Just in case you were curious

Master Russell

2010-11-08T09:40:00.002-05:00

So after almost a decade I finally finished my Master's degree from Haaaaahvard Extension School. My dad really wanted to read my thesis so here it is, although I wouldn't recommend it unless you have a prescription from a medical professional for industrial grade insomnia. Please do not read while operating a motor vehicle or any heavy construction equipment.

You've been warned.

The best worst knock-knock joke ever

2010-01-24T12:56:00.003-05:00

Emily: Knock knock!
Wifey: Who's there?
Emily: Knock knock!
Wifey: Who's there?
Emily: Knock knock!
Wifey: Who's there?
Emily: *giggle giggle* Knock knock!
Wifey: Who's there?
Emily: *giggle giggle giggle* Knock knock!
Wifey: Who's there?
Emily: Banana!
Wifey: Banana who?
Emily: Orange!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *deep breath* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

She's almost got the hang of it.

Marinara Sauce

2010-01-08T10:51:00.002-05:00

A couple of people asked me about this recipe. Thought I'd share it with the world. It started out as lasagna sauce but it is great for any pasta.

Marinara Meat Sauce

These are the measurements for 1 lbs of meat. You can make as much at a time as you like.

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef (you can sub ground turkey if you want it to taste like sand)
1 small/med onion, diced
1 carrot
1-2 cloves of garlic (mmmm garlic. more is better.)
1 28-ounce can of diced or crushed tomatoes (diced gives you more chunks of tomato. Crushed does not.)
1 12-ounce can of tomato paste
(optional) 1/2 cup of chicken/veggie broth.
2 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon oregano (more of this is better)
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder/salt (not needed if you used fresh garlic above. Only here if you don't have that)
1 bay leaf

Directions:

Shave carrot and dice onion into big pot and sautee with some olive oil.
Add ground beef to pot and brown
When browned, tell your wife you drained the meat if needed. You can actually drain it but it won't taste as good or be as thick.
Lower heat to simmer
Stir in both tomatoes and paste.
Add the rest of the ingredients.
Stir everything together thoroughly
Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for about 1/2 hour per lbs of meat, stirring every 10 minutes. Depending on the consistency you may want to leave the cover askew on the top to let some water escape if its too runny.

Editorial Input

2009-12-18T21:13:00.002-05:00

Emily: Mommy, tell me the Frosty the Snowman story?
Mommy: Sure sweety. Once upon a time it was winter...
Emily: No, it wasn't.
Mommy: Ummm, ok. Once upon a time it was fall and turning into winter and the snow began to fall...
Emily: No, I want the story without the snow.
Mommy: Ummm, the Frosty the Snowman story without the snow?
Emily: Yes, I just want the children and no Frosty and they fall down and bump their heads.
Mommy: Why don't you tell me what you did at school sweety.

Sports Apparel FAIL

2009-10-21T09:17:00.003-04:00

This is what happens when your wife randomly picks out red and blue clothes for your son.

As several friends have pointed out it seems appropriate that the Giants ended up on top and the Pats are most likely the recipients of a steaming load.

A Lymeric on Sleep

2009-10-07T07:48:00.002-04:00

There once was a little girl with croup
Who clearly felt just like some poop
Said her father that night as he turned off the light
I can't rhyme on four hours of sleep.

Health Care and Making Stuff Up

2009-08-27T13:54:00.002-04:00

There have been a lot of awful things said on all sides of the recent health care debate and most of it has been a huge pack of lies, damn lies and things said by Fox News commentators.

However, while randomly reading the wiki page of Stephen Hawking, I came across an interesting paragraph.

In 2009, Investor's Business Daily (IBD) claimed in an editorial, "People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless." This caused widespread criticism, as Hawking does in fact live in the UK, and has received NHS treatment.^[34] Hawking personally replied that, "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he said. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."^[35] Eventually, IBD issued a correction,^[36] but continued to defend the original editorial, calling the mention of Hawking a "bad example" and accusing those that mentioned their error of "chang[ing] the subject."^[37]

So, you know what, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with Sarah Palin. Stop making stuff up just to scare people. Have a decent reasoned debate, but stop talking out of your ass.

Emily's new skill

2009-08-22T09:53:00.000-04:00

Now that Emily is potty trained she has discovered that she can actually stop peeing before she's done. She used to use this skill to finagle a greatly extended bedtime by magically having to pee three or four times in a ten minute span.

Well now she has a new use for this skill. Emily likes to be told stories while on the potty but after telling stories in the car, during breakfast, and every other waking hour of the day, its sometimes hard to come up with another one on the spot.

Emily: "Daddy? Can you tell me a story while I try to go peeps?"
Daddy: "Sure sweety..... ummmm.... let me think of one.....hrm."
Emily: (look of concentration and then she stops peeing suddenly) "That's OK Daddy. I'll wait."

Wifey was a good girl today

2009-06-15T21:36:00.001-04:00

Emmy: Mommy, what are you eating?

Wifey: A Hershey's Kiss, sweety.

Emmy: Why?

Wifey: Because I went pee pee on the potty today too.

You kids and your music

2009-06-14T21:10:00.010-04:00

My grandmother recently asked me this question:

Could you please tell me how entertainers(?) in dishabille attire,screaming incoherently into a mic can command concert size audiences - something I always wonder about. Does everybody memorize the lyrics before the concert? I am looking for a young person's perspective.

Here's my best shot at an answer.

A form of this question has been asked of one generation by the previous ones since the dawn of music, basically paraphrased as:

How can you kids listen to that hideous noise?

Sometimes the question isn't even a question at all, but an expression of incredulity that the performance of the latest popular musical trends managed to escaped explicit mention by somehow slipping the minds of the framers of the Geneva Convention.

My father "asked" me this question when I played Dave Matthew's Band for him several years ago, and by "asked" I really mean he looked at me with a cold stare, rolled his eyes and mumbled, "Whatever". I'm sure his parent's "asked" him the same thing.

You know how I know this? Because one of the most popular composers of his time, though not nearly rising to the historical significance as his father, Johann Christian Bach was frequently and publicly chastised by his father, the immortal Johann Sebastian Bach, for writing such festeringly putrid crap. J.C. Bach, the son, is most known for the influence that he had on the concerto style of Mozart. Yes, that Mozart. J.S. Bach, who died in 1750, basically asked of his own son, one of the great influences of possibly the greatest composer in the history of music:

How can you kids listen to that hideous noise?

This is, in my opinion, irrefutable proof that there is nothing special or particularly offensive about the music that "kids are listening to these days" no matter to which "days" and/or "kids" you are referring. Its all relative.

For a fabulous story on this exact subject I suggest listening to this episode of Radio Lab, a public radio show from WNYC. The show at the link is about sound and music and how the mind deals with them. You should listen to the whole hour, but if you are strapped for time, listen to the whole hour anyway but start paying attention to the story about the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring starting at 31:40.

Stravinsky was way out on the bleeding edge of tonal music in the early 20th century when his new ballet, The Rite of Spring, was first performed in 1913 in Paris. This was back in the day when going to the premiere of a new ballet was like going to see the new Harry Potter movie and Paris was the place to do it. Everyone was hip and really got into the whole classical composition scene. If you were going to draw a crowd in Paris you had better be doing something really new and cool.

Well Stravinsky brought it that night and the audience, if you'll excuse the colloquialism, completely lost their shit. There was a riot. Stravinsky had to sneak out the back. It was bad. They wanted him dead.

One year later, after other composers had assimilated what Stravinsky had done and started to emulate it, The Rite of Spring was performed again. This time they carried Stravinsky out on their shoulders, but in a good way. He was a visionary. A mere twenty-seven years after Stravinsky had to sneak out of the concert hall for fear of his own life, The Rite of Spring was selected by Disney as one of the pieces in their groundbreaking full length animated exploration of classical music, Fantasia.

From maddening to kids' music in one generation.

The Radio Lab podcast, and I highly suggest listening to it and all of the other Radio Lab podcasts for that matter, has a great explanation for what happened. It involves a part of the auditory cortex in charge of assimilating new and unfamiliar noises and making some sense of it. The practical upshot of which is, you are comfortable listening to what your brain has already parsed. If your brain hasn't analyzed some set of sounds yet, you will feel uncomfortable, possibly extremely so, listening to it until you have.

My guess is that in addition to this, some people like the feeling of unease that new and unrecognized music gives them and they go and search out new and interesting music to challenge their brains. Most of us, though, like what they liked when they are growing up and pretty much stick with that for the rest of their lives.

As much as I hate to admit it, I think I fall into this last category. I listen to a huge amount of music, but I haven't bought a whole new album in years, all of my Pandora.com stations are programmed to play music I already like and I can't for the life of my figure out how can the kids these days listen to that hideous noise?

So there you go, Grandma. That's the best answer I could come up with.

New Batteries

2009-06-08T21:16:00.000-04:00

Wifey: Can you bring up some new batteries for my electric toothbrush?

Me: You know, sweetie, you used to actually just move your arm when you brushed your teeth.

Wifey: Yeah, but its electric... boogie woogie woogie woogie.

Me: *sigh*. Ok.

2009-05-21T09:28:00.001-04:00

Ok, yeah yeah, I work for Cisco, but that's not the point. This is musically amazing. Studies have been done where musicians try to perform together over phones or video conference but as the latency goes much above 250ms it gets maddeningly hard to stay together. This performance and the technological ability to do it is incredible.

Secondly, I wish I lived in a culture that still respected classical music enough to use it in a popular setting like this. If this were done in the US they would have been reduced to dancing to U2 or something.

Throwing a wrench in Apple's ad campaign

2009-05-18T09:59:00.003-04:00

I know the Mac vs. PC ads are hilarious but I often wonder what was going on in the original casting meetings for those ads. Now, John Hodgman is perfect. Funny, great timing, more than a little dorky. But what about the Mac?

Justin Long always struck me as a strange choice. He's mildly cool in the ads but understated. Maybe that's what they were going for. But all I think about when I see him is wrenches.

What Guitar to Buy. An Answer to The Question

2009-01-05T21:29:00.007-05:00

We have a guest writer today. A wise man once said,

Its not always about knowing the answer, its about knowing where to get it.

When it comes to a lot of topics, I know squat, but sometimes I know who to ask, which is just as good. Frequently when someone finds out that I am a musician they will eventually ask me the one question, known simply as the question, that non-musicians will always end up asking musicians because everyone wants to pick up chicks.

I want to buy a guitar. What kind should I get (that would land me the most tail)?

The part in parenthesis is rarely stated but clearly implied by the request.
Notice from the beginning I said I was a musician and not a guitarist or settings-fiddling-equipment slut as they tend to be known in "the biz".

So when one of my friends recently asked me the question, I did what I always do. I asked The Master. The Master was there when it was my time to ask him the question many years ago, and he guided me through selecting my own axe, which I still have and play to this day, and which played no part whatsoever in me landing the chick who usually prefers to be referred to as "my wife", or simply "Wifey".

While reading The Master's most recent response to my forwarded question I thought that this is exactly the sort of knowledge that the Internet is meant to store and make available to the masses as opposed the the mindless drivel that tends to clutter its nether regions. So here I am, doing my part to bring a spectacular response to the question to any who may stumble upon my humble corner of the tubes.

It is important to note that this particular answer to the question is lovingly crafted to the exact specifications of the original requester and is not meant for everyone. In fact, in order to present the correct context for this targeted answer to the question it is necessary to include the requester's description of his/her desires in this respect.

I am looking for guitar for fun - not to do any professional gig or anything like that. Neither I am a purist about Acoustic Vs Electric - whichever one is more fun to play for an amature like me.

I do like slow songs. No heavy metal. For me, being able to play something like "Hotel California" would be great.

As I see it, I will play around with guitar, maybe take few lessons. In couple of years, if I still enjoy it, will trade it for a better/fancy one. If I do not enjoy it, will put it on craigslist or give it away.

Right now, I am looking to spend less than $500

Now, without further ado, here is The Master in his own words. Draw nigh that ye may bask in his answer. . .

Excellent, you gave me all the info I need here. I would recommend getting an acoustic guitar as you can play without plugging in and it will be more satisfying as a solo instrument. There is a steep increase in quality when going from $200-500. The main difference is that once you get near $500 then you've increased the number of guitars that have the appropriate fit/finish.

Fit and finish are not referring to cosmetics, but instead to the playability of the guitar and quality of construction. On cheaper instruments, you may have loose tuning knobs, poor action, fret ends sticking out, and in general traits that make the guitar difficult to play. As such, I would encourage you to move up to the higher end of that range ($400-500).

Another huge factor in the price of guitars is the use of solid versus laminate wood. As you can imagine, a piece of solid wood has some flex to it and can act like a "speaker cone" to amplify and impart a pleasant tonal signature as you pluck the strings. Laminated wood is exceptionally stiff and is a poor conductor of sound. It is essentially the difference between jumping on a trampoline (solid wood) versus concrete (laminate). Vibration is key to creating the sound.

With this in mind I would recommend purchasing a guitar with a solid spruce top. Sound modeling, and other experiments, tell us that between 80-90% of a guitar's tone comes from the top (the sound board). As such, it is most important that this is constructed from solid wood. For your price range, you will be unable to find a playable guitar with solid wood sides and back. But it is a fair trade off for cost as you are new to the instrument. There are some chinese knockoffs being produced around $500 with solid wood all around (e.g., Blueridge guitars), but these instruments have quite poor fit and finish. I would strongly discourage a new guitarist from purchasing this instrument. Such an instrument would work as a "beater" for someone like myself, but would be exceptionally frustrating and counterproductive for a newbie.

Finally, given that you don't know if you'll enjoy playing the guitar and could potentially put it on ebay or craigslist, I would recommend purchasing a well known brand as it will hold value well.

So in summary, we are looking for an acoustic guitar with good fit and finish, good playability, solid spruce top, laminate back and sides, and a well known brand to hold value.

In short, these are the guitars I would recommend:
1) Martin DX1K
http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/product/Martin-DX1K-Acoustic-Guitar?sku=514672

2) Martin DX1
http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/product/Martin-DX1-Dreadnought-Acoustic-Guitar?sku=514814

3) Martin 000X1
http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/product/Martin-000X1-Acoustic-Guitar?sku=514817

The difference between 1 and 2 is simply cosmetics. Option 1 has nice looking wood on the back and sides. This means nothing tonally because both have laminate back and sides. I like the way #1 looks, but for a more subdued look you might go for 2. Now, what about 1/2 versus 3?

If you plan on strumming a lot and are above average in height/build I would choose options 1 or 2. This is a dreadnaught sized guitar. Great for strumming and good for fingerpicking. If you are a slightly smaller build (<5' 11"), want a very comfortable guitar to play on the coach and plan on fingerpicking I would choose option 3. I would choose option 3 for myself because although I am almost 6' with long fingers I find the 000 body size more comfortable and I love fingerpicking. That being said, the D size will be a much louder guitar. I hope this was helpful.

Best regards and enjoy playing.

Rock on.

Rock on indeed.

The tubes are unclogged

2008-12-14T23:28:00.001-05:00

After the recent ice storm in the north east, many people were without power for a few days, many still don't have it. While we never lost power, we were without access to the internets for part of three whole days. This is the part where you are expecting me to say something about how liberating it was not to check email and not keep up with RSS feeds and how I read a book and cooked and saw the sunshine and fulfilled a dream.
Bull$#!+. Now I can finally do all that crap and still check my email.

My Take on Web Storage

2008-12-08T14:49:00.002-05:00

More and more I am starting to think that my local computer is really the weak link in storage of my data. For this reason I've put a lot of thought into this web based file hosting thing. Here's what I've come to so far.

I use Dropbox a lot. The wonderful thing about it is that the files are actually on your local machine, so you can access them without an internet connection, which is only really important with a laptop. Some people say this is a weakness because it takes up local space, but that never bothered me and I like not relying on the network to get to the files. Whenever you change anything in any of the local files it is synced up to Dropbox so you can get to it from their very slick web page or through any other computer where you have the Dropbox client installed. No manual intervention, it just notices that the files changed and up it goes. Very cool. It also has file history so you can go back to previous versions of files and recover deleted ones.

You can get a free forever account with 2GB of storage but you can pay for more.

I've heard about Box.net but haven't use it. It doesn't have the local files that Dropbox has. Here's someone else's good comparison between the two.

Another one that I really really like is jungledisk.com. This one is my favorite because they don't actually keep your files. You go out and get an amazon s3 (simple storage service) where your data is hosted and encrypted by amazon's very cool cloud disk in the sky. Jungledisk just organizes it like a filesystem for you and provides automated backup software etc. You just buy jungledisk software once (you can try it for free) and that's it. Upgrades for life. And you pay amazon for the storage, which is pretty cheap ($0.15/GB/month).

This solution really is nice because you are trusting the 800 lbs amazon gorilla with your data, and not some random fly by night company. The jungledisk file access parts are open source so you will never not be able to get your data.

So I like Dropbox's implementation but jungledisk gives me the warm fuzzies. The amazon s3 prices are still a little steap for a full out backup solution as my 2 year old is one of the more well documented individuals ever and the pictures are piling up. Of course, I have to back it up locally with multiple disks, so maybe I'm just kidding myself with how much it really costs.

I've had dreams about saying this

2008-11-07T20:18:00.001-05:00

Paul Rudd is my hero.

I got a leaf for you

2008-11-01T11:50:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure at what point in childhood it no longer occurs to you when sitting in the middle of a 3 foot high 10 foot wide pile of leaves to carefully pick up a single leaf, turn to your father and say, "Daddy, I got you a leaf." but I hope my daughter doesn't get there soon.

Can Ted "The Tube Man" Stevens Even Get His Own Vote?

2008-10-29T10:23:00.004-04:00

The jury came back in the Ted Stevens federal corruption trial with Stevens being found guilty on all seven counts of "making false statements on Senate financial documents". This makes Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican senator in the history of the United States, a convicted felon.

Now I usually get some weird voyeuristic pleasure watching any politician get caught doing something dumb. The greater the irony (I'm looking at you Rep. Mahoney) the more fun it is. However, Stevens holds a special place in the hearts of most geeks having single handedly renamed the Internet to "The Tubes".

For totally irony points though, I think the absolute pinnacle would be that with his conviction coming just eight days before his hotly contested senatorial seat is up for grabs Stevens may not even be able to cast a ballot for himself.

According to Human Rights Watch:

II. FELONY DISENFRANCHISEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES

In the United States, conviction of a felony carries collateral “civil” consequences apart from penal sanctions such as fines or imprisonment. Offenders may lose the right to vote, to serve on a jury, or to hold public office, among other “civil disabilities” that may continue long after a criminal sentence has been served. While both state and federal law impose civil disabilities following criminal conviction, state law governs removal of the right to vote even if the conviction is for a federal rather than state offense.

I'm not sure what the laws are in Alaska pertaining to felony disenfranchisement, but if there is any karma in the universe, Stevens may very well lose by the single vote that he couldn't cast himself.

Best Quote of The Week

2008-10-10T09:30:00.005-04:00

George Will is a conservative columnist for the Washington Post. He's not one of those loopy fire breathing nut jobs that FOX News hires, but he is a thoughtful, intelligent conservative who challenges the ideas people with whom he disagrees instead of throwing poo at them. He is the kind of conservative that the world needs so that the entire discussion doesn't fall into the hands of the the fire breathing nut jobs on both sides.

He has pretty much conceded the election these days, most poignantly in a quote of a Conservative (capital 'C') British politician:

In 1987, on the eve of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's third victory, the head of her Conservative Party told a visiting columnist: "Someday, Labour will win an election. Our job is to hold on until they are sane." Republicans, winners of seven of the past 10 presidential elections, had better hope they have held on long enough.

XDRTB.org

2008-10-06T14:38:00.003-04:00

Not paying attention to the rest of the world, will eventually effect our lives in ways we can't possibly imagine.

Some of the pictures in the movie are pretty grisly.

The Debate Translated: VP Edition

2008-10-03T13:15:00.003-04:00

Factcheck.org followed up their coverage of the presidential debate with their vidcast of the lies told at the VP debate which was posted in less than 24 hours. Don't these people sleep?

The Debate Translated

2008-10-02T14:13:00.003-04:00

Factcheck.org is a fabulous non-partisan website that just checks facts. They wait for politicians to say stuff and then they tell you when they are lying. They did a special vidcast for the debate that clears up some of the arguments that the candidates had.

They do one vidcast every friday covering the week's spin and the website is updated constantly. Its well worth checking out.

My Daughter Discovered the Higgs Boson

2008-10-01T21:09:00.007-04:00

Schmoopie Pumpkin: Daddy, what's on my toe?
Me: I don't know, sweety, is it a sticker?
Schmoopie Pumpkin: Nooooooooo
Me: Its not? It looks a lot like a sticker.
Schmoopie Pumpkin: Nooooooooo
Me: Hrm, is it an ostrich?
Schmoopie Pumpkin: Tee hee Nooooooooo
Me: Well, I guess that's good. Is it a German Panzer tank?
Schmoopie Pumpkin: Noooooooooooo
Me: Is it Estes Kefauver?
Schmoopie Pumpkin: Noooooooooooo
Me: Is it a sticker?
Schmoopie Pumpkin: Nooooooooooo
Me: Wait ... a... minute.... Is that a Higgs Boson!?!?
Schmoopie Pumpkin: YEEEEESSSSS!
Me: Wow, I was expecting more fanfare when we finally found it. As it is, I think you pooped.
Schmoopie Pumpkin: Nooooooooooooooooo

House Republicans and Identifying Risk

2008-09-29T22:33:00.011-04:00

So the bail-out bill failed to pass the house, mostly because of the objections of house Republicans who just can't stomach getting government that involved in business. This concept does have its merits in theory. The invisible hand of the market and not being a commie and all, but a lot of very smart people seem to think that unless there is some sort of help provided by somebody, that we are headed for depression, not recession.

Everyone in congress appears to agree that something needs to be done, but the house Republicans seem to like this idea of a government backed insurance program for holders of mortgages and mortgage backed securities (MBS).

I absolutely hate it when people just shoot down the ideas of other people without having a good suggestion themselves, but what I'm about to do is shoot down the ideas of other people without having a good suggestion myself.

I was reading the Economist from last week and came across this sentence in an already horribly out of date article:

It is a measure of the scale of the crisis that, by the evening of September 17th, all eyes were on Morgan Stanley, and no longer on AIG, which only 24 hours before had thrust Lehman out of the limelight. After its share price slumped by 24% that day, and fearing a total evaporation of confidence, Morgan attempted to sell itself. Its boss, John Mack, reportedly held talks with several possible partners, including Wachovia, a commercial bank, and Citic of China.

Did you see it? There at the end, they snuck it in. Wachovia was being courted to buy the teetering Morgan Stanley. Sound familiar? It should because Wachovia just got scooped up by Citigroup. And not just out of the goodness of their hearts either. The Fed stepped in and is guaranteeing all losses from the Wachovia takeover for Citigroup above $42 billion. Now $42 with nine zeroes after it is a lot, but the other side of that is infinitely large and that's the part for which the US Government, already $11 with 12 zeroes in the whole before this mess even started, is on the hook.

My point here is this. A week ago Morgan Stanley was trying to get bought by a large commercial bank that seven days later was so worthless and pestilence ridden that it had to be married off to Citigroup with an infinitely large dowry from Uncle Sam.

What does this have to do with house Republicans and their insurance plan? This is the environment in which they want to establish a healthy and balanced insurance market overnight which involves the need to somehow price the premiums that must be paid in order to correctly balance the risk associated with the insured asset.

The whole point of this entire catastrophe is that the financial sector couldn't properly identify risk if it came up behind them with a rubber glove and a wry smile, which I think is exactly what's been going on recently.

Without the ability to determine how risky something is, its impossible to have a successful insurance market around it. People make a ton of money calculating risk for insurance. Remember the physical you had to go through before you got life insurance? You think they like carrying your urine around in a cup? NO! They are going through a lot of effort to calculate your risk of shuffling off this mortal coil.

There is no mechanism right not to determine how much of the risk of the currently held MBS has been worked out and how much is still to come. That is why they are completely worthless and why everyone that holds them has to value them as such so their balance sheets have been soaring recently the same way that bricks do.

The insurance plan that the house Republicans want may very well be a good idea for a long term safety net, but it won't do anything in the near term for allowing banks to lend money again.

Don't blow this, Lutz

2008-09-22T20:38:00.008-04:00

With the buzz about the newly released information about Chevy's upcoming Volt fresh in my mind I was excited to see Bob Lutz, the General Motors Vice Chairman of Global Product Development, getting interviewed on the Colbert Report about the Volt.

I was excited, that is, until he actually spoke.

He stumbles across his disbelief in CO2 causing global warming. I'm all for academic debate but you're trying sell a damn car. Swallow the fact that you are out of the mainstream and come with a prepared joke or something.

Tiny little four cylinder engine? Seriously? Come on.

He answered Colbert's jocular question about "getting off the line" with a sentence that included the word "adequately". Seriously?
You are selling a car in the United States of I Prove My Penis Size By The Size of My Carmerica.

Its has a 150hp engine, which is more than my admittedly tame Pontiac Vibe, but he says it like he's trying to explain to his mother what all this porn is doing under his bed.

"If you're buying an electric car, you're attitude shouldn't be that you're trying to lay down rubber"... are you KIDDING ME!?

Which part of sales school do they teach you not to apologize for the product you are selling? Is that 5 or 6 minutes after you walk into the room? This guy is the worst salesman since Hannibal tried to sell elephants to the Romans. Like seriously bad bad bad.

I am going to be excruciatingly pissed if GM manages to take this amazingly forward looking and courageous idea and piss it away by having the morons that have been shoving 11 MPG Abrams battle tanks down our throats for two decades wander out in front of their customers and say "Well I guess it doesn't make you look like tooooo much of a pussy if its kinda dark and you've been drinking a lot and you're standing next to Ryan Seacrest for comparison."

Don't blow this, Lutz.

Slightly Impatient to Never Buy Gas Again

2008-09-19T22:14:00.003-04:00

I absolutely can not, just gotta have it, oh baby, gimmegimmegimmegimme oh please oh please when can I get one how soon can you get it to me would it help if I pushed it might is it 2010 yet how fast can I sell my old car can not wait for the new Chevy Volt.

A friend sent me this article which is the most detailed one I've seen so far about what's in the Volt and how it will work. Gimmegimmegimmegimmegimmegimme!!!

Inside with the kids

2008-09-04T21:50:00.006-04:00

We are about to host our daughter's second birthday party this Saturday. My brother's 37 kids are coming, a few other friends with kids are bringing theirs, some of the kids from Emily's playgroup are coming for a grand total of 6.022x10^23 children under the age of five.

No problem, right? Lots of parents, we'll send all the kids out onto the swingset that we put up for exactly this reason. We'll hang out on the deck, BBQ a little, and watch the kids lose their little minds.

Or not.

Llama gestation no where in sight

2008-08-16T11:21:00.007-04:00

A little while back I was complaining about how even though I keep hearing that Linux is ready for the desktop and "No really, this is the year for Linux on the desktop", that desktop Linux is . . . ahem . . . not quite there yet. I think my exact words were "Linux is as ready for mainstream desktops as I am to give birth to a llama".

Well, I just got a new Thinkpad T61p and I'm happy to announce that I am no closer to being called on my analogy. It was a close call but the perennial favorite of "suspend to RAM" was what did it again.

I installed Ubuntu, which, as always, went off without a hitch. I ripped off the "V" key to dig out the popcorn pieces that the previous owner of the laptop had deposited there. Everything was swell... until...

I was so giddy about the new laptop and the fact that it had an nvidia graphics card as opposed to the latest ATI I'd-rather-sautee-my-own-liver-than-wrestle-with-this-video-card 9600 that usually comes with Thinkpads, that I decided to take the plunge and just suspend it. That's it. To anyone that owns a normal laptop this may not seem like a big deal. Laptops have been suspending without incident since before Florida took a steaming crap on our Democracy.

But if you don't know anything else about users of Linux on laptops it is this. These are people that get irrationally excited about being able to do something on their computers that everyone else has been able to do for at least 5 years.
So back to suspend. Of course it doesn't work. Oh wait, technically suspend does work. Its resume that doesn't work at all. The thing goes to sleep like its sitting through a Cell Bio 210 lecture in the dark immediately after lunch. Its the turning back on part that doesn't work so well. It just sits there, waits for 20 second, beeps and emits heat into the surrounding environment. Stellar.

At this point I pull my self off the ground in a very Charlie Brown post-failed football kick way and hit the forums.

If you are reading this post looking for the way to get a Lenovo T61p Thinkpad to suspend/resume properly using Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 you should not follow this link here. There are probably nearly a trillion links on the internet that you should also not go to but I dare say that all the rest of them are not nearly as long as this one and are not nearly as close to exactly what I needed to know without actually having any useful information on it whatsoever. It actually goes beyond not having useful information. It has information that looks so tantilyzingly useful that I would swear I was in one of the more creative ancient Greek afterlife psychological torture stories. But alas, bupkis.

If you are still reading this post looking for the way to get a Lenovo T61p Thinkpad to suspend/resume properly using Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 you should also not follow this link either. This one is, amazingly enough, even close than the last one. *SPOILER ALERT*. While the answer is not actually on this page, nor is a link to a page with the correct answer, a link to the page with the most helpful wrong answer is on this page somewhere.

If you are still reading this post looking for the way to get a Lenovo T61p Thinkpad to suspend/resume properly using Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 go buy a Mac. Seriously, its just easier for everyone involved.

If you are still reading this post looking for the way to get a Lenovo T61p Thinkpad to suspend/resume properly using Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 and you looked at that other page with the link to the best wrong answer, you ended up at this incredibly well written and detailed post about why suspend/resume doesn't work with Ubuntu Linux on the Lenovo T61p Thinkpad. If you read it carefully, fully grasp what it is saying and follow the instructions exactly . . . it will still not work. If at this point, you decide to look, oh I don't know, at the bottom of your laptop and see that one of the numbers there happens to kind of look like the same sort of pattern that is in the fix that this guy posted for the laptop you have but a slightly different model number, well not really model number but like a sub-product detail subdivision separator code and replaced your sub-product detail subdivision separator code with the one in the fix that the nice guy posted at that site with the closest wrong answer and you reboot and suspend and...

It totally fucking worked.

Here's the best part. The fix is in some random XML file that has workarounds for different models of computers to make them behave properly during suspend. The part that broke this the whole time has this comment over it:

T61p (6460), does not work with the NVidia driver

However, in reality, the T61p works fine with the NVidia driver. If you remove the workaround altogether, it just works.

If someone is actually looking for the answer, just replace the four digit number in the semicolon delimited prefix_outof attribute in the patch to be the four digits after the "TYPE" label on the bottom of your laptop. Sheesh.

Do you know how I know that Facebook is evil?

2008-08-11T20:56:00.001-04:00

Because they insist on being this enclosed fortress of your online life. They are the new AOL. I would not be surprised to hear someone say "Well, I'm not sure if I should switch away from Facebook, will I still be able to send messages to all my friends?" YES, ITS CALLED FREAKIN EMAIL.

Oh, but wait. That's where Facebook gets you. Go to one of your friend's profile pages on Facebook. Look for their email address. If they have one there and you can see it you are unable to cut and paste it. Any guesses why? Because it is actually a picture of the email address. Not the text itself. So you can't cut and paste it into the standard medium of communication on the tubes since someone made fun of Al Gore for not saying that he invented them, email.

Well at least you can still play Scrabble.

You know why Google is cool?

2008-08-08T21:34:00.001-04:00

Love them or hate them, its stuff like this that makes Google cool. I found this as part of a Lifehacker.com article on tips for using the different Google apps.

This one is about a trick for Google Spreadsheet. Go to Google Docs and create a new spreadsheet from the "New" button at the top left. Then, from the article:

... enter "Superman" in the top left cell, and enter "Batman" and "Wonder Woman" in the cells below. Now select all three cells you created. Hold down the Ctrl key, and drag the bottom right corner of the selection downwards over the other cells. Notice something?

I won't ruin the surprise by telling you what will happen. Its just cool.

2008-08-08T10:53:00.000-04:00

As my daughter learns to speak, she will pick up a new phrase and use it a lot for a while until she gets the hang of it. What amazes me is how quickly she picks up when to use one of them.

The latest is "Just a tiny bit", which, to be honest, sounds more like "Jst a tine beet", but you get the idea.

Mommy: Gahhh! Emily, you spilled all of your milk on the floor!
Emily: Jst a tine beet.

Emily: Pick up, Mommy! (pick me up, Mommy)
Mommy: Not right now sweety, I have to shower because Mommy is stinky.
Emily: Jst a tine beet.

Daddy: Pumpkin, I think your diaper is officially a SuperFund site.
Emily: Jst a tine beet.

So you thought that DRM'd music wasn't so bad, huh?

2008-06-24T00:05:00.000-04:00

Microsoft recently announced that they are going to be turning off their MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer. This means that the DRM protected music that people bought from MSN will only be able to be played on the machines that are licensed for it (up to 5) on August 31st 2008 and you can never change it ever again. Not for hardware upgrades, or OS reinstalls or anything.

We can all be fuzzy and warm watching copy protected music fall down all over the place with lots of unencumbered alternatives but with the situation around movies these days, if you don't see some parallels here and a similar fate in the future you should have the marshmellows removed from your corneas.

Overqualified

2008-06-20T11:27:00.000-04:00

This bottle of Purell in front of me has a claim on the front stating that the solution with

Kills 99.99% of Most Common Germs That May Make You Sick

Now on first glance, that sounds pretty good. But that seems like an awful lot of qualification for the giant bold font on the front of every bottle of this stuff sold. Usually that is the place reserved for "New" or "Improved" or "New and Improved" or "This will increase the size of your...". You get the idea. But this carefully crafted claim seems to be reaching.

Taken one piece at a time:

Kills 99.99% - Now that may seem like a lot, but when you consider that there are millions of bacteria on your hands most of the time leaving 1 in 10,000 there means there still kind of a lot. And what is it that is left behind?

of Most (but not all) Common (but not the really nasty ones) Germs - So you mean all the standard stuff that people have been dealing with for millennia is have covered. Anything slightly weird and you're on your own. And even those, this only gets Most of them and even the Most that are do covered, it will only get 99.99% of those. So this stuff will basically clean up the Darwin Award Winning bacteria. Very comforting.

That May Make You Sick - All those ones that WILL make you sick, no promises.

Remind me not to hire the Purell marketing guys to sell anything.

That said, don't worry too much about what's on your hands. When you lick your hands you're usually cleaning off your tongue.

My brother the disciplinarian

2008-06-14T19:24:00.001-04:00

Conner, don't go near the door.
Conner, don't touch the door.
Conner, don't open the door.
Conner, stop opening the door.
Conner, close the door.
Conner, don't go outside.
Conner, stop going outside.
Conner, get back inside.
Conner, don't close the door.
Conner, stop closing the door.
Conner, open the door and get back inside.
Conner, don't ignore your father.

Mirrors on the Titanic

2008-06-09T21:36:00.001-04:00

NPR recently ran a story (definitely worth a listen) about the practice of Energy Recycling. There have been a lot of stories in the news lately about energy. High oil prices, carbon output, sustainability, etc. but this one was particularly interesting. Recycling is good. Everyone loves recycling. It reduces the guilt you feel about using plastic bottles and tin cans and paper products. And its even not that bad for the planet.
Well energy recycling is even better. The general idea is to take the heat generated at, for example, a steel foundry and use it to turn steam turbines to produce electricity. This is heat that would otherwise have just dissipated out of a smokestack or something. The electricity can be used to run the foundry itself or fed back into the grid. This idea rocks. And given that 27 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions was from the production of heat as a byproduct of doing something useful, its nice to be able to use that heat again. This could even be done to recapture the heat from coal fired power plants to make even more electricity from the heat of burning the coal in the first place! HOW COOL IS THAT!
So that's the general idea. The story goes into more detail about the amount of energy and how it works but the main idea was that if we did this all over the place we could eliminate the need for something like 400 coal fired power plants.
I'm in the car listening to this with my heart singing with joy for the brilliant innovation of the human race and how we're all going to get through this thing because people can do anything and we are clever beyond the dreams of Avarice.

Then I almost hit a bridge embankment. From the NPR story(emphasis mine):

So why isn't it done more often here(in the US)?

"The real challenge is that it's typically illegal," says Casten, "and you've got to find a way around the laws."

Casten says state and federal laws protect monopoly utilities, often preventing energy recyclers from selling excess power back to the grid or from running power lines across a street. Even the Clean Air Act prevents utilities themselves from recycling waste heat at older coal-fired power plants, because any modification subjects them to newer regulations.

Are you #$%!ing kidding me!?

So let me see if I got this right. We are dicking around with solar panels, and pinwheels and hybrid cars that inexplicably get worse gas mileage than my conventional '92 Honda Civic, and taking corn that used to feed people and turning it into fuel, and talking about conservation this and recycle that and turn the lights off when you aren't using them and change this bulb to that bulb and take short showers and drive with your windows shut for air resistance and hooking up treadmills at gyms to generate power while you exercise and don't forget to suspend your computer before you leave so it won't use electricity over night and don't use your brakes because it will waste gas....

and we don't want to recapture and use the heat that creates more than a quarter of the country's greenhouse gases to protect utility monopolies!!

I am insufficiently eloquent to put into words how crazy this made me. The closest I heard was my brother's response when I told him about this. I paraphrase because I have a memory like a wet sponge:

"That is like being on the Titanic while its sinking and going topside to install a giant array of mirrors to redirect and focus the sun's rays to heat up the water filling the ship so that it evaporates faster instead of plugging the giant freaking hole in the bottom of the boat."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Time to lock it down

2008-05-21T20:34:00.001-04:00

You know what password you use on most random websites on the tubes? That one that you thought of when the internet was new and you just wanted to log into the damn site and see what all the buzz was about. And then you went to another site and you didn't want to have to remember TWO passwords, so you just stuck with you "web" password. The one that is usually about 6 characters long and only that long because some site required it to be that long. If it was up to you it would be 1 character long and it wold be the letter "J" because you are right handed and your index finger is wicked fast. So on and on you carried this one lame password that is probably your first pets name or something stupid like that.

Well now that google has my name, address, reading interest, search history, calendar, email from the past 3 years and now health information, it was time to jack up the password strength.

Its got letters, numbers, an ascii backspace character and a base64 encoded picture of Mel Gibson before he went crazy in it. Its 8 pages long and takes me 2.5 hours to type. But now there is absolutely no chance that anyone will be able to stumble across it and find out that I take Allegra once a month or so for a mild allergy to dust mites. Suck on that.

Russell's Postulate #45: Naming things

2008-05-18T19:43:00.002-04:00

I was doing some serious geeking out after putting Emily to bed and was reading about Currying in Scala. Don't go to either of those links, they are not the point and you probably wont' care. The point is that Currying is some idea that someone thought of once. From the Scala documentation I was reading

This style of ... blah blah blah ... is called currying after its promoter, Haskell B. Curry, a logician of the 20th century, even though the idea goes back further to Moses Schönﬁnkel and Gottlob Frege.

What this basically says is that Herr Schönﬁnkel and Herr Frege had this really kick ass idea but crappy names. This brought me to conclude Russell's Postulate #45

A good idea or invention will need to be thought of repeatedly until stumbled across and popularized by someone with a catchy name.

Irony

2008-05-14T09:00:00.001-04:00

Main Entry:: iro·ny
Pronunciation:: \ˈī-rə-nē also ˈī(-ə)r-nē\
Function:: noun
Inflected Form(s):: plural iro·nies
Etymology:: Latin ironia, from Greek eirōnia, from eirōn dissembler
Date:: 1502

1: The fact that on normal apples, the little sticker comes right off with no residue, but on double-the-price organic apples you need rubbing alcohol to get off the sticker glue that stays on the apple after the sticker falls apart in your hands.

Linux is as ready for mainstream desktops as I am to give birth to a llama

2008-04-25T21:39:00.001-04:00

I reinstalled my home desktop with the latest version of Ubuntu Linux. It is one of a few leading mainstream desktop Linux distributions. Its supposed to be rock solid and able to be used by anyone. I used the live CD to flatten my disk and install from scratch.

The whole install goes really well and ends with a nice little dialog that says "You're installation is complete. Restart your computer to start using Ubuntu."

Reboot

*black screen*

GRUB Loading stage1.5

GRUB loading, please wait. . .
Error 17

It then has the gall to leave a flashing cursor under the error taunting me to attempt to interact with the computer which is now a space heater.

I'm pretty good at figuring all this crap out and I'll eventually piece together what went wrong, but to be totally honest, this is bull$#!+. Maybe next upgrade...

Nothing new here, just some funny $#!+

2008-04-18T22:35:00.003-04:00

While sitting here basking in the fun and wonderfulness that was Bee Movie I went poking around the tubes for something fun.

For the love of Bob these guys are funny.

Unfortunately, this is the only clip I could find of my very favorite one which was "Even Stevphen: Islam vs. Christianity" but its in some weird random site that Viacom didn't get to yet. Still worth watching. Its not on the new and much improved Daily Show site for some reason and all the other google hits of it show it as removed due to content violations. Ah well.

WAF

2008-03-27T22:17:00.007-04:00

There is a concept that my, admittedly rather geeky, friends and I have that generally is the gating factor for any seriously geeky new technology we introduce into our homes. That concept is WAF or Wife Acceptance Factor. The WAF is calculated based on a number of variables including, but not limited to:

How bleeding edge is this new piece of technology you are planning to introduce:

High WAF - "Hey sweety, I'm going to upgrade the laptop in the living room to the newest version of Firefox. It came out 3 months ago, is on version X.2, all of your favorite extensions will work with it and its getting great reviews."
Low WAF - "Hey sweety, I'm going to upgrade the OS on the laptop in the living room to this new FreeBSD version that is about to be released in a few months as soon as they iron out that USB problem, and that screen resolution thingy. The network stack is a little buggy but is WAAY faster than it used to be and if I add this patch I downloaded off this newsgroup it won't even hang when you close the top."

How expensive is it:

High WAF - "Hey sweety, this guy at work is upgrading his monitor and wants to know if we want his old 19" LCD for free. Its a year old but it works. and is better than the 13" green and black radiation toaster we have now. You won't have to wear sunblock when you use it or anything."
Low WAF - "Hey sweety, I'm going to replace our 3 month old 21" LCD with the new 30" Apple Cinema display that just came out. We get a discount through work so it'll only cost as much as my junior year of college."

What is your recent track record with previous "upgrades"

High WAF - "Hey sweety, remember how much you like the new Mac? Well, the new version of OS X is even better and has all kinds of new features that just work all the time and its faster and taller and bigger."
Low WAF - "Hey sweety, I know that last kernel upgrade was rough but this time will be way smoother. I've read that they ironed out all of the file system problems from before and the new scheduler is supposed to make the desktop noticeably less sluggish. Seriously, buggy file systems are a drag but we can always take more pictures of the baby when she's older and she won't even notice that we don't have them from the first 16 months. It wasn't like she was doing anything interest*SMACK*

Overall complexity of every day use:

High WAF - "Hey sweety, Your new cell phone does nothing more or less than the phone the Alexander Graham Bell invented. There are 10 number buttons and a send key. Just throw it against the wall if you want to end the call."
Low WAF - "Hey sweety, check out this new universal remote. It replaces both of our other remotes and check this out. If you flip up the top and hold your finger on this part of the touch screen and then reach around to the back and push these three buttons and insert a paper clip into that third hole from the left it turns on the TV _and_ the DVD player at the same time!!! NO, NOT THE THIRD HOLE FROM THE RIGHT!!! THAT'S THE EJECTION SEAT BUTTON!!

Wife's current mood:

High WAF: "Hey sweety, do you mind if I ... oh, what? Your favorite vacuous slut is winning in the latest season of The Bachelor:Who wants to marry a Ukranian Thousandaire? Oh that's wonderful news. I'll just go do whatever I want.
Low WAF: "Hey sweety, do you mind if I try this new*SMACK*... never mind.

There are, in fact, a near infinite number of additional variables but they change constantly so are impossible to actually document but sufficient WAF is absolutely critical before embarking on any project.

Some modern wifelogians have attempted to prove that

WAF = 1/WaF

where WAF is Wife Acceptance Factor and WaF is Wife aversion Factor, but since it has since been proven that the WaF is actually more difficult to accurately calculate than WAF the definition is little more than a mental exercise.

In one special, but exceptionally rare, case, WAF actually reaches infinity. There are only rumored stories about this particular case ever happening in real life. Legends abound on the internet but most are debunked shortly after as mere misunderstandings, confusion of dreams with reality or drunken hallucinations brought on by exceptionally high HDL.

This case is when the new technology introduction was her idea to begin with...

To Be Continued...

Pretty Cheezy

2008-03-04T14:31:00.000-05:00

Wifey: We're having people over for breakfast on Easter. I'm going to make a cheese estrada.
Me: Is that like Erik Estrada?
Wifey: Sort of. More cheese.
Me: Wow, that's a lot of cheese.
Wifey: Yeah.

Drowning in RSS and learning to swim

2008-03-02T18:26:00.001-05:00

I love RSS. Its a great way to have the entirety of the internet come to me whenever I want it. However, I've noticed that the number of sites on the internet that I think I would like to read faaaaaar exceeds my ability to actually read them. I have tens of thousands of unread crap waiting for me in google reader and more are on the way every day.

In an attempt to trim the fat a bit, I decided to start using Yahoo Pipes to get more of what I want.

My first attempt is for a really nice site called LifeHacker.com. Its a blog about interesting ways to tweak your life with maybe gadgets or different ways to do common tasks. Interesting stuff, but lots and lots and lots of it.

So here's my LifeHacker's Highlights yahoo pipe that just outputs the weekly Most Popular Posts entry. So instead of hundreds I get one post a week with the ones that everyone else found the most interesting.

Hope you enjoy my pipe. errrrr... right.

Lefty Layup

2008-02-28T20:40:00.002-05:00

I was at the gym (stop laughing, I'm trying to tell a story) with a friend of mine and we were alternately talking about politics and bitching about the lack of good outdoor basketball weather these days. This of course let do a discussion about Barack Obama playing basketball in order to unwind during the campaign. We were wondering what kind of player he might be.

Apparently he used to play in HS.

Lefty layup, baby! (yeah, he's left handed but that's not the point.)

So he used to play, sure, but does he still have the skills?

The man has ice water in his veins.

Rounded Corners

2008-01-28T20:11:00.000-05:00

For those of you who don't know what TED Talks are, you should go watch most of them.

Here's one for the many new and not so new parents that I know. Its about some of the lessons that kids need to learn that our culture may not think is the safest activity in which they could partake. Aside from replacing "Spear throwing" with "Throwing a ball" because I don't have a spear lying around, I kinda like the list. I can't wait to teach Emily to drive...

Doesn't that look like my old 45?

2008-01-26T14:54:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid and CDs first came out, I heard people that were faaaar older than I make an interesting observation. They said,

"We had all these 45 records with all our music on it. Then came the big 33 1/3 record which, besides having a fraction in the RPM, which is borderline unAmerican, were more or less the same as the smaller 45s. but we bought them anyway, replacing our whole music collection. Then came tapes (or 8 tracks, the order isn't the point and if someone corrects me then we'll all know that they're just old). These new music distribution devices had new and interesting features, and the thieving bastards at the recording companies weren't selling the old records anymore so we all dutifully went out and bought the new thing.

Then followed 8 tracks (or tapes, which ever was not in the last paragraph), same story. Then, the ultimate in music delivery media. The magic of digital, the perfection of the recording... music nirvana..."

There are, of course, the crazy audiophiles who will tell you that digital music will never attain the subtle nuance and warm sounds that only analog recordings can offer. But I just can't see spending $25,000 (sic) on the oh-my-bob-that-is-the-greatest-record-player-in-the-universe perfectly weighted turntable just for the privilege of listening to a shard of metal scrape across a plastic groove which sounds more like the inside of a seashell than anything else.

But I digress

The whole point is that the CDs look exaaaactly light the old 45s that were replaced all those years ago. They weren't of course, but the visual similarity was close enough to be amusing.

So you'd think that the whole point of this ramble would be music, right? Or maybe a rant against the RIAA? Not even close.

A German company called SkySail has "invented" this amazing new "green" technology will revolutionize the entire shipping industry. They have invented an ocean going vessel, and I know this is going to sound weird, powered by wind being caught in a huge cloth sheet which pulls the boat!! Eureka! Why didn't anyone think of this bef.... oh wait.

Magellan, eat your heart out. These sails are supposed to decrease fuel usage for big cargo ships from 10-50% depending on wind conditions.

And I swear they look exactly like all those old 45s that I just threw out!!

Nah, I'm just kidding, 45s are for old people.

I guess not everyone is a Giants fan

2008-01-24T15:05:00.000-05:00

America's team my left butt cheek.

Plan B 3.0

2008-01-22T23:45:00.001-05:00

I regularly listen to the podcast of Science Friday a weekly show on NPR about science related topics. There was one recently called Brown's 'Plan B 3.0' an Environmental Call to Action which is an interview with Lester Brown, an environmental analyst from the Earth Policy Institute. Plan B 3.0 is Brown's latest book about his "plan to save the planet from climate change. But with calls for a carbon tax and more gasoline taxes, it's not going to be easy or cheap". The quote was from the shownotes.

The interview itself is an excellent listen with topics ranging from carbon taxation, wind power and, my brother's favorite, bottled water.

Even better, the entire contents of the book are available on the Earth Policy Institute website for free.

Great Wifey Quote of the Day

2008-01-22T22:09:00.001-05:00

"Prefaces in books are stupid. Why are there ever prefaces? They should just call it 'Chapter 1'".

- Wifey

A truly momentous day

2008-01-11T20:47:00.001-05:00

Today, my daughter sat on my lap, dunked half of an oatmeal cookie into a class of milk, almost up to the elbow, and ate the cookie. It is truly a great day.

The long hard slog

2007-11-28T14:51:00.000-05:00

I started War and Peace today. Here goes nothing.

Brain Floss

2007-11-23T11:20:00.001-05:00

I'm sitting here on the couch taking care of my pregnant stomach-flu infested wifey and she's watching The View. The four vacuous windbags on the show are spewing platitudes about how fragile mens' egos are when they start talking about some other anonymous windbag that postulated that by 2020 men would be having sex with robots. This caused Barbwa Waltwas to bring up the Steppford Wives movie where men were having sex with robots that not just had sex, but, and I paraphrase, "I don't know how they would make such a thing, but really enjoyed sex."

Now this was bad enough because it got me thinking about Barbwa Waltwas having bad sex for her whole life, but she then committed, what I can only assume, is a UN identified war crime. She said, "And then when its done they (the robot Steppford Wives) do that thing that Meg Ryan did in that movie in the diner where she goes..." and then it all went dark.

I could hear the blood rushing in my ears as the world collapsed in upon me. The glorious prepubescent mental image of Meg Ryan in the diner was superimposed upon Vacuous Windbag the fourth heaving and gasping on my HDTV like a salmon that had been batted on shore by a bear.

I can only hope that medical science some day finds a way to selectively remove images from the human mind.

You had so much hair back then. . .

2007-11-09T21:56:00.001-05:00

The carefully chosen words that my wife uttered when I first showed her just how cool her husband was in high school.

By the way, I'm the one in the white coat.

Isn't it ironicough cough hack

2007-11-09T10:18:00.000-05:00

Maybe when you listen to enough of the news you start to tune out some of the awfulness in the world. Maybe you filter things so that you don't just walk around sad all day. Maybe finding humor in the world is the only way to do that. Maybe when you say you, you mean I.

I just think its hilarious that this coal miner is smoking a cigarette.

He should be careful. That stuff'll kill ya.

Childhood is different now

2007-11-06T17:28:00.001-05:00

Where the #@!%$ where these toys when I was a kid?

Yahoo(Exclamation Point) developed del.icio.us Firefox Plugin

2007-11-01T16:44:00.001-04:00

I've been slowly migrating all of my web browser bookmarks to del.icio.us. That way I can always get to them and I don't have to sync them between work and home and I JUST FEEL LIKE IT OK!!!

Anyway, there are piles upon steaming festering piles of crappy del.icio.us extensions for Firefox, my web browser of choice. However, Yahoo(Exclamation Point), which owns del.icio.us has released their own Firefox extension (and one extension to bind them). Quite simply, it kicks @$$.

It replaces all of the Firefox bookmark related keybindings with the corresponding action for your new del.icio.us bookmark sidebar. You can search bookmarks, post new ones and they behave just like local Firefox bookmarks (aka "loser" bookmarks) but they are stored on del.icio.us with all the Web 2.1 goodness that that implies .

So go check it out. Its fun.

http://del.icio.us/help/firefox/bookmarks/quicktour

Web Application Hosters Beware

2007-10-27T09:40:00.000-04:00

My daughter, while unfortunately not far along in the development of her psychic abilities, is well on her way to developing a new super power.
My little Justice League member in training has always had the ability to mangle the minds of computers with a simple touch. If I even glance over at a laptop I am quickly set upon by a swirling tornado of key poking fingers that somehow always manage to close, destroy or crash, not necessarily the application that has focus, like the blank text editor I left open on purpose, but the application that contains the most important information at the time, such as the email I was writing, or the code I was editing.
This is not really amazing or strange as most children I've seen can perform this sort of trick, although this morning she went above and beyond. She managed to, with the simple graze of her finger on my keyboard, to break, not something on my computer, but a computer potentially HUNDREDS OF MILES AWAY!!

I can do little more than profusely apologize to the nice people over at iFixit who I'm sure are very smart people but who were simply completely unprepared for the formidable and still developing powers of my offspring.

Mankind will never discover telekinesis

2007-10-22T21:26:00.001-04:00

We've all read that humans only use 6 of the 8 zillion neurons in our brains and that locked up in all of that extra gray matter are some pretty cool sci-fi tricks like reading minds and, my personal favorite, telekinesis. How cool would that be to be able to move objects with your mind? I don't need to get off my lazy butt to get that book, I can just have it float to me.
The discovery of the inner expanses of human brain superpowers usually falls into two categories. They are either discovered through tireless research and training, honing the mind and or body to a razor sharp edge. This is the right method for many pursuits, such as calculus, or all of Batman's cool tricks. However, I don't think this would ever be the way that humans figure out telekinesis. By the time we grow up our minds have learned so much about the world that all of that extra space is locked away behind Sesame Street, Rocky 16, playing football, how to make cookies and how to undo a bra with one hand.
By the way, don't say it. George Lucas lost all all say over when we learn telekinesis when he borked those last three movies, so don't even say it. Midiclorians ?! Oh for the love of Bob. Just don't even say it.
The other way to go is to get to the mind before it has been pent up. This method is the one I've been thinking about recently since my one year old daughter is really starting to interact with her environment I can see her thinking about stuff. Unfortunately, its watching her do this that led to the title of the post. Right now, she her mind is pretty much as open as its going to get. She can move around by herself and see what's around her, but she has never even heard of Rocky and she doesn't even like watching the Giants kick the smack out of the 49ers... yet. However, what she does do, is want. She wants for example, her mother's sandwich. And I don't mean "want" like, "Oh gee it would be nice if I had a sandwich right now" but she "wants" in an indescribably excruciatingly agonizingly spine-tinglingly complete way of hand reaching crawling over her chair clawing at the table OH MY BOB I JUST GOTTA HAVE THAT FREAKIN SANDWICH OHPLEASEOHPLEASEOHPLEASEOHPLEASEOHPLEASE that you just don't see in adults.
So here is where it all falls apart. If there was any hidden telekinesis floating around up there, with the mix of her pliable and completely free mind and that kind of desire that sandwich would have smacked her right in the face as it flew towards her cute little forehead.

Ah well. She's still really cute.

Ubuntu Gutsy + ATI + Suspend workaround

2007-10-15T23:01:00.001-04:00

The latest release of Ubuntu (Gutsy) which is in beta testing right now has a problem where laptops with ATI graphics cards will hard hang when you attempt to suspend. The screen goes blank but the suspend light (usually a moon or something) just flashes forever.

Here is bug with the insanely long bug comment thread:

http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/121653/

Here is the workaround:

Create this file:
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-fglrx

Put this in it:
blacklist fglrx

Reboot.

This will allow you to continue to use the fglrx X.org driver but without the kernel module which causes the problem with suspend. . This means you get 2D acceleration but not 3D. So no cool Compiz eye candy. But at least you can put your laptop to sleep.

How much do you like acronyms?

2007-02-21T20:45:00.000-05:00

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has decided to name the new offensive to pacify Baghdad, for which 21,000+ additional American troops have been sent to Iraq or had their tours extended,
Operation Imposing Law.

It is impossible to make this stuff up.

Yeah, well it looks easy after you do it 10,000 times!

2007-01-29T10:20:00.000-05:00

For those of you who are reasonably good at something, be it music or dancing or juggling etc. and been infuriated by having hours upon days upon years of practice and experience dismissed by other people with a shrug and a "Wow, I wish I were as talented as you." it turns out you may both be right.

David Shenk is tracking the writing of his new book The Genius In All of Us: Nature, Nurture and the New Science of Talent and Giftedness in his blog. This particular post has a collection of articles and research concerning musical "talent" in people throughout their lives. There are papers about infants showing recognition of melody and song in other people as early as a year but that no amount of musical ability will last past the age of 7 without some sort of training and encouragement.

Lots of interesting research into the discussion between nature and nurture of "talented" people.

The stupidest thing I've ever heard

2007-01-24T09:24:00.000-05:00

Arlen Specter (R-PA) was questioning Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez recently and got to asking him about the restriction of habeas corpus by the Bush administration. Habeas is basically the right of prisoners to challenge their incarceration before a court to prevent unlawful imprisonment. It dates back to the Magna Carta and up until recently was a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. This has been the central debate surrounding the Guantanamo Bay detainees and comes up repeatedly whenever Gonzalez testifies before congress.

This one was a beauty though. Specter is asking Gonzalez how the Bush administration can restrict this right when Gonzalez drops the bomb on Specter. Are you ready for this? You might want to sit down. It makes my brain hurt?

There is some mundane stuff at the beginning, the fireworks start around 6:20.

Gonzalez claims that the Constitution doesn't guarantee the right to habeas corpus, it just ... I can't even type this with a straight face... prevents the government from restricting. Do you see the wrinkle there? It doesn't say you have it, it just says you can't take it away. So if they never had it then Bush et al aren't taking it away. And Bob is your uncle while the Constitution staggers back into its cave after another savage beating. Unreal.

Presonus Firepod, Linux, ieee1394, jackd and you

2007-01-06T22:58:00.000-05:00

Upon the arrival of my Presonus Firepod I became the 5th coolest member of my band which has only 4 members. However, all of my excitement at giving the Firepod a whirl was quickly doused by its utter failure in communicating with my Linux desktop. Why not use the your Macbook Pro instead, you ask? Because Presonus shipped the Firepod with verion 1.07 of Cubase LE which doesn't install on OS X 10.4 or greater. Awesome. So Presonus is, I $#!+ you not, snail mailing me an updated CD of Cubase LE 1.08 with a patched Mac installer. Mailing a CD. Welcome to 1998.

So that leaves me with hardware that works with the Mac with no way of interacting with it, and software that works on Linux but I can't see the hardware.

Will our hero ever figure out how to get sound to come out of the Firepod? Which will work first, the Mac with the snail mail CD patch, or Linux with the strange firewire driver problem? Will any of this happen before our hero's daughter wakes up from her nap? Stay tuned...

First off, this Pau Arumi's blog post got me most of the way there. Passed the permission problems and such. Thanks Pau. But then I ran into this fun error message.

JACK compiled with System V SHM support.
loading driver ..
Freebob using Firewire port 0, node -1
Root node has no children!
Root node has no children!
FreeBoB ERR: FREEBOB: Error creating virtual device
cannot load driver module freebob
Segmentation fault

Awesome. Stupid root node. The solution to this little gem, after much digging and pestering of nice people on development mailers, was thus.

This is the message that the jack server will output when you attempt to start it with the freebob as the driver and there is no firewire audio hardware connected to your system. But my Firepod was connected to the system, damn it! How stupid do you think I am?... don't say it.

As it turns out my Firepod was connected to the firewire bus on port 1 instead of port 0 and if you don't tell it to do otherwise, the freebob driver will look for hardware on port 0 and die if it doesn't find anything.

So instead of starting jackd like this:

jackd -dfreebob

you have to start it like this:

jackd -dfreebob -dhw:1

Now this is just for my setup. You're Firepod may be connected to port 0 in which case you probably wouldn't have had this problem in the first place. Hope that helps. I'm off to do some recording.

Share and Enjoy!

A better person

2006-09-19T15:42:00.000-04:00

In an effort to become less of a sissy I have decided not to be afraid of spiders. In general not to squeal like a little girl when I see them around my house. This was working really well for a few days until a actually saw a spider. Then not so well.

I've decided that at some point in my past I'd convinced myself that the sight of a spider scares me, so in an effort to reprogram that part of my brain I am leaving a giant scary spider on my work computer desktop. I have to change it every few days so that I don't get used to any one spider. Flickr is a great place for finding spider pictures.

So here's my desktop for today.

Pretty fearsome, huh? I get a little jolt every time I minimize something. Makes the day more .... interesting.

What will we call Canadian money now?

2006-07-25T08:57:00.000-04:00

Now I'm not saying that we should all have to sit around and do integral calculus with our trusty slide rule or anything ( yes, Dad, I know you think we should ), but this is a little silly. No more Monopoly money? Why didn't they just go straight for the retinal scan for indentity verification to directly debit your fake monopoly account?

What fuels the fire?

2006-07-19T22:22:00.000-04:00

Here is a very interesting LA Times article about some of the possible motivations on all sides surrounding the new open conflict in southern Lebanon. How many groups over there really want to see the fighting stop? Are there any?

Need glasses?

2006-07-11T22:38:00.000-04:00


I don't even care what the commercial is for.

The long wait

2006-06-19T10:41:00.000-04:00

I'm not really into video games, but the prodigious wait for Duke Nukem Forever has a way of bringing a decade into perspective.

If you're not the lead dog the view never changes

2006-06-16T11:34:00.000-04:00

Here is a quite long but very interesting take on the geekier side of leadership.

An issue of scale

2006-06-13T11:16:00.000-04:00

The US is in a bit of a spat with the rest of the world over . But I saw an article on space weapons that made me laugh

From the article:

The White House is due to announce a new space policy this month, the first overhaul in a decade. Some U.S. experts have said it will underscore the Pentagon's determination to protect its existing space assets and maintain dominance of outer space.

For some reason that strikes me as a statement that is going to be sublimely funny someday. I wonder if my cats are vying for dominance of that one clean litter box in the back of the basement.

"just a few clicks away"

2006-05-31T19:47:00.000-04:00

"just a few clicks away"
Originally uploaded by 37signals.

Now that is just funny.

Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds (I.R.)

2006-02-21T10:30:00.000-05:00

Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds (I.R.)
Originally uploaded by tricky (sovietuk).

This is one of the best flickr shots I've ever seen. Beautiful filtering.

Cool Desktop Backgrounds

2005-12-15T09:05:00.000-05:00

My brother found this very cool desktop back ground site. I'm such a sucker for space backgrounds...

Do your Windows XP fonts suck?

2005-12-12T18:50:00.000-05:00

Have you ever noticed how the fonts on Windows XP suck? When I say suck I mean that any diagonal line looks jagged and choppy? This probably means that you are not availing yourself to the marvels of anti-aliased fonts. Anti-aliased fonts are basically smoothed out to make it easier on the eyes.

The way to make the magic happen for you on Windows XP is to go and download the Windows XP ClearType Tuner PowerToy. It adds an applet to your control panel which will walk you through making your fonts look smooth as a baby's butt.

I don't actually use Windows XP very much but my brother made me write this so that he could look it up. That and I haven't updated this in a while. Of course, he uses Windows 2000 so I'm not sure who this is actually supposed to help. It could be you!

Hope this helps someone.

New member of the Russell clan

2005-11-13T23:44:00.000-05:00

What else need be said?

Photo of Central Park

2005-11-06T22:14:00.000-05:00

Still getting used to this whole blogging thing. Here's something that people might think is cool. At least I do. I took this picture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhatten. The Egyptian pyramid exhibit is just to the left of this shot. This is looking out onto Central Park.
Pretty cool, huh?

First Post

2005-10-31T14:21:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my blog. I'm pretty much talking to myself at this point because no one else knows I have started doing this. Maybe I'll tell someone when I have something interesting up here. Have a wonderful day.