Vote Colborne in 2016!

This blog has moved!

2008-05-01T21:31:00.000-07:00

If you're here, it's because you reached this blog via the old colborne2016.blogspot.com address. This blog has now moved - you may find it at www.colborne2016.com.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Far too busy for my own good

2008-05-01T17:42:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this from Las Vegas - just attended Interop. Some things on tap:

1. Pictures! There weren't a whole lot of booth cookies, but I got pictures of most of them.
2. I haven't forgotten to migrate the site; as I alluded to earlier, work has been slamming me rather hard as of late. I'm hoping to perform the migration sometime either tonight or tomorrow. Either way, the migration will happen very soon, at which point this blog will be the Second Greatest Place On Earth™.

Stay tuned...

Work

2008-04-30T18:39:00.000-07:00

There are days when I really despise my job... I'm currently running on three straight nights of five hour nights of sleep. To say that my writing quality today is going to suffer as a result, to say nothing of everything else, is a gross understatement. You've been warned.

For those of you new here, I'm an IT consultant when I'm not "adding value" to company time by blogging; the company I work for handles IT needs for smaller companies that can't afford a full-time IT staff, or, occasionally, for companies that need a decently trained extra hand around the server room. The job is fairly basic - keep servers and workstations running, install the occasional bit of software, clean off the occasional virus... it's pretty vanilla and peaceful (if boring) most of the time. Once in a while, though, I really earn my pay, and this week has been one of those weeks. One of my coworkers was expanding a partition on a server when the server decided it would not only drop the partition but take the partitions on the backup drives with it. End result? One down server and no backup.

Great.

To add insult to injury, this particular server was special. It was running Windows Small Business Server, which meant that, not only was it important as a server, it also was responsible for making sure people could log into the system (yep - only domain controller) and also making sure people got their e-mail (Exchange). It also turned out that the server also hosted everybody's home folders, but we didn't know that at the time.

Now, a Windows server, by itself, is an interesting thing to restore. At its most basic, a Windows file server is functionally no harder to restore than any other server - install an operating system, grab a backup, restore some files. You may need to add it to the domain so people can access it, and you might need to tweak some file permissions if they didn't make it across, but none of that is particularly hard or time consuming. A Small Business server, however... well, that's a special beast, and, at least in my experience, when one of those goes south, you're looking at up to 48 man hours (note - not two days; we're talking six eight-hour shifts here) to get everything restored and all the kinks worked out.

What's the difference, you ask? Of course you don't, but I feel like ranting.

Conceptually, there are two basic ways to store information on any system. You can either store information on files, reading and writing to that file whenever a change needs to be made, or you can store information in a database. Now, a database consists of a set of files, but databases are special - they're designed to be easy for a computer to remember. Allow me to illustrate through metaphor:

Let's pretend for a second that you and I are working on a book. We only have one copy of the book, but both of us want to be able to work on it. We have a couple of methods at our disposal to keep things in sync:

We can hand-deliver changes to each other. This would be analogous to a file-based system - I would make the change I want to make to the book, you would look at the change, then we would get back to work. There are some drawbacks to this, though. First off, what happens if you and I want to make a change at the same time, and the change affects what the other person is doing? Whose changes take priority? Secondly, this can be rather slow - while I'm making a change in the book, you won't be able to look at the book (seeing as I have it and all), nor will you be able to make any changes yourself. This causes a rather serious bottleneck.

We can make little notes, including the date and time we made the note, then come together periodically and make the changes together. This would be analogous to a database, and it speeds things up dramatically. We could just rely on the date to determine whose changes go first. Then, periodically, we could both get together, figure out which notes go in which order, make the changes we need to make, and go our separate ways.

Now, let's say the book gets lost. How can we bring it back? Well, in the first model, it's fairly simple - we could just agree to have a backup of the book that we decide to start working from. Once a day, we run the book through a copier machine or something similar. The worst that happens is we lose our changes for that day. In the second model, yes, we can still do this, but there's a catch - what about our notes? Have we been backing up our notes as well? If not, we're going to have a problem - we just lost all of the changes we were going to make to the book!

Let's complicate things a little further and pretend that there's someone else working on a different book, but they're using our book as a source for material. They want to be able to cite our book by page, paragraph, or even sentence, so they want to keep track of what we're doing while we're doing it so they can keep their cites up to date. Going back to our models, there are two ways we can allow this:

Let that person take the book, make their cites, then return it to us. Again, this would be analogous to the file-based system, and it would be slow and cumbersome; we would have to wait for the book to come back before we could make any further changes. On the other hand, if that person loses it for whatever reason, we could just grab our backup, get back to work, and let the person know that we restored the book.

Alternatively...

Let that person keep a copy of the book. The copy will be updated each time we make changes in it. This would be analogous to the database model, and, as I'm sure you can imagine, it would be much faster - we could make changes while they're citing, let the person know we made some changes, they grab a new copy of the book, life is good. Just one problem, though - what happens if we lose our copy of the book? We could restore it from a previous version, but what if our version and the other person's version don't match? We would need to keep a record of what version we're each working from and compare version numbers - if they don't match, we're going to need to come up with some way to rectify that. Worse yet, what if they make citations based on a newer version that we no longer have and they throw away the cites to the older version? What if the citations from the newer version reference something that didn't even exist in the old version? What if we lost the notes that led to the newer version, perhaps due to our last backup being at least two versions back?

Herein lies the trade-off between databases and files: Databases are way faster than files, but can be rather tricky to bring back to life if something happens. Files are way slower than databases, but are much easier to bring back to life if something happens. Now, guess what Windows uses for everything? That's right - databases. Guess what happens if you don't have a good backup of some of those databases and they all tie in against each other? That's right - I get no sleep, and neither do my coworkers. The worst part about it, of course, is that Microsoft likes to use databases in the most convoluted way imaginable so that way they're nearly impossible to back up correctly. Pretend, for a sec, that you lost your database for Active Directory, which is responsible for all of your user names and passwords. Fortunately, you have a backup. Can you restore it all by itself somewhere else? Of course not - that would actually make sense. Instead, you get to restore it with the rest of something called "System State", which just happens to include your entire registry, which just happens to include all kinds of various arcane configuration settings for your hardware and any program that's running on your computer. Guess what happens if something gets screwed up in the registry? That's right - you don't get to restore Active Directory, which means you no longer have user accounts.

Nice, eh?

So, that's been my week. Once this reign of terror ends, I'll get some good posts up here. In the meantime, regale yourself with the latest on ID requirements to prevent voter fraud at Cardozaisms. It's not news, it's Cardoza. Alternatively, you can also get the latest in relating Professor Chaos and politics from Morbo's good friend, Rachel Lucas.

Hello, Morbo. How's the family?
Belligerent and filled with numerous pork treats.
Excellent. I'm Rachel, and I'm pro-war and pro-family.

Well, she's not pro-family, exactly, at least not in the Quantity is King! sort of way, but you get the idea. Or you don't. I don't even care anymore. Burn in hell, hippies!

In other news, market forces work

2008-04-29T18:18:00.000-07:00

Tired of Obama and Rev. Wright? Yeah, me too. I'm still continuing my hiatus on talking about him... so, without further ado:

MSNBC had this article on Juneau lowering their power consumption:

JUNEAU, Alaska - First, there was a run on energy-efficient light bulbs. When those ran out, people began asking for lamp oil. But when they started demanding clothespins in this land of mist and rain, it was clear Alaska's capital city was caught in a serious energy crunch.

"We sold all our clothespins the first day," said Doug White, general manager at Don Abel Building Supplies. "I don't think kids even knew what they were for, but they're learning now."

Avalanches earlier this month knocked down transmission lines and cut off Juneau's source of low-cost hydroelectric power. Threatened with a five-fold increase in utility bills, Juneau quickly powered down.

[...]

Energy conservation is a hard sell in much of the U.S., but Juneau has proved that people will change their ways if the financial incentives are big enough.

Well yeah. What did anyone expect to happen? That the residents of Juneau would say, "Screw the environment and our pocketbooks - let's pay $950/month on power"? Guess what - when something gets more expensive (power, gas, diesel, clothes, whatever), people use less of it when and where they can. Just ask Chrysler, who managed to tie their entire business model against selling nothing but Hemi-powered cars.

In other news, the sky is still blue, the sun is still yellow, and journalists are still idiots, who are perpetually perplexed by the pragmatic perfectness of simple things like, y'know, capitalism.

What the...

2008-04-28T23:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, North Korea is now officially weird...

Korean Folk Amusement-Seesaw

Pyongyang, April 28 (KCNA) -- Folk amusements become more popularized in the spring season in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Conspicuous among them is seesaw.
Seesaw is the one of the folk amusements that the Korean people have been fond of from olden times.
It was created on the principle of tread-mill in Korea.
The players show various arm and leg movements, moving up and down.
Seesaw is a sport which not only makes women's figure nice by balancing the whole body in the air but also builds up a healthy body by making the strength of legs strong and increasing the breathing capacity of the lungs.

And people say the Japanese are weird... at least their news makes some small measure of sense.

Considering how he treated "Starship Troopers", this will come as no surprise

2008-04-28T21:25:00.000-07:00

Cassy Fiano, who is having a rather good day today, discovered that the heinous adulterer of Heinlein's sacred works (none other than the accursed Paul Verhoeven) has decided to aim his unique and ineffable "skill" at completely and arbitrarily ignoring the text of his sources towards some little-known text called The New Testament:

'Basic Instinct' Director Paul Verhoeven: Jesus Was Son of Mary and Roman Rapist

In his upcoming biography of Jesus, "Basic Instinct" director Paul Verhoeven will make the shocking claim that Christ probably was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during the Jewish uprising in Galilee.

[...]

In addition to suggesting that the Virgin Mary may have been a rape victim, the book will also say that Christ was not betrayed by Judas Iscariot, one of the 12 original apostles of Jesus, as the New Testament states.

Keep in mind that this is the same man who upon being tasked with writing a movie based upon Starship Troopers, tried to read the book but failed, becoming "bored and depressed". I'm suspecting something similar happened here; I'm not even sure if he made it past Matthew 1:17... not that I blame him. I mean, after reading about Elezear and Matthan, I became bored and depressed myself.

Would you like to learn more? I don't frakkin' think so.

NOTE: I actually liked the movie, cheesy and heretical as it was. Even so, I definitely understand the viewpoint of those that actually grew up with the book, only to watch Mr. Verhoeven basically swallow the entire premise, ferment it in some weird dystopian nightmare, then excrete it through the bowels of Denise Richards' inexplicable refusal to show some cleavage. Consequently, this post is for you.

Thanks, Senator Reid.

2008-04-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

So, Nevada has the Senate Majority Leader in its ranks, who is well known for his proclivity towards earmarks - you'd think we'd be rolling in federal loot, right?

Wrong.

Nevada is dead last in money from federal agencies. Why? Well, there are a few reasons:

The reasons included the state’s tight purse strings and demographics.

It often takes a commitment from the state to give money to get federal money, and Nevada isn’t spending the money, administrators say. With Nevada’s percentage of senior citizens isn’t as high as the rest of the nation, there’s less Social Security and Medicare money flowing to the state.

Also, it turns out the Navy doesn't spend enough here:

While Nevada lags in spending by the Army and Navy, Air Force spending is higher.

Yeah, I know about Fallon NAS, but still... we're landlocked, people! We have absolutely zero navigable rivers in this state, unless you count the Lake Mead part of the Colorado River that forms our southern border. Of course Naval spending in this state is weak.

Meanwhile, Medicaid in Nevada just isn't getting the job done, apparently:

Nevada’s Medicaid program — which provides medical insurance for people who don’t have health insurance — is close to having only the coverage required by federal law, said Charles Duarte, administrator for the Nevada Division of Health Care Financing and Policy.

“The bottom line is that we have a relatively basic program,” Duarte said. “When you look at spending per capita on Medicaid services, we routinely rank near the bottom or at the bottom.”

For instance, 28 other states have the Medically Needy Program for people not eligible for Medicaid to deduct what they spend for medical treatment to qualify for Medicaid. The federal government requires state governments to match Medicaid contributions and Nevada does not have money set aside to do that, Duarte said.

Nevada’s lack of Medicaid programs shows up in higher health insurance premiums, said Dwight Hansen, director of financial services for the Nevada Hospital Association.

When people have no medical insurance, their health worsens and they seek treatment in emergency rooms. That care is more expensive and the uninsured can’t pay, so the hospitals have to look for other places to recover the costs for their more expensive treatment, Hansen said.

“That cost then gets shifted over to the only people the hospital can shift it over to and that’s the insured population,” Hansen said.

And as health insurance costs rise, fewer employers can afford it, leaving a higher percentage of the population without insurance, he said.

“You get into this cost spiral that makes things worse,” Hansen said.

One of these days, I'm going to go off on why it's absolutely asinine we're making hospital emergency rooms pay for the uninsured. This is the equivalent of saying, "Okay, we know you can't afford food, so here's the deal - if you go to a Red Lobster, you get free food. Otherwise, you're on your own." Uh... what?! On what planet does this policy even come close to making sense? Yeah, I get that we're trying to make sure that everybody has some basic level of care and that people in need aren't getting thrown out of the hospital, but forcing hospitals to throw the uninsured in the most expensive part of the hospital seems somewhat counterproductive to me. Then again, I'm mildly mystified why hospitals don't just remodel their ERs and have a little community health center right next to it - whenever someone uninsured comes in with the sniffles, they get taken to the community center where, what the hell, they can get treated for "free", just like the E.R. It would be cheaper for the hospital, I'm sure. Or, better yet, we could just get over this idea that people should be providing goods or services for "free". That would be helpful, too.

For frak's sake...

2008-04-28T19:01:00.001-07:00

I'd love to be nice and prolific today, but I'm going to level with everyone - I got almost no sleep last night. I managed to get into bed around 12:30 a.m., which would've been bearable if it weren't for this (Reno Gazette-Journal):

The quake that struck Mogul at 4:33 a.m. has been revised to a magnitude 4.2. It earlier had been listed as a magnitude 4.0.

The location is also listed as between Laurel Ridge Drive and Graysburg Drive just south of the Somersett Country Club.

It's part of a series of quakes in the Mogul area that began in late February. The strongest has been a 4.7 late Friday.

There have been 21 small earthquakes today ranging from 0.7 to 4.2, all centered in the Verdi-Mogul area.

As some of you may be aware, Reno has been steadily rocked for the past three months by little earthquakes. The AP touched on it a little today, and, indeed, I've touched on it a little myself. They're starting to get more powerful - we're getting periodic 4's now, which is getting disconcerting, to put it gently, especially since it means I'm starting to feel them at my apartment on a more regular basis. It's also completely jacked my sleep schedule - if there's anything worse than waking up in the middle of the night and having to decide if this one is actually going to be strong enough to jump into the doorway for, well, I can't think of it.

Some random thoughts in the meantime...

1. Yes, I know about Wright opening his big, fat mouth. I also don't care. I wasn't voting for Obama before he opened his mouth, and I'm certainly not going to now. I have issues with Obama's policies that, for me, are way more important than he chooses to spend his Sundays with. However, if you do care, Rachel touched on it, and Instapundit is doing an excellent job as always.

2. Conspiracy theorists crack me up. I mean, many of them are the same people that would never think for a second that the government would be competent enough to bake a loaf of bread but simultaneously believe it's completely possible that the government is competent enough to stage 9/11, among other things. You can't have it both ways. If the government is really that competent, we wouldn't care about it fooling us with terrorism because none of us would have to work for a living anymore.

3. I'm going to Interop on Wednesday, which means that posting might be a little sporadic then. I am hoping to get some pictures and do a post on it.

4. Remember, I'm switching to the new system on Thursday. If you're using the Blogspot address, update it schnell! As future Vice President of Porke Affaires, I command it!

Poor Gaius Baltar...

2008-04-27T20:21:00.000-07:00

I ate far too much Mexican today - my stomach feels like it's going to explode in a salsa-filled, refried bean infused tidal wave of death and destruction. As usual, though, that's entirely besides the point.

Battlestar Galactica is one of those shows that I would absolutely love to watch when the episodes come out. Unfortunately, I came into the series way too late, and, from where I'm sitting, there is nothing worse than jumping in the middle of a series, especially one where most episodes build on top of each other like BSG. So, I've been slowly purchasing the DVD box sets, watching them, one by one.

This weekend, I finished Season 2.5, which, for various geek-related reasons, I like to think of as Season 2 SP1. If you've never watched Battlestar Galactica (the new version, not the campy '70s version, which is still decent in its own right), much of this isn't going to make sense. If you actually watch it as thoroughly as you're supposed to, much of this will be old news, seeing as they're up to Season 4 now and all.

Some things that ran through my mind after finishing it (and, yes, I'm going to be purchasing Season 3 soon, and, yes Rachel, I'll use your Amazon link):

1. Dr. Baltar is such a tool. So, let's see here... he dooms humanity by letting his Cylon love buddy get close and cuddly to his defense system (NOTE: What defense department would actually allow one person to design their entire system? Honestly, I think the Colonials deserved to lose). Thanks to his Cylon lover hacking his defense system, there are all of 40,000+ humans left. So, when he runs across another copy of his Cylon lover, what does he do? He gives her a gun and, eventually, a nuclear warhead. What does she do with the warhead? She shoots it off, letting the Cylons know where New Caprica is. In short, he manages to successfully sell humanity out to the Cylons twice within two seasons. Brilliant!

2. Though I've been trying to keep my eyes closed on various plot spoilers as the series has progressed, I am aware that Season 3 is where a lot of people become unhappy because of the supposed parallels between the Cylon occupation of New Caprica and our occupation of Iraq. Before I see Season 3, here's my take on this:

The Cylon occupation of New Caprica would be, at best, analogous to Germany occupying Israel in 1949 - yeah, maybe the Germans were a little better behaved by then towards Jews than they were in 1945, but, c'mon, you think the Jews wouldn't make life for any German occupier a living hell? Point being, we didn't kill 99.99999999% of the Iraqi population, so any comparisons between an occupation of Iraq and a Cylon occupation of the remainder of humanity is a false one. Consequently, I absolutely refuse to take the Cylon occupation personally. I just won't have any of it.

3. Black Market was, in fact, as bad as I heard. It didn't advance the plot at all, it didn't make any sense... yeah. It just didn't jive. Here's hoping they don't do something quite that stupid again. The only bright note of that episode is they wiped out Commander Fisk, who really didn't make any sense as far as the rest of the cast goes. While we're at it...

4. Wow, the Pegasus offered up surprisingly little resistance to Adama taking over. I'm sure a lot of them were happy that the very MILF-like Admiral Cain died, but, even so, they spent maybe three episodes tops on how well Pegasus would be able to integrate with the Battlestar Galactica crew. It just seemed a little too easy.

Now, with all that said, I just want to point out that writing a decent science-fiction show is tough - way tougher than writing anything else, in my opinion. Fans of science fiction shows are far more demanding as far as plot consistency goes. That BSG is turning out as well as it is, in my opinion, is a damn good thing... even if I already know that a bunch of unlikely people will later turn out to be Cylons. Though, for what it's worth, at least Colonel Tigh will have an excuse for his incompetence...

Thus endeth my geekitude. You may now get back to the rest of your Internet.

UPDATE: Holy frak! It would seem I was more in tune with the Porke Method than I realized, sloshing through some of it at the same time that Rachel did. Sweet. Yeah, I already know about Razor, and, yeah, I was planning on waiting 'til after Season 3 to deal with that, though I understand that, chronologically speaking, it happens between Season 2 and Season 3.

MY EARS! THEY HAVE BEEN VIOLATED! (a.k.a. I discovered the Star Wars Christmas Album)

2008-04-25T17:40:00.000-07:00

Oh, the bad, horrible places my computer takes me to... I'm, of course, referring to a review of the Star Wars Christmas Album. Now, I know what you're already thinking - how bad could a review be? Not too bad... not too bad at all, actually... unless they do something truly heinous, something truly devious, something truly evil:

Have a link to the music.
(NOTE: Be nice enough to visit the article before clicking on this - seriously, they have to pay for the bandwidth somehow. Oh... it's a trap!)

Oh, it's terrible, all right. It has all of the charm and decency of the Star Wars Christmas Special, only with songs being sung by C-3PO and R2-D2.

Trust me - it's much worse than you can imagine.

It's playing on my laptop right now. I'd stop it, but I'm afraid it might choke me or something. Seriously, the dark side is strong with this one. My ears can't repel assery of that magnitude!

(Okay - I stopped it. Not dead yet. Thank Allah and praise Vishnu!)

God... shoot me. I can't unhear it. I can't! I really can't! It's going to take hours of therapeutic vodka shots up my nose to properly dull my brain stem sufficiently to make the madness stop! GAAAAAHHHHH!!!

One Week Notice

2008-04-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

Just a quick heads up to everyone:

In precisely one week, this blog will be switching to the new host. You can get a sneak preview here. There shouldn't be any serious issues; it's still going to be at www.colborne2016.com when all is said and done, so, as long as you're not getting here via the old Blogspot address, you should be fine. Even if you are getting here the "old-fashioned" way, I'm still going to have this blog up and registered, along with a final post detailing where to find the rest of the blog, so it's not like you're just going to get dropped into the ether.

I'm pretty excited - I have a logo picked out and it actually looks halfway Presidential, which is kind of nice... not that I'm really running for President or anything, but, if I was, well, that's a pretty decent start. Heck, I'd slap that on a bumper. If I get enough readership going here to make it worthwhile to actually try and merchandise the living shit out of this thing, maybe you will, too. I could even come up with all kinds of random and witty catchphrases, like:

Colborne 2016 - Not A Known Cause Of Cancer In The State Of California!
Colborne 2016 - Because I'm Better Than You!
Colborne 2016 - There's no 'u' in "It's time to take over the world!"
Colborne 2016 - Atheist, Broke, White, Male - What's Not To Love?

Oh yeah... we're going somewhere with this. Perhaps I could change the C around a little, maybe try to rip off Obama's O...

Oh yeah. That's glorious. Now, where can I sign up to be a graphics arts guy? I mean, with the kind of skillz that I'm exhibiting here, I should really, really be one, right?

(Note: No aborted fetuses were used during the making of this art.)

The storm clouds gather

2008-04-25T14:59:00.000-07:00

This is part of the ongoing series I have going on the NY Times article detailing links between the Pentagon and former military news analysts.

I've been a little surprised that nobody on the left has been jumping on top of this. Was it because they figured this was no big surprise and not worth remarking on? Was the article poorly written and completely devoid of facts? What was going on here?

Then I came across this on Huffington Post - Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) is angry!

Last Sunday, the front page of the New York Times included a story about the efforts of the Pentagon's public affairs operation to influence retired military officers now working as military analysts for some of our nation's largest media organizations.

I am very angry about the issues raised by the New York Times' story, as are many of my colleagues who have called me aside to discuss it. The story does not reflect well on the Pentagon, on the military analysts in question, or on the media organizations that employ them.

Now, by itself, this didn't seem particularly portentous. Congressfolk spout off on random issues all the time. This one article, however, has proven to be the seed cloud of what could become a rather nasty little tempest... you see, there was one other blog that read that article as well.

Daily Kos.

After the near media blackout of the New York Times report on the Pentagon program designed to blanket the airways with retired military analysts:
...in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance...

...[they] represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.

...you were probably thinking that yet another Bush administration scandal would fall through the cracks. But fear not, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) is all over it. Bypassing the more obvious methods of raising it on the floor of the House of Representatives, or calling a press conference to denounce a program to peddle propaganda to the American people, Ike opted to go 21st century and blog it. And boy, is he angry!

Now, at this point, I'll point out that, yes, this article does show that DailyKos has been tracking this issue since at least Monday, which means the left hasn't been entirely ignoring this. However, it's only a matter of time before this becomes more of an issue - I mean, think about it. This is precisely the sort of thing these guys feed on - intrigue, conspiracy from a right-wing government that manipulates the media to get us into war... seriously, in about a week here, this is going to be all we're going to hear about.

As I've said before, I don't think this is entirely as bad as it looks. The article focuses around Rumsfeld's involvement, and, considering how his career ended, it's not like his tactics are going to be repeated anytime soon. I also think it makes sense for the media to talk to former military personnel, and for those personnel to have some connections with the Pentagon - it makes a heck of a lot more sense than talking to, say, Cindy Sheehan about the war. At least with former Pentagon personnel, you might have a fighting chance of getting some facts with the spin. Asking for information about an ongoing war from anti-war moonbats makes about as much sense as asking for information on the quality of Kobe Beef from a vegan. I'm hoping that's why this isn't being bludgeoned to death by every single left-wing blogger, radio host, cable news host, and the like.

We shall see... and I, for one, prefer to be prepared.

Why I'm better than you

2008-04-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

I found a typing game on Fazed, so I thought it would be fun to try. End result?

That's right - 113 words per minute. This is the part where the rest of the blogging world quivers up into a tiny, insignificant ball, as they suddenly realize that I can outblog the rest of the Internet nearly 2 to 1. Heck, I even read faster than all of you.

There is no escape. Resistance is futile.

Taxes

2008-04-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

This is somewhat inspired from Rachel's post about child tax deductions and partly from the comments in there. Long story short, here's Rachel's objection to child tax credits:

Here’s a debate question: is it fair for people to pay less tax simply because they have chosen to have children? I’m sure you can guess where I stand (I say it’s bullshit), but I’m curious to hear logical, sound defenses of this policy. Yeah, if I had kids, I’d take the deduction, but I don’t think I’d feel comfortable saying it’s actually “fair” that the day I popped a baby out I suddenly deserved to pay less tax than the day I did before.

The comments generally steer around the following ideas:

It's fair, because...
- The children pay into social programs later in life.
- It saves money on social programs by encouraging parents to take care of the children (my take, by the way).

It's not fair, so we should...
- Flat tax! Make everyone pay some percentage (funny how it's always a far lower percentage than what we'd actually pay if we went with this, by the way - it wouldn't be 3%, people).
- Sales tax! That way people notice the tax and start encouraging the government to tax less.

I'm going to state the obvious right here and now - one problem we don't have in this country is people not realizing they should be taxed less. If we actually had that problem, we wouldn't be running up trillions of dollars in debt. The trouble we're having is that there is a big disconnect between what our country takes in taxes and what the people think the government should provide for them. Furthermore, the trouble with sales taxes is they are extremely regressive. Think about it for a sec - if you're poor, you're probably spending damn near 100% of your income on goods and services. If you're rich, you're probably spending a lot less and saving a lot more, and why not? If you're making $1,000,000 a year, how much of that can you spend? That's why we have an income tax - strange as it sounds, it's a little more fair for everyone.

This brings me to the problem of a flat tax. In order for a flat tax to work, you have to assume that the government is not providing any services to the poor. Why? Well, if we are providing services to the poor (health care, food stamps, housing, etc.), all we're doing is taking money from them that we'd probably they rather use on actually getting themselves out of poverty. Pretty simple, right? I mean, think about it for a sec. You're poor. We're giving you money so your life doesn't completely suck. Then, we're going to take your money so we can... be fair? How does that help you not spend our money again? It's the same reason we have a child tax credit - letting someone keep a few grand a year so they have a better chance of taking care of their children beats the hell out of the government spending tens of thousands of dollars for each child that ends up in foster care or in an orphanage somewhere. It's also the same reason that I think it's 15,000 shades of stupid that we tax Social Security.

Now, if you want to argue that eliminating social services would be nice, well, yeah, it would be nice, but it's not going to happen anytime soon. So, as long as we're doing that, let's not knee-cap people that are receiving aid by throwing a flat tax in there that would only force them to need more aid to pay the tax and would keep them on aid longer because we're taxing their ability to get out of it.

I told you I'd get back to this...

2008-04-24T18:20:00.001-07:00

This post is going to be something of a continuation of this post on the NY Times article detailing ties between military analysts and the Pentagon. I still say it doesn't look good, but I also find it interesting that I'm not even seeing much on this on the more left-leaning sites that would ordinarily jump on a story like this. That's not to say nobody's jumping on this - Glenn Greenwald jumped into this with both feet:

Identically, in April, 2003, a couple of weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Democracy Now interviewed then-CNN anchor Aaron Brown about CNN's reliance on retired Generals as military analysts, the virtually complete exclusion of anti-war voices from its coverage, and the various problems which such behavior engenders. Senso and Brown were equally dismissive of these concerns, contending that the "retired Generals" were merely speaking about apolitical tactical questions rather than engaging in political advocacy about U.S. policy. Both were also completely dismissive of the more general concerns that were raised -- in 2003, Brown said: "I think the generals question, respectfully, is a colossal red herring" and said that, once a war began, there was no reason to hear from anti-war advocates...

Now, as some of you are aware, I work in IT for a living. Let's pretend for a second that I was actually working at a news agency and there's a big breakthrough in computer technology that's about to hit (say, a new version of Microsoft Windows). I have the number of a former Microsoft employee, the number of an Amish guy that believes computers are tools of the devil, and the number of Richard Stallman. Who am I going to call? The guy who used to work at Microsoft and might have some insight about the product? The Amish guy that is wondering why we're talking about computers when we should be raising barns? Or the weird hippie who believes that all proprietary software is evil?

Right. Me too.

Well, back to story here, I'm running a news agency and a war is coming on. Who am I going to talk to? A former military man or an anti-war advocate? One of these people is going to have a clue about what's going on there, while the other is going to proselytize about how we shouldn't be there in the first place. One might be insightful. The other is definitely going to push an agenda.

Yeah, I'm going to roll the dice, too... and if it means I might actually end up with a Pentagon stooge, well, it beats the odds of definitely ending up with an anti-war stooge.

Do not attribute to malice that which can be just as easily attributed to stupidity

2008-04-24T17:34:00.000-07:00

As part of my plan to grow this blog a little, I've begun to lurk around some blogs that I usually don't agree with, if only for no better reason than to have something to write about when blindly parroting everyone else gets a little old. Thankfully, it doesn't take much for somebody to come up with something absolutely mind-bending, especially when that somebody is Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft:

Fire David Shuster

After being previously suspended for his sexist remarks, it is clear that David Shuster has no remorse. Shakes and Media Matters have the story:
During the April 22 edition of MSNBC Live, guest host David Shuster said to senior campaign correspondent Tucker Carlson: "Before we get to predictions, Tucker, I want to present you ... It's a pen. It's 'Jabber Jaw Pens.' And when you listen to it here." At this point, Shuster pressed the top of the pen -- a likeness of Sen. Hillary Clinton's head -- and the mouth began to move as the pen began audibly laughing.

So, David Shuster should be fired for handing a pen to someone? No... there's a far more sinister motive:

How could NBC possibly think this outrageous sexism could be acceptable? Fire David Shuster. NOW.

That's right - he's a sexist for creating a pen that mocks Hillary's laugh. Not because he said that Hillary needs to stay barefoot in the kitchen, not because he said that Hillary doesn't have the balls to be President, and not because he tried to grab Hillary's ass. You see, only lesbians are allowed to grab other women's asses - it's not sexist when that happens. But if a guy does it... oh, boy howdy is he going to be in for a world of hurt.

A coworker of mine one said, "Do not attribute to malice that which can be just as easily attributed to stupidity." The Hillary pen was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, stupid. However, in order for something to be sexist (or, really, any -ist), it has to insult her in a way that demeans women in general. Saying that she has a lousy laugh does not demean womankind. It just means she has a lousy, distinctive laugh. Nothing more.

This reminds me of something that I read on Cardozaisms fairly recently, about how some people were trying to call McCain "racist" because he described himself as an "American" candidate. What cracked me about it was that the same people that call McCain "racist" and call Shuster "sexist" are the same people that also claim that, when people criticize Obama's choice in friends and religious figures, they're attacking his "character" and that we need to focus more on "policy". Not that any of this is surprising, of course - hypocrisy knows no bounds in politics or talk radio, so why anyone would expect any different is beyond me.

What the hell?

2008-04-24T17:25:00.000-07:00

Found this on Squeaky Wheel Seeks Grease, and decided it looked like fun:

Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123.
3. Find the first five sentences.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

There shall be no tagging because tag is an offensive, oppressive game used by the white man to keep the black woman down. Even so, I'll participate in the other four... and, to bring it home, seeing as I'm sitting at work, I'll use "UML and the Unified Process", which just happens to be the closest book sitting to me.

Prepare to be regaled with the most boring passages in your natural-born life!

However, it is class scope - this means that there is only one copy, and this single copy is only initialized once. Exactly when that happens is implementation language dependent but, as far as we are concerned, all we have to know is that it initialized to the value zero when the program started.

Suppose that in the create() operation you invoke the class scope operation IncrementCount().

Oh yes! There are pages and pages of that, all in that book, and I had to read every single page of it during my senior year of college. Oh, what horribly good times those were! It was due, in no small part, to books of that ilk that I developed the appreciation for computer programming that I have today, which is a big reason why I don't, in fact, due programming as a full-time profession.

*sigh*... The memories.

Earthquakes

2008-04-24T16:33:00.000-07:00

My coworkers and I just experienced an earthquake today. Lately, Reno's been getting a lot of them - think over 60 in less than a week. Granted, Reno's in a fairly active area, but this is getting a little absurd. They have all been really small (most under 3.0, with the occasional 3.0-4.0 thrown in for good measure), but, especially with what happened in Wells about a month or so ago, some people are feeling a little more paranoid than usual. What's particularly disturbing is that they all seem to be in roughly the same area. Thankfully, I don't live on that side of town, but I have a friend or two that does, so this could get a little too interesting in short order.

Time for a game of Good Idea/Bad Idea

2008-04-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

Good Idea: Talking to your constituents, being available for them when asked, and giving speeches when they want you to.

Bad Idea: Giving speeches at an event commemorating Hitler's birth (NY Times):

A congressional candidate is defending his speech to a group celebrating the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth, saying he appeared simply because he was asked.

Tony Zirkle, who is seeking the Republican nomination in Indiana's 2nd District, stood in front of a painting of Hitler, next to people wearing swastika armbands and with a swastika flag in the background for the speech to the American National Socialist Workers Party in Chicago on Sunday.

"I'll speak before any group that invites me," Zirkle said Monday. "I've spoken on an African-American radio station in Atlanta."

Reports of the Blues Brothers crashing the party and attempting to ram Tony Zirkle with a beat-up police cruiser are, as of yet, unconfirmed.

Pick a logo!

2008-04-24T14:18:00.001-07:00

Okay, I think I've come up with a halfway decent logo for the new blog, one that isn't overstyled or overlesbianed. However, on the off chance that I'm way off base here, I present to you the three possible logos for consideration:

1. The camo logo

2. Styled logo with slogan

3. American Flag logo

I'm more than happy to tweak one of the logos if there's one that people really like but is missing something. Personally, I'm thinking that I'm going to make myself completely insane if I don't pick one here pretty soon. I'm also thinking that GIMP is definitely one of the more interesting programs I've ever had the pleasure of digging into, but that's a story for another time. For whatever it may be worth, the point of the font choice was to create something of a mock-futuristic look for the logo, but, again, I'm beginning to rethink that, as well, which is probably why I need to really stop now.

UPDATE: I have a fourth one. That's right - a fourth one. I need to be stopped. Heinously.

Add it to the list

2008-04-24T13:07:00.001-07:00

Yep - another edict from the Blogmaster:

Man, I wish my birthday was more often than once a year. I’ll make it officially so when I become Leader.

- The Daily Dog: Birthday Loot

The only question now, of course, is when else would it be Her birthday?

Also, it would seem that Her thank-you card will become currency:

Anyway. The Amazon gift receipts only show the giver’s address, not email, so those of you who bought those things are in for a special treat: I’m making a Sunny thank-you card on Zazzle and will send you one via snail mail. It may be a week or two but when you get it, hold onto it because one day when I’m running Earth it might be worth some money. At least a dollar.

At least they'll be worth more than those coupons with the 1/32 of a cent of cash value or whatever it is. Seriously, that part always baffled my mind... could you imagine cutting a bunch of coupons out of the newspaper and redeeming a big pile of them for five cents? It's an even worse deal than recycling cans.

It's all about the contrast

2008-04-23T16:48:00.000-07:00

As Rachel pointed out today, the Internet is proving to be incredibly boring today. Fortunately, I'm willing to go that extra mile for my dear readers, scouring the lesser-known news sources, turning that extra rock that others might miss... which is how I found this (PV Times):

Winery bottles Nevada's first estate wine

The vineyards at Pahrump Valley Winery are no longer just for show.

Bill and Gretchen Loken, owners of Nevada's oldest and largest winery, bottled the first crush 2005 Zinfandel called "Nevada Ridge" Wednesday, from grapes grown completely on Pahrump soil.

Besides being an exciting time for the Lokens, it marks a possible turning point for the fledgling grape-growing industry in Nevada, Bill Loken said.

"There's never been a bottle of wine ever made at the Pahrump Valley Winery from grapes that were grown here -- ever," Loken said.

Loken qualified his remarks, adding it's "believed to be" the first red estate wine ever grown in Nevada, since Frank "Pop" Buol grew grapes in Pahrump in the 1930s. But little is known about Chateau Buol other than it was bonded by the federal government, he said.

The first crush will produce about 100 cases, or about 1,100 bottles, Loken said. A long list of buyers is awaiting a bottle, expected to cost $75.

Pahrump is about 70 miles west of Las Vegas (the one everyone knows about, not the one in New Mexico); the climate is almost identical, give or take a degree or two. The Pahrump Valley Winery has been trying to successfully grow wine grapes in an environment that is extremely dry (less than four inches of precipitation a year), regularly has 105F highs during the summer, and has a relatively harsh winter compared to places like Napa Valley and Paso Robles. In other words, if there was a more challenging area to grow grapes, it would involve somewhere in the Sahara or the bottom of Death Valley. That they finally pulled this off is nothing short of amazing, especially since they've been working on this for nearly 15 years.

One line that did crack me up, though, came at the end of the article:

Could wine connoisseurs some day sniff their fine vintages in the glass and when they inquire where it was grown ask: "Napa Valley? Sonoma? Paso Robles? Pahrump?"

I'm trying to visualize a wine tour through Pahrump, and it's cracking me up to no end. Keep in mind that Pahrump, great town that it is, is basically little more than thousands of mobile homes planted on acre-to-acre and a half lots dotting a dry, dusty desert. There are a couple of smaller casinos, a few stick-built homes here and there (more now than there used to be), and that's about it. Oh, and there are also some nearby brothels and Art Bell lives there. Sounds like fun, right? Now, imagine a bunch of yuppie wine snobs coming to visit.

Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

Still, though, I'm genuinely impressed with what they're doing out there. Growing grapes out there for food in that environment would be a challenge. Growing them for wine and actually coming up with something that doesn't taste like it belongs on a salad is nothing short of miraculous. Here's hoping we see more of it.

Operation Impending Doom 2: Vista SP1

2008-04-23T16:39:00.000-07:00

According to the Windows Vista Team Blog, Microsoft is going to start pushing SP1 for Vista out via Automatic Updates. The good news is that, at least at work, we haven't had any problems with it - that's not to say that nobody is having problems with it, though. For whatever it may be worth, we run Office 2007 on Vista SP1 all over the place in here without incident, so, needless to say, your mileage may vary.

This sentence says it all

2008-04-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

I fired up some left-wing radio this morning and, within two seconds, I heard this on the Stephanie Miller show, trying to explain away Obama's Level II Kinsley Gaffe:

What he was trying to say was that people shouldn't have to rely on things other than the government.

Yep - that's pretty much what I thought he meant to say, and, from where I'm sitting, that's a hell of a lot worse than any of the so-called "right-wing talking points".

It's no Mr. Fusion, but still...

2008-04-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

Found this article on Popular Mechanics via Slashdot:

Hydrogen, ethanol and even compressed air all have the shrink-wrapped sheen of the bright, green future. But gasoline? At $1 per gallon?

Researchers at UMass Amherst recently published a new method of refining hydrocarbons from cellulose, paving the way to turn wood scraps into gasoline, diesel fuel, Tupperware—anything, essentially, that’s normally refined from petroleum.

[...]

Using a catalyst commonly employed in the petroleum industry, Huber and his colleagues heated small amounts of cellulose very quickly for a matter of seconds before cooling it, producing a high-octane liquid similar to gasoline. “The temperature window is very critical,” Huber says. If you heat too slowly, you produce mainly coke—elemental carbon residue. If you heat too fast, you make mainly vapors. The sweet spot, about 1000 degrees per second, transfers roughly half the cellulose’s energy into hydrocarbons. “If we can get 100 percent yield, we estimate the cost to be about a dollar per gallon,” Huber says. “Right now we’re at 50 percent. Can we get 100 percent? I don’t know. Hopefully we’ll bump those numbers up.” (emphasis mine - DC)

Like most things in Popular Mechanics, it certainly sounds promising on paper. At worst, it sounds like it'll fit in a similar niche as the coal-to-liquids technology pioneered by a couple of countries that had a lot more coal than oil available to them. At best, it might be just the thing to permanently eliminate scarcity - if they can get production costs down into the $2-3 range (not sure what it is at 50% efficiency), that'll serve as an upper limit for future gas costs.

Either way... between this and biodiesel, we're living in very interesting times.