| Links to clear my browser |
[Dec. 16th, 2011|12:00 am] |
I've been hording a lot of stuff that I've wanted to get back to and it just hasn't happened, so I'm throwing them here. You might find some of it interesting, but it is rather long, and since I am setting the date to a future date, it'll be coming up at the top of your flist (I think), plus, I really, REALLY, like run on sentences
( Read more... ) |
|
|
| Fecal matter impacts rotary blades: Federal Judge rules against Army Corps of Engineers for Katrina |
[Nov. 20th, 2009|12:25 pm] |
"The Christian Science Monitor reports that a federal judge has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers — and thus the US government — is liable for a big chunk of the damage caused when hurricane Katrina pushed ashore on August 29, 2005 by failing to stop the natural widening of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet canal (aka Mr. Go) causing it to eventually bump up against the shore of Lake Borgne, on the city's east side. 'It is the court's opinion that the negligence of the corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MR-GO properly, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia, and shortsightedness,' wrote US District Court Judge Stanwood Duval. Judge Duval said he believed it was the failure to shore up the outlet that 'doomed the channel to grow to two to three times its design width' allowing waves on Lake Borgne to enter the Mr. Go and travel into the east side of the city, battering the levees to a degree to which they were not designed. 'One of the greatest catastrophes in the history of the US' was both predictable and preventable, testified veteran Louisiana geologist Sherwood Gagliano, a former Corps consultant."
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/11/20/0742226/Federal-Judge-Says-Corps-of-Engineers-Liable-For-Katrina-Damage?art_pos=3
From what I've heard, Mr. Go was perhaps the single biggest contributor to damage from Katrina. The government paid for a lot of the cleanup, so is this going to be prompts for insurance companies and individuals to sue ACoE and the government or what? (Admittedly, I haven't yet read the articles linked to in the Slashdot column) |
|
|
| Doonesbury Say What? |
[Nov. 20th, 2009|12:15 pm] |
"I don't care about the Constitution!"
-- Bill O'Reilly, on Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try five Gitmo detainees in NYC
I would LOVE to have the full quote or see the segment! |
|
|
| We just found the coolest way to give your dog pills! |
[Nov. 15th, 2009|11:43 am] |
It's probably been out for a while, but we don't go to PetSmart very often. It's made by the Greenies people and it's called Pill Pockets. It's a beef/chicken/etc protein thing that is sort of a little cup: you put the pills inside it, squeeze it shut, and give it to the pooch. Very convenient. They recommend using one hand to handle the pills and the other for sealing it so the dog doesn't smell the pill stuff on your hands, but I imagine the beef/chicken smell will override the medicine smell as far as they're concerned.
We've never had much of a problem giving pills to Celeste, we just put a bit of peanut butter on the and she gobbles it down. Recently Russet took her to get her teeth cleaned, and it turned out the poor thing had pneumonia! Fortunately the antibiotics for the first round were meat-flavored, so Celeste gobbled those no problem. But when we took her last week for a followup, she still had shadows, so she's on a second round of pre-dental antibiotics.
We also give Celeste a glucosamine pill twice a day, but for that we just put it with her food and put a dollop of yogurt on top of it. Fortunately, normally, all she needs is that pill with the regular heart worm pill, which is also meat-flavored and instantly devoured by her. |
|
|
| Doonesbury Say What? |
[Nov. 11th, 2009|09:50 am] |
"I've had two teenagers who were considering killing themselves, because they didn't want to be around when the world ends. Two women in the last two weeks said they were contemplating killing their children and themselves so they wouldn't have to suffer through the end of the world."
-- NASA Astrobiology Institute scientist David Morrison, on 2012 fears
/facepalm
I guess there's never a shortage of people like this. A friend of mine, whom I thought was fairly rational, moved to Idaho before Y2K. He bought two generators, had a year's worth of food, and who knows how many thousands of rounds of ammunition stockpiled before the year ticked over. I understand that all over the country you could pick up some really good deals on new, unused generators in January 2000 which people suddenly didn't need any more. |
|
|
| Maryland experimented with a new voting system last week |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|09:10 am] |
Rather interesting. First, each ballot is numbered (they are already so they can account for spoiled ballots). Second, you use a special pen to mark your candidate. When you mark your candidate, a hidden code is revealed, and you can go online and enter your ballot number and verify that your vote was properly counted for the selections that you made.
It's also inexpensive, using high-end commercial scanners, coming in at half the cost of dedicated systems.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/scantegrity |
|
|
| Doonesbury Say What? |
[Nov. 5th, 2009|07:35 am] |
"Admittedly, I have not always been engaged in the electoral process."
-- Carly Fiorina, announcing her race for U.S. Senate despite having voted only five times in last 18 elections
With the exception of two days ago and some smaller local elections, I've voted in every election since I registered almost 30 years ago. My only excuse for not voting this week is I moved back to Cloudcroft a few months ago and haven't changed my registration yet. |
|
|
| Doonesbury Say What? |
[Nov. 4th, 2009|10:05 am] |
"He is an American citizen thanks to taking a test and living in our country...Nothing against Keflezighi, but he's like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league."
-- CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell on NYC Marathon win by Meb Keflezighi, who immigrated to the U.S. at 12 and became a citizen 11 years ago
Yeah, lives here almost half his life and that makes him a ringer. |
|
|
| Doonesbury Say What |
[Oct. 31st, 2009|12:38 pm] |
"Most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches. I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference."
-- Dr. Kimberly Daniels, in an essay posted on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network
Words fail me as much as brains fail Dr. Kimberly Daniels. You know, there are laws in some states that you cannot publicly criticize food: Oprah was sued by a Texas cattleman association (she ultimately won). It would be interesting to see M&M Mars go after Daniels. |
|
|
| Windows 7 shipped last week |
[Oct. 26th, 2009|07:27 am] |
Windows 7 released last week. A lot of people, myself included, are calling it Vista 2.0, but Microsoft would like to distance itself from the Vista name. If you have newer hardware, i.e. less than 2 years old and lots of memory and good video card, you probably shouldn't have any issues with upgrading as long as you're careful. I downloaded the beta of 7 and was running it in a virtual environment on my Mac and was satisfied, but I have no plans to buy it for my 5ish year old AMD Athlon system: it's just too old and underpowered comparatively (I use it as a Tivo repository). My virtual machine is going to be deactivated by MS in a month or so, at which point I'll go back to using my virtual XP image. Still, it worked well.
Here's some thoughts/recommendations:
I cannot emphasize this too strongly: BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER BEFORE UPGRADING!
You can get an external hard drive at Best Buy or Staples et al for $50-75ish. Microsoft says that you have to reformat your hard drive if you're upgrading from XP (you don't have to if you're upgrading from Vista, but it's always a good idea to do it). There are reports of people not having to reformat when upgrading from XP and earlier, but don't take the chance: BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER! MS includes a utility to restore your data from an external HD after installation, but I have no experience with that as the install that I did was to a new virtual image and had no data migration with it.
Conveniently, Wired has put their Wiki page on backing up a Windows PC on their front page this morning: http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Back_Up_Your_Data_on_a_Windows_PC
There are reports that some people are having problems downloading updates if they bought/downloaded the discounted price student edition. I'm sure MS will get that sorted out very soon.
I haven't heard of any horrible major third-party software problems with it, but I'm sure there will be some. Like I said, this is basically Vista 2.0: most of the major bugs have been ironed out of Vista, so 7 should be a fairly painless experience. |
|
|
| First snow! |
[Oct. 26th, 2009|07:16 am] |
We got our first snow of the year last night as we drove back from the observatory!
Nothing too dramatic, it's been too warm of late for it to truly accumulate. Still, the ground is mostly white, though I don't expect it to last too long. |
|
|
| Walmart does something that I like?! |
[Oct. 22nd, 2009|11:13 am] |
I'm very glad for this, it shows that someone at corporate is doing a good and ethical job.
Walmart was hacked. It happened around the same time as the TJX and Dave & Busters hack, but there's no evidence that it was the same crew. Their infrastructure was penetrated and information about their point of sale system was compromised, but apparently it was caught early and no customer information was compromised. Because nothing was compromised, they did not publicize the hack, they just quietly sealed up their systems and became very vigilant about monitoring and PCI compliance.
How vigilant? They're required to undergo a PCI audit annually: Walmart does it twice a year.
I still don't like Walmart as a corporate entity because I believe that lowest possible prices and highest possible profit are ruinous to the world, but I gotta give 'em props for doing good on this issue.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/walmart-hack/ |
|
|
| Monty Python's 40th Anniversary |
[Oct. 22nd, 2009|10:45 am] |
Wired has a nice little article including some video clips of their reunion in New York, and Fresh Air/NPR also had a good piece.
Wired article
NPR article with link to audio clip
I was first exposed to/corrupted by Python in the late 70's whilst in high school. They had probably already completed their BBC run at that point and the Phoenix PBS affiliate, KAET, ran the entire series. I don't recall the first sketch that I saw, but I was hooked pretty much immediately. I bought a few of their albums, including the original three-sided album (Matching Tie and Handkerchief) which I think I still have around somewhere, not that I have a functioning record player.
While in Tucson a couple of weeks ago, I was quite happy to discover two albums at one of the greatest used bookstores in the world, Bookman's, and drove back to New Mexico listening to the soundtrack to Holy Grail and an album called Monty Python's Previous Record (1972). I had many segments from Holy Grail from other CDs, but I was missing one of the most brilliant: the Professional Logician. It didn't appear in the movie, it was a comment on Sir Bedeviere's logic, but was nonetheless hilarious. I played it for Russet the other evening and it blew her mind ("Sex is more fun than logic. One cannot prove this, but it IS, in the sense that Mount Everest IS, or that Elmer Cogan ISN'T. Goodnight."). Sadly, with the Previous Record CD, although the album had something like 26 tracks on it the CD has two: Side 1 and Side 2. *sigh* If I get ambitious some day with a good sound editing program, maybe I'll break it in to chunks.
(and for the record, Powell's Bookstore in Portland, OR is the greatest used bookstore in the world. Bookman's is quite good, but it ain't Powell's.) |
|
|
| Doonesbury Say What? |
[Oct. 16th, 2009|11:52 am] |
"I'm the cow on the tracks."
-- RNC chairman Michael Steele, on the health care reform train having "left the station"
SPLAT!
I don't know what's going to happen with health care reform. Something must, we have a totally unsustainable system. So get on the effing train and make something good, you bastards! Don't just nay say and kill any attempt at dialog. |
|
|
| Doonesbury Say What? |
[Oct. 15th, 2009|08:36 am] |
"When they're done with Fox and talk radio, do you really think that they'll leave you alone, if you want to ask a tough question?...Do you really believe, after [Obama] takes out the number one news network, do you really think that this man is then not going to turn on you...to take you out? If you believe that...you've missed the point of many brutal dictators. You've missed the point on how they always start."
-- Glenn Beck to NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN, on White House calling Fox "the communications arm of the Republican party"
The number one news network for people who like to whine that they lost an election and avoid critical thinking. There was a great segment on Daily Show last night. There was a march on Washington to get Don't Ask, Don't Tell repealed like Obama promised: 75,000 people showed up and Fox didn't send out a reporter/camera crew. The best thing is that Fox has a Washington bureau overlooking the Mall: all they had to do was look out a window.
Yup, that's modern journalism for ya! The fact that you're the biggest doesn't mean you're the best. |
|
|
| Doonesbury Say What? |
[Oct. 8th, 2009|12:26 pm] |
"The fact that our numbers are up 30-plus in the news arena on basic cable I'd like to think is a sign that we are just putting what we believe to be the facts out on the table."
-- Fox senior vice president for news Michael Clemente
There's just no words. Maybe we could resurrect zombie Cronkite and Murrow to go over there for a brain smorgasbord, but they'd die of starvation. |
|
|
| Speaking of books, it's National Banned Book Week! |
[Sep. 30th, 2009|10:04 am] |
Go out and read something that someone thinks you ought not.
I should go through and see how many I've read. Locally, there's a preacher who railed against Harry Potter and had a bona fide book burning. He was then caught coming out of the movie theater having taken his niece and nephew to see said Harry Potter movie. Gotta love ideological consistency!
http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/ |
|
|
| Sony finally does something that I like, I don't think Amazon's going to be too fond of it |
[Sep. 30th, 2009|09:54 am] |
They opened up their ebook software so that anyone can create content for it.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/sony-opens-up-ebook-platform-to-self-publishers/
Basically, they're in partner with a site where you can upload your book, specify how much to charge for it, and specify what platforms it is available for: Stanza (iPhone and more), Google Android, and Barnes & Noble.
I like the Sony ebook readers in terms of their physical form factor and ergonomics. I like the Kindle. I don't like the cost of either, they're just too expensive for a single-purpose device for me. I've read a lot of ebooks on my PDAs over the years as it is a multi-function device that I use daily. I'm also not at all a fan of some of the things regarding DRM on a Kindle, nor do I like their pricing structure, though I understand the cost of ebooks through Amazon has come down. I read a story of someone whose Kindle was stolen, and though he could disable his account so the thief couldn't buy books on it and charge the owner's account, Amazon couldn't/wouldn't remotely brick it, which should be easily possible considering the persistent cellular connection that it maintains. |
|
|