Random Access Memories

In a word, disappointing.

A panel of 4 hardcore female gamers mostly patted themselves on the back. Rather than have a male on the panel to provide an opposing view, or a female gamer that enjoys “girly” games they seemed to just be trying to empower the women in attendence.

Heavy on jokes, heavy on putdowns of older male-dominated gaming, light on the future of females in gaming.

Quoting Steve Jobs from his press conference this morning regarding the Iphone 4.


But how is this not a lie? Their solution is to put a “Bumper” on the phone so the antenna issue does not occur. That is literally a band-aid if ever there was one.


He also said:
“looking at the data, we don’t think we have a problem.”


Well, if you don’t have a problem, then one must ask why you are offering everyone with an Iphone 4 a free case to fix a problem that you say you do not have.

Quoted from here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20010351-1.html

The seemingly unending saga of the iPhone 4 antenna issues has grown yet again. After a negative report from Consumer Reports, Apple has apparently deleted all threads about the findings from its popular Support Discussions forums. As Kent German reported earlier today, Consumer Reports has issued their official stance on iPhone 4 and they can’t recommend it.

Moderators for Apple’s Support Discussions forums quickly deleted growing threads discussing the Consumer Reports articles. Though these threads are no longer viewable, you can read through cached versions via Bing.

Despite the generally positive reputation that Consumer Reports enjoys, many Apple fans vehemently defend iPhone 4 throughout the thread. It will be interesting to see what sort of fallout this finding will produce in terms of sales for iPhone 4 moving forward. Despite the early reports of these very issues, iPhone 4 still out sold iPhone 3GS by nearly double over its first few days. Not to mention, Consumer Reports has already stated that the issues related to iPhone 4′s antenna are not unique to iPhone 4.

Reminds me of that Mythbusters quote, “I reject your reality and substitute my own!”

Glad only men are allowed to enjoy good cutlery.

Sexism is the new norm, right?

I mean the latest Acura commercials make an excellent demonstration that only men make illogical luxury purchases.

Don’t you love how this little gadget to open plastic packaging comes inside that evil plastic packaging itself.

“Sure, all this will fit back in the box sir. No need to put a bigger box on there!”

“If aliens were among us then it would be all over the papers and if it was being covered up by the Governments then they are doing a far better job of it than they have managed with anything else”

From our recent backpacking trip.

“The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.” – Confucius

So AT&T will change it’s pricing plans and do away with “unlimited data”.

“AT&T defends its decision to eliminate the unlimited data plan, saying statistics show that 65% of their customers use less than 200MB of data per month, while 98% of their customers use less than 2GB of data on average each month.”

Yes, I agree those numbers are likely correct. However, they are making this change in conjunction with the rollout of the new Iphone 4G. Now who really thinks that someone with 4G is going to use less than 200MB.

I am rather certain we’re going to see customers screaming bloody murder over this one in the near future. Nothing like increasing profits in the short term while you make customers unhappy.

So my girlfriend got Pokemon Soul Silver for her DS. And I must admit i’m oddly attracted to the idea of how to cheat the little pokewalker pedometer that comes with the game.



Also, it takes around 2 million steps to unlock the highest things in the game so it seems most people think it’s not that bad to cheat.

It seems to gain it’s steps based on an accelerometer, once it hits a certain level of “shock” intensity a step is recorded, so a gentle motion doesn’t seem to work as well as a sharper one (I guess it reads the shock of the step).

I scrounged out the vibration motor from an old PS/2 rumble controller and used a paperclip to make a wire “hanger” on the back so it could be removed.

After that I added some foam so it wouldn’t rub against the motor. Then after a few wire connections, and a string to hang it from I plugged it in and checked the number of steps it recorded over 1 minute, 72.

Not that bad, but not awesome either. Then I slid the walker so it was not hanging off the motor, but rather directly in-line with it and checked again, 144 steps per minute!



I think that should be good enough, heh.

No, I will not make you one, but if you want detailed instructions end me a note.

So what’s come to the top of the pot in the US recently?

We’re found that both BP and the Government were grossly wrong about the flow rate of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (No shock there really, what company isn’t going to make it’s figures as low as possible when it’s impact on the environment is concerned).

We’re learned that Transocean who owns the rig has received 411 million dollars from it’s insurance company, but is trying to use a law written in 1851 to limit it’s liability to 21 million total.

To top it off the last flight of the shuttle Atlantis is scheduled for this afternoon, and the final flight for all the shuttles is a November launch of Discovery. The replacement launch vehicle “Orion” has a scheduled launch date of 2015, anyone that seriously thinks that is going to be on target is fooling themselves.

The US has ignored the job of the Federal Government to push the envelope for the good of the nation and instead now has handed off such trivial things to private corporations. Those corporations are now almost completely running the show, able to do almost anything and ignore the consequences of their actions.

In the end tho isn’t it the people that need to do something about this? Given the great divide in US politics I don’t see that happening for more than 20 years.

So all we can really do now is keep fooling ourselves into thinking that we matter while of course remembering to bow to our corporate masters who demand our money and ruin our environment. Yeah, I am no more thrilled about this idea than you are.

As I was saying, there is a smoothie place in Seattle named “Crazy Cherry” but upon trying to get a cherry-flavor smoothie was told they do not make cherry.

I’m sorry to say I hope this disaster is as bad as can be thought of.

I want to see hundreds of millions of gallons spread from Texas to Florida.

Why?

Because it’s going to take that kind of a massive disaster to get people to stop ignoring the ecological price of filling their gas tank.

So very wrong, heh

This sure seems like a Banksy, I saw it by Harvard Exit in Seattle by chance.

But since there is a Banksy movie opening in the theater next door I’m skeptical.

So lately i’ve been playing around with electronics parts, and I stumbled upon a post that said there was a really good accelerometer in the Wii Nunchuk controller.

Not wanting to let a good thing pass me by I ordered a cheap one on Ebay for $5. Well, that was my first mistake.

The data was horrible, totally substandard, today I bought a true Nintendo brand nunchuk used for $15 and well, the data speaks for itself.



Lesson learned, I now wonder what other controller devices have such awful components in them that we never “see” outside the packages, nor get a look at the raw data.

A friend pointed this stuff out to me today. It’s aluminum t-slot building parts for small project and hobby use (Think large stable erector set parts)


http://www.microrax.com

I’m tempted to buy some but I don’t have a real need for it at the moment.

Now to start with I in no way condone the actions in Austin, Texas this morning. Violence does not solve problems. Killing innocent people is horrible. Period.

But when something like this happens in our modern era and online information turns up about it that information seems to vanish at a shocking pace.

Case in point, Joe Stack’s website at embeddedart.com. If you went there after about 10am PST this morning you got this message. You could still see the cache of the page on Google, but that was cleared about an hour later.

For future reference I post a cache of the original site here.

Strangely enough the hosting company T35.net returned the page as it was originally while I was writing this for unknown reasons. Then by the time I finished writing the site was offline again and pointing to http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2010/0218102stack1.html. That page says the original replacement message said the page was taken down at the request of the FBI. Perhaps in all fairness the company was not the one covering it’s butt, rather it was the Feds.

When I emailed the webmaster at T35 they responded with: “Yes, we did receive several requests from the FBI (to remove the page). They were made over the phone.”. I would give a lot to know what the FBI was thinking when it made those requests.

Likely, we’ll never know the whole truth.

Ever so often an image comes along that sums up a problem so very nicely.

This is one of those images.

Can’t wait for my new electronics parts to get here so I can really start doing crazy stuff.

Whee!

Now if only someone would pay me for doing crazy stuff, that would be awesome.

This is beginning to really annoy me.

More and more the USA is becoming a nation of “if you can’t accomplish something yourself, you’re a loser”.

Even here in Seattle people are still judgmental and arrogant with their individualist thinking.

Makes it a bitch to try and stop acting like that myself, heh

I’ve been waiting for a viable “slate” device for 10 years. Knowing this was going to be a big thing when it hit the public market. Today I got the first hint that the markets are ready for a slate, but it’s not the slate I was expecting. I still think I was right and this is a game changer, but is this going to be the “Next big thing” for Apple? I don’t think so, here is why.

First, the iPad is not the iPhone, even tho they want people to compare the two. The iPad will have an app market, but it’s not an “app” device, it’s a true computer, and people will want to use it as a true computer. They will want to read books and comics and websites on it along with working on their business functions, which is not something the iPad will really allow, you only get one application at a time and you don’t get a true OS you get the iPhone OS.

Secondly it has no camera, stylus or mouse capability. People want all-in-one devices, they want options, they want precision, slates are going to be used for EVERYTHING, finger-touch will not be good enough.

Along with those you cannot make any calls off the device even tho it has the audio capability. A slate needs to be able to make calls over Skype or other providers.

You also cannot use spare batteries to extend your work time, this is something basic to netbooks and most notebook computers.

Lastly it has no expansion capability, no USB ports, no SD or even MicroSD card slots, on a device this big that’s like not including a spare button on a $200 sweater, it’s a silly lack of basic functionality that people are going to want.

In short, it’s not being treated like a computer it’s being treated like a big phone that you cannot make calls off of. Seriously who is going to be open to that type of limited functionality? When the first slates come to market running full OSs they will dominate multiple fields that the iPad will not be useful in, such as medicine, research, college students, anywhere where a full-size computer is useful and needs to be carried around (Think the PADD devices you saw on star-trek) slates are going to be the pocket-calculators of the new techie revolution.

Now, the key is what companies to buy into to ride the wave. Unfortunately I don’t know yet, Asus and Acer will be big players, Dell is sure to make it’s own device, but it’s OS that will determine who succeeds, any of these devices can be made into functional PPCs (I’m thinking this is a good shorthand for “Pad Personal Computer”) by installing Linux, but people are still stuck on Windows, so I think the model with a functional copy of Win7 at a good price will be your first hit.

All hail the beginning of the next technical revolution, in ten years i’m betting PPCs will be replacing netbooks and small notebooks completely. (Well, at least i’m hoping)

Thanks to the Supreme Court corporate money can now flow into political campaigns with reckless abandon.

So much for the average voter actually having a meaningful voice.

It seems Google has raised quite a few of eyebrows with it’s public announcement of attacks from Chinese sources.

I think it’s way past time to hold tongues just because of profits.

Oh i’m very unhappy about this one.

Reports are that gmail accounts have been compromised by Chinese governmental organizations.

Precisely what is out there to stop them from trying to get into mine? Sure, I have nothing on it that China would care about, but that’s not really the point is it. It’s that my data is *MY* data, not China’s data.

I feel if Google wants to live up to their mission of not being evil they have little choice right now but to leave China for the good of all their other users around the globe.

Seems that being the largest private torrent tracker in the world has some downsides.

Especially when music is relatively small and fast to download. If you end up with new invitees just downloading what they want and trying to upload it to have a positive ratio you’re going to have alot of people waiting a very long time.

Their solution? Screen new members in an “interview” process. Make sure they’re capable of uploading something. But how many really ever get anything worth uploading that isn’t already there yet?

“I could upload my parents collection of Korean folk songs, but I doubt anyone would want it. However it’s the only thing I have that they don’t already have on the site.”

Also invites are only now being given out to users that upload, no uploads, no invites.

But thinking about percentages this isn’t really going to help them out. There is only so much music out there that “online downloaders” want in the first place. If you have 99% of it already then anyone you add is going to have a harder and harder time of maintaining a positive ratio. And you’re going to get more people uploading junk because that’s all they can find to upload.

The solution? I suggest converting to a private pay site, no other fix it going to deal with the ratio issues music entails.

Just in case anyone ends up searching for information about them.

My GF and I got 2 Droids from them on the 27th of November at 1:04pm.

Her Droid developed an issue and needed to be replaced. We took it back on December 27th at 5:01pm.

They promptly told us the 30-day warranty had expired 4 hours ago and we would have to get it replaced through the manufacturer, have a nice day.

Needless to say this is not what I consider good customer service. Be warned.

Just a little note for those folks searching out a sweet red wine.

I’m partial to “Sweet Lucy” from Kokopelli Winery.  (http://www.kokopelliwinery.net)

So they are recalling 50 million window blinds due to the deaths of 5 children.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/ConsumerNews/50-million-blinds-recall-child-deaths/story?id=9336171

Literally because a 1-in-10 million chance of death is too high.

The odds of being struck by lightning each year? 1-in-750,000.

MIT team wins Darpa’s treasure hunt in less than one day

From Bobbie Johnson, San Francisco – guardian.co.uk

A $40,000 online challenge proposed by the US government has been won by a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – just hours after it was launched.

The Darpa Network Challenge, which took place on Saturday, offered a cash prize for the first group to successfully locate 10 large red weather balloons hidden at a string of secret locations across the US.

Competitors were asked to use the internet and social networking sites to discover the whereabouts of the balloons, in what Darpa – the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – said was an experiment to discover how the internet could help with rapid problem solving.

More than 4,000 groups eventually registered to take part, but although the organisers had given players up to nine days to track the balloons down, the team from MIT scooped victory within nine hours of the launch.

“Darpa salutes the MIT team for successfully completing this complex task less than nine hours after the balloon launch,” said Regina Dugan, the director of the agency.

The winning team has not explained precisely how they came to discover the location of all 10 balloons, but the process detailed on the team website explains that they created a viral campaign to encourage people to put forward information they gleaned about the locations.

The team offered the first person to spot a balloon a $2,000 share of the prize money, but smaller awards would also be given to those who referred that player to MIT’s website – a scheme of incentives aimed at getting people to urge their friends to take part.

Whatever happened in the end, it appeared to work – and quickly.

“The challenge has captured the imagination of people around the world, is rich with scientific intrigue and, we hope, is part of a growing ‘renaissance of wonder’ throughout the nation,” said Dr Dugan.

In the end the eight-foot balloons were hidden in locations across nine states: Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

I’m quite happy with this little gadget (Especially now that there is a browser that uses multitouch and zooms in much farther than the built-in browser)

The fact that it links with all my existing google data, and it gives me realtime bus routing in Seattle it’s perfect for my needs. Audio “phones” are beginning to become archaic, data devices are the future yet they are just barely becoming available.

The New York Yankees have won 27, or 25% of the 105 World Series to date and have 43% of the 61 AL wins.

Go ahead, tell me that it makes things fair and interesting when the richest team wins 1/4 of the time.

From Kitmous:

I came here from the “Stumbling toward Ecstasy” post at Shapely Prose. I was reading about your struggles with diminished smell/taste, and thought I would come offer a suggestion.

I was in a car accident more than a decade ago that resulted in cranial nerve injuries. I have diminished smell and taste, and ‘sweet’ (because it’s on the tongue and not reliant on smell for intensity) is also the one that for me is strongest and most reliable. What I’ve taken to doing is pursuing REALLY strong-flavored foods–sharp English cheddar cheese instead of mild American cheddar, dijon mustard instead of yellow mustard, “everything” bagels instead of plain bagels, filet mignon instead of cheaper/less tasty cuts of beef, that sort of thing. Foods (for me, anyway) that actually have flavor. I don’t need to eat as much of them because I can taste them, so my body/brain is satisfied with less.

I’m just some random human on the internet, but I thought I’d pop over and offer a suggestion.

I do tend more towards VERY sweet things (IE. I like a little tea with my sugar in the morning) and I adore extremely sharp cheddar.

Sometimes tho a taste will completely overpower everything (Shitake mushrooms are a good example of this, coffee is another).

If I want a mild flavor I have to eat ONLY that thing (Shrimp, crab legs, steak fit that catagory)

Some flavors are powerful, but fade quickly for me (Mustard, horseradish fall here)

I also like to make a huge pot of soup with lots of veggies and lean meat, I can eat lots of this and it’s both low in calories and very good for me. Compared to snacking on other foods.

I appreciate the info, I never knew that certain tastes were not at all nose-dependent.

To quote Mark Greenbaum of the Christian Science Monitor:

In a nation that is so diverse economically, culturally, and politically, a party that enforces a rigid litmus test for membership will not be able to remain viable.

If Republicans continue to move from the center in areas where adherence to conservative ideology is not palatable to a majority of voters, the GOP will not be able to regain Congress or the presidency anytime soon.

I think they’re dying, they just haven’t been buried yet. The sooner they realize this the sooner we can quit having “us or them” politics.

I’ve thrown my support behind the “New Atheist” movemtn.

“Intolerance of ignorance, myth and superstition; disregard for the tolerance of religion.
Indoctrination of logic, reason and the advancement of a naturalistic worldview.”

Right up my alley.

Republican National Chairman Michael Steele issued a grudging statement this morning in response to the president’s being awarded the Nobel peace prize.

“The real question Americans are asking is, ‘What has President Obama actually accomplished?’ It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights,” Steele said.

“One thing is certain – President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action,” added the former Maryland lieutenant governor.

His attitude is a very good example of the sad state of US politics. I think it’s time to come together and be US Citizens instead of making everything a partisan fight.

Whatever happened to being proud to be in the USA?

Heaven is Where:

The Police are British,
The Chefs are Italian,
The Mechanics are German,
The Lovers are French and
It’s all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is Where:

The Police are German,
The Chefs are British,
The Mechanics are French,
The Lovers are Swiss and
It’s all organized by the Italians.

I would say this is a fail.

This place is nice, they give you power plugs next to network jacks with crazy speeds. For free!

This is totally hilarious.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39495

So the other week we went to Game Crazy which resides in Hollywood Video to get a used DS Lite.

They were nice enough to give us a sheet of 12 free rental tickets, one per month. As the gentleman said “These are so you have something to play on your new system”

“Oh, you rent DS games?”

“No”

??? right….

I’m having a cruddy week of fighting the “Seattle Freeze” effect. (It’s a Seattle thing, people want you to “Have a nice day, someplace else”).

It’s odd how it seems alot of other people also have this problem, but we can’t network worth a crap.

So most of the globe is shocked and saddened that Michael Jackson is dead.

Personally I feel that it’s hardly a big loss, he had not contributed much to society in quite some time.

Everyone dies, it’s just a matter of when and how.

I noticed this on Zdnet, it’s well worth reading.

Why Raid 5 stops working in 2009
By Robin Harris, July 18th, 2007

The storage version of Y2k? No, it’s a function of capacity growth and RAID 5’s limitations. If you are thinking about SATA RAID for home or business use, or using RAID today, you need to know why.

RAID 5 protects against a single disk failure. You can recover all your data if a single disk breaks. The problem: once a disk breaks, there is another increasingly common failure lurking. And in 2009 it is highly certain it will find you.

Disks fail
While disks are incredibly reliable devices, they do fail. Our best data – from CMU and Google – finds that over 3% of drives fail each year in the first three years of drive life, and then failure rates start rising fast.

With 7 brand new disks, you have ~20% chance of seeing a disk failure each year. Factor in the rising failure rate with age and over 4 years you are almost certain to see a disk failure during the life of those disks.

But you’re protected by RAID 5, right? Not in 2009.

Reads fail
SATA drives are commonly specified with an unrecoverable read error rate (URE) of 10^14. Which means that once every 100,000,000,000,000 bits, the disk will very politely tell you that, so sorry, but I really, truly can’t read that sector back to you.

One hundred trillion bits is about 12 terabytes. Sound like a lot? Not in 2009.

Disk capacities double
Disk drive capacities double every 18-24 months. We have 1 TB drives now, and in 2009 we’ll have 2 TB drives.

With a 7 drive RAID 5 disk failure, you’ll have 6 remaining 2 TB drives. As the RAID controller is busily reading through those 6 disks to reconstruct the data from the failed drive, it is almost certain it will see an URE.

So the read fails. And when that happens, you are one unhappy camper. The message “we can’t read this RAID volume” travels up the chain of command until an error message is presented on the screen. 12 TB of your carefully protected – you thought! – data is gone. Oh, you didn’t back it up to tape? Bummer!

So now what?
The obvious answer, and the one that storage marketers have begun trumpeting, is RAID 6, which protects your data against 2 failures. Which is all well and good, until you consider this: as drives increase in size, any drive failure will always be accompanied by a read error. So RAID 6 will give you no more protection than RAID 5 does now, but you’ll pay more anyway for extra disk capacity and slower write performance.

Gee, paying more for less! I can hardly wait!

The Storage Bits take
Users of enterprise storage arrays have less to worry about: your tiny costly disks have less capacity and thus a smaller chance of encountering an URE. And your spec’d URE rate of 10^15 also helps.

There are some other fixes out there as well, some fairly obvious and some, I’m certain, waiting for someone much brighter than me to invent. But even today a 7 drive RAID 5 with 1 TB disks has a 50% chance of a rebuild failure. RAID 5 is reaching the end of its useful life.

“An American-born journalist imprisoned in Iran for espionage is expected to be freed today after an Iranian appeals court cut her eight-year prison term to a suspended two-year sentence, her father said this morning.

Roxana Saberi, 32, “will be freed today, hopefully,” Reza Saberi, waiting outside the jail in Tehran, told CNN. “The papers are ready … it is just a matter of time, a couple of hours.”

The Iranian court of a appeals “reduced her jail sentence from eight years to two years of suspended sentence … and she will soon be free,” said her lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/05/11/2009-05-11_iran_to_free_jailed_american_journalist_roxana_saberi_after_appeal.html#
”

About time.

So I stopped by their little shop the other day, and they have a nice selection.

The people however seem to be a little full of themselves. For instance if you are going to argue about technology with your customer it helps to know what you’re talking about. Telling me a USB port could not be put on a detector because it wouldn’t be waterproof when the detector itself is not, and waterproof USB ports do in fact exist does not show much wisdom.

Also one could say it’s not wise to try and argue religion when your customer, especially when they obviously do not see the issue the same way you do.

These are both good reasons why I myself am not in business.

Would this stop me from shopping there? Not likely, but it does make me not want to go ask them for help.

Geez, it feels like a funeral. I’ve been in quieter libraries. It felt “tense” like nobody wanted to say anything for fear of looking silly maybe.

The Linuxchix were MUCH more my speed. I like friendly and fun with lots of talk rather than movies and presentations. I think having it in an office conference room definitely had alot to do with it.

Oh well, I tried.

Reposted here because I don’t see this version on the web anywhere.

The Cartoon Rating Guide for Smart Adults: v3.0 4/24/2008

Why watch cartoons if you’re an adult? Because cartoons often have the best scores, most interesting plots and/or most humorous dialogue, and the most accomplished “cinematography” of any visual media. The best are stunning works of art and imagination with gorgeous matte landscapes.

This is a rating guide, not a review book — its purpose is to quickly alert you to animation you may never have heard of; consult elsewhere for extended analyses. It is skewed from the perspective of an adult animation fan — a lowly-rated show may be immensely enjoyable for children and even well-made, but couldn’t captivate my attention; a highly-rated show will be competently-made, but may or may not be enjoyable for or even marketed to (or even appropriate for) children. If a show has English-language versions, those are the versions I have likely watched. A cartoon with great writing and voice-casting but average animation will score higher on this list than a show with top-notch animation but mediocre scripting and voices, or an extremely well-made show marketed to children.

This list covers mainly animated television series, although some films are included, and one “webtoon”. I have not seen every episode of some shows rated 7 and lower and many episodes of shows rated 5 or lower; indicated ratings may change if I see new episodes of better or worse quality than those previous, or if many better or worse other shows are added to the list which alter the bell-curve landscape. Note: There are literally hundreds of mediocre-to-terrible shows that are not presently on this list, including a lot of uninspired anime and older “dumbed down” cartoons of low or no interest to the smart adult; I haven’t created this list to exhaustively include them all.

Anything rated at least “5″ is in the category of “average show worth watching once for the cartoon buff, provided you have time”; you probably won’t watch re-runs, however, until a decade or three have gone by. A typical “5″ cartoon features arch-type characters and villains, with serviceable if unexceptional dialogue, animation and plots. “4″s and lower feature too much bad animation, one-dimensional characters, lousy voice-acting, plot-holes, dumbed-down or just plain stupid writing and spastic slapstick for this adult reviewer to stomach — although kids will like many of them. “3″s and lower will have the smart adult scrambling for the remote. “6″s and “7″s feature more charismatic characters, more innovative drawing and intelligent scripting than average, and anything rated “8″ or better is likely to pull you in to watching a re-run while you’re channel-flipping, even if it’s well-memorized already. Anything rated “9″ is truly exceptional, and perfect in nearly every way. “10″s are reserved only for those shows which, IMO, will become or already are timeless classics. “11″s are simply phenomenal; you’ll feel empty inside after finishing the last episode and realizing that there aren’t any more. Highly-rated shows generally have unique and memorable musical scores associated with them. Make an effort to see every “9″ and up before you croak, and most 7s and 8s.

Q. Where do I find the latest CRGFSA?
A. It is always posted within a torrent; try searching here: http://tinyurl.com/2oxsn4

- “11″ – a rating which is off the 1-10 scale. Incomparably great.
- “3D” indicates an obvious computer generated style as opposed to a 2D drawn artwork look.
- “adult” indicates overly lewd sexual references and/or repetitive foul language. Some adult-oriented cartoons are witty parodies or taut thrillers, but most are extremely cheaply-made rancid, brain-dead trash.
- “adventure” means the main characters are perpectually on the move.
- “cards” means the show is a marketing vehicle to sell trading cards; most of these involve children with strange monster pets or summoned creatures who fight each other.
- “comedy” describes humorous shows that are neither toons nor spoofs.
- “DCAU” refers to the “DC Animated Universe” created by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini.
- “east” denotes an overtly oriental-themed cartoon, often involving samurai or ninjas, or emphasis upon martial-arts or medieval-period Japanese or Chinese clothing and settings. This guide does not otherwise distinguish between cartoons and “anime”.
- “educational” shows frequently deal with ethical, historical or geographical aspects.
- “family” indicates a show with very broad appeal; it isn’t specifically written for any age group, and is neither “dumbed down” nor “sophisticated humor”.
- “fantasy” indicates the presence of magic or “chi” and/or spirts, gods, ghosts, demons, undead, fantastic animals, etc, but the setting is in an otherwise more or less realistic world.
- “flash” is cheap-looking computer animation of mostly moving cut-outs and vector-scaling.
- “Ghibli” indicates the acclaimed Japanese animation studio, or anything prior involving its founders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata.
- “girl” indicates the presence of important female protagonists.
- “kids” means the show is appealing to small children (whether or not dialogue is dumbed-down). Virtually all kids shows are also comedies if not toons.
- “Mainframe” refers to Mainframe Entertainment, a pioneering 3D animation company.
- “mecha” indicates giant robots. Most mecha also includes sci-fi elements.
- “movie” means a single, stand-along show, regardless of whether it played in theaters.
- “realistic” indicates real-world physics are observed, nobody has superpowers, and animated characters are essentially like real people and don’t take inordinate risks, speak “one-liner dialogue” or “mug for the camera”.
- “scary” means weird monsters may frighten very small children and give them nightmares, even if it’s a comedy otherwise popular with kids. I afix this term only to shows marketed toward family or children’s audiences (I take it for granted that teen- and adult-oriented shows are filled with imagery guaranteed to frighten toddlers, especially anything rated “violent”).
- “sci-fi” shows are set in the future, or concern exotic technologies such as space-travel.
- “series” means plots span multiple episodes and even seasons (so they are best watched in order); lack of this term doesn’t mean, however, that all of a show’s episodes are “stand-alones”.
- “spoofs” parody cultural or other-show references which younger persons are less likely to be aware of; a kid’s cartoon which is also a spoof is likely to drag up this reviewer’s rating due to intelligent writing. On the other hand, a spoof’s gags tend to be topical in nature, and the humor may fall flat with the passage of time.
- “superhero” means some characters have extraordinary abilities or “mutant” powers which permit them to cheat real-world physics which others have to obey in an otherwise more or less real world. While many cartoons feature characters who trend in this direction, superheroes are invariably costumed protagonists who are famous for their abilities. Superhero shows often include sci-fi elements.
- “toon” means real-world physics are expressly NOT observed, animals talk, characters have “three fingers & thumb” hands, gravity is defied until noticed, etc. Many competently-made toons have lowered ratings in this guide due to emphasis on slapstick antics and marketing toward children.
- “violent” means there’s realistic-consequences combat with injuries and blood, and/or on-screen death, and the show is usually inappropriate for small children (the lack of this term, however, doesn’t mean that a show lacks fighting). A show labelled “violent” does not necessarily contain violence in all or even most of its episodes.
- “ultra-violent” shows so wallow in gore that many would consider them completely depraved.
- “WMT” indicates Japan’s “World Masterpiece Theater”.

(Like the amplifiers in “This is Spinal Tap”, the Cartoon Rating Guide now goes to 11!)

11 – Cowboy Bebop – series, adventure, sci-fi, violent, girl (English language version)
……..The greatest sci-fi cartoon series of all time. Nothing else is even close. Nothing else even tries. More recent shows may have flashier graphics (barely), but none capture the heart, the soul, the soundtrack, the rich variety of settings, and especially the quality of writing and characterization.

11 – Persepolis – movie, girl, adventure, realistic, educational, adult
……..The mesmerizing autobiography of acclaimed author Marjane Satrapi. Banned in Iran.

11 – Romeo’s Blue Skies – series, family, adventure, realistic, WMT, educational
……..Schools should be replaced with vid-screens looping this show. Children (especially boys) will learn about everything important here: Life, death, respect, values, integrity, initiative, creativity, empathy, education, courage and purpose.

11 – Whisper of the Heart – movie, girl, family, realistic, romance, Ghibli
……..While their fantasy advantures are all very good, this is Ghibli’s most satisfying and polished work.

10 – 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother – series, family, adventure, realistic, WMT
10 – Adventures of Prince Achmed, The – movie, family, fantasy, girl, adventure
10 – Avatar: The Last Airbender – series, family, fantasy, adventure, girl, east
10 – Fairly OddParents, The – toon, spoof, kids
10 – Future Boy Conan – series, family, adventure, Ghibli, girl, WMT
10 – Kiki’s Delivery Service – Ghibli, movie, family, girl, fantasy
10 – Laputa (Castle in the Sky) – Ghibli, family, movie, adventure, girl, sci-fi
10 – My Neighbor Totoro – Ghibli, movie, family, kids, girl, fantasy, adventure
10 – Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water – series, family, girl, violent, adventure
10 – Oban Star-Racers – series, adventure, sci-fi, girl
10 – Popeye: Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp – toon, family, fantasy, movie-short
10 – Samurai Champloo – series, spoof, violent, adventure, adult, girl, east
10 – Venture Bros., The – adult, spoof, violent, sci-fi

9 – Batman, The Animated Series – superhero, DCAU
9 – Batman Beyond – superhero, DCAU, sci-fi
9 – Beauty and the Beast – movie, Disney, fantasy, girl, family, scary
9 – Danny Phantom – comedy, fantasy, girl, superhero
9 – Eureka Seven – series, mecha, violent, sci-fi
9 – FLCL (Fooly Cooly) – series, comedy, girl, sci-fi, fantasy
9 – Grave of the Fireflies – movie, drama, realistic, violent, Ghibli
9 – Invasion America – series, sci-fi, violent, adventure
9 – Kim Possible – comedy, girl, Disney, superhero
9 – Lupin III (or the Third, English version) – comedy, adventure, girl, spoof
9 – Megas XLR – mecha, spoof, girl, fantasy, sci-fi
9 – Mysterious Cities of Gold, The – series, kids, adventure, girl, fantasy, educational
9 – Pom Poko (The Raccoon War) – Ghibli, movie, fantasy
9 – Porko Rosso – Ghibli, movie, adventure, girl, fantasy, family
9 – Prince of Egypt – Disney, fantasy, movie, musical
9 – Princess Mononoke – Ghibli, movie, fantasy, adventure, violent, scary, girl
9 – Sea Prince and the Fire Child – movie, toon, fantasy, girl, romance
9 – Spirited Away – Ghibli, family, movie, fantasy, girl, adventure, scary
9 – Superman, The Animated Series – superhero, DCAU, girl, family
9 – Teen Titans – spoof, superhero, DCAU, girl, family

8 – Akira – movie, sci-fi, violent
8 – American Dragon Jake Long – kids, superhero
8 – Ben 10 – kids, comedy, sci-fi, girl, adventure
8 – Cat Returns, The – movie, Ghibli, fantasy, girl, family
8 – Courage the Cowardly Dog – toon, family, spoof, scary
8 – Full Metal Alchemist – series, fantasy, violent, comedy, east, sci-fi
8 – Futurama – adult, spoof, sci-fi, toon
8 – Gargoyles – fantasy, violent, scary, girl, Disney
8 – Gauche The Cellist (Sero Hiki no Goshu) – movie, Ghibli, family, fantasy
8 – Ghostbusters, Extreme – fantasy, scary, comedy
8 – Ghostbusters, The Real (seasons 1-3 only) – kids, fantasy, scary, comedy
8 – Heavy Metal – movie, fantasy, sci-fi, comedy, violent, adult, girl
8 – Howl’s Moving Castle – Ghibli, movie, girl, fantasy, violent
8 – Iron Giant, The – mecha, comedy, family, movie
8 – Jackie Chan Adventures – family, fantasy, girl, comedy
8 – Justice League / Unlimited – superhero, sci-fi, DCAU
8 – Kamichu: Teenage Goddess – series, fantasy, girl, east
8 – Lilo & Stitch (movie, TV show) – kids, sci-fi, comedy, girl, Disney
8 – Martin Mystery – sci-fi, comedy, scary, girl
8 – Mulan – movie, fantasy, girl, Disney
8 – Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind – Ghibli, movie, girl, fantasy, adventure, sci-fi
8 – ReBoot – toon, fantasy, spoof, 3D, Mainframe
8 – Rocket Power – kids, comedy, girl, educational
8 – Rocky & Bullwinkle Show, The – kids, spoof, toon
8 – Secret of NIMH, The – toon, adventure, violent, movie, Disney
8 – Shadow Raiders / War Planets – series, sci-fi, girl, 3D, violent, Mainframe
8 – Static Shock – kids, superhero, DCAU
8 – Valhalla – movie, kids, fantasy, girl
8 – W.I.T.C.H. – girl, fantasy, comedy

7 – Batman, The – superhero
7 – Beastwars – series, sci-fi, fantasy, mecha, 3D, Mainframe
7 – Big O, The – mecha, sci-fi, violent, girl
7 – Bleach – series, fantasy, violent, comedy, east
7 – Case Closed (Detective Conan) – family, mystery, adventure
7 – Daria – girl, comedy, realistic, adult
7 – Death Note – fantasy, violent, series
7 – Dexter’s Lab – kids, toon, spoof, sci-fi, girl
7 – Ghost in the Shell, Stand Alone Complex, 2nd Gig – series, sci-fi, violent
7 – Infinite Ryvius – series, sci-fi, drama, girl
7 – Invader Zim – toon, kids, spoof, sci-fi
7 – InuYasha – series, east, violent, fantasy, girl
7 – Juniper Lee (The Life and Times of) – spoof, girl, kids, fantasy
7 – Kappa Mikey – spoof, toon, girl, flash
7 – Korgoth of Barbaria – adult, spoof, fantasy, ultra-violent
7 – My Dad the Rock Star – kids, toon, comedy, girl
7 – My Life as a Teenage Robot – kids, toon, sci-fi, spoof, girl, superhero
7 – Naruto – series, east, violent, girl, fantasy, comedy
7 – Outlaw Star – series, sci-fi, comedy, girl, adventure
7 – Pinky and the Brain – kids, toon, spoof
7 – Popeye – toon, family, spoof, girl
7 – Powerpuff Girls, The – kids, toon, spoof, girl, superhero
7 – Robot Chicken – toon, spoof, adult, violent
7 – Rock & Rule – movie, fantasy, sci-fi, girl
7 – Samurai Jack – kids, sci-fi, superhero, adventure, east
7 – Scrapped Princess – series, fantasy, sci-fi, girl, adventure, scary
7 – Shuriken School – kids, toon, spoof, girl, east
7 – Star Wars: Clone Wars – series, sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, violent
7 – Superman Doomsday – movie, superhero, violent, DCAU(?)
7 – Time Warp Trio – kids, fantasy, adventure, educational
7 – Trigun – series, sci-fi, violent, comedy, girl
7 – Tutenstein – kids, toon, adventure, girl

6 – A.T.O.M – kids, superhero, sci-fi
6 – Aeon Flux – series, sci-fi, ultra-violent, girl, adult
6 – Afro-Samurai – series, east, adult, ultra-violent
6 – Aladdin – kids, toon, fantasy, Disney
6 – Blu Gender – series, sci-fi, mecha, ultra-violent, drama, girl
6 – Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers – toon, kids, Disney
6 – Chop Socky Chooks – 3D, toon, spoof, girl, east
6 – Dragon Booster, kids, fantasy, 3D
6 – Duck Dodgers – toon, spoof, sci-fi
6 – Escaflowne – series, fantasy, mecha, violent, sci-fi
6 – Fafner in the Azure (Dead Aggressor) – series, sci-fi, mecha, violent
6 – Get Ed – toon, kids, sci-fi, 3D, girl
6 – Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, The – kids, toon, spoof, girl
6 – Hercules – kids, fantasy, superhero, comedy, Disney
6 – Hobbit, The – fantasy, adventure, family, movie
6 – Johnny Bravo – toon, spoof
6 – Legion of Superheroes – kids, superhero, sci-fi
6 – Mar – toon, fantasy, comedy, east
6 – Martian Successor Nadesico – series, mecha, girl, comedy, sci-fi
6 – Ninja Scroll – movie, adult, ultra-violent, fantasy, east
6 – One Piece – kids, toon, adventure
6 – Paranoia Agent – drama, violent, comedy
6 – Replacements, The – kids, spoof, girl, Disney
6 – S-CRY-ed – sci-fi, mecha, superhero, east
6 – Silverwing – series, kids, scary, adventure
6 – Skyland – sci-fi, adventure, girl, 3D
5 – Storm Hawks – kids, 3D, adventure, sci-fi
6 – Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! – kids, toon, mecha, superhero, scary
6 – Tenchi Muyo! – series, fantasy, girl
6 – Legend of Tarzan – kids, toon, girl, adventure
6 – The Tick – toon, kids, spoof, superhero
6 – Thunderbirds – series, adventure, comedy
6 – Totally Spies – comedy, girl
6 – Winx Club – girl, fantasy, comedy
6 – Witch Hunter Robin – series, fantasy, girl, violent
6 – Wolf’s Rain – series, fantasy, violent, sci-fi
6 – Xiaolin Showdown – kids, toon, fantasy, comedy, east
6 – Zeta Project, The – kids, girl, superhero, sci-fi, DCAU

5 – As Told by Ginger – kids, girl
5 – Beast Machines – series, sci-fi, fantasy, mecha, 3D, Mainframe
5 – Beavis and Butthead – toon, adult, spoof
5 – Berserk – series, adult, ultra-violent, fantasy
5 – Blue Submarine #6 – series, sci-fi, realistic, violent
5 – Buzz Lightyear of Star Command – kids, toon, sci-fi, Disney, 3D
5 – Cartoon Planet / Space Ghost Coast to Coast / Brak Show – spoof, adult, superhero
5 – Digimon – kids, toon, cards, adventure
5 – Dr. Who: Infinite Quest – movie/series, sci-fi, 3D
5 – Dragonball Z – series, east, violent, fantasy, cards, comedy
5 – Duck Tales – toon, Disney, kids
5 – Duel Masters – kids, cards, spoof
5 – Dungeons & Dragons – kids, fantasy, scary
5 – Gigantor – kids, mecha
5 – Gokusen – series, adult, east
5 – Goof Troop – kids, toon, Disney
5 – Gotham Girls – series, girl, superhero, DCAU, flash, webtoon
5 – Gundam Wing – series, sci-fi, mecha, violent
5 – Hey Arnold! – kids, comedy
5 – Horus, Prince of the Sun – movie, Ghibli, fantasy, adventure
5 – Johnny Quest, Real Adventures of – adventure, girl, fantasy
5 – Justice League: The New Frontier – movie, superhero, sci-fi, violent
5 – Metalocalypse – adult, spoof, ultra-violent
5 – Mobile Suit Gundam – series, mecha, sci-fi
5 – Phantom 2040 – series, superhero, sci-fi
5 – Proud Family, The – toon, Disney, spoof, girl
5 – Recess – kids
5 – Record of the Lodoss Wars – series, fantasy, violent
5 – Reign: The Conqueror – series, fantasy, violent, adult
5 – Rocko’s Modern Life – kids, toon
5 – Sailor Moon – series, kids, east, girl, fantasy, cards, comedy, sci-fi
5 – Scooby Do, Where Are You? – kids, toon, comedy
5 – Samurai Deeper Kyo – series, fantasy, violent, east
5 – Sandokan – kids, toon, adventure
5 – Shinzo – series, kids, fantasy, cards, east, sci-fi
5 – Speed Racer – adventure, series
5 – Spongebob Squarepants – kids, toon, spoof
5 – Swat Kats – kids, toon, fantasy
5 – TaleSpin – kids, toon, girl, adventure, Disney
5 – The Future is Wild – kids, adventure, girl, 3D
5 – The Secret Show – kids, spoof, sci-fi, superhero
5 – The X’s – toon, sci-fi, flash
5 – Time Squad – toon, spoof, kids, educational, sci-fi
5 – Timon and Pumba – kids, toon, Disney
5 – Trinity Blood, Blood Plus – series, vampires, ultra-violent
5 – Wild thornberrys, The – comedy, kids, girl
5 – Willy Fog (various shows) – kids, series, toon
5 – Wizards – fantasy, movie, violent
5 – Xyber 9 – mecha, sci-fi, series
5 – Wayside – kids, toon
5 – Yakkity Yak – kids, toon
5 – YuYu Hakusho – series, east, girl, fantasy, comedy
5 – Zatch Bell! – series, kids, cards, comedy

4 – Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, The – kids, toon, 3D
4 – American Dad – spoof, toon
4 – Animaniacs (without Pinky and the Brain) – kids, spoof, toon
4 – Beyblade – kids, east
4 – Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo – toon, kids, spoof
4 – Blue Dragon – kids, series, fantasy, sci-fi, east, cards
4 – Camp Lazlo – kids, toon, girl
4 – ChalkZone – kids, toon, girl, fantasy
4 – Chaotic – kids, toon, fantasy, girl, cards
4 – Chowder – kids, toon
4 – Class of 3000 – kids, comedy, sci-fi, girl
4 – Codename: Kids Next Door – kids, toon, girl
4 – Corneil & Bernie – kids, toon
4 – El Tigre – kids, toon, flash
4 – Emperor’s New School, The – toon, kids, Disney
4 – Family Guy – adult, spoof
4 – Fantastic Four – superhero
4 – Fillmore – kids, toon, comedy
4 – Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends – toon, kids, fantasy, flash
4 – Growing up Creepie – girl, fantasy, comedy, flash
4 – Idaten Jump – kids, toon
4 – Johnny Quest (original) – kids, adventure, violent, sci-fi
4 – Kong: The Animated Series – kids, fantasy,
4 – Legend of the Dragon – toon, superhero, girl, east
4 – Little Einsteins – toon, kids, girl, adventure, educational
4 – Little Mermaid, The – kids, toon, fantasy, Disney, girl
4 – Lord of the Rings (Fellowship, Return of the King) – fantasy, movies, violent
4 – ¡Mucha Lucha! – kids, toon, superhero
4 – Mummy, The – kids, adventure, scary
4 – N.A.S.C.A.R. Racers – kids, 3D
4 – Pepper Ann – girl, Disney
4 – Pokemon – toon, kids, cards
4 – Pucca – kids, toon, girl, east, flash
4 – Rugrats – kids, comedy
4 – Shin Chan – comedy, adult
4 – South Park – toon, adult, spoof
4 – Special Duty Combat Unit: Shinesman – sci-fi, comedy
4 – Super Milk-chan Show, The – toon, kids, spoof
4 – Thundercats – kids, fantasy, girl
4 – Voltron – mecha, sci-fi, kids
4 – Yin Yang Yo! – kids, toon, Disney, spoof, east
4 – Yugi Oh! – kids, toon, cards

3 – Aqua Teen Hunger Force – toon, adult, spoof, flash
3 – Dora the Explorer – kids, toon, educational, girl
3 – CatDog – kids, toon
3 – Dragon Tales – kids, toon, fantasy, girl
3 – Ed, Ed & Eddy – kids, toon
3 – Grossology – kids, toon, flash
3 – Flintstones, The – kids, toon, girl
3 – G.I. Joe – kids, violent
3 – He-Man & Masters of the Universe – kids, fantasy, superhero
3 – Inspector Gadget – kids, toon
3 – Kenny the Shark – toon, kids
3 – Krypto the Superdog – toon, superhero, kids
3 – Lucy, Daughter of the Devil – adult, toon, 3D, flash
3 – Magic School Bus – kids, fantasy
3 – Mike, Lu & Og – kids, toon, girl
3 – Moral Orel – adult, toon, 3D
3 – My Gym Partner is a Monkey – kids, toon
3 – Prince of Tennis, The – series, girl
3 – Spider Riders – fantasy, kids
3 – Spiderman – superhero
3 – Superfriends – kids, superhero, girl
3 – Superman: Brainiac Attacks – kids, movie, superhero
3 – Top Cat – kids, toon
3 – Tracy McBean – kids, toon, girl
3 – Transformers (several shows and movies) – toon, mecha, sci-fi, (some 3D)
3 – Ultimate Avengers – movies, superhero, sci-fi, girl, violent

2 – Amazing Chan Clan – kids, toon
2 – Captain Planet – kids, toon, superhero
2 – Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos – kids
2 – Frisky Dingo – adult, spoof, violent, flash
2 – Home Movies – toon
2 – Jabberjaw – kids, toon
2 – Little Bear – kids, toon
2 – MaggieBeast – kids, toon, girl
2 – Sealab 2021 – adult, spoof, flash
2 – Xavier: Renegade Angel – adult, toon, 3D

1 – Assy McGee – adult, toon, violent, flash
1 – Gary Coleman Show – kids, comedy
1 – Squidbillies – adult, toon, violent

3 12 hour days in a row really suck.

Thankfully one way or another i’m not going to be dealing with this schedule for much longer.

“Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.” -Plato

Well, i’ve made my mind up, i’m moving to Germany ASAP.

I’ve got a few friends lined up that will give me a place to live over there (there is a really nice girl named Lirpa Sloof that has a spare room), and i’ve got enough money in the bank to live off of for quite some time.

I’ve just had with with the USA. The place is too damned individualist for me no matter what I do.

Better to cast the dice someplace else more fitting for me than die slowly here.

I’ve already downloaded the German version of “Rosetta Stone” so i’ll know at least some of the language.

I hope to be packed up and on my way over there by June 1st.

Wish me luck!

Sometimes I wonder why software systems constantly require users to change their passwords.

I suppose they assume we all have an infinite capacity to remember a string of numbers, digits and symbols are repeat that information anytime in the future without ever writing it down anywhere.

But you see, we often do. Most people have written down their passwords until they have memorized them.

I feel this is horribly insecure compared to allowing users to keep their existing passwords until they desire to change them.

So today my bank tells me i’m going to get a new debit card and new debit card number.

Because one of the VISA transaction companies (Heartlland) was broken into and an *unknown* number of card numbers were stolen.

This is not the first time this has happened to me, or the second, or the third, no it’s the fourth time.

The fourth time that i’ve had to go online and change the card number that gets automatically debited for my bills, the fourth time i’ve had to deal with a new PIN number, and the fourth time that i’ve been reminded that even tho banks are piling on more and more complications to your personal login they seem to know nothing about how to protect corporate data.

I love this film, it’s totally cheesy but it makes me laugh.

(Direct Download link: Here)

Men need to change their tune, it’s as simple as that.

In a recent story I read online about women leaving men for women it was remarked:

“Many of the women interviewed said, they are attracted to the person, and not the gender — moved by traits like kindness, intelligence, and humor, which could apply to a man or a woman. Most of all, they long for an emotional connection.”

The “tough guy” image that men present is more a front put on to combat other men. There was a time when it was a good survival trait, when fighting off other humans was a base matter of survival and putting food in your mouth. However we don’t live in caves anymore, we don’t fight off hulking carnivores with clubs. Instead now the overabundance of testosterone causes conflict where there doesn’t need to be any. Along with that fewer women seem attracted to it as time goes by, favoring instead men with emotions and brains.

The issue with this entire situation is simple, “Men don’t listen”, and furthermore society accepts their refusal to consider any changes. It is almost inconceivable to most of them that they should drop the macho attitude so why would they consider it? They wouldn’t, and they don’t. Often as well their entire sense of identity is built around it and when that image is shattered they lash out violently in defense.

I guess unfortunately only time fixes things like this.

We should all be very, very cautious in the near future until something comes along to remove this threat.

“A pair of Argentinean researchers have found a way to perform a BIOS level malware attack capable of surviving even a hard-disk wipe. Alfredo Ortega and Anibal Sacco from Core Security Technologies — used the stage at last week’s CanSecWest conference to demonstrate methods (PDF) for infecting the BIOS with persistent code that will survive reboots and re-flashing attempts. The technique includes patching the BIOS with a small bit of code that gave them complete control of the machine. The demo ran smoothly on a Windows machine, a PC running OpenBSD and another running VMware Player.”

http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/core_bios.pdf
http://threatpost.com/blogs/researchers-unveil-persistent-bios-attack-methods

“I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.” – Henry Rollins

I just love the way they did this commercial. Took me forever to find a copy of it, it’s around 10 years old.

(Direct Download link: Here)

I noticed this on MSN Money and thought it was worth remembering for later.

The 5 biggest lies on Wall Street

These are the tenets you counted on for years, like ‘buy and hold’ and heed the advice of ‘experts.’ Keep these whoppers in mind as you plan your financial future.

By Michael Brush
MSN Money

If you had any money in stocks in the past few years, you might be feeling pretty dumb right now — since you’re down more than 40% on those “investments.”

But stop being so hard on yourself. Yes, you probably should have pulled more money out in time.

But on the other hand, you were probably suckered by any number of big lies foisted on you by Wall Street and market players who stood to profit.

Here are the five biggest lies that probably hurt you the most and will be worth remembering in the future.

Big Lie No. 1: The market will take care of everything

Remember Ronald Reagan’s line, “Government isn’t the solution to our problems; government is the problem”? The Gipper may have had some great political insights, but the train wreck in the market shows this one wasn’t one of them.

During most of this decade, Wall Street lobbyists persuaded would-be regulators in the Bush administration to lay off. “The markets” would find the best solutions to any problems on their own.

In the free-for-all that ensued, the Wall Street Masters of the Universe made untold millions — and left us with huge problems. The damage caused by all the tricks, scams and skullduggery has cost more than $7 trillion in market losses so far, not to mention millions of jobs and a deep recession.

“We convinced ourselves that the inmates could regulate themselves, and obviously that was wrong,” says Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics, a financial consulting firm. “If we are going to let people buy public policy, then we are going to get stupid things.”

Perhaps the biggest gaffe was allowing a multitrillion-dollar market in credit default swaps — a kind of loan insurance — to develop with no oversight or regulation. This was just plain dumb, and we’ll continue to pay the price. Too much CDS exposure helped take down Lehman Bros. (LEHMQ, news, msgs) and American International Group (AIG, news, msgs). They lost big by insuring complex securities backed by bad home mortgage loans.

Of course, none of this could have happened if regulators hadn’t looked the other way as mortgage originators handed home loans to anyone who could fog a mirror. They didn’t care because the loans could be sold to Wall Street banks, repackaged as securities and sold again to investors.

“A shadow banking system developed to originate and sell mortgages outside the regulated banking system, and we ignored it,” says William Isaac, a former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and now head of the Secura Group, a division of national consulting firm LECG.

Even regulators who were supposed to be policing the market often did a lousy job during this “free market” era.

One example: Early this decade, a statistical wonk named Harry Markopolos had figured out that the investment vehicle that Bernard Madoff was promoting to well-heeled investors was a classic Ponzi scheme. Markopolos alerted the Securities and Exchange Commission, which failed to act until investors had lost billions.

Big Lie No. 2: The ‘experts’ will help you

Many of us rely on the “experts” for guidance in the market, and they failed us miserably.

Most mutual funds are down as much as the market — or worse. The geniuses running hedge funds did little better. A few commentators managed to forecast the market disaster; most missed it.

There’s a simple reason why they missed the coming carnage, says David Loeper, the CEO of Wealthcare Capital Management in Richmond, Va., and author of “Stop the Investing Rip-off: How to Avoid Being a Victim and Make More Money,” due out in June.

The “experts” have conflicts of interest. Mutual funds, hedge funds and brokerages want to keep you at the table so that they can continue to earn fees from your nest egg. “They don’t care if you win or lose, they just want you to keep playing the game,” Loeper says.

They often pitch whatever is hot — commodities and emerging markets come to mind — at exactly the wrong time. “They’ll market it until it falls apart, and then they will find something else,” Loeper says.

At worst, the conflicts of interest seem downright blatant, says investor Jim Rogers. Among the biggest lies, he says, were the high-grade “AAA” stamps of approval put on faulty mortgage-backed securities by the debt ratings agencies — which were paid big fees to rate those securities by the very banks who created them.

The media don’t get a free pass either. Loeper says media outlets such as CNBC, and presumably this Web site, regularly fall short in guiding investors because their real priority is to provide entertainment — and that they have to dumb things down too much to keep content interesting.

Big Lie No. 3: Buy and hold

Anyone who has followed this advice since the late 1990s now feels deceived. “Buy and hold” once seemed so obvious. Over the long haul, stocks advance 10% to 12% a year, goes the mantra. So you can’t ever go wrong adding money to stock funds — as long as you don’t act like a wild day trader.

The problem was that investors and financial advisers use an assessment of risk tolerance to determine exposure to various asset classes like stocks, bonds and cash.

Then the level of risk in the stock market changed violently. But investors — or their financial advisers — didn’t adjust their portfolios away from stocks toward safer assets like cash, says Axel Merk of Merk Mutual Funds in Palo Alto, Calif. “If the risks in the markets change, your investment allocations must also change,” he says.

But how were we supposed to know that the risks of owning stocks had increased?

One early signal began to emerge in 2007, when market volatility started to increase rapidly, Merk says. Another sign was that excessive debt throughout the system had driven corporate profits to abnormally high levels, setting up investors for a big fall, says money manager John Hussman, the president of the Hussman Investment Trust.

Hussman warned investors of this risk early on. But, he says, because of Big Lie No. 2, many experts and Wall Street professionals “were unwilling to entertain any concern that threatened to stop the gravy train.”

Big Lie No. 4: Overpaid CEOs are worth the money

Whenever I write about greedy CEOs who get paid too much, company PR machines trot out the old saw that pay has to be so high “to attract the best talent.”

Oh, really?

Then why are we suffering such a deep recession and huge market losses? After all, the CEOs at the banks that got us into this mess were paid like kings. Let’s take a look at some of the consequences — and predictions — brought to us by the supposed “top” talent purchased with all that money:

An extreme underappreciation of his problems. At Lehman Bros.’ very last annual meeting in April 2008, then-CEO Richard Fuld opined that “the worst of the impact of the financial markets is behind us.”

In June, he told investors the investment bank was “well-positioned” because of efforts to strengthen its balance sheet.

Fuld was supposed to be a “top talent”; Lehman had paid him more than $186.5 million in salary, bonuses and profits from stock options in the prior three years, according to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm.

Yet by autumn, Lehman vanished, setting off the October 2008 market crash. It had been killed by mortgage-backed securities and other investments made on Fuld’s watch.

The cost of moving too fast. On Sept. 15, Bank of America (BAC, news, msgs) CEO Ken Lewis announced that the banking giant was buying Merrill Lynch, saying the deal — cobbled together over a weekend — was “a great opportunity” for shareholders because together the companies would be “more valuable” due to synergies.

Lewis had taken home $98.6 million from 2005 to 2007, so you’d think he would know what he was talking about. So far, he’s been terribly wrong.

Bank of America reported a $21.5 billion fourth-quarter loss. The government responded by injecting $20 billion in new capital Jan. 16 and guaranteeing $118 billion in potential losses from the Merrill Lynch deal.

The stock has been crushed. Bank of America closed at $33.74 the Friday before the deal was struck. It fell to $26.55 on Sept. 15. It dropped to as low as $3.77 on Feb. 5 before recovering to $5.57 on Friday.

What seems clear is that these executives were blissfully ignorant of the growing risks to their businesses or simply chose to ignore them.

And despite all the bad press about CEOs raking in millions for lousy performance, the tricks continue. D.R. Horton (DHI, news, msgs), the nation’s largest homebuilder, lost a whopping $8.34 per share in fiscal 2008, which ended Sept. 30. The stock has fallen 79% since July 2005.

Yet Chairman Donald Horton and CEO Donald Tomnitz collected $5.4 million and $4.4 million, respectively, for the year, including $1.8 million each in performance pay. They were rewarded for hitting benchmarks on cost cutting, pretax income and operating cash flow.

None of this is new. CEOs have been collecting big bucks for lousy performances for years.

Big Lie No. 5: Buy a flat-screen TV, save the economy

Maybe the biggest lie about to be foisted on people is that they should go out and shop to save the economy. Wall Street wants you to spend to pump up the economy. Much of the federal stimulus package enacted this week entails tax breaks and handouts to get people spending.

But it’s really just another big lie to tell people they’ll make a difference if they go out and shop.

The problem is that the economy is going nowhere — no matter how much anyone spends — until someone comes up with a plan to give the banks enough of a capital cushion so they start lending again. So far, we haven’t seen that happen.

So play it safe. Hold on to your money. Most of you need to save more for retirement, anyway.

According to McKinsey Global Institute, two-thirds of baby boomers are unprepared for their golden years. Most of the boomers who are unprepared have a net worth of less than $100,000 even though they are just years away from retirement.

If you are younger, don’t smirk. You need to save, too; otherwise you’ll end up like them.

At the time of publication, Michael Brush owned shares of the Hussman Strategic Growth Fund (HSGFX).

So for years now when women asked me “how do you get your hair so long?” one of my answers has been “Wash it once a week or once every other week”. Of course most women are aghast at this possibility, thinking that i’m an uncouth barbarian for doing such a thing.

Well, today on the radio I heard the following story which made me feel much more secure in my advice.

Morning Edition, March 19, 2009

Americans love to shampoo. We lather up an average of 4.59 times a week, twice as much as Italians and Spaniards, according to shampoo-maker Procter & Gamble.

But that’s way too often, say hair stylists and dermatologists. Daily washing, they say, strips the hair of beneficial oil (called sebum) and can damage our locks.

Shampoo Is Big Business

The current trend of frequent shampoos may have started on May 10, 1908, when the New York Times published a column advising women that it was OK to wash their hair every two weeks. At that time, once a month was the norm.

Decades later, TV marketing campaigns began to convince us that daily washing was the thing to do. A 1970s Faberge ad for Farrah Fawcett shampoo is one example.

“All you have to do is watch her running in slow motion on a beach with her hair flopping gracefully in the wind,” says Steve Meltzer, a former ad executive. The idea was, “Wash your hair with this stuff, and you, too, can be like Farrah Fawcett,” Meltzer says.

Madison Avenue sold people on the idea that they could shampoo their way back to beauty.

Ads also convinced us that daily hair washing is healthy. Remember the Breck girls? Or how about Christie Brinkley’s body-building for hair ad with Prell?

Skipping Shampoos Is, Well, Un-American

Americans took easily to the idea that we should shampoo frequently. And lots of us find it disgusting to shampoo any less than once a day. Take some fitness-conscious college students from Georgetown University, for example. When I told them about the old-time advice to wash once a month, they almost gagged.

“That is way too little hair shampooing,” laughs Jane Caudell-Feagan.

“If I don’t shower every day, my hair gets greasy, so I think it’s completely heinous,” says her friend Ashley Carlini. After a workout, they say, it would be disgusting not to wash your hair.

Eco-Conscious ‘No-’Poo’ Movement

Given our cultural propensity to lather up frequently, it may be shocking that in some eco-conscious circles of society, some people are giving up shampoo.

“There’s a lot of people doing this no-shampoo movement,” says 20-something blogger Jeanne Haegele. She writes a blog called LifeLessPlastic.

In an attempt to buy fewer items with plastic packaging, Haegele recently went three months without using any shampoo. Instead, she washed her hair with baking soda twice a week and conditioned it with a vinegar rinse.

She says her hair didn’t smell, and her friends were very supportive. “Maybe they were secretly wondering why I smelled like a jar of pickles,” she says jokingly.

She ended the no-’poo experiment after developing a bad case of dandruff, but Haegele says she might try it again.

She recalls the biggest surprise was that her hair didn’t get very greasy. For now, she’s using shampoo bars a few times a week.

Dermatologist Recommends Shampooing Less

Experts say Haegele’s observations are not flaky. As she washed less, her sebaceous glands began producing less sebum oil.

“If you wash your hair every day, you’re removing the sebum,” explains Michelle Hanjani, a dermatologist at Columbia University. “Then the oil glands compensate by producing more oil,” she says.

She recommends that patients wash their hair no more than two or three times a week.

There’s also a lot of variation among hair types. African-Americans and people with curly hair can go even longer between washes compared to folks with straight hair.

So, it seems, less is more. And maybe our grandmothers were on to something after all.

Well, Friday I went hiking to Lena Lake to see if it was thawed enough to go fishing.


There was some snow on the trail and quite a bit at the trailhead. The lake itself was 2/3 frozen and the fishing was terrible.




(Click for a handful of photos)

An epic failure indeed.





Frankly I don’t think I ever bought anything there.


If I recall right they had terribly high prices and poor sales staff, they had a habit of firing old higher-paid folks and bringing in cheap staff with zero experience. Let’s all put them in the category of how NOT to run a business.

So i’m sure you have seen a “Picnic Backpack”, a nice backpack with special pockets for plates/napkins/silverware for 4, a corkscrew, salt & pepper shakers, etc. All very overly pretty but not overly functional, not to mention heavy. This set alone is 85$ and 8lbs without a blanket.

While the idea is a good one, notice how the backpack is filling. Every little thing in it’s own little palce nice and pretty and tons of wasted space. But i’m a practical kind of guy, the idea of excess space and weight in something i’m going to carry for miles and miles does not really appeal to me.

So, I set about making my own “functionality-inspired” picnic backpack. (NOTE! This is not a cheap set, it’s a design built for compactness and weight reduction not frugality)




1 backpack (just about anything will do) I went with a black Everest bag with 2 side pockets for water bottles – $19.99

4 lightweight Polypropylene REI plates – $2.75 ea.


4 sets of REI plastic utensils (I took out the big spoons, you can substitute titanium but the cost will go up exponentially) – $2.25ea. set


4 plastic collapsible wine glasses (The bottom unscrews from these and fits upside-down in the top) – $6.95ea.


1 “cork extractor” (I don’t like corkscrews, they mangle a perfectly re-usable cork too much) – $5 on Ebay


1 plastic orange peeler – $1.99


1 combination salt & pepper shaker – $3.95


1 cutting board – $3.00


1 decent quality knife (something that will hold an edge) – $9.99

5 cotton hand towels (4 napkins and one prep towel) – $9.99

1 Platypus bag for leftover wine – $7.95

1 Ikea Cotton Blanket – $29.99


1 sheet heavy dropcloth plastic (For wet or muddy ground) – $2.50

My grand total? $140

Total weight? 7lbs, 1oz (3lbs 12oz without the blanket)

Not too bad I figure, the blanket weighs a considerable amount on it’s own but the cotton doubles as a certain amount of padding. I could have gone with a poly “microfiber” blanket and saved alot of weight (and I still might).

Any ideas on what else I might want to add? I think I might go with a slightly larger backpack for rain gear, hiking goods, etc. The blanket takes up a considerable amount of space in this one (I bought the backpack before the blanket). I think i’ll add a Frisbee, or the Aerobie I have laying around.

The next project is a second backpack cooler that is both light and functional.

I saw this in the restroom on the basement level of Pacific Place in Seattle.

My co-worker recently sent out an email with the following in it:

“Something I have said for many years, if your job seems easy, you aren’t trying hard enough.”

I dispute this. As this comment stands it implies that no matter how hard you work you will never finish your tasks at hand. Furthermore it suggests that there is something wrong with being good at your work so that it is easy to accomplish a days work and that if that work is easy you simply should have been able to accomplish more.

I tend to go by the saying below:

“Work smarter, not harder”

This implies that the goal is to accomplish the work at hand in the most efficient and easiest method possible. Making sure that the attainment of the goal is the first priority, not the increase of the sweat on one’s brow in accomplishing that goal.

I realized something wandering around downtown yesterday that struck me like a brick upside the head.

As I was searching for menswear in Nordstrom and Macy’s I saw that the women’s fashions were of extensive varied colors and patterns, with a myriad of cuts, shapes, florals. etc.

However upon entering the menswear department I was suddenly and completely transported to 1950 or thereabouts. The colors were drab and boring and the cuts of the suits, shirts and shoes were indistiguishable from those being in fashion 60 years ago.

As I stood taking in this realization I was approached by a member of the sales staff who intoned “Is there anything I can help you find sir?”, after a moment to realize it was me he was speaking to I responded “Yes, variety”, his quizical stare and raised eyebrow making it clear he had no idea what I meant I added “This is all very, very old, where is the new men’s fashion?”.

Without any hint of sarcasm or comedy he replied “Men’s fashion does not, and will never change sir”.

Needless to say this was not an answer befitting my state of mind at the time so I took my leave of the place, but the issue still hung in my mind, “Why is men’s fashion so stagnant?”.

When I returned home I started searching for something different or new in men’s fashion trends thinking that the web (which obviously knows everything and has connected several billion people) might show some promise.

I then realized the horror of my situation, that almost all the variety in men’s fashion is lumped into “alternative” fashion. You know this type of fashion, the looks that your parents thought were completely unacceptable and that somewhow 99% of adult men grown out of upon exiting high school or college.

I believe I shall have to find a custom tailor and begin my quest to write this terrible injustice that men now suffer, or (lord forbid) do the unthinkable and learn to sew myself.

This has got to be one of the silliest things I have seen in a long time.

I saw this on the street as I was driving along today.

Seriously who the hell expects to find a girlfriend by advertising your website on a street corner?

Now i’m not a big fan of everything the NRA stands for, but I am a believer in the principle behind the Second Amendment.

What I cannot fathom is the NRA “Special Offer” email I got today from their “Wine Club”.

I have to say it isn’t the most brilliant idea to pair a group of gun owners with alcohol (not to mention the fact that i’m sure 99% of them are beer drinkers with no interest in wine).

Well, I played hooky from work for 2 hours to go listen to Les Stroud speak today at REI.

He was gracious enough to sign his book for me as well.



He also gave a long rambling talk that was pretty good.

He made sure to mention that he did not “quit” survivorman like it has been reported. (I’m not sure why the show is canceled, probably just wanted to go on to other things).

He mentioned how in the episode “Temagami Hunting (Deep Woods)” he and Bob Wilson were actually running from the rescuers to try and get more filming in. Unfortunately for them the rescue teams were police officers. Once the rescuers realized the rescuees were actively attempting to ditch them they dumped their heavier gear and turned it into a manhunt. At the end where Les and Bob are standing by the lake and eventually “found” he said they were covered in sweat from running.

When asked what the scariest moment he had was he related a story about a solo survival trip in Canada before Survivorman. It was September and he was out without any survival gear (yeah, what was he thinking) on a canoe that he had stashed in the woods and then wandered off. He saw a female moose and tried to call it to get it’s attention. Instead he got a very angry bull moose that chased him around and up a tree. He eventually jumped out of the tree and managed to outrun it back to the area where his canoe was, but he was on the wrong side on an inlet so he had to sneak in the water to the mouth of the inlet. After loosing the moose he got lucky and flagged down a couple in a caloe and spent half an hour convincing them he wasn’t crazy. They gave him a lift back to his canoe and was very exhausted, cold and wet. But alive at least.

One interesting question that had been nagging at me was “What happened to the dogs that were released in the episode “Labrador”. He said they made it back to their owner without any trouble.

He also spent a bunch of time talking about the Spot GPS locator. “The manufacturers came to me and said they had 2 choices for spokesman really, one was the real deal and one wasn’t”. (Yeah, easy to tell who he meant there)

So Jennifer (still in Phoenix, AZ) and I were talking.

She said her boyfriend tried to buy some handgun ammo the other day, but couldn’t. Wal-mart, Big-5, Sports Authority were all completely sold out.

It’s obvious why, but what is interesting is it has not been mentioned in any news source anywhere.

Well, to be precise I want “a” rock.

I noticed this cut crystal at a local rock shop the other day.


(Click it for a larger image)

For those 2 of you that are curious it’s a Stellated Dodecahedron.

They want 90$ for it, I think i’m going to snag it next month.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave you know that flight 1549 recently “crashed” into the Hudson River in New York.

The plane is reported to have suffered a loss of two engines due to a double bird strike, nobody died, and the worst injury was 2 broken legs.

People have been calling this a “miracle”.

Websters defines a miracle as:

“an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs”

While I agree this was an excellent feat of piloting, and a great deal of luck was involved, I do not believe there was any divine intervention to be mentioned.

Perhaps if the NTSB report says “God assisted in the landing” i’ll change my tune, until then i’ll just acknowledge the heroic efforts of the crew.

Chesley B. Sullenberger III
Jeffrey Skiles
Donna Dent
Doreen Welsh
Sheila Dail

Thank you.

Got this at fifty cents a stick (half off) just because it was a few months out of date.

For those not familiar with HI-Chew it’s kind of like Laffy Taffy or Starburst.

(But of course far superior, heh)

Well, I finally got tethering to work between my Moto Q9m phone and my Ubuntu 8.10 Aspire One.

(For you non-techs that means I can get to the internet from my notebook computer using my wireless phone’s internet connection)

Speed isn’t awesome, but it’s not dialup:

So today I got a letter in the mail from one of the banks I have a credit card with.

This letter is in reference to your credit card issued by Barclay’s Bank Delaware.

In a recent review of your account, we noticed that you have not used your Mastercard account for a long time. To help you better manage your credit accounts, we have closed your account.

Please destroy any credit card(s) associated with this account as well as any convenience checks you may have in your possession, as they are no longer valid.

Sincerely,

Barclays

Now I have *perfect* credit. I had not used the card in about 6 months, which does not seem like an overly long time to me.

They are owned by the Barclay Group out of London, so they were not part of the TARP program at all, but cutting off lines of credit to people that are extremely low risk does not seem like what any market needs right now.

A picture of what was falling from the sky outside my office this morning.

Well, all the gifts I need to buy have been bought, packed and mailed off.

Now I get to sit back and wait another year before I have to go through that again. (Can you tell I just LOVE christmas, heh.

I need to plan ahead better.

For those of you unaware earlier my website looked like this:

The reason for this was an exploit that a spambot used in the TinyMCE editor on my site. (Which has since been fixed).

But what is more interesting is what it did. It wrote a huge string to every single php file in my website.

Getting it out proved a royal pain in the butt, but I finally came up with the following command (Had to do it twice because the string was so long).

perl -p -i -e ‘s/oldstring/newstring/g’ $(find . -name \*.php)

If you use this remember to use \ before any characters that aren’t numbers or letters, and use \x27 for the ‘ character.

What does the future of politics (the next 40 years) hold? Let’s look into the magical crystal ball of current events and history and see if we can pull out any tidbits.

#1 The debate over gay marriage will die. Just like segregation died out as younger people grow up without considering that it’s a big deal it stops being a big deal. Many young people view this as silly as if you are saying a black man and a white woman have no right to marry.

#2 Religion will eventually move out of politics. As above young people are not turning to religion like previous generations. http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-08-06-church-dropouts_N.htm (One story of hundreds)

#3 Abortion will stop being a major issue. Once again, younger people do not consider this to be such a black/white moral topic the way older generations do. Hence it will stop being a divisive issue in politics as time goes on.

#4 The USA will have socialized medicine. The number of younger workers (18-35) in the US without healthcare keeps steadily growing, employers are not offering it like in the old days, and employment is not as stable as it has been in the past. Eventually as this issue grows it will reach a head and something will be done about it.

#5 Islam and Muslims will not be considered “evil”. Just like the Japanese were hated during WWII and the Soviets during the cold war this too shall pass. They are not the inherently evil group that current thinking has painted them out to be.

#6 Gasoline will be 5$ or more per gallon. Don’t expect OPEC to play nicely now that it’s seen demand stays high with 100$ per barrel oil. Even if we start drilling everywhere in the USA younger folks are more willing to look for alternatives, they are also more willing to accept taxes in order to help the environment.

I do not see any reason at this time to predict that people born in the next 20 years will be any more conservative than the current 18-35 year old age group. Some massive world event might change this, but I can’t see what it could be. Along with the recent finding that people get more liberal as they age: http://www.livescience.com/health/080310-liberal-seniors.html

That’s as much as I can be certain of anyway (IE. *I* feel confident enough in the above to put money on it.)

So, I was going to add another disk into the raid-5 I run off of a Highpoint 2224 card.

No biggie I figured, just run the expansion tool.

But I goofed, and instead of expanding to raid-5 and just adding a disk I ended up adding a disk AND migrating to a raid-0. I then noticed there was no way to cancel the operation once started.

Bummer, but the drives were new, it should survive the migration and then i’ll go from there.

But I was wrong. The new drive failed during the migration.

So now i’m running on borrowed time with the migration on hold trying to backup all the data to the old disks and misc places in the rest of my network.

I’ve been doing this, for the last 3 days.

No, it has not been fun.

Once stuff is backed up i’ll try the raid tool that Highpoint sent me, and if that fails i’ll erase the entire array and build a new one (Not what I really want to do that)

We shall see how things go.

I know this is a tad old, but I wanted to to make mention of it nonetheless. So much for a free market spurring competition.

Congress questions high cost of texting

By Stephanie Condon
September 9, 2008 4:25 PM PDT

The price of text messaging has doubled industry-wide in the last three years, and Congress wants to know why.

Sen Herb Kohl, chair of the Antitrust Subcommittee in the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter Tuesday to the four major wireless carriers–AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile–asking them to explain the dramatic price increases for text messaging services.

“Some industry experts contend that these increased rates do not appear to be justified by any increases in the costs associated with text messaging services, but may instead be a reflection of a decrease in competition, and an increase in market power, among your four companies,” Kohl said in the letter.

The cost of text messaging since 2005 has increased 100 percent from 10 cents to 20 cents for all four providers. Mobile operators have reaped huge profits from the increased prices, CNET reported in July.

Also, the number of major carriers in the United States has shrunk from six to four in recent years, while the remaining carriers continue to acquire their regionally based competitors, Kohl said in the letter. He noted that the four carriers combined currently serve more than 90 percent of wireless subscribers in the U.S.

“I am concerned with whether this market consolidation, and increased market power by the major carriers, has contributed to this doubling of text messaging rates over the last three years,” Kohl said.

The senator from Wisconsin asked the companies to provide evidence of how their respective text messaging pricing structures differs from those of their competitors, along with evidence of what factors led to price increases. He also asked the wireless carriers to provide data on the utilization of text messaging from 2005 to 2008 and a price comparison of text messaging services to other services such as Internet access over wireless devices. Kohl asked for a response by October 6.

The similar price increases, coming at similar times, Kohl said, “is hardly consistent with the vigorous price competition we hope to see in a competitive marketplace.”

So the place I work has alot of odd toys laying around, skateboards, scooters, etc. (Yes, it’s a small tech startup)

But one of them is truly sadistic.

This is a version of the classic “board on the cylinder” balance item, and I fell on my ass trying to stand on it today.

It belongs in the category of dangerous toys with lawn darts and chemistry sets.

Some of you will know what i’m talking about.

(The Ribbon as it appears in MS Word 2007)

In the newest versions of MS Office there is the new “Ribbon”, rather than the normal toolbars.

For those of us familiar with the old style of such things we’re screwed:

“There is no way to delete or replace the Ribbon with the toolbars and menus from the earlier versions of Microsoft Office.”

And of course there is no way to complain to MS about it either. Figures eh?

I just love it when we get force-fed a new standard.

Bleah, I had a nice trip to AZ, except for the fact that i’m quite sick.

The flight back combined with a sinus headache was NOT fun.

If only eh?

Che had balls our recent politicians can only dream of.

EDIT: Yes, I know he had his dark side, and some view him with animosity as “the butcher of La Caba�a.” but he didn’t just sit back in Cuba after they won the revolution, he went off to find another revolution to lead. That is why I like him, he didn’t just talk the talk, he walked the walk.

If you have not read this essay by Neal Stephenson regarding Operating Systems, or have only read the 1999 original version, I suggest you read this 2004 version, annotated by Garrett Birkel.

It brings the original more up to date.

One interesting thing about Seattle is how few of my pastimes are possible anywhere nearby.

I managed to find a few decent lakes to fish in, but the nearest airsoft field is an hour drive from me, good metal detecting spots are almost twice that far, anywhere to hunt game is a two-day trip.

I’m going to have to figure out how to marry my hobbies with my desire to live in the city.

Several weeks ago I bought an Airsoft version of a Steyr AUG, it finally arrived today.

I was shocked at how heavy the thing was, it’s mostly metal just like a real version of the rifle.

Now to get the rest of my airsoft outfit.

So, I headed to the lake this evening with my little boat. The weather was partly cloudy, with a light wind.

Didn’t get any bites at all until about 6pm, then anything I threw into the water caught a perch near the Meridian entrance (there is a tree fall blocking this entrance now BTW) the largest one was about 12″. I got one rock bass as well.

They were still biting when I got bored at about 8pm and headed home.

So I try talking to one of my co-workers about the new TSA regulations. And no matter how bad a theoretical situation I bring up he says:


“I don’t care, they can do whatever they want for my safety”


Why oh why are people so willing to give up their freedoms for thinking they are safer?

Body of “flying priest” balloon adventurer recovered off Brazil


July 5th, 2008 by Mohit Joshi


BrazilRio de Janeiro – The body of “flying priest” balloon adventurer Adelir de Carli has been recovered some 100 kilometres off the Brazilian coast, local media reports said Saturday.


Father de Carli went missing in April while attempting to fly with 1,000 helium-filled party balloons tied to a chair. The body was recovered by a tugboat crew off Rio de Janeiro state, reports said.


Police said clothing, a rucksack and shoes left little doubt that the body was that of the priest. DNA tests would be conducted to provide final proof.


Father de Carli, 42, had set out on April 20 on what was planned to be a 20-hour flight from the town of Paranagua, in the state of Parana, to Dourados, in neighbouring Mato Grosso do Sul, to break a 19-hour world record and “to promote religion,” as he put it.


He had also been seeking to raise money to build a chapel and to contribute to the cause of long-distance lorry drivers demanding longer breaks.


He went missing eight hours into the flight attempt as the wind blew him off course towards the sea. Rescue teams at sea later found the balloons the Roman Catholic priest had been using and fragments of what may have been his chair some 50 kilometres from the seaside resort of Florianopolis, in the state of Santa Catarina.


Authorities feared at the time he had fallen into the sea and been dragged south. They broadened the scope of the search, hoping to find De Carli at sea or on an island in the states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.


On January 13, the priest made a successful attempt to fly supported by balloons, travelling 110 kilometres from Ampere, in Parana, to the Argentine town of San Antonio, in a four-hour flight. He used 500 balloons and reached an altitude of 5,300 metres


Friends did not regard de Carli as a “crazy priest” but as an experienced flier and parachutist, who completed several survival courses.

Recently, the list of world’s happiest countries was out.




The winner? Denmark!




The survey for happiest nations was conducted by University of Leicester,and what exactly was asked isn’t revealed. But,what’s striking is that the list which is here, is appearing to be more or less the same in any survey conducted across the globe.
The 20 happiest nations in the World are:




1. Denmark
2. Switzerland
3. Austria
4. Iceland
5. The Bahamas
6. Finland
7. Sweden
8. Bhutan
9. Brunei
10. Canada
11. Ireland
12. Luxembourg
13. Costa Rica
14. Malta
15. The Netherlands
16. Antigua and Barbuda
17. Malaysia
18. New Zealand
19. Norway
20. The Seychelles




Other notable results include:




23. USA
35. Germany
41. UK
62. France
82. China
90. Japan
125. India
167. Russia




The three least happy countries were:




176. Democratic Republic of the Congo
177. Zimbabwe
178. Burundi




What do I personally find striking about this list? That most of the happiest nations tend to be welfare states, have extremely high tax rates, or general socialistic tendencies.




It’s also worth noting that another survey by livescience.com showed: “Americans are no happier today than they were 50 years ago despite significant increases in prosperity, decreases in crime, cleaner air, larger living quarters and a better overall quality of life.”




So, exactly what gives?




My opinion? The USA will never be happy with “what it haves”. It’s far too busy trying to get more and more and more that people cannot stop and enjoy what they have currently.




Maybe in a few decades that’ll change, but either way we have to drop pure individu

At 71 George Carlin left the stage for the last time the other day.

Vulgar as he was few can argue he spoke volumes about modern life worth listening to.

He’ll be missed.

So, my mother flew me out here from Seattle this weekend to meet the family, for the first time since I was 8 years old my uncles and aunts on my mother’s side of the family are together in the same place.

It’s been a very interesting day to say the least.

So while browsing http://www.thislife.org/ looking for a show I missed recently that I wanted to listen to I noticed a constant request for money.

Not just the general NPR begging but directly to pay for the roughly 15 Terabytes of bandwidth per month that was eaten up by people downloading their podcast.

Immediately a fix sprang to mind, use BitTorrent. People that have no money to donate or don;t want to donate will probably be willing to cough up a little bandwidth.

So I posed the idea to them.

Their response? They said they’d think about it, but I realized they are probably not thrilled about the idea of having their radio shows strewn across the public ether free, since once those shows are archived after 30 days they are no longer free.

So, which is it? Are they offering it up free and asking for donations to cover your bandwidth, or are they using the free shows as a teaser to get people to snag the archived non-free shows?

I’m afraid they can’t have it both ways.

Had a reasonably decent trip to AZ last weekend.

Saw Sarah and the rest of the crew. Everyone seemed happy to have rain come down with me.

Just can’t say i’ve really felt much like babbling lately.

It’s hard to see but this circle of a line goes all the way around the fourth floor of the Pacific Place shopping center.

They are all waiting for Speed Racer.

I estimate three hundred heads.

(I found out this morning that it was an advanced screening, since it seemed kind of odd for a movie to open on a Monday)

I caught this on the news and even tho i’m not a big sports fan I think it deserves attention.

Carrying injured opponent around bases eliminates CWU from softball playoffs

JOSEPH B. FRAZIER; The Associated Press
Published: May 1st, 2008 01:00 AM | Updated: May 1st, 2008 07:36 AM

PORTLAND – With two runners on base and a strike against her, Sara Tucholsky of Western Oregon University uncorked her best swing and did something she’d never done, in high school or college.

Her first home run cleared the center-field fence at Central Washington University’s home field in Ellensburg.

But it appeared to be the shortest of dreams come true when she missed first base, started back to tag it and collapsed with a knee injury.

She crawled back to first but could do no more. The first-base coach said she’d be called out if her teammates tried to help her. Or, the umpire said, a pinch runner could be called in, and the homer would count as a single.

Then, members of the Central Washington University softball team stunned spectators by carrying Tucholsky around the bases Saturday so the three-run homer would count, an act that contributed to their team’s elimination from the playoffs.

Central Washington first baseman Mallory Holtman, the career home run leader in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, asked the umpire if she and her teammates could help Tucholsky. The umpire said there was no rule against it.

So Holtman and shortstop Liz Wallace put their arms under Tucholsky’s legs, and she put her arms over their shoulders. The three headed around the base paths, stopping to let Tucholsky touch each base with her good leg.

The only thing I remember is that Mallory asked me which leg was the one that hurt, Tucholsky said. I told her it was my right leg, and she said, OK, we’re going to drop you down gently and you need to touch it with your left leg, and I said OK, thank you very much.

She said, You deserve it, you hit it over the fence, and we all kind of just laughed.

We started laughing when we touched second base, Holtman said. I said, I wonder what this must look like to other people.

We didn’t know that she was a senior or that this was her first home run, Wallace said Wednesday. That makes the story more touching than it was. We just wanted to help her.

Holtman said she and Wallace weren’t thinking about the playoff spot, and didn’t consider the gesture something others wouldn’t do. As for Tucholsky, the 5-foot-2 right fielder was in pain.

I really didn’t say too much. I was trying to breathe, she said in a phone interview Wednesday.

I didn’t realize what was going on until I had time to sit down and let the pain relax a little bit. Then I realized the extent of what I actually did.

I hope I would do the same for her in the same situation, Tucholsky added.

As the three reached home plate, Tucholsky said, the entire Western Oregon team was in tears.

Central Washington coach Gary Frederick, a 14-year coaching veteran, called the act of sportsmanship ‘unbelievable.’

For Western Oregon coach Pam Knox, the gesture resolved the dilemma Tucholsky’s injury presented.

She was going to kill me if we sub and take (the home run) away. But at the same time I was concerned for her. I didn’t know what to do, Knox said.

Tucholsky’s injury is a possible torn ligament that will sideline her for the rest of the season. Her home run sent Western Oregon to a 4-2 victory, ending Central Washington’s chances of winning the conference and advancing to the playoffs.

In the end, it is not about winning and losing so much, Holtman said. It was about this girl. She hit it over the fence and was in pain, and she deserved a home run.