traitor!

As you may or may not know, I'm quite susceptible to road rage. Like most people, I think that I have the perfect 'rules of the road' and that people should have their licenses revoked for not following them. One of the basic rules is Ye Shalt Waiteth In Line With The Rest Of Us. A common situation is when Car 2 (left lane) decides to pass Car 1 (right lane) at a relative speed of 0.1337 mph. Of course, this causes a huge line to form behind Car 2, since there are many cars that would like to travel faster than 65.1337 mph.

Inevitably, some jackass will ignore[1] that line of cars and zoom up behind Car 1 in the right lane. He'll then wait there, eyes to the left, waiting for a gap big enough to let him in[2]. I don't have a description to equal that of dircha's, so I'll simply repeat his words on the subject.

In traffic, leaving more than a single car length between you and the guy in front of you gets you cut off. It's an invitation for some asshat in the next lane over to cut in. You know the type.

I tell ya... roof-mounted laser gun turrets. "We've got a Jetta at 3 o'clock! Get in there and keep him occupied until I can engage the damned lightdrive!"

That and enemy sympathizers - traitors. You rode that bumper like an animal in heat and kept the Jetta out of your lane. But what's this? The Jetta pulls ahead and that weak-willed pansy Corolla two cars ahead lets him in, after all your work! "Dammit man, we're trying to hold a line here. Get on that fucking bumper and ride it for all you're worth you fucking pussy!"

Where did these people learn to drive? Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood?

_________________________
[1] Or fail to notice... But you know what they say about malice and ignorance.
[2] If he has a 15 foot long car, that means the gap must be at least 15.5 feet. Not only do these pricks cut in line, they completely ignore the concept of 'safe following distance' and thereby increase the risk of a nasty pileup if anything goes wrong.

no hat, no coat, no problem

Winter has finally arrived. There is snow on the ground, the wind chill is hovering around zero degrees Fahrenheit, and I have the pleasure of doing both my morning and afternoon commutes with my headlights on. Those joys, I get to share with everybody around me.

Nobody else, though, spends the first part of every winter enduring daily questions about where the hell his coat is. As soon as the mercury drops below freezing, everybody on earth becomes my mom.

Q: "Where is your coat?" (This is the simplest and most common.)
A: "In my car."

Q: "You're gonna get sick!" (This is often phrased in a manner eerily similar to the BB gun admonition in A Christmas Story.)
A: "Maybe."

Q: "Aren't you freezing?"
A: Varies, depending how cold it really is. Sometimes, it's perfectly nice outside (e.g. 40 degF and sunny) and I respond as such. Sometimes, though, I'm chilled to the bone and I admit it.

Occasionally, somebody wants more than a one-line response. I'll tell you what I tell them: It's just not worth the trouble of bundling up to walk 100 feet from a parking lot to the warmth of my destination! Plus, once you get to the warm place, you're then /too/ warm because you're dressed for something 50 degrees cooler. I think it makes a lot of sense. Don't you? :plugs ears: ;)

In other news... The song of the day is "The House Jack Built" by Metallica. Yes, it's from before they sucked. Download it!

pure snowage

1) Blizzard in IL
It started coming down as sleet/ice/nasty on Thursday evening. It was so loud (think of God throwing giant slushballs at the side of your house) that it kept waking me up until about 03:00, at which point it finally turned to snow and stayed that way.

When I woke up Friday morning, things looked about like this:


Basically, all you could see was white. Of course, that didn't stop some idiots from trying to get out. The snow pwned all who challenged it. Here are a few of the dozen or so cars & trucks that tried, and failed, to get out of the neighborhood.



Not wanting to become one of those plow-blocking asshats (with my little RWD hatch wearing new rubber, untested in the white stuff), I stayed inside and watched the hours pass with no plow in sight. As 13:00 came and went, I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't be leaving town (to get to the Werner holiday party in Omaha) any time Friday. The plow finally came to my street around 22:30, but it was dark and I couldn't really see how much of a difference it made.

I woke up at 06:00 Saturday, eager to get on the road to KC (Big XII championship game!). I took a shower, got dressed, ate breakfast, and loaded my car. The sun had finally come up, so I opened my shades to get a view of the streets. Fsck! While the plow had successfully removed the top 8-10" of snow, there was still a solid 3-4" layer of compacted ice and snow on all the roads. The rest of the day (including our self-destruction at Arrowhead) passed by in a long, depressed, blur.

Three days after the storm, the streets remained in such horrible shape that my Monday commute took twice as long as normal. Even the main arteries, including 55 mph highways, didn't get to be pavement-only until Thursday! Some places got it even worse than Peoria (especially further north and west in IL), but it still hammered us and ruined my weekend. If only I could kill some more pirates to really get global warming moving along...

2) Blizzard in MO
The same storm hit parts of Missouri just as badly. See, for example the devastation at Lake of the Ozarks.

3) Blizzard of awesome not-in-RL
I just noticed today that the final episode of the first season of Pure Pwnage is out! w00t!

worst football day of the year

I was supposed to be at Arrowhead today, watching my Huskers take on the Oklahoma Sooners for the Big XII Championship and a trip to Arizona in January. Instead, I'm sitting on my couch in Peoria.

Why, you ask? This is why... also this, this, and this.

I spent 90 minutes yesterday morning clearing a path in my driveway (best workout I've had in months) in 20+ mph winds and continued snowfall, only to see my neighborhood streets remain unplowed for the next 12 hours.

I'm too frustrated to type anything more. Gah. There Is No Place Like Nebraska, but right now I wish I was in KCMO.

real life is scary

I've been acting like a geezer for the better part of a decade. In the last couple years, I've even been living in the 'real world', just like an old person. I got a full-time job, moved to a strange town, bought a car, etc.

One of the scariest things about getting older, although not directly affecting me, is people my age getting married. I consider marriage to be a much larger ball and chain (to borrow a nice cliche) than a job or mortgage. I don't know if that is because it's people instead of money, but nothing says 'all grown up' to me more than getting hitched.

Well, now I must confront real life [in the third person, at least] in an even more serious way. I have a friend who is getting divorced! It's so crazy, I don't even know what to say... I mean... Divorce!

Can I be a kid again, please?

Trick!

Can I skip being a dad and go straight to being a grandpa? You get all the fun of hanging with little kids, without any of the trouble of raising and caring for them!

I say this because I've been seeing a lot of little kids tonight, which reminds me of how cute they can be. My favorite so far tonight was when a group of five or six all did the "Trick or Treeaat!" thing when I opened the door, at which point I said "Trick!" and closed the door momentarily. Of course, I quickly opened the door again and gave them artery-clogging chunks of caramel and chocolate. It warmed my heart to hear them giggle about how I really did trick them as they walked to the next house.

Well, I better end this post before the next group of kids comes. Happy Halloween.

P.S. Oops, they're here already!

Die, Big 10 [11]!

Once again, I'm just outside the coverage area for a Nebraska game. If Minnesota doesn't upset Ohio State (the game I get to see instead of Huskers/Cowboys), I'm going to be even more angry.

I had to hack to hear my Huskers.

Today's Nebraska football game (against those purple pantywaists from K-State) is televised, but only via Fox Sports pay-per-view. My local cable operator hasn't picked up the option to broadcast the game, so I'm SOL as far as TV goes.

I'm used to this situation, though, having moved out of Big 8 country several years ago. Luckily, I've always been able to catch the games via streaming radio over the Internet. As the broadcast rights have changed hands over the years, the ease-of-listening factor has varied. During this last offseason, however, it suddenly got much worse. I now use only Free (-as-in-speech) operating systems, and it's a major PITA when content providers insist on using proprietary and/or patent-encumbered file formats and codecs.

Intelligent people provide their audio broadcasts as simple mp3 feeds that can be read and enjoyed by almost everyone (even though it's illegal for me to do so in the US!). Asshats like Huskers.com, however, use kludges that take an already-proprietary stream and then abstract it behind multiple layers of useless garbage. The following is an account of what I had to do just so I could listen to the Husker game today.

1. Click the 'listen' link at Huskers.com. This opened a pop-up (strike 1), which informed me that I needed a new browser plugin (strike 2) to view the content on that page. Why the f--k does an audio file want to play in a webpage? Wouldn't it be better in, say, an /audio player/? Anywho...

2. Since (a) I don't want to pollute my computer with that crap and (b) such plugins almost never work well on Linux OSes, I decided to take a peek at the page's source code to try to find a direct link to the broadcast.

3. Success! I found the URL (define) for the page's audio feed. I pasted that address into my browser and told it to open the file using a media player application (Totem, specifically).

4. Failure! Totem told me that it couldn't open the file. That struck me as odd, since I should be able to play dang-near any type of audio file with Totem. I tried reopening the link, but this time I was redirected to a text file...

5. The file's title was 'mediaPlayerAudioOnlyUrl.wvx'. They use a specific abstraction layer (unsophisticated as it may be) with no other purpose than to prevent fans from using anything other than Microsoft Windows Media Player (and, furthermore, any operating system other than MS Windows) to listen to Husker games (strike freaking three)!

6. Undeterred, I went looking for an audio feed URL within the file's code. Again, I found a string that seemed like it should get me to the radio broadcast. Again, I popped the address into my browser. This time, it automatically opened the file in Totem...

7. Success! Of course, I don't know if I can accurately call it a 'success' that I had go through all that hackery in order to hear a simple radio broadcast. I'm busy listening to us kick Wildcat butt, though, so I don't mind /too/ much for the moment. :)

GO BIG RED!

Terrorists vs. Washington D.C.

No, this post's title is not what it seems. Yes, it's about the War on Terror(TM). No, it's not about IEDs or OBL, but rather about the fight between terrorists and the Feds to determine who can violate more of my rights and generally be bigger douchebags.

I had the joy of dealing with the TSA last week, just like every other person unlucky enough to have to board a commercial airliner in the Unites States of America. I know about the 'elevated' threat level and what it means in terms of added scrutiny of carry-on baggage. I also know that the whole thing is bullshit; consequently, I refuse to go down without at least a token resistance.

As my own little personal act of civil disobedience[1], I decided to disregard the new baggage restrictions. In the case of this particular day-trip, that meant I'd be bringing a whopping total of one verboten item with me: toothpaste. I did my best to put it deep within the bowels of my backpack, hoping that I had enough things stacked on top of each other to make the individual silhouette of my toothpaste tube less obvious. Despite that effort, the X-ray machine at PIA saw something[2] that caused the operator to have my bagged pulled aside for inspection. The TSA agent went through my bag, quickly finding my Aquafresh Tool of Terrorism just about where you'd expect it (in my Dopp kit).

I was feeling somewhat dejected after my plot had been foiled. I was down, sure, but I wasn't out! On the return trip, I decided to make a second attempt at defeating our pointless, ineffective, mis-targeted[3] 'security' policy. For numero dos, I used the free toothpaste I got from the hotel as my contraband. This time, I made no attempt to hide it. Lo and behold, I passed right through security (at PIT, this time) while the guy before me was almost cavity searched[4].

I really don't know what to make of this experiment. With a sample size of two, the fact that I got 'caught' only once could be due to any number of factors: differences between airports, X-ray equipment, X-ray operator skill, X-ray operator 'enthusiasm' for following the rules, or even random luck. The only clear result of this little study is that I need to do a bigger study! Leave me a comment if you have ideas for other ways to test the system. One particularly crude idea I've had is to collect a bunch of empty containers (toothpaste, pop, gel deoderant, whatever) and fill my carry-on with them. The best would be opaque containers, since nobody could tell they were empty without individually inspecting each one. Anyway, I'm looking for suggestions, so leave me one.

_________________________
[1] I don't mean to equate my actions with [far, far] more significant acts of civil disobedience that have changed entire nations, but one doesn't have to be MLK Jr. or Gandhi in order to do something worthwhile.
[2] It could have been the toothpaste, or it could have been that my plan worked /too/ well, and they could decipher so little with the X-rays that they figured they had better inspect my bag by hand. That has happened to me several times in the past (pre-9/11, even), and it could easily have been the case this time, as well.
[3] I could go on forever, but I'll stop. I hope you appreciate how diffcult that is. :)
[4] This was one of the guys I was traveling with. I know he didn't have a single banned item in his bag, because it had all been confiscated on the first leg of the trip. The poor guy had actually forgetten about the no-fluids rule, and had to throw away quite a bit of stuff after getting his bag searched at the security checkpoint.

one-trick pony

I've been in denial about this for a couple of seasons now, but I'm finally able to admit it. The Big XII has become an also-ran in the world of major college football. We are now what we always accused the PAC-10 of being: one team that is nationally competitive, and a bunch of others that are dangerous only to themselves.

Let's take a look at this week's scoreboard, shall we?
1) Kansas lost to Toledo, but K State beat Marshall. Trading wins with the MAC is not the mark of a top-notch, BCS conference.
2) Iowa State lost to Iowa. Losing huge rivalry games is always a let-down.
3) Baylor lost to Wazzu, Oklahoma lost to Oregon, Nebraska lost to Southern Cal, and Colorado lost to Arizona State. That's 0-4 against the 'weak' PAC-10!
4) Our perennial fireworks show of an offense, Texas Tech, was held to a field goal by Texas Christian.
5) We picked up wins against Rice, Florida Atlantic, New Mexico, and Army; if we can't be proud of those victories, what is there to fight for? :rolls eyes:

While Nebraska certainly could have fared worse against a surprisingly [to me] still-top-notch USC team, I agree with Callahan's statement that this wasn't even a moral victory. We lost, plain and simple. We are certainly improving over last year's team, but we're also not ready for the national stage yet. I'll be thrilled if we win our conference, no matter how shitty it might be, because it still means winning the North /and/ beating the South's victor on the field. That is still something that we can be proud of and hold over the heads of all those silly PAC-10 and Big 10 fans. :)

I am sick-o.

No, I'm not /a/ sicko. Estoy sick-o; you know, Spanish for rejecting-food-from-all-manner-of-orifices-and-being-so-sore-it-even-hurts-to-move-my-eyeballs.

I called my boss at 06:40 to let him know of my condition and the guy answered his phone! It sorta threw me off-guard, since I was expecting his voicemail at that early hour. As part of the opening pleasantries of our conversation, he whipped-out the oft-used 'How are you?' I answered in the same vein that I normally do; 'Not too bad.' Not too bad?? The whole reason I'm calling is to specify just how bad I am!

Rather than using this example as evidence of my distinct lack of phone conversation smoothness, I want to use it as evidence of the inane, worthless things we do just because society has taught us to do them. Not only was it pointless, in this case, but it was actually counter-productive.

Well, I've run out of steam and it's time to rest some more. Adios, all you lucky not-sick people.

Welcome to the family, russiandell!

There is a new addition to my household. Her name is russiandell, which is pretty self-explanatory when you consider the she's both a gift from my little sis (thanks!!) and a Dell Inspiron 600m.

Poor russiandell, you see, went all gimpy a few months ago. My sister, not being the type of person to fix a computer and definitely being the type of person to want an excuse to buy a new laptop, went out and bought herself a new Apple MacBook Pro.

Me being a helpful brother and all, I diagnosed her problem as a failed hard drive and also discovered, after many hours of thorough research and analysis (or two minutes at http://support.dell.com), that the computer was still under warranty! A couple days later, I had a new hard drive. My awesome sis told me I could keep the computer; after a few weeks of laziness and Broadcom-hating, I installed Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (homepage, Wikipedia page) and haven't looked back.

I could turn this post into a huge gush-fest about Ubuntu and how it pwns windoze, but I'll restrain myself. Instead, I'll just hit 'publish' now and concentrate on enjoying the fact that I'm making this copylefted post on a copylefted browser and operating system, all while sitting on my porch on a beautiful summer evening. :click:

fscking lawyers!

Disclaimer: I understand that there are one or two lawyers out there who are not the spawn of Satan. I really do. That said...

Class-action lawsuits (CALs, from here onward) are among the biggest scams perpetrated on the American public. Recently, I've received letters about two CALs of which I am a member. The first was against Microsoft, regarding the flagrant abuse of their monopoly, and the second was against Sprint, regarding some dodgy billing practices which caused a bunch of people to pay too much in fees.

The payout for both CALs was pretty small, ~$20 or less. Even worse, they were in the form of discounts for products and services offered by the defendant! What kind of bullshit is that?

Let's say I punched 2,000 people in the face, and they turned around and hit me with a CAL. It seems that the 'punishment' I could expect would be an order that I must offer them an UNCLBEN(R)-brand mouthpiece at half-price (which is still enough that I will profit from the sale), but only if they will allow me to punch them again! If they want to go be friends with someone else, who /won't/ punch them in the face, that's too bad; they'll get no compensation for the punch I dealt them.

Of course, CALs continue to thrive because the lawyers get filthy rich. A million people/victims get $10 each in coupons to the offending company, but the five lawyers/piles-of-excrement each get $2,000,000 in cold, hard cash. Fscking lawyers.

T minus...

34 days, 1 hour, 15 minutes.

Gooo Biiig Reeed. GO BIG RED!

CD Baby rocks!

No pun intended, of course...

Payola has ruined radio for me. I don't like paying money for digital downloads, so sites like Magnatune aren't at the top of my list. Pandora and Last.fm both offer great services, but don't allow me to filter for RIAA affiliation. CD Baby has none of those drawbacks, and has become my one-stop shop for finding new music. IMHO, it has two meta-features which make it better than competing stores.

Meta-Feature #1: Ease of finding music you'll like.
Feature 1a) Search. There are four different search algorithms (including the two obvious ones, Artist and Album).
Feature 1b) Simple bins for browsing CD Baby's catalog. This isn't very different than most sites have, but it's still useful. Major categories include broad genres (e.g. Blues, Latin, Rock), top sellers (this week or ever), and sale items ($5 or less!). In addition, each genre is broken down into subcategories; there are about thirty of these for Rock, including 60's Rock, Extended Jams, and Rockabilly. Within each genre and sub-genre, CD Baby even lists some Editor's Picks and the top sellers.
Feature 1c) Flavors. The editors have selected albums which are particularly appropriate for a given occasion (e.g. 'To Drink Alone To', 'Long Drives / Road Trips') or mood (e.g. 'Sick of all normal music', 'Smash! Burn! Destroy! Rage!'). This may be the best part of the whole site.
Feature 1d) Song previews. Every album has a selection of its songs available for preview (the first two minutes of the track).
Feature 1e) 'Similar to' lists for each album. CD Baby provides links to other albums by the artist, similar albums by other artists, appropriate genres, and albums by bands from the same geographic location.

Meta-Feature #2: A business model that everyone can love.
2a) Respect for musicians. CD Baby will sell albums by any artist. You don't sell your soul to CD Baby to get distributed. Each artist sets the album price and determines which songs will be available for customers to preview. There is no lower volume limit to be listed at CD Baby; you can sell three CDs a year, and your page will get just as much love as one for a Jack Johnson CD.
2b) Respect for customers. CD Baby does not accept payment for prominent positioning on the website. Because of this, CD Baby will never be like mainstream radio or brick-and-mortar retailers, in which products are promoted (via airtime or shelf space) in proportion to the size of the payola, not in proportion to the quality of the product. The website is built to accommodate W3C standards, so that anybody with a standards-compliant browser can use the full functionality of the site; you are not locked-in to one, particular, proprietary software package (a la iTMS, Rhapsody, Pandora, and most others).
2c) An all-around awesome founder/owner. Derek started CD Baby in his bedroom. He makes it a point to listen to every CD sold through the store; it's too big to keep that up, but CD Baby employees keep up the practice. Derek still maintains the website. Heck, I wrote them an email the other day with a question about the 'help' section of the website. Within 24 hrs (on a Sunday, no less) I got a response from Derek himself. We shot a few emails back and forth throughout the day. That kind of genuine customer service is invaluable.

This is a huge post, but it's hard to express how happy I am with CD Baby. Now, if only more people read this blog so word could get around. :-P Oh, well...

Benito en Mexico

I went to Cabo over a month ago. It was very, well, Mexican, despite the fact that Cabo is a gringo-ized tourist area. There were people everywhere whose sole apparent purpose was to do random crap for tips. It was like a whole city full of those bums that try to wash your windshield but really just make it dirtier.

Even for someone who hates heat, it was nice to be in a place where you're not always in a mopped/air-conditioned/purified/fluorescent-lit building. Many of the buildings (even the airport) were mostly enclosed, but still open to sunlight and a nice a breeze... very refreshing, indeed. I know that such things are common in many places outside of Mexico, but I've spent so much of my life in the Midwest that it's still novel to me.

Probably the biggest disappointment of the trip was that we couldn't find a Taco Bell anywhere amongst the smorgasbord of American fast food restaurants. I really wanted to see what Taco Bell tastes like when you're /actually/ south of the border. ;)

I would have posted this sooner, but I was waiting for a certain someone (you know who you are!) to send me the pics from her camera. I finally got sick of waiting, so here's a short photo tour of the trip... as always, click the picture for a bigger version.

First, a few pics of the place we stayed. It was a tiny little gated 'compound' with a few buildings, so I felt like a drug lord or something.



I even caught a Cat BHL and MWL roving the neighborhood. :-P


Last but not least, pictures of two of my most favoritest things in the whole wide world: lizards and shuffleboard!

Pleeeaaase be quiet. Pretty please.

I don't have a kid handy, so I can't verify the supposed awesomeness of this phenomenon, but apparently white noise works like magic to calm a crying baby. A couple of entrepreneurial parents decided to create a neat CD (I especially like the track titles) of white noise, all generated by appliances and other around-the-house sources.

Have any of you tried this approach? Does it really work?

CA doing something right? WTF, mate?!

The other day, I came across a BusinessWeek article describing the measures that California has taken to curb their appetite for energy in the wake of their recent energy crisis.

Those West Coast hippies might enjoy regulation a little too much, but at least this time they're pushing in the right direction. State building codes now require fluorescent lighting, which is generally more efficient than incandescent lighting, for new construction and remodels. They have a system of rebates to encourage the purchase of high-efficiency appliances where it helps most: HVAC and refrigerators. They are pushing to require white roofs, which will save quite a bit of energy (via reduced cooling costs) in places that are both hot and sunny.

The only thing mentioned in the article that I don't agree with is renewable-energy requirements for electrical utilities. I think that such demands should be pulled by consumers, not pushed out by producers. If using dino fuel has 'external' costs associated with it (securing Arabian oil fields, treating pollution from coal plants, etc.), then quantify that cost and add an appropriate (and strictly limited in scope!) tax.

Overall, though, it seems California is headed in the right direction wrt energy conservation and independence. For once, I wish the rest of the country (and world) would follow its lead.

A moment of silence, please.

Today marks a sad milestone in my adult life. I broke my first dish. It was a small plate, white with a blue stripe around the outside of the rim. His death was not in vain, though; he sacrificed himself to keep my baked potato from landing on the ground[1]. The viewing is being held in a cardboard box next to my kitchen trashcan. The funeral service will occur whenever I get around to taking out the trash[2].

Not to disrepect the recently-deceased, but do you know what my first thought was upon his death? 'Aw, crap. Now I have seven small plates and eight of everything else. Maybe I should accidentally drop one of all the other stuff.'

_________________________
[1] Not that I wouldn't have eaten the potato anyway, but it makes me feel better to think that Mr. Plate died in a sacrificial act of bravery.
[2] That could be anywhere between 3 and 30 days from now, depending on how lazy I am and whether I throw away any meat or other stuff that will make my apartment smell like armpits smothered in doody.

I'm scared.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T for passing the traffic on its network backbones and communication databases directly to the National Security Agency (NSA). In short, the NSA was spying on every AT&T internet or telephone customer in the United States, as well as anybody else whose data happened to travel over AT&T's lines en route to its destination. Obviously, this is an flagrant breach of the Fourth Amendment

Yesterday, the Feds filed a 'statement of interest' in the case. It says that the goverment intends to seek dismissal of the case, on the grounds that proceeding will reveal state secrets. The gov't is attempting to remove all accountability to the people, even in a case where the issue is that they're massively violating the Constitutionally-granted rights of those very people!*
_________________________
* If that doesn't make you tremble with anger, I ask that you please leave this country. The UK and Australia are even further along than the USA in the transition to a police state - you should be happy in either place. Save America for those who value their freedom.

nerd politics

Recently, I've often found myself pondering the sweeping changes in my political interests and views over the last decade. I think that the central issues in that transformation have been a newfound [and absolute] lack of faith in the government and a sudden [very strong] antipathy towards much of 'Corporate America'.

Re government, I spent most of my childhood believing that a strong (not sprawling and socialist, but strong) federal government would keep me safe from danger, both at home (police) and abroad (military). Now, I have finally realized that fascism is just a different kind of nanny state; it's not largely better or worse than socialism. The only difference is the /kind/ of freedoms you give up, not the /number/. I have always railed against seatbelt and helmet laws [for adults], social security [in its current form, at least], and the progressive income tax. To my list of government evils, I've now added several things from the opposite end of the spectrum: censorship, invasion of privacy, and imperialism.

Re the corporate world, my biggest concern is companies that are actively anticompetitive; when the government fails to put an end to cartels and monopolies that abuse their power, everybody suffers. Secondly, and this is in some ways a subset of the first problem, I cannot help but hate companies that believe they still own my property after I've purchased it. 'Intellectual property' is often the culprit; unfortunately, Congress has taken a piss all over the Constitution (specifically, Article One, Section 8) and given away the rights and freedoms of American citizens to their precious, corporate campaign donors.

After all that ranting, the most important part of this post is a question. What do /you/ care about? Seriously, I want to know. C'mon you lurkers, don't be shy. What are the most important issues facing us today?

IT + MSFT: double-whammy

In my group of about 50-100 engineers, the IT folks set us up with 'My Documents' folders (we use MS Windows 2000) that automatically synchronize our files between a server and our PCs/laptops. A few months ago, the aforementioned server ran out of space. Apparently that had not been anticipated by IT, who nonetheless quickly dumped all our files over to a larger server in another building.

Unfortunately, IT names our file servers partially according to the building in which they reside. Since the servers are in different buildings, the path names to those servers are also different. Our PCs/laptops didn't know the new path name, so nobody could access the master (server) version of their documents! Eventually, between the efforts of IT and the more computer-savvy engineers (e.g. yours truly), everybody got relinked to the correct server.

MS Windows 2000, however, is not smart enough to handle that change. If you edited any documents between the time OldServer died and the time you were first connected to NewServer, your computer had the new version of the document while the server still had the old... and since Windows couldn't find the old server, it had nowhere to sync the new version with. The edited files on your PC are effectively orphaned, and Windows will pester you about it for all eternity, reminding you that you're disconnected from OldServer and urging you to please synchronize your changed documents.

Both IT and I tried everything we could to make MS Windows forget about the old share. We deleted the shared drive, purged the local version of My Documents (which was safe since I had sync'd them to NewServer already), and disabled file synchronization (hoping to erase Windows' memory of the old sync profile). No. Such. Luck.

As if that wasn't frustrating enough, a similar snafu happened again recently. My immediate workgroup has a network drive that we use to store project files, share test data within the group, etc. Some three-plus years after my business unit changed names, many things are still called by the old name: signs, websites, posters, and the name of this particular network drive! Well, IT finally decided that it was time to have the drive name reflect the new BU name. They changed the name, and I had to spend all of Monday 'fixing' people's computers when they couldn't access anything on the shared drive.

You may currently be asking yourself, 'What is the point of this freaking blog? I fell asleep twice already and I didn't even really finish it - I just skipped down to the end!' I'm sorry to disappoint you, but there really wasn't much of point to this. I just wanted to complain about how shitty my IT department and Microsoft are. Sorry!

V for Vendetta

Those crazy Wachowski brothers sure have a knack for writing compelling stories about freedom. The Matrix is, without a doubt, one of my favorite movies of all time. I don't think V for Vendetta is /that/ amazing, but there is one way in which it trumps The Matrix: the relevance of its plot to modern life.

The system of control in the Matrix is transparent to those within its grasp. The people inside have no way of knowing that their free will is nothing but an illusion. In system of control in V, however, is much more tangible in terms of technological and political proximity to the modern world. The oppressors are not futuristic, mechanical overlords. They are regular people who came to power through the regular political process. Their tools, fear-mongering and xenophobia, should be familiar to anyone. Their motive, the consolidation of power in their own hands, is the same motive that drives all governments.

... After all that writing, I've just realized that what I really want to say is much simpler. In summary...
1) V for Vendetta is a sweet action movie. Go see it!
2) V for Vendetta is a frightening portrayal of where our country is headed with legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act. Even scarier is the fact that Britain and Australia may be even worse off than us! Scarier /still/ is that most people are so oblivious that they will probably sit through V for Vendetta without ever realizing how close we are to becoming 'citizens' of a police state.

Kevin Hassett is a shill

I say he's a shill because I refuse to believe that anyone with such a full resume could be so incredibly stupid as to espouse the views contained in a recent column of his. Surely then, the only logical explanation is that he was bribed, brainwashed, or otherwise coerced into writing this by Apple, Microsoft, et al.[1]

The hubbub is about a bill currently passing through the legislative branch of the French government. Should it become law, companies selling digital music would be required to allow hardware companies to make digital audio players that can play the downloaded music. Right now, you can't play Apple downloads on a Samsung player, Napster downloads on your iPod, etc.[2] The new French law would eliminate such artificial barriers. You see, Apple has to go to /extra effort/ to keep you from playing iTunes Music Store songs on other players. I defy Mr. Hassett to explain how creating artificial barriers can ever move culture, or the economy, forward.

Kevin's makes many claims that are simply too ridiculous to ever do justice in my blog. Most of them make me wonder aloud how any well-educated person could be so incredibly ignorant. Primarily, he seems to center on two [equally false] arguments.

1) This law will encourage copyright infringement (aka 'piracy'), which is a Very Bad Thing(TM).
a) What Apple et al. are likely to do, and the logical result of the law, is to open up their DRM. If Creative could license Apple's FairPlay DRM for its Zen digital audio players, and Apple could license Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM for its iPod digital audio players, then both parties would have satisfied their obligations under the law. What is the result? All the music still has DRM, so the record labels don't need to worry any more about piracy than they do now!
b) The assumption that copying music for personal use is a Very Bad Thing(TM) has nowhere near unanimous support. The rampant popularity of illegal downloading is proof of that. Many people, including highly respected thinkers like Lawrence Lessig and Richard Stallman, would argue that society benefits more by sharing ideas and culture than by granting artificial monopolies to those who happen to create certain expressions of human thought (like, say, a song).

2) This law is stealing from Apple and America and giving all kinds of free shit to the Frogs, and is terribly anticompetitive.
The law would not steal from anyone. Apple has served consumers very well by creating excellent hardware (the iPod lines) and excellent software (iTunes and the iTunes Music Store), and their bottom line has been rewarded for it. Vendor lock-in, however, serves nobody but Apple shareholders, while hurting everybody. Interoperability, which the French bill would require, will /increase/ competition, not hurt it. Increased competition is a Very Good Thing(TM), contrary to what Kevin argues; it gives producers and consumers /more/ choices and drives constant innovation, rather than allowing companies to build monopolies, lock their customers in to their product lines, and then milk the profits for years afterwards.

Aaand I'm spent.
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[1] This is not entirely true. He could just be an anarcho-capitalist. In that case, replace 'shill' with 'idiot who believes in neither welfare states nor meritocracies, but instead thinks that people should be primarily rewarded for their relative ability to screw over their fellow human beings.'
[2] Again, this isn't 100% true. It generally only applies to major-label (i.e. RIAA) music. Which is, to say, 99+% of what is downloaded from the stores.

i don't give a... hoot

In this [we]blog, I usually try to avoid the stereotypical LiveJournal/Xanga crap that defines the public perception of 'blogs'. You know, things like posting song lyrics or pointless emotional drivel that nobody else cares about.

Well, I'm about to lapse again. Right now I'm frustrated, and (with apologies to Watterson) nothing helps a bad mood like spreading it around. Without further adieu, I present to you a test/game/thing that is sure to offend any politically correct asshats (redundant, no?) that happen to stumble across it: All Look Same!

more fun with coworkers...

It was a peaceful Friday afternoon at about 15:00, so me and my cubemates were shooting the breeze in anticipation of getting the heck out of Dodge. The topic turned to kiddie movies, and Pixar in particular. I made a comment about my disapproval of Disney's recent buyout, mentioning that I think Disney is Teh Suck. I dislike Disney mainly because of their desire to extend copyright infinitely (see also here). Generally, they are also socially ultra-conservative, which only hurts them more.

Before my blood could even start boiling, one of my fellow engineers (let's call him H. Phobe) jumped in to support me. Awesome, an ally! Or so I thought ...

"Did you know that Disney has a whole week set aside especially for... homosexuals? It's unbelievable." WTF? No, Mr. Phobe, what's unbelievable is the fact that you're a fucking idiot and a bigot, yet you've somehow managed to get promoted three times since you started with the company. For the next 10 minutes, H.P. kept trying to steer the conversation back to the evilness of backdoor bandits. He even claimed that Disney's animation studios have a huge contingent of gay writers and animators who toil away in their underground caves of moral depravity to sneak effeminate male characters into their movies, and otherwise promote/legitimize their lifestyle/agenda/whatever. OMG teh homos will infect us all!!!!!!11one

Once again, I have found myself marveling at the [boundless?] depths of human ignorance and xenophobia. :sigh:

Be afraid.

I know most of you aren't as anti-government, libertarian, etc. as me, but that doesn't mean that Uncle Sam isn't trying to restrict your rights, too. Usually, these restrictions fall under one of two categories. I'll explain them from the perspective of The Government.

1) We're going to spy on you, but if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about! Therefore, if you vote against this, you are a terrorist/communist/pedophile/evildoer with something to hide.

2) We believe that corporations deserve more rights than you. They not only have less liability and responsibility than normal people, but they get more power to pass laws in their favor! It is only a coincidence that these corporations pay us millions of dollars a year for vacations, homes, vacation homes, and lovely antiques and mistresses to fill up the vacation homes.

If you value your rights, take action!

Blogger sucks!

What a terrible weblog site; they can't even get their dates right! This post is marked as 01 March, but today is clearly 29 February. The UPS guy wouldn't lie to me about a leap year... would he??

frustrations of a plebeian (2)

[continue rant]

My last post, via the computer-use-in-meetings anecdote, is an example of how Mr. D is frustrating to somebody (myself) who gets peeved about almost any kind of idiotic computer use. There are also, however, ways in which he projects his incompetence to any and all people in his presence.

When somebody asks Mr. D a clarifying question, he is often unable to understand what the question is really asking. Mr. D ends up trying to dumb down his response every time the question is re-asked, since he feels the other person must be mentally handicapped if they aren't understanding his explanation. Here's a typical example...

Mr D: "Please measure the width of these boxes."
Person 2: "Okay. Do you want width from front to back or from right to left?
Mr. D: "Width is the linear distance between two, opposite sides of an object."
Person 3: "Yes, but that distance is different depending on which sides you pick."
Mr. D: "If you take the total volume of a cube, and take the third root of it, you'll get the width."
Persons 2 and 3: [under their breath] "We're going to ignore you and/or scream now. Okay?"

Of course, the incompetence doesn't stop there. Mr D is totally unable to think on his feet or carry on a constructive argument/discussion. Let's say he has prepared for a meeting by charting the defect rate of widgets over time. Now, imagine that somebody in the meeting suggests that it might be more insightful to view the defect rate as a function of production volume. At this point, Mr. D is likely to wig out. He'll get flustered and irritated, completely unable to function usefully. He /could/ spend a minute or two rearranging things to create the charts that were suggested, but because he sucks with computers (as seen in the last post) and is wigging out, he'll attempt to recreate everything from scratch and waste 20 minutes in the process, all while muttering to himself: "Dammit, I should have done it that way from the start. Sorry, everyone, just let me redo this entire spreadsheet." You can never tell who he's yelling at: himself, the person who suggested the change, or both.

[/rant]

frustrations of a plebeian (1)

I am but a simple, subsistence farmer in the society that is my company. Sure, I'm a landowner and [more or less] have a good deal of freedom, but I am wholly unremarkable with respect to money and power. Mr. D (a pseudonym, of course) is a also a farmer, but a much more powerful one. He does not have his own commercial farming organization, but he runs a co-op that includes several farmers in addition to himself. Consistent with the Peter Principle, he seems to have been promoted [at least] one level past his competence.

To be fair, running the co-op does not take all of Mr. D's time. The portion still spent farming is quite productive; he's not a bad farmer at all. To run the co-op, however, requires different skills: namely, leadership. Such a leader needs to not only inspire confidence in the other co-op members, but also command respect from the outside farmers with whom he competes and/or cooperates. Needless to say, Mr. D does not have those skills.

This whole post started because of Mr. D's ability to all-too-frequently make me shake my head and mutter [under my breath] "Good Lord... get your shit together, buddy." His beginning-of-meeting routine is a good example. Meetings at my company are inevitably shifted 5 minutes late because the people in the conference room before you never leave on time, so neither do you, or the folks after you, and so on. People calling in from their desks are normally on time; so not only are you starting late, but the poor fellas on the conference call have been listening to hold music for 5 minutes before you even enter the room.

At this point, a smart Meeting Leader would dial in to the conference call, bring his laptop out of standby, refresh the Sametime webpage (the software we use for online collaboration), and be up and running within 30 seconds. Mr. D enters the conference call, apologizes for the previous meeting lasting too long, then proceeds to delay the start of /this/ meeting by at least another five minutes. First, he unpacks the A/C adapter and mouse. Apparently, nobody told him that laptops have a battery and pointing device built the fuck in[1]. Once those are organized and plugged in, he turns on his computer: not 'resumes from standby', or even 'resumes from hibernation', but 'turns on' his computer. For the laptops in my group, booting up can waste anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes; resuming from standby takes about 15 seconds. Once powered up and logged in, he has to search for and open the Sametime meeting and any documents germane to the topic at hand. If, during the meeting, he has to find a new file, he often closes all the other open windows. Of course, if he needs any of those now-closed files again, he has to find and reopen them. Maybe all these things aren't frustrating to other Luddites, but they make me want to pull my hair out. Technology exists to make our lives easier, faster, cheaper, and more productive, but Mr. D uses technology to waste my time and make himself look like an idiot.

This has been nothing more than a rant, and I apologize for that... not because I don't think it's a worthy topic, but because I don't think I took enough time in composing it. This guy projects a constant aura of incompetence, and I was hoping to provide a clear picture of the computer-related aspect of that aura.
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[1] At least he's smart enough to use the wireless network instead of taking the time to set up a wired connection.

extreme naivete

For your reading pleasure, I will describe a recent conversation between myself and an intern in my workgroup. He and I sit in adjacent, four-person cubes, so this conversation was easily overheard by at least six other people.

Intern: "Ben, you have a girlfriend, right?"
Ben: "Yes."
Intern: "Have you ever made her mad?"

At this point, two things happened simultaneously. First, I just about fell off my chair laughing. Second, everybody within earshot turned around to look at the intern, trying to figure out whether he had really said what they thought they heard. This kid isn't /that/ young (21 yrs old, I believe); how is he still so naive as to ask such a question? He's even in a long-distance relationship, which by definition is a reasonably serious relationship. How is it possible that's he's never effed up before? Guys are hard-wired to do things that, through no fault of our own, piss off our mates. Anyway, the intern continues...

Intern: "Where's a good jewelry store around here?"

Here is where this post switches gears, and I move from questioning the intern's 'lady smarts' to decrying the ridiculous 'standards' to which relationships are held in modern America. What does it say about our society that a useless, pointless, worthless gift is supposed to help 'fix' a fight? The jewelers and florists love it, but it's a hot, steaming, Biff-enveloping load of crap. Even worse, the standard only goes one way; if a girl messes up, the guy doesn't get a Borla cat-back, or a new Xbox game, or a stack of Playboys.

The ideal, however, is not to expect the post-fight gift giving to go both ways. The ideal is to eliminate it. The two people involved should discuss the things that caused the fight and try to come to an agreement on those issues. An apology (or two) is probably a good idea, but gifts are not. As with lawsuits, fights are often a way to vilify your adversary and obtain some kind of payback, to which you feel you are entitled as the 'victim'. In reality, things are almost never so black and white. I'm not saying that blame is always 50:50 in every situation, but there /are/, to be terribly cliche, two sides to every story. Only by taking an objective look at both sides can you truly and justly 'solve' a dispute. Now, please return to your regularly scheduled laughing-at-the-dumb-intern. ;)

soliciting user feedback

Today I listened to both Peoria's State of the City address and Bush's State of the Union. I guess that got me all political for the evening, so I decided to take OkCupid's political test. It's a pretty good one, with neat ways to view the result. Mine disposition is shown below. Where do you fall?

You are a Social Liberal (63% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (63% permissive) You are best described as a: Centrist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

girls and cars: a dangerous mixture

Last Saturday, for the first time in year or two, I listened to Car Talk on NPR. One of the callers, a female, was having trouble with her Nissan Sentra. After every oil change, smoke would pour out of the HVAC vents for the next 20-30 minutes of driving.

At first, the speculation was that the mechanics were overfilling the oil, letting some flow over on to the adjacent exhaust manifold, where it would be burned/vaporized and produce the smoke seen by the caller. This had happened with several different garages, though, and it was unlikely that all those different mechanics were making the same mistake.

To make a long story short[er], it was finally discovered* that this woman had been driving around /without an oil fill cap/. Each oil change left her full of engine oil (duh), which would keep sloshing out of the fill tube during acceleration until the oil level was low enough that it couldn't escape. /That/ was the reason it was burning up on her exhaust manifold and sending billows of nasty smoke into the cabin.

I normally hate when people write in all caps, but ... WHY, IN GOD'S NAME, WOULD YOU THINK IT'S OKAY TO DRIVE AROUND WITHOUT AN OIL FILL CAP?! Girls, especially, seem to have a mental/logical disconnect when it comes to automobiles. Everything seemingly works by magic; they're totally clueless about the actual mechanics of operation.

I'm not suggesting that you should have to design a mathematical model of an in-cylinder combustion flame front in order to get a driver's license, but you should understand that basics of how your car works. You should understand how your car gets traction (during acceleration, deceleration, and turning), the purpose of each of the main fluids in your car (engine oil, coolant, transmission fluid, etc.), how varying temperatures affect your car (especially snow & ice), and other such commonsense things. Contrary to popular practice in this country, not every 16-year-old dipshit with a rustbucket, $15, and a lukewarm IQ should be allowed to drive!
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* Note that by 'discovered', I mean 'discovered on-air'. The lady was fully aware that she had been driving with no oil cap, but apparently didn't think it was important or relevant enough to mention.

time = money (cont'd)

I should have known that people would try to read into the numbers behind my little example chart ... so, by popular demand, we'll take a second look.

I'm not going to go as far as the AC suggested. What I did, instead, was remove the data points that aren't relevant to the spending-by-day point of view. Mainly, I removed all my bills: rent, ISP, car loan, etc. The result is shown below. Interestingly, Thursday is now my /least/ expensive day. There is one caveat to this revised chart: Saturday is artifically low. Most of my Saturday spending (i.e. drinking) is in cash, but I don't track individual cash transactions.

time = money

All [four? :-P] of my loyal readers may have noticed that my post frequency has dropped quite a bit recently. I was on vacation, or recovering from it, for a while and work has been somewhat busy. For the last couple weekends, one thing has been sucking my time down more than anything else; the last 12 months of my financial history.

Since September 2004, I've used spreadsheets to track my income and spending. Every transaction was categorized by date, payment method, two levels of descriptive categories, and [of course] dollar value. I had sums that ran over time and over types of spending, and it was a pretty decent system. Not decent enough, though. My OCD would not be satisfied without a true accounting program, and I found a good one, GnuCash, that met all my needs.

I read the documentation and experimented a bit, finally deciding that I'd switch from spreadsheets to GnuCash from December 2005, forward. Unfortunately, I also made the decision to port my data for all of 2005 to GnuCash, as well. About 12 hours later, I'm finally finished. It was worth every minute. For a taste of teh awesomeness, see the graphic below. This is one of the [customizable] reports you can run, albeit a pretty frivolous one; it shows all spending broken down by day of the week, in this case summed over CY2005.

why now?!

On my way home from work today, I thought I'd check out what I could find on the AM dial. As my right finger did its best impression of a 'scan' mode, I heard one station talking about some bad traffic on 680. Odd, I thought, I don't know of any 680 within a few hundred miles. A few seconds later, I hear them mention rush hour on I-80 in Council 'Tucky. Say what?

It turns out that I can hear KFAB out here. Why couldn't I figure that out /before/ football season??