aubreyturner.org

On Thursday a week ago I was trying to get wrapped up with work in preparation for taking Friday off and getting out of town for the weekend.  I got an IM from my customer asking me if I was going to be at the Austin meeting next week.  Since I hadn’t heard about such a meeting I was a bit confused.  It turns out that he had only decided on Thursday that he wanted me to attend.  This all meant that after my trip to East Texas over the weekend I had to turn around on Monday and go to Austin.  I just got back last night. 

I drove to Austin and back, since it’s not much more hassle than trying to fly there, and it doesn’t take much longer.  The flight from DFW to Austin is about an hour, but when you figure in time for check-in, parking, and security, you’d probably take three hours or more, and the drive is only 3.5 hours.  Another upside to driving myself is that I can carry my usual complement of sharp pointy things and other implements of destruction.

Coming back last night it really hit me how much traffic on I-35 is composed of 18-wheelers.  I left Austin just before 8:00pm and once I was on I-35 there was a long period where I was the only “regular” vehicle on the road.  For the most part, I kind of like driving with the big rigs, since they’re generally not prone to fits of road rage, they don’t usually make sudden lane changes, and they don’t usually tailgate.  Once you find a slot where you can match their speed it makes for a fairly relaxing ride.  At least until we hit Temple and all the idiots got on and started darting in and out and tailgating.

They’re starting by talking about VOIP, but AT&T and other broadband providers want to charge content providers for access to their networks. 

Well, the traditional phone companies are at it again, looking for pounds of flesh that they can extract from the feature-rich Internet-based services and sites that want carriage over their networks.

Just yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (I’m there) Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg talked of willingness to strike up deals with unnamed sites and services. "We have to make sure they (services) don’t sit on our network and chew up our capacity," he said.

Of course, this is where the distinction between a deal and a shakedown starts to get a bit blurry. After all, it was AT&T (formerly SBC) CEO Ed Whitacre’s controversial statement last fall that free carriage of high-bandwidth services would be "crazy" that started this fiirestorm.

William Smith, chief technology officer of BellSouth, told the Journal today that he envisions charging content providers a fee based on the volume of material they send over BellSouth’s network, as well as the bandwidth the content takes up.

As I see it, there’s just one tiny little hole in this “logic.”  Broadband subscribers are already paying for access to the network.  This sounds suspiciously like double-dipping by phone companies that are afraid of losing their lock on the phone business.

It’s technically feasible to determine the ISP of the user based on their IP address.  It would be a simple thing for Yahoo! or Google to deny access to AT&T/SBC users by redirecting them to an alternate page with a very simple explanation of why their carrier is blocked.  I suspect that most people would be rather upset with their ISP for doing something like this.  With enough customer outrage, I’d expect that something like this wouldn’t last long. 

I noticed that Verizon was among those contemplating this sort of thing.  Despite the fact that cable can’t offer me the speed of Verizon FIOS, I’d drop Verizon in a heartbeat and go back to cable if Verizon were to pull this sort of stunt.  I pay Verizon for a certain amount of bandwidth.  It should be irrelevant to them what I use it for.  If they think I’m using too much, then they should reprice their offerings. 

Further, I don’t like the idea that Verizon decides which services gets better performance on their network.  Any way you slice it, it looks like end users get screwed under that kind of deal.  Instead of getting the bandwidth and performance we pay for, we get the bandwidth and performance that someone else pays for.  If they’re going to do that, then they’d better knock some off of the price I pay.

I ran into an interesting problem with my game PC over the weekend that I just solved yesterday.  I haven’t had much time for games lately, so it hasn’t been used in a while.  But I had a friend who wanted to transfer some tapes to CDs, and this system is the one that’s connected to the tape deck.  So I fired it up to make sure it had the latest Windows updates and to make sure that the audio capture stuff worked.  The system seemed to work fine, except for an exasperating hang whenever I tried to access a Samba share on my Linux system.  This was especially annoying since it was working fine the last time I used it.  Despite this problem, we were able to make CDs from the tapes.

What I eventually noticed is that this system refused to talk to the Linux system in general, either for Samba or for HTTP.  It would get about 1MB of data to flow before it would slow to a crawl (i.e. maybe a few bytes per second, if that).  This would cause Windows Explorer to hang if you were trying to browse a share via the GUI (sometimes it would come back with the message “the network name is longer available”).

It occurred to me that I hadn’t used the system since the network reorganization that took place during the FIOS TV saga and my struggle to get a wireless router that worked.  The main difference between then and now is that I had to plug everything into the D-Link DI-604 and that I now had a Belkin Pre-N router acting as an AP, where in the past I used a single unit (a Linksys WRT54G(S)).  The system could access the internet fine, which goes directly through the D-Link router.  It just couldn’t access the Linux system, which is across a wireless bridge. 

The system is built around an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, which has two gigabit ethernet controllers integrated into the motherboard.  One is part of the Nvidia nForce chipset, and the other is based on a Realtek chipset.  The ethernet wire was plugged into the Nvidia port.  I began to suspect, based on the symptoms, that there was something about the whole wireless bridged path that it didn’t like.  Some searching on Google turned up a few people who also had trouble getting a reliable connection using the Nvidia port.  Some were able to fix it by changing the driver settings so that the ethernet speed was locked, rather than autonegotiated (i.e. they’d set it to 100Mb/s Full Duplex).  Others got around it by switching to the Realtek port.  I first tried changing the ethernet speed setting, but as soon as I applied the setting the system rebooted (!).  So I went into the BIOS and disabled the Nvidia ethernet controller and re-enabled the Realtek one.  Sure enough, everything started working perfectly. 

So, I can only conclude that there’s something about the Nvidia controller or its driver that does not like crossing the bridge to the remote network.  Technically, a bridge is supposed to be transparent at the MAC layer, but it would introduce a bit more latency than if the connection were direct.  I didn’t investigate further to see if there were any driver settings that could be changed.  I was a bit afraid to mess around with it, given how badly the driver reacted.  It should be noted that this occurred with the latest driver available at the time, which was part of the nForce 3 Version 5.11 package.

Here’s how the systems are laid out.  The systems in question are “Game PC” (on the left towards the middle) and “dominion” (the Linux server).

I have a lot of sympathy for the crap that smokers have to put up with.  Heck, I like to smoke a cigar from time to time, so cigarettes don’t bother me.  But people who throw their cigarette butts out of their car windows make me want to reinstate public hangings.  If this sounds a bit harsh, it’s only because the stakes of their selfish behavior have risen considerably in the current drought conditions.  We’re about 17-inches behind in rain right now, and everything is so dry that just looking at the grass the wrong way starts a fire.

It’s really amazing how fast a cigarette can start a fire in dry conditions.  Several years ago I witnessed it first-hand.  The passenger in a car in front of me at a stop light threw a cigarette butt out the window into the grass.  By the time the light changed (just a few seconds), there was already smoke coming from the grass.  I called it in and the fire department showed up pretty quickly, so it didn’t get a chance to spread very far.

If I hear one more story about a grass fire or people being burned out of their homes because of cigarettes, I’m likely to go postal…

This is the kind of crap that tells me that someone doesn’t deserve to be sucking oxygen right now.

A gunman opened fire at an off-campus student party at a Stillwater hotel early Sunday, killing one person and injuring three others, police said.

The shooting occurred after two men attempted to enter the invitation-only party at a Stillwater Holiday Inn about 3 a.m. Sunday, said Lt. Michael Metcalf. When the men were denied entry, one of the men pulled out a handgun and fired several shots at partygoers inside the hotel room.

“Apparently, the suspect and another individual showed up and tried to crash the party,” Metcalf said. “When the people that were hosting the party said that it was by invitation only, an argument ensued and (the suspect) fired several shots into the room.”

When you get down to it, this is a perfect example of the real problem we have with violence right now.  It’s not the guns.  Only an idiot would think that banning guns would have stopped this, since anyone like this isn’t going to be deterred by gun control laws.  The real problem seems to me to be that some people aren’t learning any kind of impulse control.  Frankly, I blame the touchy-feely, don’t-spank-the-children, positive-reinforcement-only numbskulls for it.  It’s possible that the shooter had good parents who punished him for breaking the rules, but I highly doubt it.  If we look back at the shooter’s record, I have little doubt that we’ll find that he had lots of run-ins with the law and little punishment for previous bad acts. 

I just got an email about a system that was experiencing a “high CPU condition.”  After my double-speak filter kicked in I realized they meant that the system was overloaded, but I have to admit that my first thought was of a computer system toking up with a cloud of smoke surrounding it. 

Duuuude…. like there’s a system error or something….

My brain works in strange ways.

I tried really hard to surpress my schadenfreude over this case, but my dislike of moral busybodies overcame my restraint.

A pastor who has spoken out against homosexuality was arrested after propositioning a male undercover police officer outside a hotel, authorities said.

As the Rev. Lonnie Latham, 59, left jail Wednesday, he said “I was set up. I was in the area pastoring to police.”

Latham, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee, was arrested Tuesday and charged with offering to engage in an act of lewdness, Capt. Jeffrey Becker said.

Hmm…. “pastoring.”  So that’s what they’re calling it these days. 

I was lucky in that I caught this problem on my own.

About 10,000 area natural-gas customers thought their online payments were going through just fine.

Until the late notices began arriving in November.

While their payments were properly deducted from their bank accounts, they weren’t being credited in their names at Atmos Energy. So many called the customer-service line this week to get the matter straightened out that it caused further delays, customers said.

Blame the problem on the account changeover after Atmos acquired TXU Gas.

“The banks and payment processors were supposed to make the changes in account numbers so that online customers’ payments would go through smoothly, and in some cases, the changes weren’t made properly,” spokesman Rand LaVonn said.

Those affected should call or e-mail Atmos with their bank-account numbers. No late fee will be charged.

I think the thing that bothered me about it was that Atmos gave us absolutely no notice.  They tried to handle it themselves, and that’s good.  But they still should have told us what they were doing so we would know if something went wrong.  The only way I found out that the account number had changed was when I got the December bill and noticed that they hadn’t credited me for November, even though I knew I’d sent in the payment.  Suspecting that the change from TXU to Atmos had something to do with it I double-checked the account information that was stored in my online payment system against what was on the printed bill.  Sure enough, the billing address and account number had changed on the bill.

Even if a company intends to try to automate the account change, they MUST inform people that it’s happening.  It’s as simple as that.  They failed to do that, and now they’ve got a lot of people who are going to distrust them in the future.  If they’d been open about it, people would at least understand what was happening.

Every now and then someone who appears to have been Googling themselves gets irate about something I wrote about them.  In this case, I received the following missive from Lindsey Crumpton, who was the subject of a November 16, 2004 posting concerning her killing an innocent person in her attempted suicide.

Just to let you know that I don’t appreciate the bullshit your giving readers about my personal information.  For a matter of fact asshole I wasn’t intending to drive in the other lane….I was trying to flip my car and instead the reaction was that you discussed.  And f.y.i. have you ever been to hell before??? Because I have and I don’t think you have the right to say anything without knowing the facts.  Also, you know the saying…“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover,”? YEA WELL IT GOES FOR YOU TOO ASSHOLE!!! And one more thing before I go….in order to have an opionated website on current things that you find amusing, I think you should think a little harder before you let the world know what you think.  Sorry to say, but watch where you go…..you may be stepping on eggshells for quite some time!!

I find this part most telling:  For a matter of fact asshole I wasn’t intending to drive in the other lane….I was trying to flip my car and instead the reaction was that you discussed.

That’s a good way of trying to disclaim responsibility for her actions.  I was just trying to kill myself.  I didn’t intend for that to happen.  Well, I call bullshit on that.  The fact of the matter is that she killed an innocent person while trying to kill herself.  That’s just stupidly evil.

Anyhow, not being the type to quietly go into that good night just because someone gets a little pissy, I sent the following reply:

Ms. Crumpton,

Real life is a hard place, so I’m not worried about someone being upset by something I wrote.  Further, being a rather stubborn type, I’m not one to give up my position just because someone is pissed off (and especially if that person can’t be arsed to use proper grammar).

Anyhow, your note seems intent on trying to say that I don’t understand or that I don’t have all the facts.  Frankly, given what you wrote, I’m convinced that I have enough facts to form an opinion, and that opinion is still the same as the one I had at first.

You wrote the following:
“… I was trying to flip my car and instead the reaction
was that you discussed.”

That, in and of itself, is sufficient for me to sustain the reaction I had.  Your INTENT is IRRELEVANT.  The RESULT is what matters.  And you must bear the responsibility for it (it sounds like you still haven’t taken responsiblity, though, given your anger towards me).  You KILLED an innocent person in your selfish suicide attempt.  That’s something you can’t take back, wish away, or get a do-over for.

So, given all the above, I stand behind my initial assessment of your actions, my wish for your future, and your overall character.

Finally, you should be careful issuing statements that someone should “watch where you go”, as that could be interpreted as a threat.  Given your current legal situation, the last thing you need is further trouble from the law.

Perhaps some may think I’ve been a bit harsh, but this is serious stuff, and reality is a harsh mistress.  Further, trying to threaten me isn’t exactly conducive to changing my mind on something. 

I like to have some music on in the background, and I found Chillout Lounge on 1.fm (beware the pop-ups) via WinAmp’s Media Library (it’s under “SHOUTcast Radio”).  It’s an interesting variety of mixes, most of which are fairly good for background noise.  However, every now and then they’ll pull out something that just stops me in my tracks and leaves me scratching my head and muttering, “WTF?”

Today, it was a remake of “White Lines,” which was originally done by Grandmaster Flash.  This one was a strange jazz version from a group called Barefoot (click through to the Flash page, hit the ‘?’ in the upper right corner, then you can listen to some of their music, including White Lines).

There’s just something very odd about an English woman reciting Grandmaster Flash…