Straight No Chaser - 12 Days of Christmas

Paris For President, Paris Hilton, Official Music Video, HQ

You gotta see this Paris Hilton for President video

ZFS coolness

I just loaded 2008.05 open solaris on my laptop. Found that the
Broadcom wireless didn't get recognized (no surprise, linux doesn't
like it either, apparently Broadcom doesn't like anyone but
Microsoft). Anyways, found ndiswrapper, but apparently I require a
slightly newer kernel. So, how do I update? Well, I found this page:
http://opensolaris.org/os/project/indiana/resources/rn3/image-update/

What's really cool is that in OpenSolaris with ZFS, when you need to
do certain updates you essentially "branch" your filesystem, apply
changes to the branch (in those instructions earlier I was using build
86, so I had to do all of them), and then 'activate' that branch. The
old one is still there, and I could easily roll back if needed.
Imagine if you could do that after installing Vista. "Ah, crap, this
runs too slow. I need to rollback. ... ... Oh, what do you mean I
can't rollback? Ah, crap." Messing up a critical config file could (if
you use the beadm command religiously) be minor - just rollback. Think
Microsoft's Previous Versions for files and System Restore, but for an
entire filesystem, accessible from a bootdisk.

--
Chris Wiegand

Amendment 47 – Unions and Right To Work

Because I’m sure everyone really wants to know my opinion of this amendment, here it is: I’m for it.

I’m for it for two reasons: 1) while I was a contractor at Lucent (later Avaya after the split), I saw, first-hand, the laziness of workers who were sufficiently far up the union ladder that they no longer needed to work – they just showed up and did whatever they wanted. The company couldn’t fire them (except VERY slowly), and one person in particular I depended on, and he was very slow to respond to anything because there was nothing I could do about it. I can compare this to my current job, where if I don’t perform I’m out the door. Unions protect all the workers – good and bad.

But 2) my second reason is that I cannot in good conscience require a worker to give up money just to help fund some political campaign that the union boss likes. That, to me, is borderline theft or fraud. In addition, the union boss (or “manager” as they sometimes like to be called) has 0 productivity – he doesn’t help me code, or design databases, or manage servers. He even interferes with my ability to manage people (should I have any underneath me in any way).

I can understand why, in some trades (mostly blue collar) unions may be a great way to go, but let’s keep them competitive – if union membership brings real benefits then people will want to join/form them. Otherwise people will go elsewhere. That way I can go work for non-union shops where I know I can can a worker if they are consistently non-productive.

Phone numbering plan expansion

North American Numbering Plan Expansion – this is interesting. Looks like someday they’re going to extend phone numbers to 12 digits here in the US/Canada area (and a few other places too). Cool how they can use the ‘new’ 4th digit to detect if it’s new dialing (0/1) or old dialing (2-9). This is going to be EXPENSIVE – they should probably get moving on this now, IMHO.

Test 1.2.3.4

This is testing if Windows Live Writer Beta (9) can post to my LiveJournal account without blowing a gasket. This is only a test. If this were a real blog posting, cool blinky text would appear, courtesy of hidden javascript. Or perhaps a video of myself being dorky, or my son being cute. Or I would rant about politics (what depths will the republican party go to – Reagan is surely SPINNING IN HIS GRAVE!), or my job (can’t talk much about it, but I’m busy this week. And next.), or local issues (my wife thinks that if you define a person as being at conception she should at least get to count him/her as a 2nd person in the vehicle in HOV lanes). But this is just a test, so I’ll sign off now.

Connected

So, let's see, I have a LiveJournal, a Blogger (which is really just a mirror, and not yet up to date), a Flickr account, a Twitter account, a Momentile account (it's still in private alpha), a Facebook, a MySpace, a LinkedIn, a SlashDot account (id 2267!). I also have 3 AIM accounts, an ICQ account, one or two MSN's, a Yahoo!, a Google Talk, and a Skype account. Also a GrandCentral, a Gizmo project, and probably something else I've forgotten about. I am very very connected. Some of these are linked on this page. Perhaps, just perhaps, I'm too connected?

No more jury duty!

This means no more jury duty for me! Yay!

Spam recently received at work. We all had a good laugh, and decided to post for others enjoyment. Note that it DID come with an attachment, which I ain't touching with a 3.3 meter pole - I'm very sure it's got something nasty inside. From: "ICS Monitoring Team" Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:44:30 To: client Subject: Your internet access is going to get suspended Your internet access is going to get suspended The Internet Service Provider Consorcium was made to protect the rights of software authors, artists. We conduct regular wiretapping on our networks, to monitor criminal acts. We are aware of your illegal activities on the internet wich were originating from You can check the report of your activities in the past 6 month that we have attached. We strongly advise you to stop your activities regarding the illegal downloading of copyrighted material of your internet access will be suspended. Sincerely ICS Monitoring Team

Boring Life

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usS4tvmoJjI

Boring Life

Ruby/Flex

Ruby is cool. See this example: # Ruby knows what you mean, even if you want to do math on an entire Array cities = %w[ London Oslo Paris Amsterdam Berlin ] visited = %w[Berlin Oslo] puts "I still need to visit the following cities:", cities - visited And it WORKS. No helper functions, no loops scanning for items missing from visited, just nice, clean code. I also think Flex is pretty cool - both are challenging programmers to leave their comfortable .Net/ASP and Java/JSP environments and thinking about using Flash for more than just movies, and thinking of webpages in an MVC model (not that that's always appropriate, but often it can be a cleaner separation than just using code-behind). Ruby has some really cool features, like making blocks of code objects that can be assigned to variables - you can *pass around code like it was a variable/function*. It's really just taking the concept of an anonymous function and making the variable a pointer to the code, but in a really high level language. And flex lets you finally write some good logic into flash, making rich internet apps easier to write (not easy, just easier - I dislike the IDE).

Blindness - the movie

This is an interesting movie: http://www.blindness-themovie.com/ The synopsis is blindness as an epidemic. I've actually wondered what would happen if an epidemic of muteness occured - how would that affect our culture?

LHC webcams

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

Recent spim conversation

This was on AIM, btw. Names removed to protect the stupid. (10:41:24 PM) xxxx: Do you possess sad endorphins? [Note: at this point I tell what he said, and I echo what I hear:] (10:41:52 PM) chrisyehudi: No I possess gleeful endorphins (10:41:57 PM) chrisyehudi: But I am not sharing (10:42:12 PM) chrisyehudi: Did you say that too? (10:42:15 PM) chrisyehudi: You're such a dork (10:42:19 PM) chrisyehudi: Tell me if they say anything (10:42:34 PM) chrisyehudi: LOL (10:42:47 PM) chrisyehudi: meow [Note: the last line was from the cat, not my wife.] Edit: they actually responded! (10:44:56 PM) xxxx: i obviously have no idea who this is (10:45:50 PM) chrisyehudi: probably not, but since I got what looked like spam I responded :) [Quoted: xxxx: Do you possess sad endorphins?] (10:46:14 PM) xxxx: wow! am i spamming people! (10:46:30 PM) xxxx: you're the second arbitrary person to say that I've been IMing you :-( (10:46:41 PM) chrisyehudi: yeah, might want to run an anti-spyware check on your comp (10:46:54 PM) xxxx: booo. and i'm anti-anti spyware too (10:46:59 PM) chrisyehudi: usually I ignore them, but this time I decided to have some fun. apparently you're not a computer program :) (10:47:15 PM) xxxx: hurray for humans!

WE WON! WE WON AT POWERBALL!

Okay, so we only won $7. But it's winning, still, isn't it? thinks I'm a dork. News at 11.

Okay, I just watched the Microsoft commercial with Bill Gates and Seinfeld.

Who put this together? Because they should get out of the PR field. Entirely. Maybe go into Janitorial Services. 'Cause that was the quality of that commercial. Was there a coherent idea? I heard Jerry say Microsoft, but they didn't tie in Windows, or Office, or anything actually Microsoft. And Bill Gates is getting a little old, I must admit.

Even after taking a few minutes, I'm amazed that that commercial made it to air. Honestly, that was a huge WASTE of money. It doesn't make me want to buy anything from either Microsoft or Bill Gates, and it doesn't 'engage me in a conversation'.

The Time for Liberty

20080823 - This Week

This week's video blog.

VBlog 20080816 Testing

Yeah, sound is really quiet. I figured out what I did wrong and my next one should come out better.

sign language: the [new] asl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaAmlhzELpw
Okay, found this on YouTube - absolutely hilarious! NSFW or kids.

Nintendo DS screen replacement

DO NOT - EVER - UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES - REPLACE A DS TOUCH SCREEN YOURSELF. Let me explain. 's DS' touch screen wasn't calibrating anymore, a known issue. Sadly it's out of warranty, so she found some replacement instructions, and we decided to move my touch screen to her DS. Sadly, while the instructions are rather easy to follow, the touch screens aren't really designed to be usable once removed. I might be able to get a new one to work, but at this point my DS' power and volume switches have broken off. Now I have to buy her a new DS (probably going to trade mine in and I'll take hers, even if it is pink).

 

Aromatherapy via USB - the newest USB gadget.

It's All Because (The Gays Are Getting Married)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rixkck8QnjY
This is hilarious!

Snow! Rain! COLD! YAY!!

Yay! Snow! Rain! COLD!! I'm happy now.

Confused in Canada/Larkspur

This page confuses me. It's on the Life In Canada website, and the rest of the site seems to talk about moving to Canada. That's cool (pun intended). But then it highlights a Larkspur, Colorado home. Doesn't compare it to some equivalent home in Canada. Just the one in Colorado. My reaction: Huh??

I want a Bimmer (BMW car)!

My brother in law now has a BMW 328xi. I want. Very nice ride, AWD, remote control power windows, led-lit door handles, electronic ignition with auto-recharging key fob. Power everything. And, of course, the BMW logo. The only logo I treasure more is Apple's. Well, maybe in a couple years when the current car is paid off and we can pay down the credit cards. Maybe.

Ladies and Gentlemen, kiss your 4th amendment goodbye. If you leave or enter the country, any item that can store information, analog or digital, may be taken without cause or suspicion and kept without limit for no reason at all. On american soil no less. Looks like I won't be taking my laptops, phones, mp3 players or dvds with me. I guess just the clothes on my back and that's about it.

I hate Oracle DB

I HATE ORACLE. I REALLY REALLY HATE ORACLE. It's difficult to connect to, difficult to pull data from, difficult to see the schema. And Microsoft's SSMA doesn't make it any easier to actually migrate - the documentation is a complete lauch, there's no steps, no directions, just information on how people migrate not using the tool. Oracle requires me to download a FIVE HUNDERED MEG download just to use the ODBC driver, and the OLE driver is a complete farce. I just want to grab 1.5 GB of data from an Oracle server and pull it into SQL Server where I can actually get work done. We're having to export as CSV files (!!) and pull it back again in SQL because even Microsoft's tool can't see to actually migrate any schema or data reliably, and the memory leak is really getting annoying. I'm gonna blow my stack with this.

Video of Isaac and me

Application to date my daughter

This application is hilarious. I gotta remember it when my kids are old enough to think about dating. I should seriously print them out for the kids and have them 'fill it out'. Hehe

Cartoons and dogs

Why is it that in most cartoons the animals (and sometimes insects) can speak, but with few exceptions (like Goofy) dogs don't talk? This isn't just one or two cartoons - they all seem to make dogs only bark/make dog sounds, but mice, cats, ducks, sheep, fish, horses and more get to talk.

Good view of the GPL

Taken from here: > No matter how good you think the intentions you have are. If *insert corporation > here* wants your code they can take it and use it to create restrictions for the user. Well, duh! The point is that I don't care. If they take my code and put restrictions on it, I still don't care: no matter what happens, I still have my code. Anyone who wants to get my code can still get my code. What they can't get is the *insert corporation here*'s code that they added to my code, and the one very important point the GPL camp misses is that only a communist would lay claim to that code. The corporation wrote it, it's theirs. They can keep it, or sell it, or give it away. But it is immoral for me to force them to give it away. I can do what I want with my free software; I have no right to dictate others what to do with the code they write, even if it is using my code that they legally obtained from me. When I release free software, it's free software. Period. No friggin' GPL strings attached. -- Quoted from Chemisor on slashdot. I really agree with this viewpoint - just because some company took the code I gave away (which both BSD and GPL licenses allow) and didn't release it back to the community (which the GPL does NOT allow) doesn't mean MY code isn't still available. Which is why I don't write software under the GPl anymore, at most I'll use the LGPL, and usually I prefer the BSD as it's truly free for all - developers, companies and end users. The GPL is only free for developers and end users.

Recently heard in our living room...

From to our wonderful son: "Honey, pinching yourself does not a birdie make." (You see, to make the bird sign you pinch your fingers like a birdie opening and closing its beak.)

Commonly Confused Words Test

Your result for The Commonly Confused Words Test...

English Genius

You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 80% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!

For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.

Take The Commonly Confused Words Test at HelloQuizzy

Argh! I want to know what I missed! *sigh*

Apple doesn't really want developers for the iPhone. You want proof, you say? Interface Builder - the worst piece of crap since BEFORE Borland's tools for C++ back in Windows 3.0 days. I could at least build a window that would display what I told it in the GUI without writing code, whereas if I try to use a proper UIView, UIViewController, UIWindow, and throw in a UILabel it doesn't work. Half the time it crashes, the other half of the time the window's blank and doesn't actually display the UIView at all, even though I've double-checked my 'linkings' that IB likes to use. If I could use C#/.Net, my LiveJournal client would ALREADY be ported and done by now (I've already got code that does the LJ client stuff). I ported a bit of the backend code over to Objective-C, but then when I went to write the UI I ended up wasting 4 HOURS of my precious time today that I got to myself - as a dad I don't get a lot of time to myself without having to watch the bug, and I really feel like Apple doesn't want the casual programmer (who nonetheless, without tooting my own horn much, has enough experience to manage in most programming languages) programming on the iPhone. I like the UI itself, but programming it is rather non-trivial, and very frustrating.

Okay, well, today was interesting. We went to bug's swimming class and Mandy and Vinnie showed up, so we all went swimming and had fun. Then, I got my early father's day present: I may get another one, but not until I know that no kids will pull on it (we hold our kids on the left, it's just the way things turned out, so this one's on the right). says it actually looks good on me, I think I like it myself. Ought to be interesting to see who at work comments and who doesn't. [Edit: I got it at Under Your Skin in Aurora Mall in case anyone wondered. And I'm now thinking I may get a second one much sooner.] [Second Edit: Okay, I got a second one put in, now I'm balanced.]

People's Fair

Well today we all went to the People's Fair downtown for the first time. Was kinda interesting - all of the 'alternative groups' (i.e. the libertarian party, green party, highly-alternative religions, 911-was-a-govt-conspiracy groups, etc..) plus all of the food. found some pickled garlic that tasted really good - I was surprised. We got a small jar for future use. We brought the wagon so that neither of us would have our backs killed by kiddo, worked really well. I think when I go to denver pride (first time!) in a couple of weeks I may have to take the wagon then too, although it may not work well depending on the crowds - sometimes today it got kinda difficult to navigate around people. Got some Tokyo Joe's for dinner (or was that lunch?) and hung out with Mandy watching some movie about a football star that finds out he has a daughter, I'm sure my wife will comment with the name of said movie, I forget.

Ugh

I have to go back in this morning to the surgeon to see if my hernia's recurred or if I'm just feeling something pretend. Yeah. I'm so not looking forward to likely having a 2nd surgery. I'm just now over my 1st one (except lifting weight restrictions). At least my insurance isn't bad - the original charge from the hospital was $15K and insurance knocked it down to them paying $2600 and me paying $1500. Which obviously shows how ridiculous medical billing has gotten these days.. [editted] Ok, it's not a recurrence, it's just the results of having a hernia not instantly reabsorbed - silly 'not as young as it used to be' body! Anyways, should be gone in a few weeks, nothing to worry about.

Seizure when falling asleep...

Okay, let me explain my subject. I just finished watching the movie 'Next' (we went with some friends of ours (hi!) to a drive-in theatre to watch it but bug was getting too fussy so we had to leave early so I netflix'd it). Cool movie, the ending didn't bother me, actually, I felt it actually fit with the rest of the movie. Anyways, curious about it, I looked it up online, ended up on Wikipedia's article, then on their article on premonition, etc. That linked to the theory that some premonitions are due to what amounts to a technical mini-epileptic seizure on the temporal lobe, making one think they saw something before (kind of a like a hiccup). I ended up on their article on Deja Vu and found out that that little hiccup you get when you go to sleep, right when you're on the edge of sleep - well that's technically a mini-epileptic seizure too (it's called a hypnagogic jerk)! I had no clue other people even got those - I thought I was just weird (cue the 'um, yeah, you're weird anyways' comments). Just weird, just plain weird. I had no clue.

Comment #50 on this article is quite funny: Polygamy works both ways. There are people who believe women should have more than one husband. The woman choses whom she wants to marry and when, or if, she wants to have sexual relations (or children) whith any of her husbands. The husbands purpose is to provide for and take care of the wife, financially and otherwise. The husbands also share in household chores, cooking, and child care. One man often can not fulfill all the requirements and having multiple husbands ensures all the wife's needs are met and in the case of the death of a husband there must be another husband already in the household to take over the responsiblities. The basic belief behind this is that men are only physically superior to women. The reason they are physically superior is to enable them work and care for a women efficiently, not so they can intimitate, control, and take advantage of women as has happened throughout history. In many species, women dominate and select their male partners, "Queen Bee" for example, although some species have been corrupted. This was God's intention and the laws of nature prove this. Women mature faster, have better self control, and higher intelligence. Men are just stronger. Men must be strictly guided by a woman because of their lack of self control, immaturity, and perverted tendancies. If a man is given the freedom to explore his preverted caveman-like sexual tendencies, such as giving him multiple wifes, corruption, abuse, rape, and molestation will result as it has in Colorado City. Men simply can not handle this type of freedom and power. My wife thought that funny - men can't control themselves and need women to tell them what to do. Also the bit about women being smarter and how men should be serving women. [Edit: My wife mentions that she does not AGREE with the statement, just that she is amused by it.]

Federal money

Ok, so we just got our federal money yesterday. And now I get to stretch it as far as I can: 2 new tires on the car (badly needed), new dryer (badly needed), new couch, new clothes, cabling to move the cable modem to a Isaac-inaccessible place (he's already unplugged them once for us), Mother's Day present. Oh, and I had to use part of it to help pay for the property tax, so we can't do all of this at once. I just paid for the tires - $250 with alignment, and then ~$450 for the dryer, and then we have to wait for a few paychecks to 'pay back' for the property tax so that we can get the couch and the other stuff. We were hoping to get a new desk, but I don't think we'll be able to do that this year - I'll have to just reinforce her current desk. Why can't I have a magic dollar tree in my patio? I would happily water it daily.

GMail style extension

This is a cool GMail style using the Firefox extension 'Styles'. Really I'm posting this so that I can load it at home and show my wife.

Lost the beard

So, I was freestyling with my beard trimmer, and accidentally removed a 1" by 2" (2.5cm x 5cm) section right in the middle of my left cheek. Oops! And sadly it was rather noticable. So, I went ahead and removed the remainder of the beard. Picture online. So, I'm now shaving for the next couple of weeks while I decide if I want to regrow it now or wait until autumn. And the really funny thing is that the userpic I'm using I had cropped and uploaded that morning. It's one of my better pictures with a beard (my beard doesn't like to fully grow, as you can see I really can't grow a goatee as the mustache doesn't really connect well with the lower beard).

iPhone so easy

The iPhone is so easy, my 2 year old figured out how to unlock it!

IPv6

I love playing with IPv6. If you don't know what that is, skip this entry. :) I got a free tunnel (two, actually, one for at work and playing with vpns and cross-site stuff) from Freenet6/Hexago. I set it up at home and work so that each IPv6 endpoint can route, so my wife's laptop (MacOSX with IPv6 pre-enabled) can ping my Mac at work, using my work laptop and a test server at work being the IPv6 routers. Mind, no real firewall is setup at this point - I need to get that setup. But still, is very very cool - I can now play with a real network and get familiar enough so that when IPv6 gets used for production I'll already know what I'm doing. Not to mention that now I can access my computers at work directly and not need to setup silly NAT forwarding.

To get into OpenFirmware when Cmd-Opt-O-F isn't working (like, say, you're using a USB PC keyboard): Open Terminal Type sudo nvram auto-boot?=false and give it your user password. Reboot. OpenFirmware will not auto-boot into OSX. To undo, do the same but put true instead of false.

Funny comic

Funny image below cut:

From kirktoons.com

Almost Normal

Almost Normal as a movie is rather good. The basic premise: a gay guy goes back in time to his high school days, but in a twist the orientations are reversed: being gay/lesbian is "normal" and being straight is wrong. The writer really thought things out - straights are called "breeders" (a derogatory term in that world), to have kids you have "parental partners", but it's not a long-term relationship. And in gym class you have "shower buddies". All in all I rather liked the movie (watched it on Netflix' instant viewing thingy). A quote I love from the movie:

If G-d had wanted a man and a woman be together, He would have made women like football!

From SlashDot, in response to a claim that American health insurance is cheaper than Canadian:

[Canadian] Health care budget, 2005: $19bn Population of Canada: 33,390,000 (approx.) $19bn / 33,390,000 = approximately $569 / year, or $47/month. Average health insurance premium in the USA: $308/month. Still think that it's cheaper?

Numbers aren't checked, but even if they're rather off, the math is still clearly on the side of Canadian-style socialized medicine...

Life after people

I just saw a commercial for a TV movie from the History Channel called Life After People. The basic idea: humanity suddenly no longer exists and what happens next. Ought to be interesting, I hope to record it. I've actually wondered in the past what happens at the End Of Time. One thought: let's say either a meteor hits the earth in a global-life-ending catastrophe, or say a rapture or something similar. Either way, everyone dies/leaves earth/etc. What about kids - they don't get to grow up to be adults. Babies and toddlers never learn to walk or talk. If it's a rapture-like event, what about those cars no unpopulated (or partially populated - what if the driver goes and not you)? What if enough people leave or die, how do those left gather together, or does humanity fall apart? If it's a epidemic, what if it happens slowly, say over a year or two? Some people may think they're prepared in case it's sudden, but if it's delayed it would have a different effect on society and people.

After having too many salty chips from Chipotle recently, I said this (and had my wife in TEARS laughing at me): "I can't drink anymore, 'cause the crackers are too salty!" You had to be there.

iPhone headphones not working? potential fix here

If, like me, you suddenly discover that your iPhone isn't playing music through your headphones, even though you can hear when you disconnect it, you might try this: 1. Reboot your iPhone by pressing down on the top (power) button for 5 seconds, sliding the "Shutdown" button, then after it's off pressing down again to turn on. 2. Unplug and replug your headphones a few times. Seems that there's an occasion "mixup" internall y that sees that something's plugged in but doesn't believe it's headphones. Yeah... anyways. Worked for me. Was rather annoying.