IE Upgrade
I just had Windows update some software, which it does on a regular basis. This time around, it wanted to install Internet Explorer 7. I lost my senses for a few moments, and decided to go ahead with the upgrade. I’m not sure why I wasted my time with it since I never use IE for anything at all.
One of the things that irked me was that at the start of the install, the IE7 installer demanded that I verify the authenticity of my Windows XP install. That’s total crap. They’re backdooring the authenticity check with other software. Someday, I’ll upgrade Solitaire to get new card backs, and they’ll want me to verify my Windows install.
Don’t get me wrong; my Windows XP install is totally legal. My main concern is that the process will choke somewhere along the way, and then shutdown my system forever until I spend countless hours with Microsoft to get them to turn my machine back on.
It just seems a bit heavy-handed is all. It makes me wish that I had the cash for a Mac laptop or something.
A Religious Experience
Craing told me a few weeks ago that certain monks in Europe had it rough. On days that they were required to fast, they were still allowed to drink. On these days, they were only allowed five liters of beer during the day. Yep. That’s right. That’s five liters.
Doing a little math turns the five liters into 169.070113 US fluid ounces. Doing a little more math and that turns into 14.089176083 12-ounce beers. 14 beers in a day, but no more than that!
Keep in mind that these monks didn’t have wussie beers like Bud Light, Keystone, or other pilsners. They were drinking real beer: Hefeweizen, black ale, brown ale, honey mead. Stuff that really fills the stomach and packs a punch.
Craing and I are thinking about getting together one Sunday and doing this. To meet the true spirit (get it? spirits, drinks, alcohol!) of the day, we would get up before dawn, hit a Waffle House, eat some good greasy food, and then head back to the house, and start drinking. No food until the sun goes down. Just drinking beer throughout the day to sustain ourselves. Between the two of us, that’s 28 beers. I think we can do it.
Anyone else interested in joining us for a religious experience?
Disjointed Dream
This dream was one of the strangest that I’ve had in a while….
I was sitting in a sweltering bus crossing a vast desert on a remote highway. In the bus were two former professional baseball players. One was talking about how the other had made two home runs in a row in the exact same way. As he was describing the home runs, I could picture them in my mind with amazing clarity. I could smell the peanuts, taste my hot dog, hear the crowd, feel the warmth of the sun on my face, and revel in the excitement of a home run being hit.
As I turned to the player that hit the home runs to congratulate him, I was faced with the fattest man that I’ve ever seen. He took up two seats on the bus, and corpulent rolls of fat rolled out from every crevasse of his body. He had no neck at all. He just had a lump of a head sitting atop several rolls of fat that drooped down into his shoulder area. It was quite disturbing. I couldn’t imagine this man as a professional athlete of any kind. He just smiled at me, and drawled out, “I haven’t always been this fat.”
Upon hearing these words, I found myself in the middle of a field surrounded by white horses that were on the verge of death. I know that many years ago, I read a story about a man that witnessed the death of a white horse, and it drove him to insanity. I knew that if I didn’t save every last horse, that I would be driven insane. Maybe I already was insane. I didn’t know. Among the horses stood a single black cow. I knew that if I could milk the cow, that I could feed the horses the milk, and then save their lives. I started furiously milking the cow, and forcing the horses to drink the purple milk that came from the black cow. In the end, I saved all of the horses, but I was exhausted. However, my sanity was safe.
As I found myself falling asleep in the field, I could smell the distinct smell of burning popcorn, and I discovered that I was in the lobby of my favorite movie theater. Something was wrong though. The lobby was full of teenage zombies, and the clerks behind the counter were also zombies. Somehow, they didn’t attack me. I got my burned popcorn in hand, and a large Diet Coke. I walked right past the usher without them seeing me, which was a good thing because I didn’t have a ticket. I ended up in a theater that was showing news clips from World War II. I never personally experienced this, but my grandparents told me that this was how the news of the war would reach the United States populace. I sat in wonder as I watched video of men storming beaches, firing their guns, and dying horrible deaths.
I decided that I didn’t want to watch any more of this, so I left my burned popcorn and partially drunk Diet Coke behind. As I walked out of the theater, I found myself on the side of a desert road. A large purple and white bus roared through the shimmering heat towards me, and it ground to a halt with the hiss of air brakes. The driver opened the door, and told me to get inside. When I entered the bus, the two baseball players were there waiting for me. The fat one waved me over, “Come on, boy. Have a seat. We’ve been waiting for you.”
As I sat back down in the bus, I woke up to something that startled me. It was about 4:45 in the morning, and for some reason I was very frightened. One of my cats looked up at me with concern. She came over to me and started to lick my face to comfort me. Her purring and attention calmed me down and told me that everything was right with the world. I cuddled up to her, and slowly fell back to a peaceful sleep…
Grassroots Followup
Last week, I made this post regarding a bill that I was opposed to in the Senate.
Today, I received this response from Senator Wayne Allard:
Thank you for contacting me regarding your concerns for Section 220
of the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007 and
Senator Bennett’s (R-UT) Amendment to strike the provision from the final
bill. I appreciate you taking the time to write. I voted in favor of
Senator Bennett’s Amendment 20 to the reform bill. The Amendment will
completely strip Section 220 of the bill. This section placed unnecessary
burdens on grassroots organizations for paid efforts used to encourage
further grassroots efforts. I believe that we must be careful not to
infringe on citizen’s abilities to contact their elected officials.
This provision could potentially have dire effects on the capacity of
grassroots organizations to provide information to those that might not
otherwise be aware of particular issues. I was glad to see that this
Amendment passed the Senate and was subsequently included in the bill.
The bill was passed by the Senate on January 18, 2007, and will head to a
conference committee between the House and Senate once the House passes
similar provisions. I will be sure to keep your comments in mind when
the conference report comes back to the Senate for final passage. Again,
thank you for writing to express your concerns. If you would like more
information regarding this and other issues important to Colorado, please
visit my website. If you would like to receive updates on news important
to Coloradoans, click here. Sincerely, A Wayne Allard United States
Senator WA:KY
I feel like I made a difference! Maybe it was my voice combined with all of the others out there. Maybe it was just me, and my eloquent arguments. I really have no way of knowing, but it’s nice to know that the people’s voice was heard on this issue. This means that I can continue to post about political topics that interest me, and not worry about breaking the law through no direct action of my own.
Yay!
Great Idea
I had a great idea for a blog entry last night as I was getting ready for bed. It was such a great idea that I was sure that I would remember it in the morning. Just my luck, I don’t remember the idea. I do remember having a great idea, but not the idea itself. Damn.
Maybe it’ll come back to me some other time. Not sure.
Dresden Files Followup
I talked about this show coming up, and I managed to catch it Sunday night. It was a pretty good show. Here’s a breakdown of things that I liked and did not like:
Likes:
- Dresden got beat up. He always gets beat up. Nice touch.
- Bob helped out in an esoteric and weird way.
- Dresden has a conscience that won’t allow him to take advantage of innocents.
- Dresden rescued the boy in the end.
- Nice flashbacks to work in his important history.
- Good acting, and decent character portrayal.
- The skinwalker was a good bad guy. Classic Dresden.
Dislikes:
- A Jeep? Come on! They couldn’t afford a beaten-up old VW Beetle?
- Murphy and Dresden were a little too antagonistic towards each other. They’re supposed to be pretty good friends, not users of each other’s talents.
- Bob should be a talking skull, not a snooty British guy!
- Dresden was trained by his uncle? I don’t recall that from the books. Seems a little too distant from Dresden’s actual history.
- Murphy is a short, athletic blond with a little extra weight on her. She’s not a short, brunette that is too skinny. The actress should have at least bleached her hair for the role.
- Dresden would never be as careless to put up protective wards on his house that were on curtains that could easily be ripped down. They’re engraved into the stone.
- Dresden lives in a basement. What’s with all of the windows?
- Magicians can’t deal with technology. What’s with all of the electrical lights and electrical fridge in his apartment? This is key to so many plot points in the book. I can’t believe that they changed that!
Overall, I liked the first episode enough to watch more. I just hope they don’t screw up enough things to make me start to hate it.
Lack Of Sleep
I normally get tons of sleep over the weekend. Probably too much. That wasn’t the case this weekend. I also normally don’t blog about work because that can get me in a bunch of trouble. People have been fired for blogging about work. I’m going to risk it this time.
I started to get to bed around 11:30 Friday night after catching up on my TV shows. About 12:30 the on-call cell phone went off. It was minor and took 10 minutes to fix. 10 minutes after that was another phone call. 10 minutes later, I was done. 10 minutes after that was yet another phone call… Well… you get the point. This lasted until 4:30 in the morning.
Kiara was out of town, so I had to get up early to feed and water the animals, and let the dogs out. That meant about 4 hours of sleep Friday night. Saturday night, I ended up getting to sleep around 11:00 (after passing out on the couch first.) We have an automated process that checks the integrity of one of our RAID arrays. This starts at Midnight and generally runs until about 2:30 to 3:00 AM. It gives an update page every 15 minutes even if nothing wrong is found. What a crock! Well, Saturday night it took until 5 AM to finish. This means that I was woken up every 15 minutes between Midnight and 5 AM. I had to wake up enough to make sure that nothing was wrong before dozing back off for another 15 minutes. Gnah!
About 7 AM, I got another call to do more work. That means that I had about 5 hours of “napping” and 2 hours of sleep. Good God!
I slept fairly well Sunday night, but I did get paged a few times. I got to bed around 10 PM, and slept through until 6 AM. A good night’s sleep of total exhaustion. Kind of good, but I didn’t really recover all that much from the previous two nights.
I was supposed to hand off the cell phone Monday, but I couldn’t get into work because of the snow. That meant yet another night of being on call. Fortunately, the phone was quiet, but I had a severe case of insomnia. I didn’t get to sleep until a little after 1 AM, and I got up a little before 8 AM. Seven hours of sleep. Not quite enough, but liveable.
I’m really looking forward to tonight when I can get a good night’s sleep without being on call. It’s a good thing that I’m only on call for 1 out of every 4 weeks.
Ubiquitous Computing
Computers are everywhere. They are in everything. They control everything that we do in our daily lives. Somehow, I’m not amazed, frightened, or dismayed by this fact. Computers have been a part of my life almost non-stop since November of 1980. I even take a laptop with me on vacation, and I hardly go a day without reading email, browsing the Internet, doing work online, or working on something computer related.
One statement that I use to describe myself is, “I’m a computer geek down to the depths of my soul.” I love computers. They make me happy. Am I addicted? Yeah, probably. Can I go without computers? Yeah, for short (2-3 days) periods of time. It’s a nice break from technology to sit down with a good book, hang out with some friends, or do something else. However, I always come back to the computer for some form of enjoyment.
What do I do with computers? Pretty much everything. I build them. I repair them. I write software on them. I write short stories, books, D&D information, and blogs on them. I do web development. I play the occasional game. I chat with friends. I do homework, write essays, participate in classes, and do research online. About the only things that I don’t do are podcasting, webcasting, and video chat. Maybe someday, I’ll tinker with that technology, but it really holds no interest for me at the moment.
All-in-all, I love computers and everything that they have done for my life. It’s been a good experience so far, and I expect a great deal of improvement in the future.
Mudding Is Dead
I’ve had a suspicion for a while that MUDs are a thing of the past. The advent of Everquest that finally evolved into the latest incarnation of MMORPGs World of Warcraft has killed any text-based games that are out there. I love MUDs much more than graphical interfaces. I prefer to read well written descriptions, and picture in my mind what the author is describing over poorly generated graphics that are designed more for speed than quality. Sure, WoW is pretty, but it’s not as pretty as the images that my imagination comes up with.
What finally confirmed to me that MUDding is dead was a conversation that I had with my head creator on my MUD. He had gotten drawn into WoW, and has not logged into the MUD for quite some time. I knew that he had some personal problems, many kids, college, and work to take up his time. He’s done wonderful things for Spear of Insanity, so I wasn’t going to begrudge him his absence. I figured he would be back eventually. Now that he’s playing WoW, I’ve lost all hope of future development on my MUD.
I’m going to keep my MUD running. After all, the world is 90% done, and it’s still playable. The code is well developed, full of features, and very stable. There’s no harm in keeping it running. As a matter of fact, I checked, and the MUD has been running for 89 straight days without a hiccup. Granted, not many people have logged in during that time, but it’s still there.
Someday, I’ll have the time to go in and polish off that last 10% just to say that I have the world done. I’m not sure why I have the motivation to finish it off since no one is playing. I guess it’s because it has been an important part of my life since 1996, and I would like to say that I finished it even though it has taken more than a decade to do so.
R.I.P. MUDs. You’ll be missed.
Grassroots
Congress is trying to step on the first amendment rights of free speech by making blogging a “lobbyist endeavor” if you have more than 500 readers. I doubt that I’ll ever reach that number, but there are quite a few people out there that have that many (or more!) readers. With the new law that is proposed, anyone making political comments to 500 or more readers must register with Congress, and make quarterly reports to them.
This includes me. I’ve posted about politics here, here, and here. If, at any time in the future, I reach 500 or more readers, I suddenly become a “grassroots” political effort, and I have to register. This means that I need to remain wildly unpopular, stop commenting about politics, or become a lobbyist.
This stomps all over the first amendment, and should not be allowed. If you blog, think about politics, or just don’t think this is right, contact your senators and representatives now! We just can’t let this happen. It’s like getting permission from a school teacher to speak. We’re not in elementary school anymore! (and yes, I did contact my Senators regarding this proposed legislation.)
