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. :)