Living the Petrarchan Motif

Valentine's Day Rant 2011 Version

2011-02-13T18:54:00.003-06:00

Well friends, if it's near February 14, it must mean it's time for another Valentine's Day rant. This year I went with iambic pentameter, four line stanzas, and an abab rhyme scheme, capping it off with a couplet. 30 lines in total. The tone is a little more sober than my more recent efforts, but it matches the subject matter, I think. No zombies, or teddy bears, or other fantastical elements. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.

“The Budget”

Ah Valentine, your day has lost its sheen;

Its symbolism now commercialized

So far beyond just what it used to mean;

Now Love is wrapped in bows, all but disguised.

What happens when these fetishes get priced

So high above the reach of common folk?

Is Love worth less if lesser goods sufficed?

Would fewer even try if they were broke?

Uncertain is the economic clime

That greets this day we celebrate Romance;

The crass commercialism of the time,

No longer can continue its advance.

The celebrants now find the cost too steep

For what once was a trivial expense.

High value gifts once possible for cheap,

They now do not make good financial sense.

The syndicate of cards, and flowers, and plush

Retrench when they confront their ink of red.

Long used to profit margins much more flush,

They wither from the revenue they've bled.

Demand is low, and yet supplies still glut;

But forecasts must be met, so prices soar.

Consumers looking for a budget cut

All spent and worn, just feel gauged more and more.

With tightened belts and more so purse-strings taut,

Attendants of this love-lorn day seek out

A true display of what Love really ought

To be; A kiss, a hug, and leave no doubt.

Can Valentine's Day regain what was lost?

The choice is ours, for we decide the cost.

- James Morris, February 13, 2011

Windows 7 and Microsoft Virtualization Tools

2011-02-01T19:17:00.002-06:00

Well that's disappointing.

So I'm futzing around with my virtual environment on my Windows 7 box. I've got Microsoft's Virtual PC running a VM instance of Windows XP (otherwise known as XP Mode). I've got a project at work where I need a test bed for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so I wanted to install CentOS 5.5 (because, duh, it's free. Unlike Red Hat) on a VM Instance. Now, technically, Virtual PC is only supposed to support Windows OS, like XP, Vista, and 7, but tons of Google hits show that people are using it to run flavors of linux. Unfortunately, you find out real fast that Virtual PC can only run a 32-bit version of an OS. The installation ISOs balked on boot because they're 64-bit linux. I'm not going to download another 5 GB of installation files just for the i386 version. Fine, whatevs, I'll install VMWare's totally free VMPlayer for running my 64-bit CentOS VM. But I didn't want to install yet another Virtual Machine emulator on my box, I just wanted to use what I already had.

So that got me thinking, just what options are there if you want to stay in Microsoft's world of virtualization tools? Which led me to this this link. Boy, that sounds really simple and elegant. I guess it works, and it would get me where I wanted to go, running 64-bit VMs on Windows 7. But...really, Microsoft? If you want to compete for real in the Virtualization Realm, you're going to have to come up with some competitive tools, not backdoor workarounds, that can be installed on client OS's, not just servers. Otherwise, developers, testers, educators, are going to abandon Hyper-V because you made it too hard, or too expensive, or both.

Okay, close tag on the <geek rant>.

Har! Shiver me timbers 2010

2010-09-19T11:58:00.002-05:00

Iffen it ain't Talk Like A Pirate Day. Give 'em the stink eye if yer not served the finest gut-churning grog in the place!

Yar!

Valentine's Day 2010

2010-02-12T08:51:00.004-06:00

Eh, Valentine's Day is fast approaching, and if you read this blog, you know what that means.

Since the dreaded day is on a Sunday, I'm posting this a little early. Not too much to say about this year's effort. Ballad Verse, no internal rhyme, more plot than poetics. Enjoy!

"Teddy Steps Out"
I don't know where I started from
Or how I came to be;
I sat upon a little shelf
With others just like me.

A plushy hide envelops us
As soft as soft can be;
And beady eyes gaze out upon
A bustling company.

Both large and tall they dwarf our size
And rush throughout the day.
Among these some will slow their pace
And turn to look our way.

Awareness of this time and space
We barely register.
But gradually we noticed that
Our members disappear.

My brethren silently communed
Perplexed at what we face.
We can do nothing but observe
A dwindling of our race.

“Where do they go?” And “Who is next?”
The questions come to bear.
“And is our plight related to
These beings all out there?”

It fell to me, by common choice,
To seek and to achieve
A way to stop the kidnappings,
But first I had to leave.

How did they part, my missing friends?
What secret conduit?
And then I was gripped from behind!
A Ha! So that was it!

I floated to a counter top
With flashing lights and beeps.
I then was dropped into a sack!
It sure gave me the creeps.

The darkness made my mind go blank
I faded for a while.
Eventually I came about
And saw a toothy smile.

A giantess had hold of me;
There still was too much glare.
My sight though dim could just make out
What seemed to be a lair.

So this was what befell my chums,
A fate I scarce could guess.
Was I a meal or sacrifice?
I quailed in my distress.

She crushed me in a bear hug,
Quite worthy of the phrase;
“Alas, dear friends, we'll meet again,”
I thought in her embrace.

And then, no more, I mean, that's it.
She placed me on a shelf.
Beside me were a motley crew
Who seemed much like myself.

Dimensions, fur, and countenance,
They were not uniform.
My brethren all looked just like me,
But these guys weren't the norm.

I soon discovered common ground,
A time line here held sway.
We each appeared a year apart;
And almost to the day.

There intermixed among us were
The trappings of a rite.
The color red had shone throughout,
Displayed around the site.

Some holiday, we figured out,
And this shelf was the shrine.
A “Valentine” was what we were,
A symbol or a sign.

What that could mean, I did not know.
The others knew not, too.
From shelf to shelf we had traversed
To mark some such ado.

Each passing year we always found
An add-on to our pack.
And steadily our number grew;
I rarely did look back.

I never did meet with again
My brothers from before.
I'd hoped their fate was much like mine,
New friends, and nothing more.

This Day for “Valentines” I came
To see as an affair,
To leave the fold and to step out
And join a bigger lair.

-James Morris, February 11, 2010

PetMo 10,000

2010-01-21T20:24:00.001-06:00

Huh. At some point yesterday, some dude googling for Shakespug landed on my blog and became my 10,000th visitor. Grats!

Oh. I guess congrats to me, too.

Coming up for air update: Wireless Project initiative

2009-10-09T21:46:00.007-05:00

So what the heck have I been up to all this time?! Well...while working like a dog, buying new computer and networking equipment, fitting in a vacation to see the bro who's a bro, while also drinking a lot of his awesome wine, somewhere in there, I decided to get off my butt and start a "local wireless initiative". Otherwise known as, er, getting rid of of many computer or networking wires as possible.

I started with my usb attached printer. Since I have a laptop that I normally don't keep anywhere near my desk (where the all-in-one copier/scanner/printer is), if I ever wanted to print something, I had to walk my laptop (remembering to unplug everything) over to the desk to plug into the usb hub. Ugh. So...I plugged a donated usb bluetooth adapter into my printer, and I can now stream print jobs from my couch 10 feet away (yeah, yeah, small condo). Totally free!

The next project was to get rid of the wired keyboard and mouse. I've shunned bluetooth solutions in the past because the laggy and unresponsive feel of the input was just something I couldn't live with, especially if I was going to be doing some serious gaming with these periphals. This year seems to be the renaissance of rf devices in the 2.4 Ghz range. And when this keyboard/mouse combination became available, I knew I couldn't put it off any longer. No lag, awesome keyboard, and mouse with some serious juice, including a couple of programmable buttons, and a scroll wheel that scrolls vertical AND horizontal. Wut?! Yeah. Really. All wireless, and not bluetooth. $70.

The last wire I had to get rid of was my USB external hard drive. I love it, it's light weight and portable, but...there's this USB cable that I always have to have plugged into the laptop if I wanted to access the files on it. So...I have this Wi-Fi draft n gaming router that I actually get 300 mbps out of, and it has a USB port on it. There is a firmware update for it that allows USB hard drives to be accessible from the WAN connection...duh! Update the firmware, install the network sharing utility (a modified hot-sync'ing utility, from what I can tell), and bam...wireless USB. Since USB 2.0 can transmit at a theoretical limit of 240 mbps, and 802.11n is as fast as 300 mbps, that means that I didn't lose any speed at all when I went with this solution. I can play HD content, wirelessly, from this hard drive, and there is no lag, or dropped frames, at all. To put it a different way. I can play all my video files from this hard drive at the same speed that I already enjoyed from a wired connection. Bliss! And free! (Well, the router cost a bit, but I didn't buy it for this project.) UPDATE: USB 2.0 is supposed to have a limit of 480 Mbps, so I already lost some there. I also noticed that while I could play 720p HD content with no lag, 1080p is a totally different story. Also, file transfer rates are way slower than a wired connection, only in the 1.25 to 1.75 MB/s range. These rates could be related to settings or firmware. DLink forums are rife with complaints about the firmware updates for this router, so be warned. I expected 1080p content to lag, but did not expect file transfers to be this slow. I'll provide an update if I figure this out.
UPDATE 2: After crawling through the support forums for this particular feature of D-Link routers, this is about the fastest it's going to get. Full HD content that requires bit rates of 8 mbps and up just will not be able to stream from the USB attached hard drive without some lag. Faster (and more expensive) external USB drives can get up to about 3.75 MB/s, or ~30 mbps. I'm getting in the 14 mbps range, but streaming without buffering is what causes the lag on 1080p content. I was able to configure my Media Player Classic Home Cinema to handle the buffering (using its max setting in the the "EVR custom pres" video renderer), but it still felt like a compromise. Wired USB compares at 189 mbps or 23.8 MB/s for real world file transfer speed. And no lag. Meh. My router has the capability of Wireless USB, but I guess I can live with one more wire into my laptop.

So what's left in the wireless project initiative? I now have only 2 wires plugged into my laptop: an HDMI cable into my receiver, and an AC Adapter. If a standard ever gets adopted between WirelessHD or UWB (Ultra Wide Band), and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg, then I can get rid of the HDMI cable. And...if the wireless recharging experiments finally come to market, I can get rid of the AC Adapter, too. Even so, I'm pretty happy that I was able to pair all my wires down to just these last 2, and all relatively easy, and affordably.

Valentine's Day 2009

2009-02-14T08:01:00.003-06:00

Well, folks, it's that time of the year again. Of course we've seen the obligatory stories on anti-western sentiment around the world. Normally, I'm all for being against this holiday, but from the angle of attacking it as crassly commercial. But times are tough in 2009, and several economic sectors are hurting, especially retail, so I had a different idea about what should happen on this faux celebratory occasion. Without further ado, this year's effort.
Enjoy!

Valentine’s Day 2009: The Valentine’s Day Bailout

So Bailout, TARP, and Stimulus
Are s’posed to save the day.
But Retail, just as perilous,
Has yet to get some play.

Now comes that madeup holiday,
Already in dire straits
From Anti-Westerns making hay
Of lewd romantic dates.

Don’t florists also need a boost
To sell their fragrant wares?
Or should consumers be induced
To buy some plushy bears?

And candy makers, what of them?
Maligned for years and years,
Expanding waists and LDL,
They’re now reduced to tears.

Ah, Valentine, what would you think
If you still lived today,
To see your feast day on the brink
Of fiscal disarray?

Consumerism, long denounced,
Its debt it can repay,
If stocks and bonds can get a bounce
Before Valentine’s Day.
-James Morris, February 14, 2009

Update, Geek-Style

2008-12-08T22:30:00.003-06:00

So it's been a while since my last update. Okay, okay, it's been a while since I've posted regularly at all. Yep, rasserfrasser employers with their insane ideas about steady work to go with that steady paycheck.

Anyway, just to give you an update since the office move. Not only did I get blistered thumbs from checking every data port over that weekend, but when I came into the office that Monday, the 2 veeps spear-heading the move showed up in my cube all ashen-faced. Geh, what now?! One of the servers that host our website decided that this was the perfect time to have its hard drive go belly up. Backups? Nah, of course not. Image the server that survived? Nup, not an option, either, since it would take a week to get a replacement HDD delivered that matched the specs. Cheh. Guess who has to rebuild a whole new server from scratch...in one day...while also continuing to do all the work currently scheduled for our customers' projects? I've been playing catchup ever since.

After that, I also had an internal project to maintain our partnership status with Microsoft as an Independent Software Vendor, ISV for short. Every two years my company has to go through this process to get our software tested, and it's been my burden to package up our software and provide instructions so that a third party tester can validate that our bits meet the requirements. If we pass, we get all these goodies from Microsoft to play with, like their latest versions of, well, everything. Literally tens of thousands of dollars worth of software. Free. All so that we, as an ISV, can develop our own code to work with it. It's quite the chore. But this year was the fastest our code ever got tested. And passed. For me, though, it was just another task to check off as completed, so stop bugging me about it, Mr Veep in charge of whatever you're in charge of!

Well, this is my last week before I go on a two-week vacation, spent in much warmer climes than frosty Chicago. The year-end rush to chase every bit of revenue down is in full swing. I'm cross-training, like 4 people, just so that the company can squeeze out just that little bit while I'm gone. Who know if any of these projects will actually happen while I'm gone? Meh, I guess I'll find out when I get back because I don't intend to check any email or answer any phone calls from the office while I'm out exposing my skin to light that isn't generated by heating up exotic chemical gases in glass tubes. You know, the sun!? Four days till I'm on a plan out west. I hope I can survive!

Michael Crichton Dead at 66

2008-11-05T19:40:00.003-06:00

Of cancer. A sad day for science fiction aficionados. I will especially miss the passion and wit he brought in recent years to skepticism of the theory of Anthropogenic CO2-based Global Warming.

Windows 3.11 Finally Dead

2008-11-05T19:14:00.006-06:00

Apparently, there was some sort of brouhaha going on in Chicago yesterday...related to hope, or change. Or something. But that's not what this post is about.

No, this post is about death and finality. The finality of no more embedded licenses. Of a 15 year-old OS. Ah, Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, how nostalgic. Finally, we won't have to see that antiquated Windows™ logo as a screen saver on a beat-up cash register at some really, really, really run-down gas station.

That's hope and change I can live with.

Geek Trenches #25: The Office Move

2008-10-17T19:16:00.003-05:00

Say you've established geek cred in your company, even in a company run by geeks (yeah, believe me, all the jokes about software programmers not really being geeks are true). What happens when you're office location goes through a move? Panic sets in, just how are they going to abuse me?! Never mind that for months you've been told from the CEO all the way down to your immediate supervisor that you're "just another employee", "we've got it covered", "just expect to do what everybody else is supposed to, pack up your cube, etc."

Moving day comes...

Training room PCs have been moved the night before, how do we check that they all work (boot up, network connectivity, etc)? Er...um...My boss and the Crystal Enterprise admin are slated to go over and check that today...and I get "volunteered" to go to the new office with them (never mind that, as I pointed out, I'm just supposed to pack my cube today)...The Crystal Enterprise admin never had admin rights to the training room server to begin with. My boss doesn't have domain admin rights, either. Good thing I "was there" to grant those rights, because the Crystal Enterprise service was down, and someone needed to restart the service. And what else do we discover? Bad data ports...on half the jacks in the training room. I gave up my lunch to do "help out". So, we go back to the old office and my boss reports to the veeps "in charge" of the move about the bad ports.

Yep, I have just enough time to wolf down a Clif bar, and actually pack up my PC and peripherals before I get "volunteered" again to go back to the new office for the second time today. This time? Check every data port in the office.

Blaaarrgh

Now I have a blister on my thumbs from jacking in and out a cat5 plug into over 150 data ports. I was supposed to be having a beer with my peers at 3pm, but nooooo....

And tomorrow, I get to go back to the office again, along with all the other staff, to set up all my stuff in my cube...I wonder what new and lovely surprises will be in store for me?

Cursed by competence...

Coding through the motions

2008-05-04T09:50:00.005-05:00

It's going to be another long day. One database platform down, two to go...

On another note, I finally picked up a coffee grinder. Had to buy it at the Schmucks™ just down the block because, a) I need coffee and had just whole bean left in the kitchen, and b) I need coffee now! Totally lowtech affair where you decide how fine the ground by ticking off the seconds. Probably a good thing with my current state of mind right now.

Mmmm....coffee.

Working over the weekend...

2008-05-03T16:30:00.005-05:00

Yes, it's been quite a long time since I've posted anything. Work has been sapping so much of my time that I'm barely keeping on top of the news, let alone forming an interesting enough opinion to post on a topic.

So what am I doing now? Right now, on a Saturday at 4:30pm local time? Working. Well, right right now, I'm waiting for a developer to call me back so that I can figure out a discrepancy in table schema between the oracle, ms sql, and ms access platforms. So, here's a pic of my home work environment:

Not the sexiest use of a badass 50" HD plasma, but I do get to brag about it being part of my dual-monitor configuration. That's an RDP session to my work PC on the big screen, and you can kinda make out the VB code window on it. My laptop, acting as the primary monitor, is in the foreground, right.

Yep. Geek.

C'mon, developer, gimme a callback! I want to finish this up and get this software release out the door!

Update (8:30pm local time): You know, debugging my own code...fine, I get that. I wrote it, I should at least make sure it works.

Debugging somebody else's code? Especially when it looks like pure, chunky effluvia that obviously was never even tested? Yeah, that's not so much fun. I'm checking in this drek and calling it a night.

Valentine's Day 2008

2008-02-14T08:00:00.003-06:00

Around this time of year you always see stories in the news about the build up to Valentine's Day, the perfect gift, etc. Gag.

Anyway, in among these articles, you also see some "News of the Odd" type reports about how some other countries have their own take on St. Valentine's Feast Day. Like in some east Asian countries.

Or how some strict, mostly anti-western elements in other countries don't really handle it well, at all.

This year's poem, set to ballad verse, touches upon that, and how maybe we here in the West might want to rethink the whole multi-culti thing on our own soil (Archbishop of Canterbury, I'm looking in your direction).

Enjoy!

Valentine’s Day 2008: Love Under Siege

Mercantilism run amok,
At least so in the West,
Describes this day so few can duck
Whose Saint runs second best.

And while we suffer in the thrall
Of Hallmark, F.T.D.,
A world away, there is a brawl
Where romance is the key.

The Saudis banned the ruddy rose
To dampen passion’s flame,
For fear that when such ardor flows,
Romance they cannot tame.

Ironic, thus, that in the land
Where Islam’s honor bound,
St. Valentine, as contraband,
Has martyrs underground.

The Hindus, too, wage war upon
The Western god Amor.
Their nativists denounce the Son
Of Venus, to restore

Tradition, as a counter to
Romantic Love’s appeal.
That nation sure does seem to rue
That Kamasutra deal.

So maybe we should reassess
The dues that we must pay.
Our Western Culture won’t regress
On St. Valentine’s Day.

-James Morris, February 14, 2008

Scansion, Shmansion, a Recap of 2007

2008-02-13T21:19:00.003-06:00

I guess I owe my readers, all 5 of you, a li'l su'n su'n before the day of horrors, I mean Valentine's Day, commences.

Last year's effort was, shall we say, ghoulish. Not much to it besides it being "real horrorshow, droogs". If Michael Jackson wrote his stuff in iambic pentameter couplets, "Thriller" might have sounded a little like this. He probably wouldn't have sold 104 million copies, but hey, my rhymes are better.

Oh well. This year's effort is written and ready to post. Meh, it's cute and worth a chuckle.

Don't forget to click on the poetry label to read my poems from years' past.

Fred for McCain

2008-02-09T01:01:00.001-06:00

If Fred says so...

I will say this...I voted for Romney in my Chicago primary expecting him to lose to McCain, which is what happened.

I will sooooo definitely vote for McCain over zeenuu, I mean, Huckabee in a real primary, as if the Huck had a chance in this state, anyway.

McCain over Obamessiah or Hill/Bill? Yeah...if Perot could get 19% for no reason other than a viable choice, then McCain picks up 60% in the general. Damn. I never thought I wanted a viable geezer for president until Reagan died and left me no alternative. A president over 72 y/o? We live in interesting times, I dare say.

Netscape Finally Throws in the Towel

2007-12-28T16:35:00.001-06:00

Netscape Navigator shuffles off its virtual coil. I bet most people are scratching their heads at this story wondering, "Netscape was still around?" Many obits will mention Microsoft's decision to kill Netscape with the antitrust decision to bundle its (at the time) crappy version of a browser with Windows 95. Less be will said, however, about these real self-immolating decisions, like selling itself to AOL, and allowing an open-source group named Mozilla run with the original code and create Firefox, effectively taking away all remaining marketshare.

If you've seen Netscape 9 lately, you'd realize it was nothing more than Firefox with a branded skin around it. Not a very satisfying end to the browser that opened the internet to the rest of the world.

Merry Geeky Christmas!

2007-12-25T14:03:00.000-06:00

And have a FullMetal New Year!

Geek Cred, I haz it!

2007-12-24T15:57:00.000-06:00

So I was dinking around on Wired Magazine and found this quiz on sounds from Sci-Fi movies. I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't score 100. Post your scores in the comments.

	I received 92 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz

Via Geek Dad.

The Matrix - I Haz It

2007-12-17T22:57:00.000-06:00

Okay...Otta's whining. I must be a bad boy. I swear, I'll come up for air...when I'm on vacation. Three more days, and I'll be in Pasadena. And I can finally put this crazy year to rest.

And then start it all up again. Sure, it's nice to be appreciated at work. But they usually reward you with more work...

Samurai Sword Wielders Update

2007-11-21T17:49:00.000-06:00

I've remarked on samurai sword-wielding wannabes making the news before. Meet our latest saber rattler, Ryan William Huber, 24, of Rochester, MN. This time, he was just waving his katana around because some kids were "being too loud." Isn't twenty-four a little too young to be acting like the neighborhood crank yelling at youngsters to keep off his lawn? With the array of charges being laid against him, seems like he mouthed off quite a bit.

At least it wasn't porn that was being too loud, just some kids.

****

Yes, yes, I know it's been almost a month since I've updated my blog. I had a spare hour at work to catch up on the news because it's the day before Thanksgiving and it got a little quiet around the office. I just could not resist posting on this story.

Microbrew Costs Force Prices Upwards

2007-10-26T18:09:00.000-05:00

Uh oh...The cost of beer snobbery is about to go up.

I knew that hops, wheat, and barley production were down, but the rising price of fuel (think transportation costs) and glass are now also affecting craft brewers.

Darn...my hobbies keep getting more expensive.

Mini-update on the Linux Experiment

2007-10-22T21:54:00.000-05:00

Hard drives fail. It's a fact of life. This particular hard drive was 6 and a half years old. Just when a PC gets a new, and secure, lease on life with a free OS...

C'est la vie.

This might be an omen to recycle the really old hardware and buy a new, really cheap, tower, and start over.

Computers...tch...what a great way to waste time.

Coming Up For Air: A Response

2007-10-10T19:10:00.000-05:00

I just had to respond to Brenda (and update various online readers, friends, and assorted lookey-loos).

Would it were so that a cute she-lass were the reason for my blog output dropping like a rock towards Davey Jones' Locker.

Work is a cruel mistress. Expecting you to, like, work, and stuff. Can barely read the headlines much less think blogthoughts about them. VMWare. Servers and server racks. Online Forum software for customers. I'd complain more, but it would sound more like bragging about how much fun work is. Yeah. Geek.

And friends! Hah, inviting me to baseball games, hockey games, and parties, and weddings, sheesh. It's almost as if they enjoy my company, or something.

Puh, and don't get me started on what happens at home. Open Linux OS...wow, it almost rivals Sudoku in wasting time. Almost anything that a person would normally do on a home computer simply doesn't work "right out of the box." I'm lucky that I could actually surf the internet on a browser with an included flash plugin (Thanks to Mozilla and Adobe for throwing a teeny-tiny bone to all the open source linux communities out there). Want to listen to some music? Here's a nice looking open source media player included in the OS install package. Oh, you want to actually play an mp3 file? Why didn't you say so? Yeah, about that...um, you gotta install the codec for that first. Why didn't the codec come with the player? Yeah...open source linux gets that question...a lot. Google "linux mp3", and you'll see what I'm talking about. It will come up again, and again, and again (why can't I play mpeg, xvid, divx, h264, ad infinitum). Some sort of legal mumbo jumbo related to Open Source licensing and bundling patented/protected properties. Add the complication of sharing files between my Windows XP machine (where the aforementioned mp3 files came from) and the linux box, and you begin to get an inkling of where all my free time went. Good thing I don't buy my music through ickTunes™ and use it as my media librarian, or else I would have had to burn my music to CD and transfer files that way. Yes, the Quince™ is evil.

Yes, yes, I hear you all shouting Geek!!!11!1!1!1 while pointedly jabbing your collective fingers at my virtual me. Don't forget all the anime and manga I still try to fit into my schedule, as well. I fell down the rabbit hole. Still haven't met Agent Smith, though.

Anyway, that's what going on with me, and still going on. I had mentioned, optimistically, that my schedule would lighten up around October-ish. Nup. The implementation projects at work are coming at me fast and furious, all so that the company can get some revenue on the books for 2007. I get that. And boy, do I ever get it. I'll drop in at teh Wheel occasionally. And the bro generally knows what's up with me, if you want to ask him. I'm in a genuinely good mood, if a little frazzled. That's alright. I haven't abandoned you. And thanks for stopping by.

Yarrgh! Did Ye Hoist the Mizzen Mast?

2007-09-19T19:34:00.000-05:00

It were International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Feel like ye not be unnerstandin' yer harties? Set yer compass this-a-way fer some Pirate education.

Harr!

9/11: Never Surrender

2007-09-11T22:00:00.000-05:00

Never forget.

I've been mostly dead all day

2007-09-06T19:25:00.000-05:00

"Mostly dead is slightly alive."

I better post something to keep the buzzards away. Due to circumstances somewhat under my control, like a hectic work schedule, an active social life (I can't believe it, either!), a stack of books piled high on my nightstand, and gigs and gigs of anime and manga queued up for eyeball time, blogging on the news has unfortunately taken a backseat.

It's not like there isn't anything interesting to post on, it's just that I barely have time to keep up with the events of the day, let alone come up with an ironic take on them. Fear not, work will likely slow up a tad around, oh...October-ish.

For now, though, enjoy the links and to the left (especially my bro) to keep up your interest.

In the meantime, I still fully intend to live the Petrarchan lifestyle.

Lake Michigan Declining Water Level Not From Global Warming

2007-08-15T19:10:00.000-05:00

That's a big oops.

Remember when that lake in South America vanished and people wanted to blame global warming, but it really just drained away? (The Warmenizers still blamed global warming because the natural ice dam melted) Envirobats have been blaming Lake Michigan's rapidly lowering water level on several causes, mostly thirsty Chicago or poor resource management, and then recently, global warming. Well, it turns out that a dredging way back in the 1960s is the main culprit, and some government types have known about it for decades.

Can we plug a big stopper in that hole already?

Emperor Chavez Dissolves the Senate

2007-08-15T18:55:00.000-05:00

And all vestiges of the Old Republic were swept away. Not really, but it certainly looks like Chavez is pulling a "Castro" in Venezuela. Nationalizing big industry sectors, like Telecoms, Media, and Energy. Setting up one-party rule. And now trying to change the national constitution to wipe out term limits for the presidency, so that he could be dictator-for-life. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he's a Baathist. You know, like Saddam Hussein.

Combine this move with his South American regional power aspirations and his use of oil as a carrot, and it's all very troubling, especially for someone who claims to be against establishing an Empire like the "Great Satan" and its devil "Seenyor Boosh." All eyes will be on how the opposition will organize a counter to Chavez's referendum.

Pro and Con Global Warming Research Money

2007-08-07T20:37:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've posted on Anthropogenic Global Warming. The hot air about it ever since the IPCC released its fourth assessment has been how best to ruin the First World's economy with one wealth redistribution scheme or another to level it down to the Third World's economy. Oh, you didn't know that the Marxists took over? I'm sorry, let me use their terminology. I mean, "Carbon Credit Cap and Trade Scheme" versus "Carbon Cap and Tax Scheme."

Anyway, the grand poobah of how to make money (oh wait, money isn't "made", it's either "stolen" from the poor, or "redistributed" back to them) off enviro-masochism, Al Gore, recently alleged that there's a coordinated effort to fund global warming denialists.

“There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about $10 million a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community” about global warming, Gore said at a forum in Singapore.

The $10 million figure seems quite arbitrary, but take the $10,000 "bounty" that Exxon offered, and multiply it by how many "denialist" reports are out there, and you get the idea.

Comparisons to the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy notwithstanding, I wondered how much money is spent each year on the IPCC. Believe me, it took quite a bit of search parametizing to find it, especially given the U.N.'s penchant for lack of transparency on all things budgetized, but I did, in a news article on how the IPCC process works. (Emphasis mine)

The IPCC is a scientific panel created by the UN Environmental Organization (UNEO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Once every five or six years it issues a report summarizing the current status of research on climate change. It operates on a minimal annual budget of only €5 million ($6.8 million). To be able to fulfill its mandate, the IPCC is dependent on assistance from UN members. They finance the conferences and provide the scientists who, as authors, are responsible for the contents of individual chapters.

So, $10 million from the various polluting industries against just about $7 million to fund the IPCC, alone. How much funding per year goes to all research groups putting out the "consensus" papers? It's even money that someone will work out that figure, and I'm sure it will be just as arbitrary as the Goracle's figure.

Nerdiness in the News

2007-07-31T18:23:00.001-05:00

I guess some study by a linguist (H/T Insty) has been all over the blogosphere that tried to define nerds as "hyperwhite" because of, at least according to this one study, our eschewing of "trendy" brown slang like hip-hop, for grammatically correct English. Let's just leave aside the entire rest of the non-English-speaking nerds of the world for the moment, or even the non-native born nerds in America who speak English with an accent.

Instead, just try to explain to me, then, these LOTR Elvish fans

Or the eponymous "Trekkers"?

I'm not buying it.

Winnie Cooper making math sexy? That, I'd buy. Oh, and she seems to back up these sentiments nicely.

Somehow, I get the feeling that this researcher watched just an anthology of "Weird" Al videos to reach her "hyperwhite" conclusion:

M. C. Escher, that's my favorite MC...

See? Even "hyperwhite" nerds wanna roll wit da homies.

Klingons Have a Bad Day

2007-07-26T21:01:00.000-05:00

Gloating is unseemly, but way too much fun.

This sort of stuff never happened when I was in charge of the Southern Sector Klingon warrior data.

LOLCATS Meme Joins the Rebel Alliance

2007-07-25T23:07:00.000-05:00

So you think the cat macro meme is just this year's Numa kid?

It's official, lolcats is now part of the American Psyche.

Don't believe me? Check out the LOL WARS group on the Star Wars MashUps site, especially this post.

"Im in ur trenches blowing up ur death star."

lulz.

Ward Churchill Finally Treated Like a Real Professor

2007-07-24T19:45:00.001-05:00

...and the University of Colorado Board of Regents rewarded him commensurately for his efforts to the academy. Of course, for him, "getting what he richly deserved" means firing him in an 8-1 vote. If we recall Churchill's reaction to the UofC President's unequivocal recommendation earlier this year, perhaps reporters will be able to find him under that bridge with the rest of his illustrious "colleagues."

H/T Insty. Jawa, too.

E-Vote Leads to Revote in Berkeley

2007-07-17T19:11:00.000-05:00

More bad news for Diebold. This might be the first time a judge has ordered a revote because of incompetent use of e-voting machines by under-trained election officials. Every fear about e-voting machines seems to have happened in Berkeley: lack of electronic forensics, lack of ability to ensure security of a vote for a recount, lack of paper backup for manual recount.

It's pretty rare for a revote to happen in the U.S. That it happened in an election where e-voting machines were used doesn't inspire a lot confidence in this technology.

Germans And Anger Issues With PCs

2007-07-17T18:48:00.000-05:00

Heh.

What is it with Germans taking out their anger on PCs? Was he playing Unreal Tournament late at night? Or maybe the computer was just trying to find the key to "Escape":

Where's it at? Where is the Escape Button!?

I think that key was scattered all over the street with the rest of the keyboard and assorted silicon innards. Seriously, any excuse to post "Angry German Kid" is a good excuse.

More Bleach Comedy Mashup

2007-07-16T22:31:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted a Bleach/Dane Cook mashup in a while. Here's his voyeuristic take on bad couples and their "nothing" fights (A little NSFW content):

Hey, dude. Dude, dude...I know what you're saying about the jelly, bro.

EU May Allow GMO Potato Crop

2007-07-16T18:08:00.000-05:00

...but not for a lack of trying to stop it. This BASF-engineered potato may slip in through the back door via parliamentary procedure, but only because the arcane vote-weighting system used by EU's farming ministers failed to provide a majority for those countries attempting to kill the crop from moving forward. This GMO potato would be the first crop to be allowed entry into the EU since the de facto moratorium of genetically modified foods in 2000. Although that moratorium expired in 2004, each GMO crop brought up to a vote before the EU Farm Commission has been nixed by the weighted majority. Until now.

Per the rules of the EU, this essentially means that the crop will be approved as soon as it is placed on the agenda of the EU's environment commission. As the Reuters' story points out, there will likely be much reluctance to bring it up, so default approval may take a while. Still, even though BASF has stressed from the beginning that this potato crop was never meant for consumption, either by livestock or humans, this is a significant crack in the EU's membership's stonewalling of allowing GMO crops to be introduced into the European market. It remains to be seen, however, if attitudes change about GMO crops that are supposed to be eaten.

More on European GM-phobia here and here.

Ginormous Graduates To Real Word

2007-07-10T20:46:00.000-05:00

Heh. It's official, "ginormous" now has its own entry in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. I've been an abuser of this word for a number of years, so I'm glad to see its status rise.

Also joining "ginormous" are "sudoku" and "Bollywood." It's about time.

Parisians Undergo Etiquette Program

2007-07-09T18:38:00.000-05:00

Much has been made in Western Media of the efforts Beijing is making to gentrify itself in preparation for the influx of tourists for the Olympic Games in 2008, usually with a snicker in tone that implies Chinese backwardness when it comes to manners. It should be noted, though, that Paris, and Parisians in particular, still reign supreme as the rudest to tourists.

So it comes as no surprise that Paris officials have rolled out a new program to teach some manners to their "grumpy" citizens.

Heh. Seems like their re-education program shares some similarity with Beijing's. Note the emphasis on smiles, and the focus in particular on cab drivers' etiquette. We'll have to see how that infamous Gallic shrug takes to it, though.

Wookiee Assaults Up to Two for Year in Hollywood

2007-07-09T18:24:00.000-05:00

Wookiees sure are going crazy in Hollywood this year. This time, a wookiee is being sought for alleged sexual assault of a Marilyn Monroe look-a-like. Police are investigating. The wookiee-doe eluded arrest, but he shouldn't be too hard to find. Ms Monroe, it's doubtful, will ever utter the line "I'd just as soon kiss a wookiee" again.

If you'll recall, earlier this year, another wookiee was arrested for assaulting Japanese tourists, that time in front of the Mann's Chinese Theater not too far away. No word on if it's the same wookiee with "anger issues." That's a genetic trait of the species, isn't it?

Sega Adds Bleach to Nintendo

2007-07-08T21:45:00.000-05:00

Sega is releasing two games based on the popular anime series "Bleach" to the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DS.

After seeing the manga become an anime series, which then was adapted as a musical, and then into a feature length movie, it was inevitable that this juggernaut would make its way to video games. Bleach fans, at least on the forums I occasionally frequent (heh, like all the time), are enthusiastic to the point of hyperventilation for the Wii version. I can't wait till the YouTube videos start showing up of people slashing wildly to get their Bankai out.

Zangetsu!!!

PetMo 5000!

2007-07-05T18:23:00.001-05:00

I don't get a lot of traffic around these parts, so big round numbers still mean something. I reached 5000 unique visitors today:

Not surprisingly, it was the bro who put me over the top. Thanks again for visiting this little corner of the web.

The Answer Really is 42

2007-07-05T18:14:00.000-05:00

...But the question is How much mass does the Milky Way Galaxy actually have? It turns out, at least according to the latest calculations, that the Milky Way has a mass of 3X10 to the 42nd power kilograms. That's a 3 followed by 42 zeroes.

The Earth Mark II (or v 2.0 in the internet age) is still working on the question to "Life, the Universe, and Everything", last I heard.

h/t Ace

Meh. Slow News Day...

2007-07-02T18:27:00.000-05:00

...So here's a lolcat I made. Did I mention I love the website ThinkGeek.com? Every lolcat knows you need a towel, and that the answer is 42:

Can we stop talking about the ickPhone, already?

O HAI GUIZE NISE TSHIRT

2007-06-24T21:07:00.000-05:00

The folks at ThinkGeek have struck while the marketing iron is hot with the LOLCATS meme:

I LOLLED.

Wash and wear your favorite lolcat meme today!

Update: Your lolcat t-shirt collection would be incomplete without DO NOT WANT! in it:

O HAI. I can has t-shirt?!

France: Paranoid and Hilarious

2007-06-20T18:43:00.000-05:00

...for banning Blackberry usage by its government employees.

Why? Supposedly they're worried about intercepted email, because RIM's servers, where the emails pass through, physically reside in foreign countries. With such a restriction, you'd think these countries might be hostile to France. Only if you think with a Gaullic perspective:

E-mails sent from "Le BlackBerry" pass through servers in the United States and Britain, and France fears that makes the system vulnerable to snooping by the U.S. National Security Agency, Le Monde reported.

France, our staunchest ally, right?

"It's not a question of trust," French lawmaker Pierre Lasbordes told The Associated Press. "We are friends with the Americans, the Anglo-Saxons, but it's economic war."

Sure. Where's the lack of trust?

France. Showing once again that its national pride is connected to a competition with Britain and America. A contest in which France is the lone competitor.

Update: PC World's take on this story provided more technical information on why other countries have approved usage of Blackberries in secure data transmission.

France's government, of course, has made bone-headed IT decisions before.

Spammers Get Sneakier with Image Links

2007-06-20T18:28:00.001-05:00

The arms race continues between spammers and spam filters.

That's a pretty underhanded tactic, using image hosting sites like Photobucket or ImageShack to store the image files, then pumping out spam emails with inserted html links to these images. Unless your email settings block these websites netnanny-style, you'll see the image, and the spam offering. People like seeing shared photos embedded in email, so the option of changing your message format to text-only (with the embed links as attachments) isn't a preferable one.

Spam filtering software can analyze the photo in the link to determine if it's a legitimate image file, but not very well. And, as the article points out, spammers can vary the meta-info of the image file to thwart those efforts currently. The spam wars continue.

The Backlash Gains Momentum...

2007-06-18T19:31:00.000-05:00

...Against the "Jesus Phone." That's a lot of hype for the iPhone to live up to for what is essentially a $600 cell phone.

Any takers on how soon the backlash against the backlash will start?

I've got the line at 12 seconds.

Update: That didn't take long. h/t ZDNet.

More updates: And yes, I can see how using all of iPhone's features will be very, very expensive, considering how telecoms charge cell phone customers for bandwidth.

Back...Sorta

2007-06-14T15:05:00.000-05:00

I'm back in Chicago from my trip out to my bro's monastery, but still on vacation from work (yay!), so just taking it easy. The flight out was less eventful than the flight in. The less eventful a flight, the better! I'm already missing these guys:

"Oh. Right. From this angle, too."

For the other angle, go see my bro's post. No internet connection while we were out there (I know, right!?), so just catching up here. Thanks for the kind comments.

Blogging Hiatus

2007-06-08T18:49:00.001-05:00

No really! Not like you could tell with the frequency of my blog output, lately.

For details, go here.

Real World Study on 5 Second Rule

2007-06-08T18:34:00.000-05:00

...shows it could be extended to 30 seconds for wet food and up to a minute for dry food.

Now that's a study people can use! Not like I was ever really concerned about eating food I just dropped on the floor...although I should point out that the cafeteria in the study gets cleaned once a day.

My floor? Two points to be aware of:

I'm a bachelor.

Who lives alone.

Right. I'm lucky the dust bunnies haven't hatched a plan for a preemptive strike against me while I naively slumber on the off chance I might one day take them out.

Still, it's good to know that a reasonably clean floor is not going to kill you if you eat food you just dropped on it.

Germany's First Spouse Shuns Spotlight

2007-06-08T18:28:00.000-05:00

Funny article on the "sour" husband of Chancellor Merkel of Germany.

If Hillary! gets elected, I can't imagine a more polar opposite story being written about Bill as the First Gentleman.

Area of Brain Responsible for Deja Vu Found

2007-06-07T19:10:00.000-05:00

A couple of previous studies have been tantalizingly close to identifying just what the phenomena of deja vu and other memory mix-ups like false memory, UFO abduction, and past lives, really are.

A new study in mice seems to have found the exact area in the brain responsible for the feeling of familiarity that arises in similar situations. According to the study, when the dentate gyrus is damaged or impaired, the brain has difficulty distinguishing between two similar but different situations. It will be interesting to see if the same relationship occurs in humans, and would certainly go a long way towards understanding the susceptibility some people have to memory errors.

Difference Between Career and Hobby?

2007-05-30T19:26:00.000-05:00

Right now, not so much, and I couldn't be happier.

I've completed the installation and configuration of free wiki software at work, at least sufficiently enough to gauge feedback on it. If you're interested, go here to download it and try it out for yourself. ASPs running macros. Super easy. The built in page editor is super-klugy, at least when using the built-in macro tags, but once I configured the wiki to accept raw html, it became as easy as, well, a blog post editor in html mode. Upload image files? No problem. Attachments on the page? All too easy. Seriously, I'm being paid right now to do something that I already do in my spare time. As a hobby. Something I'm doing right now, in fact.

Yeah, work is totally teh 5uXX0r when you're having too much fun.

The boss came to me today and asked if I knew anything about installing and implementing web-based forum software for our userbase. I smiled a little smile. Sure, it's not like I'm an administrator for a forum right now or anything. Oh wait, yes I am. Nobody in my company knows PHP right now, so I again went for something using ASPs running macros. Easy enough. So that's what's on tap for the rest of the week. As with everything else in my company, you propose it, you own it. Oh Noes, administering a wiki and a forum, how will I ever...yeah, yeah. Too easy. Best part is, all of it is open source and free, which is important to a small company like where I work.

Anyway, when work is this much fun, it means less time to read the news at work. Oh well. I'm totally getting my geek on. Less status bar and more analysis, please.

ICANN Haz Lawsuit?

2007-05-29T19:14:00.000-05:00

...against RegisterFly.

I couldn't resist the lolcat-style headline. GoDaddy.com will benefit from its competitor's complete meltdown by taking up its domain name registry, which will allow customers to renew their domain name registration. RegisterFly's customers have been in complete limbo web-wise, watching their domain name registrations lapse and not being able to do a thing about it while the company sorted out its myriad troubles, after ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) decertified it.

Airbus Execs Accused of Insider Trading

2007-05-29T18:53:00.000-05:00

More bad news for Airbus and its parent company EADS, who have been charged with knowing that the A380 project was facing massive delays and cost overruns for 3 months prior to the announcement. According to the story:

EADS’ Web site shows that Forgeard and other executives exercised stock options within two weeks following the March 6 meeting. In fact, La Tribune said, some 85 percent of the company’s 800 top officials exercised options soon after the meeting, despite a March 8 announcement of record profits in 2005.

When EADS finally made public the A380's problems, the company's stock plummeted some 25%. If these charges hold, the damage to EADS and Airbus will be of Enronic proportions.

UC President Says Fire Churchill

2007-05-29T18:42:00.000-05:00

The president of the University of Colorado, in a ten page letter, has recommended the firing of Ward Churchill for plagiarism and fabrication in his scholarship.

Churchill's reaction to the news is rather telling:

"I've got more faith in almost anything (than in the university process)," he said. "A random group of homeless people under a bridge would be far more intellectually sound and principled than anything I've encountered at the university so far."

Funny, it sounds to me like President Hank Brown is suggesting precisely that Churchill join this august group there.

MSM Bias on Bush and Kyoto

2007-05-29T18:22:00.000-05:00

President Bush did not reject the Kyoto Protocol in 2001. The U.S. Senate, in a 95-0 vote, warned Clinton and Algore that it would not ratify the treaty if they dared to sign the U.S. onto it in 1997.

This is a historical fact that is easily verifiable by the simplest of internet searches, yet some AP and Reuters reporters (and their editors) don't seem to employ the barest of fact-finding skills when vetting a story. My bro has been following this phenomenon, as have bigger bloggers like Instapundit, among others. Still, I believe Joe is the first to suggest we actually contact Reuters and AP in a concerted effort to point out that the MSM, whose alleged journalistic standards are supposed to be better than bloggers because they have larger resources for fact-checking, are, at best, not using these resources, and, at worst, turning a blind eye to the biases of their reporters to swipe at President Bush whenever a story even tangentially mentions Global Warming.

Follow my bro's links to make your voice heard at Reuters and AP.

30 years of Star Wars

2007-05-27T13:20:00.000-05:00

...and Rob and his crew of Bucky and Satchel are making the most of it:

Political Views Have Genetic Component: Twin Study

2007-05-24T19:05:00.000-05:00

A new study is out on how genetics might play a role in determining political views, based on the politics of fraternal twins vs identical twins:

Research by John Hibbing, a University of Nebraska political scientist, showed that identical twins share more political beliefs than fraternal twins. They also, of course, share more genes.

"Forty, perhaps 50 percent of our political beliefs seem to have a basis in genetics," said Hibbing, whose studies were included in Jost's analysis.

While genetics are unlikely to "hardwire" people into being liberal or conservative, Hibbing said that genes could make people more or less likely to have certain values or react to situations in a particular way.

I can personally say that I identify with these findings. My bro and I agree on just about every political point, I think. And he went to Cal for college and I went...all over, really. A good "heh" moment reading this article today.

New Comet Theory for the Ice Age

2007-05-21T19:17:00.000-05:00

Did a comet exploding in the atmosphere above Canada kill off the Wooly Mammoth? Sounds plausible, especially with the finding of an iridium layer in the rock strata for that timeframe, around 13,000 years ago. The smoking gun for the comet extinction theory of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was also an iridium layer. This should spur new digging expeditions to look for more evidence for a comet blast. Cool stuff.

Eco-Tourism in a Bottle

2007-05-21T19:15:00.000-05:00

Deep sea water, desalinated, and sold as a gourmet ingredient sounds just silly, doesn't it? Didn't they used to make these kind of healthy claims about spring water in a bottle? This entrepreneur's technology for desalinating the pumped sea water right on the ship, claimed to be cheaper than currently available methods now in use for relief efforts (like during the Indian Ocean Tsunami), sounds more promising than the end product of exotic Hawaiian deep ocean water.

Gimmicky to say the least, but definitely on the bleeding edge of eco-touristy type products that will be coming to market soon. Prove your trendy eco-cred, and how alarmed you are for the condition of the environment, by the expensive vodka you swill. Almost like carbon indulgences.
_______________________________________

Note to my beleaguered readers: Yes, it's been more than a week since my last post. Work has been...interesting, to say the least. There are a couple of internal projects that have been hand delivered to me by my boss (you know how to install and implement an internal corporate web-based wiki database, right James?) that sound cool, if people would leave me alone for just two seconds. "But how does this affect me," I hear you whine. It means, of course, that I don't have as much time to scan my RSS news feeders during work hours, so you're stuck with me posting when I have time in the evenings. Whatever I can't get to, I send over to the bro, who is usually happy to oblige. Thanks again for keeping my little blog warm.

Differences between Japanese and American Emoticons: Study

2007-05-13T14:26:00.000-05:00

There was a fascinating news article last Thursday on how culture affects the reading of emoticons between the Japanese and the Americans. Because Americans focus more on the mouth when attempting to read facial expressions, our emoticons have also evolved this way, :) for example, the parenthesis representing a smiling mouth. The Japanese, on the other hand, rarely use exaggerated expressions when emoting, so culturally, they focus on a subject's eyes when reading expressions. Consequently, their emoticons have evolved to emphasize the eyes, ^_^ where the carrots are smiling eyes. If you've ever been on an anime forum, you would see a whole range of these asian style emoticons.

Then, of course, there's the whole subgenre of lolcaticons. I wonder what the study would have to say about them:

Update: See here and here for more examples and explanations of Japanese emoticons.

No Blogging Lately

2007-05-10T19:14:00.000-05:00

More excuses, of course. I've been ill the past couple of days, and then catching up on work today. So, no blogging. I figure I need to ease back into it. I promise to be interesting really soon...heh.

Ceiling Height Affects Thinking: Study

2007-05-07T19:38:00.000-05:00

Meh. The researchers point to vaulted ceilings in churches as historical evidence that humans have known about this effect on thinking. I immediately thought of a different kind of structure: warehouses converted into lofts and listed as "live/work spaces."

Sounds like a justification for "creative types" to keep inhabiting allegedly cool lofts, while shackling analysts into cavelike cubicles.

Not that I'm claiming to belong to one camp or the other, mind you.

Canadian Cat Scares Off Mail Carrier

2007-05-06T12:02:00.000-05:00

So this story about a housecat in Canada unnerving the mail carrier made the rounds on Friday. The stories don't specify what cat behavior would have so spooked her, but I have an idea.

"I has a mail k thx brb"

Preparing to Copy Windows Fun

2007-05-03T20:22:00.000-05:00

I know I give Apple a hard time on this blog (click on the "Mac Wars" Category), but hey, it's all in good fun. By the way, have you downloaded the security patch for QuickTime yet? You know, for that hack attack at that conference on security? 10 days, that's, like, what, the fastest that Apple has ever fixed anything, right?

Anyway, oh yeah, Mac OS has fans for user-friendliness. Windows isn't known for garnering any fans when head-scratching quirks of the file-copy command have been around since, oh Windows 2.0. Go read the whole thing for Dvorak's archness, but I'll quote the fun:

1. The Time-Fluctuation Phenomenon
You try moving a folder from here to there, and you get the Preparing to Copy message—followed by an estimated completion time of 5 hours! Okay, it's a big folder, so you decide to go downstairs to watch some TV. The copying begins. It looks good. In fact, it's going pretty fast. Then the time drops to 2 hours! Then it jumps to 3 hours! Then back to 2 hours and 10 minutes! What's so difficult about estimating the time? Can't they do some normalizing?
2. The Delayed-Query Syndrome
So you've got the 5-hour copy going, and you leave to watch TV. Then you come back 4 hours later, and nothing's been copied! There's a query box asking if you really want to move some read-only file. So you click Yes, and there's still 5 hours left to go.
3. The Long-Filename Anomaly
There you are, copying a folder, and near the end of the process, the whole thing aborts because you've got a filename that's too long to copy. What? How did the file get there in the first place if it's got a name that's too long to copy? I've never understood this one. And why doesn't the copying function just finish the job and leave the one file behind?
4. The Drive-Full Abort
This is a major baffler. The Preparing to Copy message appears, and the machine seems to be doing something. Then it aborts out of the blue because your drive is full. Hey, Microsoft jerks! I have an idea! How about checking to see if there's space on the drive BEFORE you start copying? What exactly is the Preparing to Copy function supposed to do anyway? Cripes.
5. The Multiple-Folder-Slowdown Paradox
You try to copy one folder and get an estimated completion time of an hour. Then you slide a second folder over, and Windows says that one will take 30 minutes. But now the first one stalls, and its estimated completion time leaps to an hour and a half. With each additional folder, each completion time skyrockets. But if you copy all the folders at once, the total time is significantly reduced. So that miserable Windows multitasker isn't copying the folders one at a time. Like an idiot, it's copying a little bit from this one and then a little bit from that one and then a little bit from—how hard can this be to fix?
6. The Yes-to-All Baffler
You get a query during a file transfer asking if you want to overwrite an existing file with the same name, and you know there's a bunch of them to overwrite, so you check the Yes to All box. This should mean that you're answering yes to all such queries, and you can go downstairs to watch some more TV. But no! The box reappears shortly with the same question! How many times do you have to say Yes to All for it to mean Yes to All??
7. The Cannot-Erase-File Gotcha
Then the whole process is halted by a file that's somehow been locked. It might even be a virus, and you can't erase it no matter how hard you try. Let me get this straight. Some program can install a file on my machine and then lock it down, but I, the owner of the machine, can't remove the file? Does this make any sense to anyone?

Throughout the course of my workday, I must see almost every one of these gotchas. Meh, you get used to it. We've got testing going on with Vista in the office now. I wonder if the file-copy behavior is still the same.

Blogging Pitfall

2007-05-02T23:06:00.000-05:00

Geh...you actually have enough free time at work to look at your RSS news feeds to figure out what you want to blog about when/if you get home after work, and what happens? Your bro steals your thunder and blogs about the fuel cells from brewery waste water story that you thought was oh so cool.

Freakin' cloned brain waves...whatever. I scoop him sometimes. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Rice Cultivation Now a Target: IPCC

2007-05-01T19:00:00.000-05:00

I had just stated as recently as yesterday that environmental policy politicos were going to start targeting sources of methane very aggressively. While Euro ecocrats decided on livestock emissions, it looks like their counterparts in Asia are eyeing methane emissions from rice cultivation.

For the same reasons that peat bogs and wetlands are large contributors of methane in the atmosphere, rice paddies that stay flooded all year round exhibit a similar cycle of bacterial decay with similar results.

Representatives of the IPCC are in the final stages of drafting the section of the report that details plans for mitigating the effects of global warming. I find it quite interesting how they are now talking about methane, when all the Global Cimate Models (or at least how the MSM has reported on them) were highlighting increasing concentrations of anthropogenic sources of CO2 as the tipping point in the theory of global warming. What do the GCMs do when sources of methane abate by whole percentage points over a relatively short period of time, like the recommended targets of twenty years? Could this be why alleged global warmening denier David Evans is actually betting on global cooling?

Livestock? Rice paddies? This all sounds suspiciously like Roger Pielke's arguments for better land use policy, rather than the narrow focus of CO2 emissions. If the IPCC is finally taking a more expansive view on climate change, shouldn't we go back to the climate modelers and see what happens when they adjust for sources of methane?

H/T Tim Blair.

Marijuana Bad for the Brain

2007-04-30T20:14:00.000-05:00

And I thought potheads were just simply difficult to understand. And if you're already crazy, doin' the dooby actually makes you crazier:

"I was surprised by the results," said Dr. Deepak Cyril D'Souza, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University's School of Medicine. "In practice, we found that cannabis is very bad for people with schizophrenia," he said.

Soooo many jokes out there in the blogosphere on this story, already, so I feel like I don't need to pile on, at this point.

I will say this. I've known several potheads who have claimed that they "study/drive/insert any activity that requires concentration" better while high, and I always thought they were full of it. This study not only lends credence to my assumption, but also shows that to think otherwise is dangerous.

While D'Souza had intended to study marijuana's impact on schizophrenics in more patients, the study was stopped prematurely because the impact was so pronounced that it would have been unethical to test it on more people with schizophrenia.

Whoa. I expect to see more studies like this to come out of Europe, where long-range studies on marijuana in even greater population size are due fairly soon.

Livestock Burping a Bigger Threat than Man-Made CO2

2007-04-30T19:38:00.000-05:00

Methane has always been a more powerful greenhouse gas, according to the GHG Theory of global warming, but once you publicize it, that fact becomes a little inconvenient to the whole Anthropogenic meme when you actually crunch the numbers. Kinda like what I did here.

Now the EU Ministers of Environmental Policy, realizing that their efforts through Kyoto and their laughably ineffective cap and trade carbon scheme fall far short, see that they need to go after the bigger numbers, namely methane from livestock. I sort of remember before Al Gore came along that the GHG Theory was more concerned about methane than CO2, since it made up a larger percentage of the gases that contribute to global warming, according to the theory. Will we soon see a methane version of Kyoto? Will Brazil and Argentina game the system by overestimating how much methane their livestock emit? Will the Supreme Court of the United States find that the EPA can regulate grade-school boys belching the alphabet?

I'm betting, Yes, Yes, and Yes.

H/T Motl.

Save The What Now?

2007-04-29T10:26:00.000-05:00

Turn off the lights, or you'll make baby Jesus cry, or something like that:

Duh vs Huh

2007-04-25T20:30:00.000-05:00

Wha...?

Yep, I don't make mad money being a smarty pants, either.

MP3 Player: Not an iPod

2007-04-24T20:53:00.000-05:00

As if I needed another excuse not to spend time on my blog. This new toy is currently in my hands.

Flash drive memory is going down in price so fast that I couldn't dissuade myself any longer from owning one.

Why SanDisk, and not an Apple ickPod? Anyone who's read my blog may have detected a slight bias against Apple. Just because something is cute and well-built does not mean it's the best product on the market. Also, take a look at all those features.

Compared to the iPod Nano (the Apple product with similar flash drive capacity), there's no comparison. While both support similar audio and image file formats, the Nano has no video support, whatsoever. But look at the media formats the Sansa supports: AVI, MPEG-1 & MPEG-2 in MPEG, MPG, MPE or VOB (unprotected) formats. MPEG-4 in AVI format, DAT, ASF, QuickTime MOV, and WMV. And the TFT screen is larger and has more pixels. Throw in an FM radio tuner, and a voice and radio recorder, just cuz.

BWAHAHAHAHA.

Ahem. I can now watch my anime downloads on the train. All that capability...and the Sansa 8GB retails for $50 less than the Nano 8GB.

What are people getting for 50 dollars more with the ickPod? As far as I can tell...white-colored ear phones to advertise you belong to the majority, I mean the revolution.

Excuse me now. I got a lot of files to download.

Update: Here's a comparative size pic of the Sansa:

News Brieflets from Last Week

2007-04-23T20:28:00.000-05:00

Feh. So I barely have time to post coherent thoughts these days due to time constraints and overall meh-ness after coming home from work. How about an imperfect solution?

Instead of coherent thoughts, I'll just post some incoherent inanities on stories that caught my eye (quiet, Joe...there really is a difference...if you squint your eyes enough). If news brieflets work for Tim Blair, they can certainly work for me.

Ethanol might not be the best solution for air pollution, according to this study. Sure, you can reduce CO2 emissions with it, and you're less dependent on foreign oil, but the 25% reduction in MPG and higher ozone emissions seem to be a bigger tradeoff.

Wisconsin lawmakers are experimenting with allowing beer samples in liquor stores and grocery markets. I'm all for it, but then again, I don't drive to my grocery store. I prefer to be "stumbling distance" from my alcohol dispensing haunts.

Europe's biggest three beer brewers were fined a whopping $370 million for price fixing and collusion. Now we know why all these European imports cost about the same, especially when they didn't need to. I know the EU wants a more integrated economy, but this doesn't seem like the right way to do it.

You can now get your caffeine fix before you're even out of the shower. I love that website thinkgeek.com (you can hit the link from the side panel). Go here, if you're more than curious.

And that's the wrap up from last week (through, um, Wednesday. I have no idea what's happened since then, really!). Oh wait, I heard a Mac got hacked within 45 minutes of going on the internet at a convention on security. Two days later, Apple releases a mega patch with an astonishing 25 security updates. What fun! Maybe I'll post on that story from last week sometime this week, too.

Till next time.

Light Blogging, Again!

2007-04-22T18:09:00.000-05:00

Feh.

This whole "gainful employment" deal can definitely have a negative impact on blog output. Work has been pretty taxing on my energies lately, and more periods like it are likely in the near future.

Heartfelt apologies to all 2 or 3 of my faithful readers. I'll post when I can.

Nations React to Sex Survey

2007-04-17T20:17:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I came a across this article from AFP on Yahoo!'s news feeder. I read it there, and found it mildly amusing that it backs up my earlier post on the lack of sex in Japan leading to a lower birth rate. Fair enough, it supports the meme that Asians aren't as concerned about getting their world rocked when they have sex, and don't do it as often or as long as residents in other countries. We get it.

However, something crazy popped up in my search for a more long-lived link to this article (hopefully this google news search survives, and some these hyperlinks stick around). Look at the headlines from across the world as each country reacts to how they performed in the survey. Hilarious! Some of the funnier headlines:

Sexy South Africans get it all
Aussie sex is short and not so sweet
Indians finish fastest in bed
Sex survey shows Kiwis have lost that loving feeling
Forget the French, Nigerians lead in the loving stakes
Americans Seeking Greater Sexual Satisfaction
Canadians Seeking Sexual Satisfaction
Stressed Brits Have Sex Less Than Twice Week

So what does this survey really reveal about how the world views sex? Judging from these headlines, it's still a subject worth tittering about.

A Hare-y Situation in Hungary

2007-04-16T20:24:00.000-05:00

Ferenc Fuezesi / AP

I've heard of multiplying factors in road traffic, but I didn't think rabbits were involved.

Kind of sad about the bunny carnage in the wake of the overturning truck:

Both drivers were unharmed in the accident, but [Highway Patrol spokeswoman Viktoria Galik] said some 500 rabbits were killed. By midday, 4,400 bunnies had been collected and taken away from the scene.

There was a silver lining, however:

About 100 of them got a lucky break, hopping away from capture and the slaughterhouse into fields surrounding the highway.
"Those 100 are free to go. We will not collect them," Galik said.

Hmm...I hope that decision doesn't turn into an ecological disaster for Hungary as it did for Australia when it imported little bunnies. Meh, probably not a danger of that happening.

Twelfth-Level Mac-olyte Owns 100 Macs

2007-04-16T20:02:00.000-05:00

AP
March 16: Mehrle with all 12 iMac G3 models that followed the initial 'Bondi Blue' model in his basement Mac shrine in O'Fallon, Mo.

Shudder...

This man is allowed to roam the streets unabated.

Even more bizarre, Apple has actually hired him to interact with the public, even to influence their buying decisions.

Stranger yet, he cohabitates with a woman in what is apparently a mutually romantic state. She seems rather philosophical about the growing army of Macs in the basement.

Shouldn't there be some kind of national register for disturbed people like this? At the very least just to track their movements. Well, we've identified him, so that's one down.

Must Be Cubs Season

2007-04-15T10:40:00.000-05:00

Of course Bucky would substitute a Cubs hat for his Hat o' Shame.

Poor Cubs fans. The jokes are just starting. Only the dim hope of the Cubs being sold at the end of the season has die-hard fans dreaming of next season. Six more months until either the season's over, they get to the World Series, or the world ends in a blaze of armageddon-inducing Global Warmening/Iran Nuclear War/India-Pakistan Nuclear War. By about June, I'm guessing Cubs fans will be hoping for the third option.

©Darby Conley

Chicago Beats LA for 2016 US Bid

2007-04-14T17:34:00.000-05:00

Da Mayor wins big again.

Chicago is the official US representative for bidding on the 2016 Olympic games. Daley's bid was widely known for its reliance on private funding. There isn't a mayor in America who can raise funds from corporate sponsors like Daley can.

Now the focus shifts to the international competition in bringing the Games to Chicago.

Fast as a Leopard? Apple Delays New OS

2007-04-12T19:25:00.000-05:00

Apple announced that it was delaying the Leopard Launch from June to the fall, and shares of Apple almost immediately fell 2%.

Sure, blame iPhone for taking away resources. How convenient. The beta releases have apparently been far below the normal standard for Apple:

The known issues range from "Unable to restore from recent backups when installing" to "emacs crashes on launch."

That doesn't sound good.

It sure seems like Apple is hoping to shoot the moon with iPhone like it did with iPod. Remember when Apple was known for its computers?

Atlanta Airport Cops Stumble Upon Gay Encounters

2007-04-12T19:23:00.000-05:00

Are airport restrooms the new roadside rest areas? Apparently so.

I just remember the hilarious scene from "There's Something About Mary" where Ben Stiller's character gets snapped up in a dragnet, suprised guys running everywhere. Dane Cook provides a different perspective on why public restrooms may not be the best locale for risky behavior: (NSFW for language)

Totally Wiped, But...

2007-04-11T21:22:00.000-05:00

...that customer is Live on their new server. Maybe now I can get back to normal blogging behavior.

Heard any interesting news, lately?

Can't Blog...Working...

2007-04-10T22:20:00.000-05:00

Geh.

I was onsite at one of our Chicago-area customers today. Worked late, too.

Very disappointed in the level of IT competence at this customer. It's rather counterintuitive that their IT competency is so low. I don't really want to name them but I'll give you a hint. It starts with "University of" and ends with "cago Hospitals." You'll never be able to figure it out, right? I was there because their NT 4.0 (I know! Right?!!!) server where our software is installed on finally got slammed by a virus that would have required updated virus definitions and anti-virus software that was actually, you know, updatable after 2005. Database server administration seems to be a foreign concept over there.

Anyway, being onsite, and not connected to the internet is why I have nothing newsworthy to post on.

We'll see what happens tomorrow with this customer since I'll be supporting them remotely while they fumble their way towards a go-live on their shiny new Windows 2003 server.

Bleach Fan's Forte: Piano

2007-04-09T19:23:00.000-05:00

After seeing my bro post a YouTube fan vid of the MacGyver theme song, I was intrigued. Must be a lot of fan vids of people playing TV theme songs, right?

After a little searching, I happened upon this gem, a guy playing the ending theme song of "Bleach", season 3:

For the original music video from artist Younha of the song "Houki Boshi", see here.

Update: rasserfrasser mondays...fixed the link to "Houki Boshi", the subbed version.

The Porn Factor in the Next-Gen DVD Format War

2007-04-09T18:10:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of good points made in this article regarding the porn industry's influence on entertainment technology.

When porn threw its weight behind VHS in the last format war, Sony lost big-time with its Betamax format. Sony can't afford to make the same mistake twice, can it?

Science Faction?

2007-04-08T12:35:00.000-05:00

You aren't a person who knows the diameters of the planets in our solar system? You will be. Heh. You will be.

©Bill Amend

Memory Errors the Source of Past Lives, UFO Abductions

2007-04-07T15:42:00.001-05:00

Haven't I heard this somewhere before?

The researchers found that, compared to control subjects who dismissed the idea of reincarnation, past-life believers were almost twice as likely to misidentify names. In particular, their tendency was to wrongly identify as famous the non-famous names they had seen in the first task. This kind of error, called a source-monitoring error, indicates that a person has difficulty recognizing where a memory came from.

This study makes total sense to me. I think the feeling of deja vu, and recovered memories (remember the McMartin-Bucky trial?) would fit into this phenomenon of source-monitoring errors in memory, as well.

Anime Geekitude: Level 2

2007-04-06T18:50:00.000-05:00

Only Level 2 on the Geek-tastic Meter.

"Bleach" Anime. Check.

A "Weird" Al song. Check.

But a song about my favorite beverage makes it totally awesome.

"Those things give me the Schlitz™."

Educational Software Doesn't Make the Grade

2007-04-05T19:23:00.000-05:00

So public education is underfunded, right?

Just more proof that throwing more money at a problem without a plan is a poor investment in the future of America.

No Votes, No Problem

2007-04-05T19:15:00.000-05:00

Heh. Democracy inaction.

Adult Stem Cell Treatments on Track in U.S.

2007-04-05T18:57:00.000-05:00

A couple of adult stem cell-derived treatments to be launched in Europe later this year, hope to enter the U.S. market in 2008.

I first noted the Celution System for breast enhancement here.

Go here for my post on cell regeneration of damaged heart tissue.

Where are all the treatments from embryonic stem cell research? Oh yeah, I forgot, all stem cells derived from embryos turn cancerous. I guess they'll just have to cure cancer, first. I'm supposed to parrot the meme that embryonic stem cell research has "more potential." Must have lost the script somewhere.

Impersonation Ruse Not Quite Thought Out

2007-04-05T18:34:00.000-05:00

Heh.

Perhaps he should have sobered up just a tetch more before calling his brother to make bail.

I wonder how that would have played out in my case, what with having an identical triplet brother and all.

Office Mate Leads Dance Partner to Court

2007-04-04T18:24:00.000-05:00

Heh. Poor woman, being thrown around like a rag doll, right in front of her office-mates.

I can empathize as a victim of "negligent dancing." You should have seen how I was man-handled on the dance floor by an overly soused (and larger, stronger, *sigh, you get the picture*) female colleague of mine at my annual office party. People were laughing for days, but cursing themselves for not getting the money shot of my terror-stricken face mouthing Help. Meeeee. as several attempts at a Texas Tornado tragi-comically went awry, sending me spinning, and sliding, into the crowd.

Good times. Good times.

And no serious injuries, either, beyond my wounded pride.

Another Non-Car DUI in the News

2007-04-04T18:15:00.000-05:00

This time, a horse was the mode of transportation. The woman seemed bent on attempting a high-speed chase, and had the meth on her to fuel such an endeavor. The horse, however, was not so inclined:

[Police Chief Brad Gregg] said the horse, which belonged to York, "wasn't in the best of health, but it's still alive."

Along with yesterday's Zamboni DWI story, there's quite the rash of odd DUI arrests lately.

More Inconvient Truths for Gore, Apple

2007-04-03T20:13:00.000-05:00

Should I throw more gas on the fire for Enviro-Propheteer Algore? Yeah, of course I should.

If you're going to set yourself up as a visionary of environmental awareness, and you sit on the board of a tech company that has been targeted in the past for its poor "green" policies, shouldn't you at least be the lone dissenting vote to support shareholders' wishes to act more enviro-friendly? Not if you're Algore.

More on Apple's decidedly "ungreen" environmental practices here. Greenpeace even got thrown out of MacExpo this year.

Update: fixed the second URL link. Sorry for the slapdash copy and pasting.

H/T to the eagle-eyed bro.

Zamboni DWI Charge Thrown Out

2007-04-03T20:10:00.000-05:00

Heh.

It did seem excessive to try to suspend the guy's driver's license for essentially drinking while operating heavy machinery on the job. I've always thought "The Zamboni Song" was meant to be sung while sloshed, anyway. Just don't drive like this guy:

Parasite Makes Rats Dig Cat Pee: Study

2007-04-03T19:34:00.000-05:00

Remember the story last year on how the cat-loving parasite Toxoplasma gondii may have driven people crazy and influenced human civilization? I sure do.

A group of scientists have begun studying the effects of T. gondii on rats, and their initial results are startling, to say the least. The parasite seems to pinpoint the exact fear of cat urine, while leaving other similar fears alone. That's pretty specific, but it sounds right if the microbe has developed the quickest way to get back into the belly of Mr. Fluffikins.

Further research on cat-specific behaviors is in the planning stages. Naturally, they'd want to see if rats infested with the brain-modifying parasite begin exhibiting symptoms such as hoarding cats like garden gnomes, or squeaking in baby-talk in their presence.

I expect more really funny research stories on T. gondii in the months to come.