Category: Uncategorized

If there’s been a more brutal examination of a witness in a Congressional hearing since the days of Alberto Gonzales, I haven’t seen it. [From TPMmuckraker | Talking Points Memo]

Artur Davis (D-AL) has a growing reputation for this: watch it and see him quietly but firmly eviscerate the witness. There’s no emotion or rancor in the questions, just a quiet tenacity.

• Toldja
  The Poor Man Institute, almost two years ago, explaining the NSA wiretapping program to you:

  (tags: history corruption wiretapping crime worstpresidentever)
• Speaking of Sicko
  on the topic of healthcare costs, count the number of non-medical staff you see in your doctor’s office and compare it to the count of practitioners. is there a disconnect there?
  (tags: healthcare business politics values)
• Single White Nation ISO Citizen, 35 , Must Love Torture
  bringing the crazeee: “The official position of Uncle Jimbo is that being an advocate of torture and secret prisons should be a requirement for being President.”
  (tags: corruption worstpresidentever gop values torture)

Various notes, if you see something you want to know more about or can expand my knowledge, feel free.

I added a network interface to my TiVo series 2 this afternoon. Couldn’t have been easier. Interesting that, in my basement, the antenna for this device picked up 3 more local wireless networks than I had seen before. I need to move the antenna(s) up into the attic to make sure they present the strongest signal. The TiVo showed up in my ZeroConf services list (sorry, Bonjour is a dumb name and I’m not using it) right away.

Judge of my delight when I learned that I need to buy third-party software to actually make a networked TiVo worth anything. That was outsourced to Roxio, apparently. <grumble>

Still seeing weird wireless network dropouts on my G5 iMac, perhaps due to authentication, but it seems more to do with signal strength. Did I mention moving the antennas?

I wanted to turn remote syslogging on for the dd-wrt-enabled access point, but the standard syslog seems unwilling to take remote messages. After seeing syslog-ng presented as the solution damn near everywhere, I installed it and it works right out of the box.

Oct 29 20:35:54 erewhon root: is this thing on?

(erewhon is the name of the access point/firewall/hub. Maybe now I’ll have a better idea what’s going on there.)

Got an old LinkSys BEFW11S4 access point via FreeCycle today. No, I don’t know why. I’ll see if I can get dd-wrt running on it and then see if it can be used somewhere. Maybe at my kids’ school, so parents who drop in can get network access. It’s only wireless-B but it was free, assuming it works at all. [update: it seems to work but it’s too old to upgrade the firmware properly. The web pages don’t render properly in any of the browsers I have tried. Wonder if there is another way?]

Also got a 4×5 negative carrier. As soon as I make a lens board to fit the enlarging lens I picked a couple of weeks ago, I can see if I can make a print. Hmm, I need to locate a bulb too, I just remembered.

And I got a 2 channel 27MHz R/C receiver so I can perhaps someday finish making that Mugi EVO I started on a month or so ago.

The KEXP.org pledge drive is making me crazy: my need/desire for funds was bad enough but not I feel guilty for now ponying up something to cover the cost of entertaining me. When they’re good, they are amazingly good.

Lots of people wrote and told me I could order Marmite from Amazon.com — and I did! It just arrived. Unfortunately two bottles (of twelve) were smashed in shipping, and I discovered that Amazon won’t let you return or refund grocery items, so I don’t think I’ll be ordering groceries from Amazon again. [From the simplicity of black…]

And what is Amazon’s recommendation engine trying to tell us about Marmite?

The Stuff is cheaper there than anywhere else, so I may have to poke around and see if I can find enough to make an order worthwhile.

• Go Bags
  I feel like I should go out and get the stuff for these RIGHT NOW.
  (tags: emergencypreparedness survival)

I got this hateful email forward from a family member the other day: I re-framed a couple of the items in it. Do you have any ideas for the others? The men who shot John Lennon and Ronald Reagan are conspicuously absent: I wonder why?

These events are actual events from history. They really happened! Do you remember?

1. 1968 Bobby Kennedy the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr was shot and killed by

a. Superman
b. Jay Leno
c. Harry Potter
d. a Muslim male extremist a white male between the ages of 17 and 40

2. In 19721996 at the Munich Atlanta Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred a nail bomb was set and detonated, killing two, by
a. Olga Corbett (sp)
b. Sitting Bull
c. Arnold Schwarzenegger
d. Muslim male extremists mostly a white male between the ages of 17 and 40

3. In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by:
a. Lost Norwegians
b. Elvis
c. A tour bus full of 80-year-old women
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

4. During the 1980’s a number of Americans were kidnapped
in Lebanon by:
a. John Dillinger
b. The King of Sweden
c. The Boy Scouts
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

5. In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by:
a. A pizza delivery boy
b. Pee Wee Herman
c. Geraldo Rivera
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

6. In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old
American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by:
a. The Smurfs
b. Davey Jones
c. The Little Mermaid
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

7. In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens , and a US Navy diver
trying to rescue
passengers was murdered by:
a. Captain Kidd
b. Charles Lindberg(sp)
c. Mother Teresa
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

8. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by:
a. Scooby Doo
b. The Tooth Fairy and The Sundance Kid
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

9. In 1993 1995 the World Trade Center Murrah Federal Building in OKC was bombed the first time by:
a. Richard Simmons
b. Grandma Moses
c. Michael Jordan
d. Muslim male extremists mostly a white male between the ages of 17 and 40

10. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya nd Tanzania were bombed by:
a. Mr. Rogers
b. Hillary Clinton, to distract attention from Wild Bill’s women problems
c. The World Wrestling Federation
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

11. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles
to take out the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed
into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers.
Thousands of people were killed by:
a. Bugs Bunny, Wiley E. Coyote, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd
b. The Supreme Court of Florida
c. Mr. Bean
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

12. In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against:
a. Enron
b. The Lutheran Church
c. The NFL
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

13. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by:
a. Bonnie and Clyde
b. Captain Kangaroo
c. Billy Graham
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

• An open note to my coworker
  (tags: culture class privilege history)
• Reasons 1-9 Why Not to Ride the Ferry in a Storm
  (tags: ferry weather)
• Coding Horror: Why Does Software Spoil?
  some of it even starts to smell after awhile.
  (tags: software upgrades programming business design)
• Communications From Elsewhere » Blog Archive » Warwalking
  51 houses, 62 wireless networks: I think I may take a walk around my block as well and see what I see.
  (tags: wireless networking markets technology security)

Let this sink in.

Rudy is Bush without the soft edges. [From Dangerous All By Himself]

Read the whole thing for the details, but as a summary, that’s just chilling.

So what would this take?

Someday someone is going to start a reunion site that will stay free. [From classmates.com spam scam | a crank’s progress ]

Free? Who would do it, then? What you want is one that is upfront about the cost and never tries to rope you into a membership under false pretenses.

After all, what do they provide? And what’s it worth?

• A site where you can register and associate yourself with a school: easily done.
• A searchable list of names and schools
• Some kind of contact system (this guestbook business that seems to be a scam)

So how hard would it be to create a database-driven website with as many publicly listed schools as possible (there are lists, after all), allow people to register and associate themselves with a school and class/year, and advertise themselves as available to be contacted?
Here’s what I would propose. Instead of a guest book that can be abused by whoever hosts the site, set up double-blind email addresses, such that classmate A sends a message to classmate B, all without divulging their real address. Only members see these addresses: they’re not published for harvesting by spammers.
Once they establish that they do know each other, they can establish some kind of link (like the networks on the LinkedIn site) so that people can see who their extended network knows. Or they can remain unlinked, publicly, and manage their network themselves. The idea would be that the members own their information, not the site, and they can choose to reveal or hide as much as they like.
What would you pay? I’m thinking a one-time fee: pay once, and you’re a member forever, like a co-op. Say, $20, and it doesn’t matter how many associations you make, how many classes/schools you are associated with, or how many connections you make.
Now, if only I was smart enough to build it.

Amazing. And at $99, not something I’m likely to buy any time soon. And that’s just Volume I. The Author pointed out some examples of artwork that was published in the mass market comic editions vs what’s in Absolute and it’s striking.

It’s a big thing, though. The kind of book that needs one of those reading stands.

“The Absolute Sandman, Vol. 1” (Neil Gaiman)