Feh.

I gotta work on this...



h/t to the Wiseass Jooette

Adventures at Wally World

I made one of my infrequent forays into Wal*Mart today, and finished the experience with mixed reactions caused by:

• Somebody's little cookie-cruncher running amok when it's mother captured it, gave it a swat on the backside, and relocated it to a cage (well, the shopping cart, but...).
• A herd of water buffalo having a confab -- not just in the middle of the big main highway that circles the inside of the store, but located so that there wasn't any easy/convenient way around them. Demonstrating the patience, tact, and courtesy that I'm widely renowned for, I tried a couple of (progressively stronger) "Excuse me!"s before resorting to asking them "Would you dumbasses mind taking it somewhere else so the rest of us can get through here?". They didn't seem to appreciate my forbearance...
  
• After departing the store, I was obliged to putter along in my car behind the couple of shitbirds that felt compelled to wander down the middle of the parking lot lane.

And so it begins (again)... (updated)

While catching one of the network shows this morning, I caught their concept of a news segment: following a report on the Iowa caucuses, they did a piece on Britney Spears' latest meltdown. It was while watching the video clip of that non-event that a number of questions came to mind that I'd like to ask:

• How is it that the personal troubles of one particular pseudo-celebrity qualify as a news item worthy of national reporting?
• By broadcasting that segment, wasn't the network -- in effect -- equating Britney's latest 'issues' with the Iowa caususes? That the difference was of degree, but not kind? (Littering and murder are both crimes; I think most of us would agree that they are vastly different in the degree of severity)
• What the hell does it say about our society that the weenie-in-charge would even think that the two items should both be reported in the same segment?
• If they're screwed up enough to include Britney with the caucuses, what other misjudgements are they making? I mean, if Britney is being included for her perceived 'draw' value, what isn't making the cut for the reverse reason?

Personally, I have the national evening 'news' programs on (usually well into the program, in preparation for my local news). The way I figure it, they stopped being NEWS programs about the time Dan Rather got canned for his little Bush v. National Guard whoopsie. When they started putting entertainment program personalities (I've met Walter Cronkite, and Katie Couric is no Walter Cronkite!) as anchors for evening news shows, they pretty much lost any credibility with me. Now my standard of reference is Jim Lehrer on PBS -- anything that turns up there is deserving of my attention; curiously, Britney, Madonna, Paris, and the like haven't made an appearance, as yet...

I think that what I'm going to do is start boycotting the broadcast networks whenever they include crap like a Britney meltdown, or a Paris Hilton fiasco, or anything of that ilk. Each boycott will be just the network I see make the misjudgement, for 24 hours, and accompanied by a nice email to the news division of the offending network, telling them who I am and what I'm doing and -- most importantly -- why.

I know that if I do this by myself, it's going to have pretty much zero impact. I can only hope that enough other people share my desire to see network evening news programs start featuring news again, and do something similar -- and maybe even encourage others to join in, as well. Who knows, maybe it'll have an impact, sooner or later...

I'll be updating this posting in a bit, to include the email addresses for the news divisions at ABC, CBS, and NBC.

UPDATE:
As promised, here are the appropriate links. Note that NONE of them offers anything like a direct email address; all feedback is via online forms...

CBS News
ABC News
NBC News (use the 'select show' option, and proceed)

Harassing the Cat

So I'm here at home, installing OS-X on a Mac Beige G3 All-in-One (any
Mac people out there will know what I'm talking about) in the interest
of playing with it (prior to installing Linux).

I've got the thing sitting on the floor, and while it's booting up, my
cat Elf decides to check it out -- and becomes fascinated by the mouse
cursor moving around on the screen. Fascinated enough, in fact, that
she decides to try and catch it...

Except the damn thing won't STAY caught (much like the dot from the
laser pointer), causing her to get more and more frustrated at it.
Finally, she gets so mad that she tries to beat the crap out of it
before heading into the kitchen to console herself with some kibbles.

By the time she gets back, the installation is ticking away, and she
gets interested in watching the progress bar move along. When she gets
interested enough, she tries to sniff it to see if perhaps it's
edible -- whereupon the static build-up on the screen 'bites' her nose
hard enough that she runs into the bedroom to escape it.

Dumbshit.

Meme-d

Having been tagged by the wise-ass Jooette from the Bronx (or wherever) , here are my answers to the Christmas meme...

A Jooette doing Christmas memes? WTF?

The rulez:
1) Link to person that tagged me (done above).
2) Share Christmas facts about myself.
3) Tag 7 others (okay, that might be a challenge -- I don't read THAT many blogs)
4) Inform tagees of their misfortune via comments in their blogs.

The Kweschuns:
1. Wrapping or gift bags? Fark that. If I'm gonna give someone something, I generally don't wait for a special 'season'.

2. Real or artificial tree? Fark that, too. No tree for me. My turd-with-a-tail, Elf, would just trash it, anyway.

3. When do you put up the tree? Ummm.... Never.

4. When do you take the tree down? The last time I took a Christmas tree down was somewhere in the mid-70's, I believe.

5. Do you like eggnog? In limited amounts, and when it has been suitably 'fortified'.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? The chemistry set I got when I was in 7th grade. Once I started distilling my own alcohol for my burners, it proved to be highly profitable to provide 190+ proof alcohol to a select number of classmates (strictly for THEIR chemistry sets, of course) in high school...

7. Do you have a nativity scene? No. Nor have I seen any scenes depicting the conception, either.

8. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Clothes, every freakin' year...

9. Mail or email Christmas cards? If I send any (seldom more than 1 or 2), it's by snailmail.

10. Favorite Christmas movie? How the Grinch Stole Christmas (I root for the Grinch). [I was tempted to name a pr0n movie...]

11. When do you start shopping for Christmas? I start my Christmas shoplifting early -- around April, or so...

12. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Lasagne.

13. Clear lights or colored? All my lights are compact flourescents, so neither. Oh, you mean CHRISTMAS lights - I don't do lights, either.

14. Favorite Christmas song? Grandma got run over by a reindeer.

15. Travel at Christmas or stay at home? Stay home.

16. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer? No. But I've got Rudolph's nose in my crosshairs...

17. Angel or star on the top of your tree? feh.

18. Open your presents Christmas Eve or Christmas morning? All I ever get is coal, anyway, so it doesn't matter. What I always want is any 3 of the Victoria's Secret models, wrapped in cellophane, but I never get them.

19. Most annoying thing about this time of year? Bloody damn Christmas music everywhere. One of these days, I just know I'm going to go in diabetic shock because of it.

20. What do you leave for Santa? the latest copy of Penthouse.

21. Least favorite holiday song? any of them.

22. Do you decorate your tree with any specific theme or color? The little bit of decoration I do, I use ultraviolet and infrared.

23. Favorite ornament? Nothing, yet, though I'd be interested in a Yule Doos...


It's not so much that I'm a Scrooge/Grinch, but that I'm simply not interested and don't like being hammered with it for two months ahead of time. Some of the local stores replaced the Halloween crap with Christmas crap...

I got nobody to tag -- everyone that I'd foist this off on have already been hit; unless someone wants to have another shot at it?

Apples vs. Oranges

Our local cable TV company -- Bresnan -- has been running ads trying to convince people that Bresnan Internet is superior to DSL. They've been doing this by 'comparing' DSL speeds to those offered by Bresnan.

The ad consists of a person bringing up four different tasks, and showing the time it takes to accomplish them.

It's what Bresnan isn't saying in the ads that grates on me.

From the speeds they're showing, it looks like Bresnan is comparing their (theoretical) top speed of 8Mbps with DSLs (functional) minimum of 256K (if you're close enough, you can purchase higher speeds, too). What isn't mentioned is that cable's 8Mbps is shared (not necessarily equally) with ALL the people on a particular section of the line, and that DSL speeds are for EACH INDIVIDUAL USER. So if you get someone on a cable Internet line with the desire to use it, and hardware to support it, that one person may end up taking 6Mbps of bandwidth, leaving the rest to be shared by everyone else; if you get a DSL line, whatever bandwidth you're willing to pay for is all yours.

Another part of that shared line with cable is that if there's even one Internet Idiot that doesn't have his/her Windows computer up-to-date with antivirus, anti-spyware, firewall, and so on, that persons computer is going to be spewing out a lot of bullshit traffic: attempts to spread the Windows virus of the day, attempts to connect to any other unprotected Windows computers, sending out spam emails because the unprotected computer has been turned into a zombie, and so on. That will further reduce the amount of bandwidth available for 'real' Internetting. When I was stuck with Bresnan, I could watch as all the Windows machines on my section tried to get through my firewall - there wasn't a minute that went by that something wasn't happening.

Oh, and let's not forget to compare the reliability of the two services: how often does your phone go out, versus your cable TV/Internet? How long does it take each company to correct the problem, and does that repair 'stick'? As I'm typing this, Bresnan has had a problem with (at least) one of their 'gateways' (how multiple computers can access the same area -- much like the gateway in a fence): it wasn't accessible for nearly half a day, came back up for a couple of hours, and now appears to be offline again. Without that gateway, there could be several HUNDRED people without Internet access - even though their cable TV may still be working. This isn't the first time this problem has come up in the last few months, and isn't going to be the last: word I get from some Bresnan insiders is that they have way oversold their services, and don't have the hardware and infrastructure to support their customers as they should.

In contrast, I have DSL in my area precisely because Qwest has run fiber optic cables up here in the Heights: it literally runs under the street in front of my apartment building.

One last thing to consider is the level of technical support available. From my own personal experience, I have to say that Qwest is far, far superior to Bresnan. Back when I was stuck with Bresnan for my broadband, I was supposed to call their 800 number (a service center in Armpit, Iowa, I believe) to let them know I had a problem. The thing was, the tech support weenie I got was insistent that I go through their cookie-cutter troubleshooting sequence before conceding that there might actually be a problem with their hardware. What actually happened was that I eventually started calling the local office to see if they had received a report of an outage in my area.

The (very few!) times that I've had to call Qwest, though, I've been able to tell their service center people where and what the problem is: "It looks like I've got a problem with the nameserver at XXX.xxx.YYY.yyy because it isn't answering pings." "Hold on while I check it... yup, it's down. Okay, I'll get someone to reset it."

Problems with Bresnan generally took hours, if not days, to get corrected; Qwest usually had them straightened out in minutes (only rarely did something take an hour).

The bottom line here is that in realistic terms, if you have a choice between Qwest DSL and Bresnan cable, I'd STRONGLY recommend the DSL. In practical terms, you'll likely never notice any difference in the bandwidth 'differences', and the reliability and security of DSL is infinitely superior, in my opinion.

LOLcat (UPDATED)

I've gone ahead and captioned the image of my cat Elf radiating cute waves as she tried to convince me to NOT displace her, and submitted it to I Can Has Cheezburger:


moar funny pictures

It looks like they allow voting, not that I'd do anything like ask readers to actually do anything like that...

UPDATE
There's a dog-centric alternative over at I Has A Hotdog that shows stuff like this:

Yeah, me, too...

OLPC

I know I haven't posted anything for a while, but Real Life (tm) has been keeping me busy. Hopefully, this little post will help make up for that deficiency...

For those that haven't already heard about it, there was a project started called One Laptop Per Child: the goal being to provide appropriate educational technology to kids that needed it and would benefit from it. [Note: these would be kids in the second- and third-world, not here in the U.S.]. The original idea was to come up with a laptop (for portability reasons) that was as easy to use (they're kids that have likely never even SEEN a computer, right?) and reliable (2nd- and 3rd-world, remember) as possible. Additional factors were price (affordability), efficiency (power isn't always available or reliable in a lot of places), flexibility (who knows what they're going to be needed for, or what use someone will want to put them to), and so on.

After a lot of testing, design, re-testing, re-design, and so on, what was ultimately developed was the XO, which can be sold for $188. While not any kind of competitor to anything else in the world, the XO/OLPC system seems to have met its goals admirably. Some of its features are:

• sealed against dust, dirt, water, and about anything else that it might be exposed to
• built-in 'mesh' networking (ad-hoc networking between XO systems), along with 'regular' wifi
• color display that can be adjusted to allow grayscale viewing of plain-text documents
• 4-hour battery life
• physically scaled for use by kids
• can be recharged with an AC adapter, solar panel, or even pull-cord charger (think pull-starting a lawnmower)
• all but bullet-proof (can be dropped from 4 feet [!!] and will keep running)
• the OS and all applications in Flash memory, so no hard drive to die
• capable of multiple languages, for local needs
• built-in camera, speakers, and microphone
• the mesh networking allows (encourages!) collaborative activities
• over a dozen built-in applications, ranging from (very basic) word processing, drawing, web browser, music creation, games, and such
• apparently pretty damn intuitive to operate (judging by some of the reviews I've read)
• Uses Linux, so it's stable, doesn't require any licensing fees, and can receive upgrades as long as the hardware holds out
• much, much more...

You might wonder what the hell a third-world kid needs a laptop for - but when you consider how easy and flexible these little boxes are, and the way they can leverage education and learning, you realize that they make a lot of sense: with a donated XO box, a kid doesn't have the expense of paper and pencils (sure, cheap to us, but...), greater resources (if even one XO box can pick up a wifi signal, it can share that link with all the rest, making the entire Internet available), durability (waterproof and all that, remember), educational (even the games encourage thinking and reasoning), and so on.

To have a look at the little buggers yourself, go on over to http://www.laptop.org and see what they're all about. You'll also have the chance to participate in the 'Give One Get One' program, where you can buy one (for $399) for yourself, and have another donated to a kid. On the site, there are also links to reviews of them, and plenty of other nifty information.

If you can, I'd encourage you to participate in the GOGO program - I mean, it's Christmas, f'cryin out loud, and what better gift to give anyone than providing some kid with a shot at having a future?

DWI

In this case, that stands for Driving With Intelligence.

You see, I'm old enough that I remember watching how people drove while I grew up, and learned how to drive myself when people still exhibited a sense of responsibility and courtesy when they drove -- and I still try to practice those traits myself. For example:

• Turn Signals: I have them on my car, and I use them -- even in parking lots, when changing lanes, and (gasp!) actually planning to turn. I'm pretty sure they're still standard equipment on cars, but I don't see them used a whole lot any more. Maybe Drivers Ed classes stopped teaching their use, or something...
• Speed limits: I observe them, for the most part: if I see a speed limit sign that says "35", I don't consider that the minimum speed as so many folks seem to. Sure, I may go a little over that, if the weather is clear and the road is in good condition and the general flow of traffic is going faster -- but not a LOT faster. I don't think that number on the signs in a Mach number, for instance...
• Special Situations: Silly me, I figure that if I'm in a parking lot, that implies that cars are parked and people will be walking from their vehicle to somewhere else -- and that I might want to SLOW DOWN to avoid running anyone over. I don't think of a parking lot as a trial area for the Indy 500...
• Driveways: Again, being the goofy individual that I am, I'm willing to share them with other people -- I steer my vehicle so that I'm on the righthand side, so others can still get by. Unlike so many, I don't plant myself in the middle...
• Painted arrows: if there are painted arrows on the pavement to indicate which way I should be driving, I'm not afraid to follow directions. Amazingly enough, doing so means that it I find it easier and safer to get around, and even find a parking space, which leads me to...
• Parking spaces: First, I'm not someone that's willing to drive around for 20 minutes trying to find a spot close to the door; I don't have any problem walking the extra 20 feet if I find an open spot a little farther away. And on top of that, I actually try to get my car parked between and parallel with the painted lines...
• Sound: I don't have a $1000 megawatt stereo in a $500 car, and my muffler is not only installed but actually works -- I'm not inconsiderate enough to inflict my taste (or lack thereof) in music on those around me, and having "straight pipes" or resonant muffler or an otherwise noisy vehicle doesn't make it any faster or improve my gas mileage at the expense of the hearing of others...
• Other drivers: Yes, I know they're out there, and I willingly share the road with them. All I want is the little piece that I'm driving on, without the hassle of some jackass that thinks the street is his/her personal property to do with as they please...
• Driving: while my car is in motion, I actually have my attention on my driving. I'm not yapping on a cell phone while trying to use my laptop while eating a 4-course meal while putting on makeup...
• Pedestrians: Sometimes, I'm one of them, too -- so I watch out for them, and do goofy shit like NOT stop my car across the crosswalk, make my turns too close to folks trying to cross the street (WITH the light!), and generally recognize the fact that in a contest between my 4,000 pound steel box and a human bean, the steel would win -- and not in a way that would benefit the human...
• Respect: For starters, I figure anything bigger than me automagically has right of way... I remember watching one of those little, tiny Honda CRXs playing catch-me-fuck-me with a PAIR of tractor-trailers by weaving in and out BETWEEN them...