Just heard the space shuttle atlantis make a sonic boom. thought a bomb dropped nearby until I realized what it was.

My cat's been bringing me so many mice lately that I feel bad about throwing them all out. Like I should make a necklace from their skulls or something at least.

On the one hand, I'm annoyed at this kid across the street yelling "MOOOMMMMEEEEEE!!!" for what seems like a solid ten minutes now. He's seriously working it HARD. But on the other hand I'm glad no one is paying attention to him (or aware that he's outside?). You'd think he's being eaten alive by weasels, but so far the only indication I can glean is that he's thirsty (perhaps from all the screaming).

He was doing this earlier in the day, but with two adults hovering over him.

If I was in the business of suggesting to others how to parent their kids, I'd probably get punched in the face more often. So I don't make that my business unless CPS needs to be notified.

I value this experience as a lesson in self improvement.

I'm staying up late to watch the NASA LCROSS mission live on nasa television. I know all about it alredy, and I have all kinds of ideas on what water on the moon could be used for. Most interesting to me is using it as a battery source to store ample solar energy and power robots controlled from earth to build things for future exploration. nearly 45 minutes to (the first) impact!

I've been having an excellent time in portland, or since I've been here. I've had many interesting little social interactions, all of which I'm really inclined to write about. Just hours ago, I had one that was very amusing:

I attended a presentation with my mom, prior to which we decided to see the top-floor restaurant and view of the building holding the event. The two people who rode up with us exited on the 10th floor as a man with a travel bag (small, yet on wheels) proceeded to enter our elevator. In accordance with standard elevator etiquette, we stated "going up" to spare him some hassle, and he made no response or eye contact. Thinking perhaps he didn't hear us, I said it again only to be met with the same response. Without even a hint of acknowledgment, I decided not to bother him further. I can certainly understand and appreciate an unwillingness to participate in basic human interaction.

He then pressed the button for the 14th floor, and was just as quickly denied. Somewhat perplexed, he tried again, and then several times more only to be mechanically denied the same acknowledgment he had personally denied us. He then made some vocal noise, and I don't recall if he asked a full question or simply conveyed a "huh" response in our direction. But I responded in my typically erudite manner, "that's a restricted floor. you will need a key" as we approached the 15th (top) floor. In short order, we were departing the elevator as I saw him produce a hotel card key.

file under: failing to be too cool for school

Having hit the trifecta of regular usage of modern operating systems, I'm now running vista, ubuntu linux, and mac os x with comfortable regularity. Vista (64-bit) has been working great to replace my clunker of an xp install, and my linux virtual machine runs great on it. Then I got os x running on my dell mini 9 some time ago and that's been a phenomenal netbook os for what I do with it. Hopefully the vista-to-win7 upgrade will be as painless as microsoft claims it is.

One of the oldest tricks in the book has to be bilking parents out of their money by telling them their kids are in all kinds of terrible danger if you don't buy their product, which will put kids in all kinds of terrible danger (or at least deprive their college fund). That sounds very cynical, but check out the back of some grocery store parent magazine in the ads some time. There are plenty of genuine safety devices that are very good ideas like the bubmo baby seat. Alls I'm trying to say is it's an easy string to pull for people trying to make a quick buck.

This one ties neatly into my previous rant on society's painful ignorance of security.

Edited for TLDR from an associate press article by Deborah Yao:

Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids.

Parents who don't want the company to share their child's information to businesses can check a box to opt out.

But that option can be found only by visiting the company's Web site, accessible through a control panel that appears after the program has been installed. It was not in the agreement contained in the Sentry Total Home Protection program The Associated Press downloaded and installed Friday.

According to the agreement, the software passes along data to "trusted partners." Confidentiality agreements prohibit those clients from sharing the information with others.

In recognition of federal privacy laws that restrict the collection of data on kids under 13, the agreement states that the company has "a parent's permission to share the information if the user is a child under age 13."

Tech site CNet ranks the EchoMetrix software as one of the three best for parental control.

EchoMetrix, formerly known as SearchHelp, said companies that have tested the chat data using Pulse include News Corp.'s Fox Broadcasting and Dreamworks SKG Inc. Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures recently signed on.

None of those companies would comment when contacted by the AP.

Hello all - I am announcing that I will be in Portland during my birthday time (Oct. 2) to see Dethklok at the roseland theater. It's the first show on a 34-city tour!

You can buy tickets here:
http://www.adultswim.com/shows/metalocalypse/extras/tour/index.html

I'm here at the Germaine Arena waiting for Hulk Hogan to show me how to put the smackdown on property taxes. I'm pretty excited! Pictures to follow later.

It starts on my birthday at the Roseland in Portland. Sometimes I get the feeling I'm living in the wrong town.

3-cell 11.1v high discharge lithium polymer battery packs. I love technology.

He's the kind of smart I can appreciate. I *loved* his stunt with the mosquitoes during his talk at the TED expo. And I've been liking him a lot more with his newfound distance from Microsoft and his pursuit of philanthropy. But he'll never have the kind of nerd cred the Woz can pull from merely sitting down. I can understand him still wanting to be a part of Microsoft with Ballmer's lingering incompetence* to manage, but then he starts making statements like (paraphrasing) "Why's everyone so excited about Chrome? It's just another Linux distro and you remember how bored and uninterested you all are in that, right?"

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10286308-56.html

As someone who's experienced a big slice of lifetime watching the windows logo and waiting for computers to start instead of actually being able to use them, I think features such as "off to web browsing in seconds" are pretty damn exciting.

He then goes on to philosophize, "What's a browser? What's not a browser?" to which I can only answer, "It's the thing you didn't ever imagine would be useful until netscape got attention, then while you illegally dominated the OS market you exploited the opportunity to make IE popular to the detriment of web developers everywhere by having a constantly broken non-standard standard."

And what Gates propaganda moment would be complete without an apples-to-oranges comparison?:
"Ballmer and Gates also stressed the fact that Google now has two operating systems--Chrome OS and Android. Ballmer noted that Microsoft learned with the separate Windows 95 for consumers and Windows NT for businesses that having two operating systems isn't necessarily a positive thing."

Running win95 isn't necessarily a positive thing? Really? Yeah, if it RUNS AT ALL lols

Edit: As Engadget pointed out:

Ballmer: "I don't know if they can't make up their mind or what the problem is over there, but the last time I checked, you don't need two client operating systems. It's good to have one." Snap. Of course, Microsoft is shipping six different Windows 7 SKUs, can't quite get rid of XP, and sells Windows Mobile, Windows CE, and Zune in the handheld space, but the man's got a point -- the real question is whether he's smiling or just baring his teeth in rage.

vista and win7 are pretty nice though. I'd be using either if I wasn't so entrenched with XP right now.

*Ballmer's incompetence: Microsoft CEO Ballmer laughs at Apple iPhone

When I was a kid, I spent countless hours playing microsoft flight simulator in 16-color EGA hi-res (640x350). I'd even rock the PC speaker with a constant square wave engine hum. It was quality time pursuing my fascination with planes, and I learned all the technicals of operating an aircraft. As any real pilot might say, flying's the easy part. Serious pilots need to learn extensively on subjects from meteorology to how best to crash. Of course, I don't speak with authority apart from knowing "the easy parts" very, very well.

As I grew older and moved on up to VGA graphics, I spent much time mastering every facet of this game:


A10 Tank Killer had a lot of things MS flight sim lacked, primarily the ability to blow things up. I learned very well what each of the weapons (one thing was a non-offense camera) were called and what they did. I learned about cluster bombs. Wow. And that was the first ever game where I learned to use a map and nav system... basically what in-dash gps map computers do now.

Not only that, but I saw lots of these things fly training missions (always in pairs) around my grandmother's home. I like them a lot for being very low-tech (did you notice the resistance flying them in the last terminator movie?) and very resilient to damage. I built lots of model airplanes, but never one of these.

I'll be writing about this plane again soon.

As someone who grew up watching adults go crazy over ideas like rules, ownership, and other non-tangible concepts where consequence did not match the "excitement" given to it, I always thought it was so bizarre how some really important things would just get brushed off like they didn't matter, even when attention was brought to it.

In particular, this was (meh, still IS) true with computer security. Not just electronic machines, but any system put in place to "protect" something where people would just rely on what they were told (or assumed) and not think twice about it. Oh, they'd lock all their doors, buy guns, and watch highlights of human depravity on the evening news, but put the equivalent of a plastic zip tie around sensitive data or switches to manipulate things pertaining directly to the real world.

Even after all this time has passed, and people are generally wiser about security thanks to rampant identity theft (thank you, weak social authentication schemes!), we get some pretty boneheaded negligence in high-ranking positions like this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/5745124/MI6-chiefs-cover-is-blown-by-wifes-holiday-snaps-on-Facebook.html

This gives me the ultimate forehead-smack of WhyTF can't these people, or the people who enable them to get there, not have a clue of what it means to keep sensitive materials sensitive. Reminds me of how nation-states would view an "enemy" like Kevin Mitnick, who was put in federal prison for 4.5 years PRE-TRIAL, 8 months of that in solitary confinement because law enforcement officials convinced a judge he could start a nuclear war by whistling into a payphone (not making this up). This happens while real enemies laugh at how stupid all of his "victims" (no one was hurt, and no owners were deprived of property) were and have a field day with the US military's information technologies.

Despite all that, things "seem" to be getting more prevalent in the public consciousness. Obama has his "cyber security" deal that sounds hopeful. I still get little moments of worry like when I recently talked to a financial institution I deal with and I was able to request a change of address and a check with no authentication. I even brought this up to the lady and she seemed to think this was more funny than serious. guh.

Not one, but TWO A/B-26 aircraft flew about 1,000' (I *want* to say less) over my house (only slightly to the north) tonight! They sound AWESOME! I'm patiently hoping another will fly over so I can snatch a video of it.

wikipedia article about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-26_Marauder

how badly I've wanted one of these since I heard the faintest whisper about it



heh

heheh

ha!

BWAHAHAHAHA!

True story: my calves are both pretty sore from learning how to moonwalk over the past three days. Once you train your brain, the actual moves are not really that hard and I'll get better with practice. I think I could teach it to people easily too.

Some are just "natural" with the talent though:

When I hear the words "treat her like a woman" - the first things that come to mind are Tom Jones, taking her out to dinner, and commenting on one of many things I appreciate.

NYPD cop Joel Witriol, badge #942838, must think something completely different.

of all the many famous celebrities that have died in the past week, I make no apologies for feeling a special sense of loss for Michael. His music was everywhere when I was a kid, and it made my outlook on the world so positive. All the "urban" cultural images and provocative lyrics I didn't quite understand really opened my eyes to the wider world around me.

Hearing the inevitable tasteless remarks about him after his death just inspire me to be awesome, heal the world, and rock his music in my mind that much harder and remember how intensely he could own his performance and make it cool to let your freak flag fly (until just after black+white by most anthropologists' views). He made the world a better place in one night than the naysayers could ever hope to in their lifetimes.

As for how I feel about his death, roast beef in the bottom left panel of today's achewood strip says it very concisely. The whole strip is a proper tribute and well worth reading.

I'd ask anyone to imagine being at this and not remember it changing their lives:


I would also highly suggest a read of Ray Smuckles' Essay on Michael Jackson's Passing

A snippet from that:

The Cure is just out there, like car horns or people who make noise when they cry. The Cure is a choice. When we hear Michael, it is not a choice to feel the beat. It is not a choice to cock your head and straighten all the fingers on your right hand.

When I heard that Mach-mood Ah-ma-deena-jahd won the Iranian presidential election "by a landslide", I was pretty sure that the results were rigged. There have been a lot of other indicators prior to the election that this was not going to be fair, and that only seems more evident with Mahmoud's attitude toward the THOUSANDS of angry protestors now in their 2nd day of serious revolt. He's very dismissive of any opposition in a weak attempt at orwellian alteration of reality, saying essentially "don't worry, the police will have this cleaned up in a jiffy".

I still the he gets wrongly misquoted on that whole "wipe israel off the map" remark. The literal translation was more, "erase them from the pages of time" as though to assert their illegitimacy as a state. Even for a figurehead with little actual power, I (and a huge portion of the Iranian population from what it looks like) think he's doing them a major disservice, and I think he would serve much better to take on civil engineering duties. At least something where he's not speaking on behalf of so many people who do not agree with him.

researching how to spell his name correctly... Mahmoud Ahmadinejad