Checkit...

Interesting video

This is a test of the emergency bloggedcat system...

This is only a test.

Hello again....

I'm not dead yet! Just took a little break. I'm sure I'll have more to say. Besides, I'm testing something.

SO there I was feeling froggy one day...

I've praised Knoppix in various places in the past, but I've never tried it out myself. I love the idea of an "easy-to-use" alternative OS that runs from a CD (and doesn't require installation). I downloaded Knoppix last night and burned the CD from the .iso. I had problems making the wireless work, but long story short, I did some research and just like Jay said in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, I made that shit work. This is a pretty slick and easy to use little distro and I'll be playing around with it some more. Give it a shot! More later... Suzanne wants to go eat dinner.

Damn, where the hell have I been?

I rarely use my desktop computer and my laptop was out of commission for a couple of weeks. I am indeed still among the living...

And I fixed my laptop!

For a diversion, check out my new moblog. I've finally joined the 21st century by getting a cell phone.

Perhaps this will bring about a more earnest dialogue of privacy choices/practices/issues in this Patriot Act/DCS1000/"War on Terror" America that we all live in. Are you bothered that something like this could happen and the company involved could keep it hidden (unless you live in California or it's discovered by the media)? I'm going to contact my Senators and suggest that they get to work on this.

Happy New Year (a week late)...

If I wasn't working New Year's morning and sleeping the next day, I was driving to Chicago to see the kickass show that I saw (VNV Nation w/ CodeR23), partying until the wee hours of the morning just to wake up the next morning to drive back home through crappy weather and getting ready to remove the snow from our driveway. I suppose it's all good! While I'd rather not put up with the snow (or at least as much as we get here), certain more southerly government agencies don't appear to need my services. I like what I'm doing here and now...

As Suzanne has mentioned recently, this isn't the first time I've driven in junk weather to go have fun. Hell, why let a little snow get in the way of having fun? I think that the differences in our views on the answer to that question lie in the fact that she spent all of the first 22 years of her life in the Deep Dixie South.

Yes, I know that the situation is much more complicated but ponder this anyway...

$35,000,000 to six countries thus far and the southeast Asia region in general. I'm sure that will grow and we already put out a great deal of foreign aid as it is. The disparity just strikes me as ironic. Awwww hell, what does it matter? We're borrowing much of the money that we spend anyway.

In happier news, I'm going to Chicago next week to see VNV Nation.

Sometimes I'm too greedy for my own good. Our scheduler was asking about overtime this morning and I agreed without hesitating (or thinking about it). I agreed to work Friday night (11-7). When I got home this evening, I told Suzanne. There are two things about those hours. Yes, it's New Year's Eve. That sucks but we're both normally asleep before midnight anyway. The worst part of it is that I'm already working the day shift on Friday. Love of money?

Blawhg humbug....

No, I don't really mean that! I suppose it might look like I'm slacking here. Yep! I'm slacking...

I haven't lost my skeptical/cynical view of the powers that be. In fact, I'm more down on Shrubbie and company than ever before. Rummy needs to go. The arguments of people like John Warner and Richard Lugar that ousting Rummy would be "too disruptive" can be rebutted by reminding them that the position would be changing hands if John Kerry had been victorious in November. Our system is supposed to be able to deal with change. Want another reason for my continued skepticism? Dan Senor was yapping on one of those Fox News prime-time shows the other night. He reiterated the recurrent mantra of how freedom and democracy in the Middle East should lead to a drop in terrorism. And here I thought that the terrorists (and perhaps the base of people from which they are recruited) hated our freedom...

I think I might be growing slightly cynical of my cynicism. There's more where that came from and I'm sure that I'll have plenty to bitch about in the coming years.

One other reason for my temporary disappearance was that I wasn't feeling absolutely well for the past week. I am feeling much better now. Now I just have to work three more shifts over the next couple of days.

On to other things...

There are some big things in the works for my company.

Looking for some unique music?

The Neshama Alma Band, with Zzaj

Jesters of Yestermorrow

Hello again, world!

I suppose it's been a little while since I've blogged. Oh well, there's other stuff to take care of.

What have I missed? I didn't say happy birthday to Suzanne online the other day (the 11th). Don't worry, I told her happy birthday in real life. I also missed sending a birthday "Wazzup?" to Debbie. Happy birthday (late)! Since it's the 14th, I can also send a birthday greeting on to my grandmother. Happy Birthday!

It's also good to see Rummy being forced to defend himself.

Speaking of cool Google tools...

Google announced their "Google Suggest" tool the other day. I hadn't heard about it, but it's fairly interesting. I like the most recent thing that Google announced. Google will soon become a repository for some books. I love the innovation that Google is showing.

I suppose that it was inevitable...

One of the drug companies that markets a treatment for influenza has made a "Desktop Flu Tracker" available. You could always visit here but the flu tracker is a nice centralized tool with somewhat of a spiffy (if not a bit cutesy) interface.

Art's not here man! Yeah, you might think I'm here, but between work and sleep and spending the little bit of time I have left (between those two alternatives) with Suzanne today and tomorrow I don't really have time to answer any e-mails or anything. Sorry!

I did renew my childrenofacid.com membership last night. I've been on there for a long time. Suzanne thinks I'm crazy. She may be right!

With a lot of attention focused directly on the current UN Secretary General...

I figured I'd look a little more into the post. Is it strange that there hasn't been a North American Secretary General? I'm not necessarily very supportive of the UN anyway. Here are five reasons.

We were talking about a number of topics at work the other day. Iraq, Vietnam, the French, Shrubbie, etc...

One topic that arose was the Vietnamese language. Following my usual surfing habits, I followed a link of interest from that page to this page. I enjoy language studies but don't follow up too much. One other thing I discovered a few months ago was a web-based trainer called the "Basics of Iraqi Arabic". Back when I first joined the Navy, I was given the choice between being a nuke and a language specialist. I'm happy with the choice I made. To that end, I should probably be getting ready for the civilian continuation of nine years as a Navy nuke. Yep, more vamp hours tonight...

Sometimes I'm forgetful and I don't remember if I put this link up...

Press the assorted buttons to hear a variety of Dubya phrases. Here's another Dubya soundboard.

Speaking of entertaining online Shrubbie stuff, view the Quick Time video here.

As Suzanne mentioned, we did end up hitting this place tonight. I had a damn flavorful filet mignon and a couple of glasses of their locally brewed stout beer. Damn fine food!

I find it amusing that this assclown calls for Kofi Annan to step down from his position at the UN partially because Annan was in charge while activities were going on during Annan's period of leadership that could have fueled and funded the current Iraqi insurgency. Does that mean that Donald Rumsfeld should step down, Norm? Some insurgency-fueling/support-stirring activities have occurred within the DoD under Rummy's watch. "But, but, but... that's different!" If this guy wrote an editorial asking for Rummy's two-week notice, I'd be satisfied and apologize for being a skeptical ass. Until then... For the record, Coleman voted "Yea" on the pork-filled $388 billion appropriations measure and "Yea" on the bill to raise the deficit ceiling from $7,384,000,000,000 to $8,184,000,000,000. I thank you and your Congressional pals for using American taxpayer money wisely.

The DoD sent an early Christmas/New Year's message to a number of troops very recently. "Four more years... four more years..." I hope the electorate majority is satisfied with their ballot choice by 2008. The Senator from Massachusetts wouldn't have been much different.

We were going to go out to eat tonight...

However, our driveway looked like this:



We're hoping that tomorrow night will be a better night to go out. I'm not too worried about driving in the tiny amount of snow that we received, but the conditions are too much like those from two years ago right around this time. That's when we were hit on the I-74 bridge and the woman (the one who inspired my "Art giving the net the bird" picture) who did the hitting took off from the scene.

Our kitty sat at the door checking out the weird white stuff falling out of the sky for much of the night. See?



Check out my myspace.com profile. Just another diversion...

The word of the day is free...

Here are the numerous definitions of free from the Yahoo! education reference pages. When talking about the "free market", I think I like the fourth or fifth definition. Demoncrats and neo-Republicons seem to support the principles of organizations like the UN and WTO and other international bodies. Just today, Dubya talked about attempting to create more compliance (through Congress) with the WTO regulations. This is the same Republicon majority Congress that is supposed to be helping the Shrub lower the deficit. And yet they still find plenty of pork to throw into the mix. Back to free trade and the WTO, I don't see a chance for free trade to work when many thousands of pages of documents bind it. Check out the WTO "panel reports" for trade issues against the United States. The market should regulate the market. Instead, we have a plethora of committees that believe that they can outsmart all of the forces that go into making goods flow equitably to and from all of the countries of the world. Free my ass...

This Ukraine thing...

George, one of the best ways to lead is by example. Our elections should have been 100% transparent. I know that 100% can't be achieved, but we can and should aim high. Hell, the Air Force does. I'm sure that our elections were fairer than the ones stirring up so much crap. However, let the people there sort it out. Why are we so interested in seeing the opposition win? Are we driving a dangerous wedge between potentially strong allies like Putin and America by being so adamant about the outcome and possible fixes? Is the desired Ukrainian leadership worth that possible rift? I'm sure (as sure as John Kerry was about an $87,000,000,000 vote) that our brilliant leaders are asking these questions of themselves. Maybe we should let the natural forces of freedom work for once. We might not have as much "support" in the short term, but we wouldn't be viewed as attempting to meddle in the affairs of other countries. Before we go and "fix" any more countries, we need to rewire that "beacon light" that "guides freedom-loving people everywhere". Fix this place first.

Is Martha Stewart so damn out of touch with real people that she failed to consider the fallout (and double entendre) that would accompany revelation of her choice of smuggling methods?

I was glancing at John C. Dvorak's blog this evening.

It's old news by now, but he posted about a website where people are apologizing to the world for Shrubbie's victory. I found that mildly funny. In fact, I find that almost as funny as the people who vowed to leave the country for four years. I wonder if the one-way airline ticket sales to foreign countries reflect the many vows that were being made. I doubt it.

There was a nice, short speech given in the House last week about moral values and the morality of allowing the national debt to grow to 69% of the GDP of the United States. The speech is in the center column of this .pdf file from the GPO. Democrat solution = tax more. Republican solution = tax less, spend more and we'll just make more money or something. Something is wrong with both of those.

Check out the latest issue of Secrecy News from the Federation of American Scientists. The large version of the satellite picture of Fallujah is amazing.

Anyway, back to the sorryeverybody.com thing... I won't apologize but I will vow to fight the dumbest legislation/policy that comes out of our government over the next four years through all civil methods available. Unless things get totally out of hand, there won't be any revolutions or anything. Sorry!

Attempt #3...

I started contemplating this post at around 8:30 P.M. Central Standard Time. In the meantime, my laptop spontaneously rebooted and then blogger.com decided to be a beeeyaatch. It's a totally slow night and I'm sitting around veggin' with a piña colada. Yeah, so it' smy fourth one...

It all started while we were kickin' back watching the 1986 movie version of Little Shop of Horrors. An hour into that, Suzanne went back to watch one of her daily soaps. I'm not the soapy type so I sat in the living room watching the umpteenth repeat of The Matrix on one of the movie channels. That was only until something else came on.

As much time as I spend using the computer (right beside Suzy), you might find it odd that I haven't checked my main e-mail account for close to a week. When I logged on this evening, there was an invite to join myspace.com from my dad that was close to a week old. I had seen MySpace before so I figured "What the hell?" I went on over and signed up. We'll see how that works out...

Where in the hell is this dude? One would think that his incarceration would stay in the news. Instead, we are force-fed the elections, the Peterson case, and last week's basketbrawl. Speaking of old news, what in the hell ever happened to the case of the bomb-collared pizza guy?

One of the movies I glanced at after growing slightly bored with The Matrix was 8 Mile. One interesting thing came to mind... 8 Mile has overtones of a young individual trying to find himself. One of my favorite recent sci-fi flicks is Star Trek: Nemesis. The thing that came to mind is the question of what Marshall Mathers would have turned out to be if he had been an average suburban white kid. We frequently have discussions at work about morality and upbringing and genetics and environment. Very few things are certain. Somehow, the discussion always degrades to a "God's about to call us back" vs. "alien teenager is about to press Ctrl-Alt-Del on his Universe Sims game" match. That's a certainty.

SO is piña colada number five...

At work the other night, one of the control room operators said he had visited this blog...

He said, "You're an angry young man." The link he used to get here had the following picture...





He followed the link from Achim's site. I took that picture after being on the receiving end of a hit-and-run.

I tried to reason that I wasn't really so angry. Thinking more about it, I realized that I probably am angry. I received a publication from the union I belong to the other day. They presented their editorial view of how they wished that the election results had been different. Of course, they were coming from a "labor-friendly" angle. John Kerry, friend of labor, one of the senators who voted yea on NAFTA. The union presents a grandiose vision of an attempt to figure out why 33% of its membership voted for Dubya. If they haven't figured that out yet...

I'm often pissed at the people who won the election, too. I won't dredge up all that negativity right now. I'll have four more years that should provide ample opportunity to present my jaded view of the world's power brokers. I will bring this up, though. If the administration wants to do something about Iran, our "street cred" has been damaged in the eyes of many of those who are in a position to bring diplomatic power to bear.

Additionally, this was quite a sickening report... More par for the course I suppose.

During the campaign, my candidate was on a Faux News daytime television show. Linda Vester asked Michael Badnarik about his view on Iraq. He provided his answer and she asked him, "Have you been there?" Hey, I don't think she's been there either so she has to rely on Fox News for info... I can tell you I haven't been there. There ARE good things going on there. There are bad things going on as well. Bad things also happened when the megalomaniac was in charge. One thing that I'll continue to find funny is that we deemed those actions not war-worthy when the megalomaniac was fighting against the Iranians. One of several future dangers that I see is that we are providing a training and breeding ground for future jihadists. For a decidedly non-Faux News view of events in Iraq, click here. I'm rambling... Sorry!

Anger isn't always a bad thing. If you utilize anger to attempt to bring change through the peaceful channels we have in place in this country, you've done a damn fine thing. I don't think I'm there yet, but I've got four more years.

Suzanne and I just returned from Coralville, IA.

I wanted to check out the membership of Mensa's local chapter. We tried to see if they were going to be at Old Chicago last week, but that didn't materialize. No biggie! Some of my cohorts from work were there and Suzanne and I had great pizza and great beer (I had the beer and Suzanne refrained) and I got to be my usual geeky self. The restaurant we met at this evening was called Saigon to Bangkok. It was a fairly small place but it had a pleasant atmosphere and great food. We don't frequently drive an hour to dine out but I'm glad we did. I've been telling Suzanne (probably since we got married) that I was going to join Mensa.

The "phishing" spam craze must be growing insanely out of control. The local Iowa NBC affiliate ran segments about phishing yesterday. When the local media in the corn wilds of Iowa/Illinois starts doing phishing scam stories, you know that something's out of control. I always go one step further with phishing scams. I report them to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center and the bank that is being targeted. Ignoring this crap won't make it stop. Fighting it probably won't make it stop either, but the odds of someone being hammered for fraud perpetration are better if people report it.

I just noticed a link to a new Google feature I haven't seen before.... See the Google Scholar. I'll have to see what that's all about later.

Why later? Well, unfortunately (or fortunately considering the monetary value), I signed up to do some overtime this evening. See y'all tomorrow! Suzanne is about to crash and I'm not far from heading out the door.

I forgot to talk about the daily phish...

One BIG HINT that the suspicious e-mail you've received might be a phishing scam...

When you hold your mouse pointer over the link/graphic that points you to a web site and the address that displays in your status bar isn't that which you would visit to access your bank, you've probably received a scam. The common thing I've seen in the "phishing" e-mails lately is an address like this (the series of four numbers (218, 158, 230, and 101) commonly called the dotted quad and the page and directory will likely be different):

http://218.158.230.101:87/b/index.htm

I received one e-mail today (the web site was closed down by the time I started checking) that had an address that looked like this:

http://%32%31%38%2e%31%35%38%2e%32%33%30%2e%31%30%31:%38%37/%62/%69%6E%64%65%78%2E%68%74%6D

If you wanted to figure out what in the hell that URL would actually point to (the easy way), visit here and enter the URL in the form.

Banks don't send out e-mails that have links like that. Plus, a bank shouldn't be sending you e-mails asking you for your personal info. It just doesn't work like that...

So, there we were...

When Suzanne got home from work this afternoon, she didn't feel like making dinner. Hey, that was cool. The question we had was what we should do about it. We ended up going to Steak 'n Shake. Not bad... It had been a while since we visited there.

Afterwards, I got a wild hair up my arse and wanted to run by Best Buy. I haven't had any problems with Best Buy, but I know some people who really hate that place. Unfortunately, it's the only electronics-store-in-a-box around these parts. Suzanne and I both wanted a new cable modem. We figured that the rental from the cable company seems like it's old and possibly, well, "busted". Besides, why pay more money to the cable company? Oh yeah, I broke down and did something I never figured I would do. I bought Eminem's new release.

I hooked the modem up as soon as we returned home. It took the usual fifteen minutes (probably a little more because I wasn't really counting) waiting on the phone to talk to a customer service rep just to answer a very simple question about our account. Beyond that, there were NO problems. I was a little surprised because our modem wasn't on the list of approved or compatible hardware. Hey, what the hell, it works. Hopefully it will solve a little problem we've been having.

I really should be in the arms of Morpheus, but damn it all, I'm just not tired enough and the last of the Star Trek: The Next Generation vintage of movies is on one of the movie channels.