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Please accept with no obligation, expressed or implied, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the holiday practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all -- and...
(deep breath here)
A fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the initiation of the generally accepted calendar year 2009 (and the Hebrew Years 5769 and 5770), but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great (not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only "America" in the western hemisphere), and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual preference of the wishee.
By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.
(This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.)
Oh, and that old flame who set me on fire for Valentine's Day? Well, they really need to clean the undersides of these buses a little more frequently. But it was a helluva ride...
Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in, at 12:00 EST, as the 44th President of the United States, on the ceremonial west front of the United States Capitol.
Here's a transcript of his speech, courtesy ABC News.
This flyby was performed after the last carrier launch of a tomcat, off USS Theodore Roosevelt. VF-31 and VF-213, the Tomcatters and Blacklions respectively, formed up for a massive 22-ship flyby. It was the end of a glorious era for the Tomcat, and the largest single tomcat flyby in at least the past 5 years, probably more.
See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MCgKzIyUD8
Thursday, March 19, 2009 @ 08:24 p.m. - Comment
As a semi-Irishman, I want to lodge a complaint!
Not a damned four-leaf in the bunch.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 @ 09:04 p.m. - Comment
There's a guy named Jim Cramer, who used to be a (fairly shady) hedge fund manager, and now anchors a show on CNBC called "Mad Money".
Seems he pissed off a guy named Jon Stewart, who used to be a standup comedian, and now anchors America's Most Trusted Fake Newscast, "The Daily Show".
Jon's mad as hell and he isn't gonna take it anymore.
I hereby nominate Jon Stewart as Court Jester Laureate of the United States.
(Here's the clip that prompted that.)
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 @ 08:18 p.m. - Comment
It's been traditional for some years now that if you wanted to get started playing with Linux, but weren't quite up to it yourself -- this was before SuSE came in a box on a shelf, you understand -- that you could find a local users group, and go to a thing called an Installfest.
That's a couple dozen guys who've been there and done that, and who will be happy to do it to you(r computer).
Well, what do you do when the computer in question is an IBM zSeries?
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 @ 05:19 p.m. - Comment
Paramount must be just about to release a Star Trek movie expected to be the most popular with a general audience *evar*: Harlan Ellison is suing Paramount for screwing him over.
Oh, they did, no question. Be interesting to see if this plays in the general press. Hey: Trekkers: Make sure your local movie reviewer has seen this.
Sunday, March 15, 2009 @ 11:13 p.m. - Comment
2 important openings in my life on March 31st.
It's the day my new 175 seat call center opens, and it's also the premiere of the (very roughly) 40th anniversary production of HAiR on Broadway...
Clearly, I won't be there for opening night, but I'm pretty sure -- receptions being what they have been for rep company performances of the show around the US -- that it's going to run for a while, and I'm planning a trip to visit Faith and see it; probably in May.
And, according to Wikipedia -- in one of those factioids I would check on before believing -- at 0725 UTC on 14 February 2009, the moon was in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligned with Mars. No word on whether peace was guiding the planets, or love steering the stars, though.
Saturday, March 14, 2009 @ 11:47 p.m. - Comment
@ - Comment
a little scary these decades...
Let's just build our own, instead.
You are *so much* a geek if you think this is cool...
Saturday, March 14, 2009 @ 05:18 p.m. - Comment
3.141592653589793238462643383279
5028841971693993751058209749445923
07816406286208998628034825342117067
9821 48086 5132
823 06647 09384
46 09550 58223
17 25359 4081
2848 1117
4502 8410
2701 9385
21105 55964
46229 48954
9303 81964
4288 10975
66593 34461
284756 48233
78678 31652 71
2019091 456485 66
9234603 48610454326648
2133936 0726024914127
3724587 00660631558
817488 152092096
(Thanks to Jorel314 (of Joiry?) for doing this so I didn't have to figure out how)
Saturday, March 14, 2009 @ 04:38 p.m. - Comment
a lot. But keeping up with all the reverse double half-hipness with a twist got to be a fulltime job, and I *had* one of those already...
Check the local news promo clips about a quarter in.
Friday, March 13, 2009 @ 01:09 a.m. - Comment
NBC actually presaged the Internet, getting news right for a change -- even if you did have to say up until 2ayem to watch it.
It was called NBC News Overnight, and it lasted a little over a year.
They went out with *4 minutes* of credits. Nice.
ABC does World News Now overnight these days, and it's likely the same sort of thing, but I'm rarely up that late anymore, working A shift.
Thursday, March 12, 2009 @ 01:08 a.m. - Comment
named Rob Paravonian that I'm quite fond of. His canonical piece, the one that got him all the viral attention several years ago, was about Johann (yes, Rob, his first name *is* Johann) Pachelbel, and his greatest hit, and how that piece of music is following him around everywhere.
But he has unplumbed depths...
The thing I like about this one is the composition: with some good arrangement, this could actually have *been* the Big Uplifting Anthem he passes it off as; I can hear the riffs going by in the back of my head.
(And Paravonian was right: this is the most viewed non-commercial-music-video clip on YouTube. TSO needs to get this guy to sit in...)
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 @ 11:48 p.m. - Comment
to be a one hit wonder...
One of perhaps my top 10 all-time favorite songs is an early 70s ballad called "Don't Say You Don't Remember" by an artist named Beverly Bremers, that did an absolutely amazing job of sounding like a mid-50s ballad instead, in its production and arrangement.
Turns out she's released a "new, digitally remastered" version of the song to anchor a 13-track CD.
And, of course, she broke it.
I didn't appreciate just how finely balanced it was until I listened to her remix, which submerges most of the beautiful arrangement underneath a *just* too loud vocal track, which itself is pretty poorly recorded and produced.
Shame, really. But I still have the original. Be fun to shoot a music video for it at my favorite Steak n Shake...
Anyone got saddle shoes and a poodle skirt in their closet?
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 @ 10:33 p.m. - Comment
In that Chinese proverb sort of way...
It seems that about a dozen states or so don't want Obama's dirrrrty stimulus money -- well, at least not if the government's a'gonna tell them what to *do* with it.
Lousy bastards; giving them money for, I dunno, *what their elected representatives told the feds to give it to them for*.
I will, for the sake of fairness, actually correct CNN's "mostly Republican" observation -- that may be true of the state houses, I didn't check. But those states went 60/40 for Obama in the general. I could get actual popular vote counts, if anyone was curious...
But those who characterise this as "the feds just running amok with no guidance" are demonstrating Strawman argument, which you should have learned about in high school.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 @ 12:47 a.m. - Comment
Give all you can afford, and save a banker, today.
Damn if Fallon ain't coming up with some decent material...
Monday, March 9, 2009 @ 10:21 a.m. - Comment
It's one of about 9 books Spider Robinson wrote before he got tired of Mike Callahan (or Mike got tired of him) and he had to start writing his own stuff... and among the items in the dedication is one to "Ed Thelen's remarkable Nike missle site", and believe me -- it is.
I was about -2 years old when the Cuban Sandwich -- er, 'Missle' -- Crisis was going on, so I can't speak to the period personally. But an abandoned Nike launch site plays a pretty important part in that story, and also in this video:
Friday, March 6, 2009 @ 12:12 a.m. - Comment
you think it's cool that you can run 5th Edition Bell Unix on a Game Boy Advance -- atop a PDP 11 *emulator*. Yes, that's right: you can run the binaries.
Thursday, March 5, 2009 @ 03:16 p.m. - Comment
wherein a typographical error in a computer on the other side of the world, that you don't even know exists, can ruin your entire day.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009 @ 12:55 p.m. - Comment
Here's a list of all that stuff that you've been playing: the top 100 (rock) guitar solos of all time, according to Guitar World magazine.
I particularly liked that they credit the guitarist; the band is secondary.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009 @ 05:23 p.m. - Comment
omnipotent after all. Or maybe it's omniscient.
Monday, March 2, 2009 @ 11:08 p.m. - Comment
The Metropolitan Planning Organization passed a resolution to rename all of County Road 296, from the I275 ramp to Hamlin Blvd, as Bryan Dairy Road.
So, I guess y'all can start calling it that, just like I do.
Sunday, March 1, 2009 @ 07:25 p.m. - Comment
were prying into people's heads last month, and -- amazingly -- guess what they found out?
Electing a black guy president reduced people's knee-jerk prejudice against black people(!)
Saturday, February 28, 2009 @ 08:58 p.m. - Comment
Twice a year, geosynchronous communications satellites are blanked out because the sun goes right behind them, and it is, um, a bit louder at RF. This doesn't generally affect communications, but when you're looking up the focus of a 30 foot dish, things are a bit different.
Studio 360 takes us up the Empi Stablding to see WNYC's transmitter facility, and NPR, for its part, gives us the punch line:
They use FTP.
What a long strange trip it's been...
Saturday, February 28, 2009 @ 05:26 p.m. - Comment
is also the richest one: Warren Buffett, founder of Berkshire Hathaway. Berk has never split its stock, in consequence of which it's current per-share price is something over $70,000 -- it's been over $100k/share, and was in the 90s for the last few years.
Every year, he writes a letter to his stockholders -- the stock is so popular that there are several "clubs" you can join to buy fractions of a share, since lots of people can't, y'know, afford to put $70k in one share of stock. :-)
This year's letter is here, and it's downright *fun* to read; Buffett is almost as lyrical as his namesake; that folk singer, what's his name, Cathy?
Saturday, February 28, 2009 @ 04:16 p.m. - Comment
has ruled, in effect, that it's the government's job to keep classified information secret, and that, I guess, while they can go after the leakers, they can't get the leaked documents thrown out of a court case.
Good.
(Here's the original story from Wired.)
Saturday, February 28, 2009 @ 04:02 p.m. - Comment
but the Times' snark-blog, the Juice, decided to play against type today.
My reply:
It's fashionable to dis porn, but one of the nice things about the Internet is that it exposes hypocrisy.
The fact that porn pretty much *made* VHS, DVD, *and* broadband makes it clear that there's nothing fundamentally "wrong" with adult movies as a genre -- a working majority of adult Americans (and 90% of teenage boys :-) enjoy watching them, at least occasionally.
That said, I'll defend Wicked here; as studios go, they don't generally produce "really disturbing" smut flicks -- that job goes to 'gonzo' producers like Joey Silvera, and Max Hardcore... who went too far, and is now paying the price for it.
Snark, in the TBT/Juice fashion, though, usually plays *against* commonly held prejudices, though, and I was interested to see this counterexample.
Thursday, February 26, 2009 @ 10:06 a.m. - Comment
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 @ 11:32 a.m. - Comment
and here's a story about the statute.
The money quote:
During World War II, when metals and other materials were scarce, the Oscars were made of plaster. After the war, the plaster statues were then turned in for the normal gold-plated versions, according to the U. S. Geological Survey.
The US Geological Survey?
Why would *they* know?
Saturday, February 21, 2009 @ 10:48 a.m. - Comment
ok, 4 radio stations, in Lakeland. The country station is WPCV, and I ran across them a few years ago when I disconnected the battery in my car and it reset to 97.5.
They just upgraded one of their other stations, and you can hear it here now: MAX 98.3: The Shit You Remember Station.
Ok, that's not how *they* put it, but stil...
And the spots are *so* quaint. :-)
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 @ 03:37 p.m. - Comment
with Bill Clinton, whether for the 160 IQ or the "leaves office with a $4B budget surplus" thing.
Those people will probably be interested in this invu, where he holds forth about how he thinks Obama's doing.
Monday, February 16, 2009 @ 02:14 p.m. - Comment
That's one of the things that some people put on a programmable Texas roadside sign.
Turns out they didn't even have to depend on the owner leaving the sign unprotected.
Sunday, February 15, 2009 @ 05:53 p.m. - Comment
@ - Comment
in the biz, sometimes.
I'm just rewatching the second half of the pilot for the TV series, based (fairly accurately, amazingly enough) on the 4th book in the series, Promised Land. Towards the end, Spenser sets up a loan shark/gun dealer, and makes one important mistake: he *doesn't* tell Lt Quirk, his police contact, to *have the cops pick up him and his client*; they let them walk. Which makes it *obvious* to said shark what happened.
All he had to do, I've just realized, is have the cops pick him and her up as well, and then release them along the way.
Dumbass. :-)
Sunday, February 15, 2009 @ 04:59 p.m. - Comment
is also over; thank ghod fo the pharmaceutical companies:
Saturday, February 14, 2009 @ 04:10 p.m. - Comment
I get excited looking at linoleum...
That was *really* well done...
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 @ 07:47 p.m. - Comment
yes, both of you, know that I'm a lunatic about the Star Spangled Banner -- I have something like 17 versions of it on my laptop, snarfed off the net.
So wasn't I surprised to find this piece about it, from our hometown St Pete Times.
Yes, of course... we just had a Super Bowl here.
It's from the *other* one; the one 8 years ago.
Damned shame the chorus I was in evaporated before we could sing it at a Rays' game.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 @ 12:58 a.m. - Comment
I don't really have to say anything here, do I?
Only ditching in the history of commercial aviation with 0 fatalities.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 @ 12:35 a.m. - Comment
I'm trying to set up apache on my work firewall as a reverse proxy into a bunch of internal servers. The work is complicated by the fact that I run split-horizon DNS and the DNS servers are *on* the firewalls (I may have to move them; this makes them invisible to the opposite end of an IPsec tunnel... but that's a different story), but it's also complicated by the fact that the people at SuSE may be eeediots.
[ looks at manual, finally ]
Yup, they're idiots.
SuSE Apache has a very nicely broken up httpd.conf, with functionally different items in Included subfiles, and sometimes directories, which makes it much easier for installed packages to drop in their little snippet of Apache config -- and, more to the point, get it back out again later when you uninstall them.
They only forgot one thing.
When you configure *any* vhosts on an Apache 2, which ever one the server *sees first* while loading config overwrites any default server settings that may have already been seen. In SuSE's case, that's the contents of the default-server.conf file. And this means you're at the mercy of the Include processor as to what order it includes the files in.
They say "always set up a vhost, even if you only have one site". I say "add VirtualHost tags into the default-server file, because you know when it will be parsed".
That's another hour of my life I'm never getting back...
Sunday, February 8, 2009 @ 02:26 p.m. - Comment
by a Belgian company called InBev, who -- among other things -- are planning to divest themselves of the Busch Gardens theme parks.
That's not surprising, and BG is pretty much solid enough to stand on its own, I suspect.
But there's a catch.
What are they going to do with these guys?
They *say* they're going to keep them, but maintaining 250 horses, a farm, and the entire team that supports them has to cost five million a year.
Disbanding the Clydesdales would be about as stupid for Budweiser as it would be for Goodyear to shut down Airship Operations (coolest baseball cap on the planet, incidentally)... but Europeans think 100 miles is a long way.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009 @ 08:45 p.m. - Comment
Yes, I've been very busy at work.
No, no real bloggage. I'm actually going out to a Super Bowl party tonight, at the St Pete Ale House, and no power outlets, so no live blogging this year; if -- like me -- you're rooting for The Commercials, I suggest you head over to Ad Freak.
More next week, when I finally come out of the closet.
Oh, one advertising note:
The Apple Macintosh Super Bowl ad -- widely regarded as the progenitor of all modern-day Epic Superbowl Advertisements -- was released, 25 years ago this week, with probbaly the best tagline in the recorded history of advertising.
And 1984 wasn't like "1984". Don't let 2014 be, either, people. Refuse to be terrorized.
Sunday, February 1, 2009 @ 10:49 a.m. - Comment
Not only did they bring the change.gov blog over to whitehouse.gov...
It has a First Post!!!11!111@@!!!
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 @ 07:49 p.m. - Comment
In his speech, Obama says we're in a hole. He says we're all going to have to work hard to climb out of the hole. But he never goes to the second person, and tells *me* I'm going to have to help.
There was no "Ask not what your country can do for you" line -- or even paragraph -- in this speech.
Damnit.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 @ 12:42 p.m. - Comment
Barack Hussein Obama's last 20 minutes as a free man.
:-)
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 @ 11:40 a.m. - Comment
is probably the smallest office building in America, regardless of how big Tommy Schlamme made it look.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 @ 10:22 a.m. - Comment
in what I'm pretty certain history will record as the worst presidency ever, handily outshining that of Warren G. "Teapot Dome" Harding.
Appropriately, today was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as we make history tomorrow by inaugurating the first president who isn't 100% Caucasian.
No doubt he will pick up the slack in the "zero-curse" of presidential assassination attempts. I hope they're as stupid as Clancy's Rednecks-in-a-Cement-Truck.
A Pew poll is predicting a 66 *rating* for the inaugural tomorrow. I'll be watching...
Monday, January 19, 2009 @ 11:37 p.m. - Comment
of the inauguration will be available -- *if* your computer speaks Silverlight, and you're dumb enough to install it :-) -- at www.pic2009.org.
But CNN also lists places where you can see it, presumably without having to fight with Microsoft.
None of those CNN items have links because, as usual, it didn't occur to the idiots to put up placeholder clips in the proper format, so people could test and prep in advance.
Only person I've *ever* seen get that right was Oprah.
C-SPAN may be the winner, though.
A linkier list is here. And it turns out there's another way to watch it, too.
Monday, January 19, 2009 @ 01:55 p.m. - Comment
but there are still some questions I want answered.
Friday, January 16, 2009 @ 07:36 p.m. - Comment
in DC, next Tuesday.
When you roam your cell phone into an area served by a Mobile Telephone Switching Office, your phone number and a pointer to your home cell system are entered into a table called the Visitor Location Register in the switch.
I don't know how big those tables are...
but I guarantee you they won't hold 3 million entries. Whether the VLR handling code respects the little-known law-enforcement and government priorities built into cell systems will be a very interesting thing to find out...
Oh, and because "they're committed to making this the most open administration ever, they're streaming it live in"...
Yeah; where do I download the Linux, Mac, and Blackberry versions of that?
Friday, January 16, 2009 @ 07:11 p.m. - Comment
Zero Tolerance run -- ok, well, it's inherently amok, but this takes it to the bank:
School strip-searches 13 year old girl for Advil.
She sued. She lost. She appealed. The Supremes took it.
Friday, January 16, 2009 @ 06:22 p.m. - Comment
Congress has a YouTube channel now, and, oh, well, see for yourself.
Friday, January 16, 2009 @ 09:58 a.m. - Comment
Do you have vinyl precious enough to require this turntable:
They do come out to your house for half a day and set it up...
Friday, January 16, 2009 @ 09:50 a.m. - Comment
but he cannot be uncertain.
Don't misunderstimate how important that maxim is.
Given my druthers, though, rather see *right*, too.
Friday, January 16, 2009 @ 09:31 a.m. - Comment
UPDATED: No fatalities. The flight was enroute from La Guardia to Charlotte NC, onward to SeaTac, and crashed at 3:11pm, after a late takeoff from it's scheduled time of 2:56.
USA press release 1, 2, 3, statement from CEO, airframe details, and more.
CNN: Overview - pilot features - passenger report - videos - training carried the day
WCBS report (and, I guess, "Next up: Who's Gay!?" :-)
What to do if you end up in the drink like those pax did.
No 30. Kudos, incidentally, to the webmaster team at US Airways, who've handled the incident *very* nicely. Their site is well done, with the leading interstitial with the cookied "skip this" checkbox, and I've heard no reports of web ad trainwrecks yet.
And, for you nervous fliers out there, you can interpret either way the fact that the airline industry had no fatalities in all of 2007 *and* 2008, the first time they've ever gone 2 straight years -- they've only made it to a full year 4 times before since the beginning of the rock -- er, um, I mean 'commercial passenger aviation' -- era in 1958.
Thursday, January 15, 2009 @ 05:21 p.m. - Comment
Someone's suing Hooters again for discrimination, so of *course* everyone has to trot out the 15 year old pictures of Vince in a Hooter-girl uniform.
I talked to Vince last year -- he was general managing the Chili's behind Tyrone Mall -- and he seemed a bit bemused that people *still* remember that bit.
I'm not. :-)
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 @ 09:23 a.m. - Comment
Now that I once again have a house to put it in, I've decided to take the plunge. I'm going to invest in the complete edition of Heinlein's works, bound in leather, etc, etc, etc...
It's called the Virginia Edition, after his wife, and no, I'm not going to tell you how much it costs. But I've spent that much on his books in 35 years, anyway.
Monday, January 12, 2009 @ 10:09 p.m. - Comment
People are porting Google Android to the Nokias.
Monday, January 12, 2009 @ 04:13 p.m. - Comment
don't assume that it must be horses.
(That is, incidentally, the underlying meaning for the oft quoted medical diagnostic maxim, according to the professor usually attributed with it.)
Friday, January 9, 2009 @ 12:07 p.m. - Comment
Here's a collection of the well wishes sent to Barack Obama by heads of other states, on the news of his triumph in the presidential election.
Thursday, January 8, 2009 @ 04:07 p.m. - Comment
I'm testing out my latest theory for small system backup.
A client of mine upgraded to Terbayte Seagates. So we bought him *3*, and 2 Kingwin trayless SATA drive receptacles. And a RocketRaid 1520 hardware SATA raid controller.
You mirror up the A and B drives, and work for a week or however long... and then you hot-swap one of them for the C drive, and let it rebuild. Blather, wince, repeat. Date each drive's label with a micro-point Sharpie when you pull it out.
It's not perfect; the rebuild time is 14-20 hours on this slower box, but it's better than trying to buy a big enough tape drive...
Wednesday, January 7, 2009 @ 06:49 p.m. - Comment
Wednesday, January 7, 2009 @ 06:39 p.m. - Comment
KB850 bluetooth keyboard to turn my Nokia N800 into a baby laptop. My buddy Dave has a picture of the combo (he got one too), and when he puts it up somewhere, I'll link to it.
It's pretty neat, actually. It's precisely the same footprint as my 800, and the combined thickness of the two items precisely fills the (ancient) cellphone holster I've been carrying the 800 around in by itself, so it works out pretty well.
Of course, *my* cellphone won't do bluetooth tethering for data (and neither, apparently, will the 8350i they want me to spend $150 to replace it with; see rant below), so if I don't have wifi, I'm screwed.
And, alas, there are a fair number of places I go that don't have wifi.
EVDO mobile router to come...
Friday, January 2, 2009 @ 02:04 p.m. - Comment
an iPhone just for this: a rotary dial application.
Having spent a bunch of time with Princess phones, I can tell you that either they got the timing slightly wrong, or the audio sync was off on the movie. But it's still insanely cool.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008 @ 05:52 p.m. - Comment
British interracial couple has a second set of salt-and-pepper twins, 7 years after.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008 @ 12:51 p.m. - Comment
Do use them for what they were intended for?
(No, not turning on horny teenagers; feeding babies...)
Then don't post pictures of yourself on Facebook.
They are not amused.
Neither are the mothers.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008 @ 05:02 p.m. - Comment
Opening March 9th. More when I know more. Clearly, I'll be going up.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008 @ 03:24 p.m. - Comment
Again this year, 235959UTC 31Dec will be followed by 235960, then by 000000 1Jan.
People in the US can see this on their computer screens at time.gov, at 7pm EST, and respectively earlier as you go West (young man).
Monday, December 29, 2008 @ 08:56 a.m. - Comment
"Offer expires January 10, 2009 or while supplies last"
That would be "the day before the phone's expected to be available in stores"; IE: if you want it for $150, you have to buy a pig in a poke.
It doesn't surprise me that they're pulling this; I expect a *firestorm* of returns when people find out just how much less more they're getting than they should be.
Friday, December 26, 2008 @ 12:17 p.m. - Comment
released the 8350i.
But of course, "released" means "we're taking orders for it on the website, and you won't be able to get your hot little spectrum analyzer on it to find out which protocols each feature is using (since we won't, y'know, tell you) until it ships, which will probably be after it hits retail on the 11th."
And it *still* won't get everything -- where by everything, I probably mean "anything" -- right.
[Update] They didn't. I'm told that it has iDen voice (instead of CDMA) and iDen data (instead of EV-DO, which is roughly equivalent to sending in a Yugo instead of a Terex 33-16). Morons. It won't sell. I sure as hell won't buy it.
Monday, December 15, 2008 @ 03:17 p.m. - Comment
Extensively. :-)
Learned a new thing today.
The undocumented error message "there are no available sessions" on login is actually bitching about "VICIDIAL Conferences", which are different from "Conferences", and aren't called "Sessions" at all.
Matt, you suck. :-)
Sunday, December 14, 2008 @ 03:52 p.m. - Comment
(which is probably obvious to everyone who *writes* manual queries for a living, but what the hell...)
If you do a lot of manual querying from the mysql or psql command lines -- any client with readline support, really -- put a comment at the end of the select with a 'tag' that you can reverse-i-search for it by, like so:
> select * from gobbledygook where...mumble...; #jra-badani
Now, you can say Ctrl-R badani -- and presto chango, there it is.
Sunday, December 14, 2008 @ 12:48 p.m. - Comment
"10Connects" (furrfu) is carrying a piece about the latest thing for bored women with too much money: G-spot collagen injection.
The take-away from this piece is "only 4 months" and "$1700".
Hee.
Saturday, December 13, 2008 @ 02:41 p.m. - Comment
is over, as of Monday.
Zczc miatwoat all ttaa00 kNHC ddhhmm NWS Tropical Prediction Center National Hurricane Center, Miami, FL 700 pm est sun nov 30 2008
For the North Atlantic, Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico:
As the 2008 atlantic hurricane season approaches its conclusion, tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next 48 hours.
Issuance of this product will resume on 1 June 2009. Should any significant disturbances develop during the off-season, special tropical disturbance statements would be issued, as needed. Special tropical disturbance statements can be found under WMO header wont41 kNHC, and under AWIPS header miadtsat.
Forecaster stewart
Have a quiet February, folks.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 @ 10:15 p.m. - Comment
with a lottle help from my sister.
So this seems a good time to muse on The Way URLs Ought To Be.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008 @ 06:41 p.m. - Comment
if you're going to buy a new compact digital camera, buy the new Canon SD880, hands down.
Friday, November 21, 2008 @ 10:24 a.m. - Comment
Electoral-vote.com pageviews:
And this year's Purpl America. Contrary to what the Republicans will tell you, the country has drifted a bit more Democratic in the last 4 years, except for a small swath through Appalachia.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008 @ 05:31 p.m. - Comment
Long enough to be informative, short enough to be readable.
And unbiased, as you'd expect from the Beeb on everything except science.
Friday, November 14, 2008 @ 11:15 a.m. - Comment
but I apparently *do* have a date for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert next Friday; work permitting.
Sshhhh; don't tell anyone or it'll probably blow up on me. :-)
Saturday, November 8, 2008 @ 07:47 p.m. - Comment
the speech given by William H Cosby, Ph.D., to the NAACP on it's 50th anniversary was a screed, but I'd never actually read it.
Wow.
[ Hat Tip: American Rhetoric, which also has several of Aaron Sorkin's famous soliloquys ]
Friday, November 7, 2008 @ 04:36 p.m. - Comment
Just about as soon as the ink was dry on the domain registration, the transition team for President Obama put up the (so far, pretty staid looking) change.gov website.
They're soliciting comments from the general public about how to fix America; here were mine:
My number one suggestion was 'Idea Triage': "Not all the smart people work for you."
If a small organization gets built behind this web form smart enough to make sure the good ideas bubble up to where someone can get something done with them, I'll be happy.
Don't just say "Open Government". Mean it. It takes time and effort. Convince us that The West Wing wasn't *just* fiction, ok guys? :-)
(Oh, and hire Aaron Sorkin and Jon Stewart as speechwriters. I was going to recommend Stewart as Press Sec, but I see you have one announced already.)
I'm sure that as policy, Obama and a Democratic administration will start to reverse the anti-science trend we've seen for 8 years, so I don't have to say much here.
Oh, and reopen the Office Of Technology Assessment. Give it the same name, hire the last guy who ran it to restart it.
And finally: the voting systems problem *has already been solved*. Even before 2004. It's just that no one in power was *listening*.
Terminal does no counting at all, merely assists on low-vision and no-vision voters, then prints a human-readable (but not touchable) OCR-A ballot card and drops it into a clear plastic validation hopper at the terminal. You approve it, and mechanically drop it into a ballot box or a discard box; if you discard it, you get to try again.
The boxes are cheap, and locked, and can be easily swapped by the poll workers; they get unlocked only for counting, with a key that isn't in the precinct until T-30 at the end of the day.
Recounts are a walk on, since humans and computers read the ballot card for counting in exactly the same way.
The terminals are off the critical path since a) they don't do any counting, and b) the voter reads the final ballot card for approval *and sees it go into the ballot box*.
End of problems; everyone can manufacture the terminals and scanners. No sense in monkeying the code on the counters since recounts are trivial, and you can actually double-count the ballots through machines made by two different makers.
Oh: *MANDATE* "None of the above".
I know the parties hate it, but it removes the Undervote Problem completely.
And this is an example of the sort of Good Idea that should be caught and percolated upwards.
Oh.
*DO THIS IMMEDIATELY*. Not a month before 2012.
They have my email address if they want more on that. We'll see how this works out.
Friday, November 7, 2008 @ 03:01 p.m. - Comment
is, of course, "please, dear God, let it be a landslide".
That it's possible for it to be one on a state by state basis is, of course, one of the many reasons we have an Electoral College (kids who failed Civics - what we called Social Studies, When I Was In School<tm> -- should go look up 'federalist' for more on that).
And, with the exceptions of Missouri, and maybe Indiana, America's 50 Secretaries of State are breathing a sigh of relief today.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008 @ 10:57 a.m. - Comment
Barack Hussein Obama is the 44th President of the United States.
But I guess the Passover Effect only works if you're actually Jewish. Shame.
More: Black man given nation's worst job.
Also: She didn't get to see it, but at least she got to vote for him.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008 @ 11:35 p.m. - Comment
Took an hour; stood on line for 45 minutes.
After seeing a 21 year old girl with her 2 and 3 year old kids walk up to stand in the line, I'm revising my prediction to 75% turnout.
At least 60% of the popular vote for Obama.
Go vote.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008 @ 10:24 a.m. - Comment
Possibly the coolest thing *evar*; you don't have to be a geek to appreciate this:
The 64 track a capella version of Thriller
Monday, November 3, 2008 @ 03:13 p.m. - Comment
says she knows the right thing will happen on November 4th.
Hee.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008 @ 05:06 p.m. - Comment
After 11 seasons of pretty lackluster ball, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays are going to the World Series.
That is all.
No it's not. :-)
From the Home Office in Schnectady: Devil Rays Top 31 1/2 List
Sunday, October 19, 2008 @ 11:31 p.m. - Comment
So I'm sys-prepping these 39 machines we're deploying at work, and I had one problem break my balls for most of the week.
It seems that if you install extensions into Firefox, and then sysprep the machine and install the image... they *look* like they're there, but they don't actually work.
The problem is that they're installed in the user profile, not the application directory, and apparently in a place where either the profile-copy you do before a sysprep eats them, or sysprep itself eats them.
I suppose this might apply to other such applications as well, but this is the only one that bit me. I'd document this at either vernalex.com (which has the best writeups on sysprep) or kb.mozillazine.org (which has the local/global thing), but neither accepts comments. So I guess you're stuck getting it from me. Aw, darn. :-)
Sunday, October 19, 2008 @ 03:24 p.m. - Comment
McCain can't even vet a *plumber*. :-)
Thursday, October 16, 2008 @ 03:00 p.m. - Comment
the DTV transition:
Thursday, October 16, 2008 @ 01:07 p.m. - Comment
I don't want to hear any right-wing Christians telling me "Look! They took "Devil" out of their name, and the *next year*, they made the playoffs!"
It's a *fish*, people.
In any event, the results of the ALDS and ALCS pretty much give the lie to all the bastards who wanted to tear down Al Lang Field and clutter up the downtown waterfront with Another Fucking Stadium when we haven't paid for the first one yet.
If you build it they will come.
Fuck that. If you play decent baseball, they will come. Are we clear on that now?
If I hear one more word -- and if the media *fails to make this point, I will be quite annoyed* -- I will find people and put them in the batting cage with Evan.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008 @ 10:16 p.m. - Comment
Somewhere between M's generation and mine lies this music video.
You Might Be A Geek If, I guess...
Friday, October 10, 2008 @ 09:10 a.m. - Comment
It is going to be a fucking landslide, Democratic. At least 5% swing in the popular vote, nationwide. The Electoral swing, right now, today, based on electoral-vote.com, is 2 to 1 in favor of Obama.
And 4 years from now, when the economy has recovered nicely and is turning and burning... my Republican friends are *still* not going to believe it was Bush's fault.
And yet, some of them are very nice people. :-)
Wednesday, October 8, 2008 @ 10:49 a.m. - Comment
Naked Shorting is what they call it, and there's a fracas about it in light of the crash, and a piece warning about it that got the author blacklisted from the Wall Street Journal -- after he was *asked* to write it.
Monday, October 6, 2008 @ 11:50 a.m. - Comment
Hair! Lots of it. Really really *long* hair.
And a more than usual amount of gratuitous nudity. :-)
The GF and I just got back from the USF CDVA performance of HAiR, the American tribal love-rock musical, which is certainly older than any of its cast, and possibly older than its director -- it premiered in New York in 1968.
Let's get it out of the way up front: you would expect college kids to be less concerned than most people with taking off their clothes in front of 400 people (and yes, I think they actually pulled close to that), and you'd be right; this cast does the nude scene up, and most of them opted not to go for thongs, G-strings and the like, they just stripped off (as our British friends would put it), and stood there waiting for the music to end.
The light show was up to snuff, so you didn't get to see much, and I wasn't smart enough to sit in the front row, so I can't tell you bra sizes, but that's not what I'm here to complain about.
I give the show a good solid B, and it failed, for me (who's seen the show in two other live performances; the film doesn't count), on two points:
First is the old debate for directors casting musicals: singers or dancers.
When Corinne Broskette (herself an alum of a 1986 cast, La and Mexico, I think) cast this show for the Palladium, in 2007, she went for singers -- for the 5 leads, at least -- and let the tribe carry most of the heavy dancing.
This show's director appears to have cast for the dancing.
The leads weren't *bad* singers, you understand, and their acting was pretty good (though a solid notch below Corinne's tribe), but their singing, well... it was workmanlike. That's not really a compliment, for me.
They had the obligatory first soprano, singing kickers, and she hit them hard, but not enough of them to make me happy, and their black female lead... well, let's just say she was no Nathalie Hostin.
But at least, they *had* some black cast members. You wouldn't *believe* how much of this show you have to cut if you have no black actors.
They dropped a few scenes, and added one number that I think must have come from London, and some extra lines in Black Boys/White Boys which likewise probably came from some other book, but only a purist would notice. The audience liked it, and I only drop it to a B on technical grounds; I'd probably give it an A- othwerwise.
I heard someone on the rope line say they were off their energy today; perhaps that's it. I may try to go again, but given my October schedule, alas, I don't think I'll manage.
[ETA:] My real problem with this performance wasn't the show, which was good, it was the direction... HAiR is, at it's core, a downbeat dramatic play -- Claude comes home in a box at the end, people -- and while the dramatic threads that weave through the story are tenuous to begin with, this performance cut most of them completely. That's really what I was unhappy with; the show would have gotten an A- from me otherwise...
Still; if you Like HAiR, or have never seen it, this is a good one to go to. Ticket link back a few posts.
Sunday, October 5, 2008 @ 07:07 p.m. - Comment
from a story about the guys who run Sweedish torrent tracker site The Pirate Bay:
Sunde and Neij agree that The Pirate Bay story is difficult to encapsulate in one sitting. This is where documentary film maker Simon Klose comes in."We met during a demonstration and I thought: 'Who are these guys? Are they baby-eating monsters or what?' They piqued my curiosity," he says.
Klose, who has also worked on movies about homeless people in Tokyo and car thieves in Johannesburg, says he is now making a documentary about "hackers in Stockholm."
"It's kind of an interesting situation," he says. "This is the first time I'm making a documentary where I'm pretty sure that Hollywood will watch it."
Heh.
[ Hat tip: Slashdot, via Freshnews. ]
Thursday, October 2, 2008 @ 05:16 p.m. - Comment
but luckily, this 40th anniversary year of Hair isn't going to go by without at least *one* more local production.
It's Thursday through Oct 11 at USF, in the 550 seat Theater 1; I just called and the box office doesn't *expect* it will sell out, but tickets are available Will Call through TicketRaper, and I'll be getting mine tonight.
Monday, September 29, 2008 @ 12:16 p.m. - Comment
Arthur Hailey got it pretty much right...
Thursday, September 18, 2008 @ 05:02 p.m. - Comment
Here we go again: Company to network redlight cameras for surveillance
Wednesday, September 17, 2008 @ 04:37 p.m. - Comment
This massive crash and bailout in the mortgage and finance industry?
The guy who wrote the law that *overturned* the law that *kept* that from happening for 66 years...
is the finance policy directory for John McCain.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008 @ 02:42 p.m. - Comment
from my cow-orker, the SQL guy:
DELETE FROM office WHERE attitude in ('chipper','perky','cheerful','upbeat);
(He's not fond of company, which doesn't really explain too well the bowl full of assorted chocolate he keeps in there...
Friday, September 12, 2008 @ 02:50 p.m. - Comment
Thursday, September 11, 2008 @ 09:34 a.m. - Comment
The Republicans fucked up again.
Is it time for WeToldYouSo.com?
Sunday, September 7, 2008 @ 10:38 p.m. - Comment
Hanna is long past, Josie isn't coming anywhere near us, and there's only a 20% chance (with 80% confidence) that Ike will swing this far east after passing Cuba, so, for the moment, I'm not worrying about him, neither.
Sorry, Tina.
Saturday, September 6, 2008 @ 02:42 p.m. - Comment
... oh, screw it. Their embed won't work, and they're *encouraging people to send e-cards*.
You should go find their site and see their funny political song parody. You just shouldn't tell them I sent you.
Friday, September 5, 2008 @ 07:25 p.m. - Comment
last night. Yes, ever. Shut up. No, really, shut up.
Rays lost, but I had fun at the park anyway, even though I forgot to bring a radio.
Thursday, September 4, 2008 @ 09:42 a.m. - Comment
it's one of the default desktops with Windows XP, and it's called "Autumn".
Apparently, that scene is very fetching to some people.
Neat story; love that kind of stuff.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008 @ 10:41 a.m. - Comment
that no longer contains Don LaFontaine...
who... will introduce our movies?
Requiescat in Pace.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008 @ 11:17 a.m. - Comment
I wrote an allegedly humourous little ditty called RFC 2100.
If you're not a geek, it's probably not funny, but every once in a while I go google after it, and find a heart warming story similar to this one, which was just emailed to me by someone *I* was writing to for tech support:
Jay, I just saw this response filed away in my completed folder for me by another help desk hero, and for the first time today, caught your full signature. All evening I've been thinking in the back of my head "that name looks familiar..." Now I know why. There's a copy of RFC 2100 run off on green bar paper with a fancy dot matrix "graphic font" that's probably a decade old by now that I walked past day in and day out for a number of years, it was hanging outside the office of a good friend of mine at IBM, up until they day he was let go by AT&T after we sold our network and it's staff to them. I didn't last much longer at the blue zoo myself. It was not at all uncommon for us to joke about needing "one more name" for a host, after giving it it's internal name and it's service alias. :)
Cheers, and thanks for all the laughs.
Awwww..... <kick> <shuffle>
Tuesday, September 2, 2008 @ 09:51 a.m. - Comment
No, really.
There's a ceategory 4/5 hurricane out in the Gulf. All the models agree you have a duck's-eye view of the shotgun blast.
You have to decide whether to call an evac encompassing a million people. And if you make a mistake... people die.
So you call it, and a million people go to visit 300,000 mothers-in-law. And the storm shows up, and by the time it makes landfall, it's weakened to barely cat 2.
So what do those evacuees do afterwards? Do they wipe a hand across their collective brow and say "thank $DEITY; we had to bug out, but at least we had something to bug *back* to?
No, of course. They bitch about having to bug out at all, and next time, they'll sit it out.
Well, the Darwin Awards are in full effect, folks.
At least I get to watch 4 or 5 local news organizations wall to wall with 3 or 4 people sitting at desks proving that live TV is not always as polished as the 6-o'clock news would have you believe. Lotsa great Control Room Porn, too.
My Louisiana correspondent bugged out to his great-aunt's in Baton Rouge... which I'm hearing may get cat-1 winds as well. No update from him since last night. More, as Jerry Pournelle would say, When I Know More.
Next up: Hanna.
Monday, September 1, 2008 @ 09:37 a.m. - Comment
it's own wiki, which I'm helping edit. If you know anything, or if you need to know anything, go there first. Please spread that link far and wee...
We will, no doubt, be only one of many meta-indexes, but what can you do?
Sunday, August 31, 2008 @ 10:41 a.m. - Comment
I'm looking at mini-notes, and the HP 2133 is *head and shoulders* above the rest of the crowd...
Except that the screen treatment is completely unworkable.
One reviewer -- who notes that it's not the traditional glossy screen, but a *glossy coating layer* above the screen -- said it was actually giving him a headache.
Morons.
Friday, August 29, 2008 @ 11:19 a.m. - Comment
"People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than the example of our power."
Yup. Power is nothing -- as I was reminded by watching Drumline last night for the first time -- without control.
My favorite subversive ad campaign.
More to come on Gustav and Hillary, ur, um, "Hanna".
Thursday, August 28, 2008 @ 11:17 a.m. - Comment
I hope you're watching it on PBS -- where they're *playing* the videotape about Michele Obama -- instead of on NBC -- where they're *talking about* the damned videotape.
Monday, August 25, 2008 @ 10:29 p.m. - Comment
and I do not approve that message.
John McCain apparently used footage of Hilary Clinton dissing Barry Obama in one of his own campaign ads... and she's not happy about it.
The best sidebar?
I told the story to a Republican I know, and asked if he knew why they have to use that language... He grumbled "yeah, probably some asshole made 'em say it".
Yup. John McCain (with a little help from Russ Feingold).
Monday, August 25, 2008 @ 10:09 p.m. - Comment
know about the Presidential Emergency Satchel.
Monday, August 25, 2008 @ 08:59 p.m. - Comment
I've replaced Mark Suddath's Hurricane Track with the folks from Skeetobite Weather, who -- in addition to having really nice raw, understand that presenting it is important too, and have the best damned weather graphics I have found on the net, not excluding weather.com or the NHC -- those people really ought to hire these people... whomever they are.
They're not going to lead you by the hand, though; they're for the raw, too, just like me.
If you like the raw, like me and Jack Ryan, check them out.
In particular, they have the most readable spaghetti model plots I have yet found; better than Jonathan Vigh's.
Sunday, August 24, 2008 @ 05:32 p.m. - Comment
got to expense a trip to the Olympics.
[ I recommend rationing; we don't get full columns from Dave that often these days. ]
Friday, August 22, 2008 @ 02:04 p.m. - Comment
of something that I thought a very interesting idea back during and after Katrina a couple years ago:
Bootable, self-contained Linux distributions tuned specifically for disaster response.
Some work was being done on that front, but I lost track of it, until I did a little searching today, and came across this Ars Technica piece.
I think I'm going to put a little more research into this one...
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 @ 04:13 p.m. - Comment
