one song you hate to admit you like). It was a tossup between that Piña Colada song and The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald.
I got so carried away because it was so nice outside that I just drove 150 miles with the windows down and the radio blasting. I think I may be deaf now.
Oh, and allow me to send out a great big "f@#k you very much" to those asswits who can't seem to drive over 50 in a 70 zone. If I believed in hell, I'd be inclined to think that there's a special place there reserved just for them.
I'm taking the day off tomorrow. After I wrap up some business here in town I'll be heading back to East Texas for the weekend. I'm going to visit my mother for an early Mother's Day get-together, since she has to be at work next weekend.
While my mother has internet access, I may just ignore the computer for the weekend. Unless something sets me off and I feel the need to rant.
Anyway, everyone have a great weekend and I'll be back on Monday.
I'm sure that the decision by Cincinnati to drop its lawsuit against gun makers has been seen by everyone already, since it was linked by Instapundit.
However, I'm glad to see that they're coming to their senses. It was a stupid lawsuit. It's just too bad that it took them 4 years to realize it. But then I guess I shouldn't expect too much from politicians.
Just for kicks (and because I couldn't get into the Hell Quiz that Bitter posted), here's the Friday Five.
1. What was the last TV show you watched?
CSI
2. What was the last thing you complained about?
All the bureaucratic crap that I have to deal with at work.
3. Who was the last person you complimented and what did you say?
Hmm... This a tough one. I don't remember complimenting anyone recently. Maybe I need to work on that.
4. What was the last thing you threw away?
A bunch of dirty patches from cleaning the guns I used at the range last night.
5. What was the last website (besides this one) that you visited?
The Bitch Girls.
Update: Hmm.... I was in a weird timewarp yesterday. It was really Thursday, it just felt like Friday to me. So I guess this really wasn't the Friday Five....
It seemed like I spent the whole day tilting at the windmills of bureaucracy. Fortunately we finally prevailed and it looks like my project is going to deploy on time (it's been a long, tough trip). The amount of red-tape and the sheer number of obstructionist asswits that we have to deal with to get a project deployed in my company is mindboggling. I once saw a checklist that the project manager has to follow through all phases of a project. It was 6 or 8 pages long with well over a hundred steps that had to be followed (checklists have to be filled out, approvals obtained, review boards satiated, etc). And almost none of this had to do with the actual technical work (like designing the system, developing it, testing it, etc). I find it amusing in a droll sort of way that the same company that imposes all this nonsense on us also complains that it takes too long and costs too much to develop web projects. Anyhow, if you'd seen me after the last conference call ended at 4:00 pm, I probably looked like a wreck. I just sat there in my chair for a few minutes, slumped way down, and stared at the wall.
But I guess I shouldn't be too upset. I have lots of work to do and the company seems to like having me do it. Now that this project is wrapping up, I've been assigned to three new ones (but I'm hoping that we can at least consolidate two of them into one), and I also have responsibilities for another project that is ongoing. At least it keeps me in guns and ammo. :)
All of this got me to thinking about the phrase, "It's been a long day" because that's the way I felt when I left work. Of course, the little Spock in my head immediately wondered about the illogic of it. I locked the little bastard in his closet and left him to stew, because it was such a nice day when I got outside. It was nice and warm, maybe just a little too humid, but I won't complain about that. According to my truck's thermometer it was 91° F this afternoon. Even so, I loved it. I drove home with the windows down and the radio blasting.
To top it off, I decided to mow the lawn when I got home (mainly to prevent my neighbors from lynching me :) ). But there's something to be said for lawn work. It doesn't take a lot of thought and it gives you a chance to just do for a while, which is a nice diversion when you've spent all day thinking and reacting.
Ok, that's probably enough bore blogging for me...