May 2003 Archives
Looks like I never posted the link to the The Daily Show's clip of Bush v. Bush. It's quite a hoot. In case the link ever goes bad, Lisa Rein has an archive of it in various forms.
Finding Nemo was excellent, as you would expect from Pixar. Go see it, unless you hate movies with lots of kids, and then wait a while or catch a show after 9pm.
Update: It seems the response to Finding Nemo has been overwhelming positive, even among the normally critical Pirates. It even has a Fresh rating of 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. Salon Movie Reviews hasn't weighed in yet, but I'm sure they'll hate it ;-)
The one critical point I've seen so far is that it may be too scary for young children. This is a valid point and something that a parent should probably take into consideration. It deals with real life topics, like death. But death is hardly something Disney stays away from in movies. So if you thought Bambi was okay, with giant forest fires and hunters, I doubt Finding Nemo with it's blood-thirsty sharks will do too much damage to your child's fragile little mind. But then, I don't have any children, so what do I know?
Francine Kiefer back in 2001 wrote in the Christian Science Monitor about how Greenspan convinced Clinton that the deficit had to be taken care of, in the Pulp Fiction sense.
He came to agree with a key interest-rate argument of Mr. Greenspan, whom he'd greeted at the governor's mansion in Little Rock, Ark., soon after his election. According to the Fed chief, lower deficits meant less government borrowing, which in turn meant more available capital for private borrowers, lower interest rates, lower mortgage payments, lower credit-card bills, more jobs - pretty much better everything.
Better everything? That sounds too good to be true! I'd like to have been a fly on the wall when Greenspan tried to talk some sense into President Bush.
AG: Dude, didn't you see what Clinton did?
GB: Yeah, but Rove said I couldn't do anything that Clinton did. I've got to distance myself from him.
AG: Well, the economy is in the crapper, the deficit is going back up, you ignored diplomacy in the middle east and Korea that will cost us billions, and you stance on the environment is freaking people out and will probably cost the economy untold billions -- perhaps even trillions in the long run. Yup, you've done a fine job of not doing what Clinton did. Cut the deficit, it's the least you could do.
GB: Sorry, no can do good buddy. Rove said tax cuts are my ticket to ride in 2004.
AG: Good luck, it's the economy stupid.
GB: Don't call me stupid.
AG: I'm outta here...I'm too old for this sh*t...
But just think about what $330 billion can really buy these days.
Participants thoughs are in italics.
AG: Oh you use that? That stuff sucks. My foo is strong!
HV: Huh? Were you talking to me? Maybe he'll see that I'm busy and let it go.
AG: God I can't believe how bad the browser you use sucks. Macs suck in general though so I'm not surprised. Seriously, my foo rules! Check me out!
HV: Yeah, they sure do. Please Lord, let that end the conversation
[pberry@skull Mail]$ ls -lh -rw------- 1 pberry pberry 9.7M May 29 11:43 docbook -rw------- 1 pberry pberry 9.8M May 29 10:49 fink -rw------- 1 pberry pberry 3.7M May 29 11:32 PB -rw------- 1 pberry pberry 8.2M May 29 08:34 smarty [pberry@skull Mail]$ rm smarty [pberry@skull Mail]$ rm PB [pberry@skull Mail]$ rm fink [pberry@skull Mail]$ rm docbook
Whoops, guess I should have checked those folders a little more frequently...
They can't even be bothered to make a proper anarchy sign...but while we're on the subject of graffiti, I thought this one was pretty funny:
I've gotten all the scores from Josh and updated the graph to include all the bowlers. I'm slowly learning more and more about gnuplot. If you know how to label points let me know. I know it's the manual, I just haven't found it yet ;-)
Jonathan Chait at TNR gives us some deficit information.
"All the lawyers are hot!"
Hunter S. Thompson has another Page 2 column out today. As always,
"Dallas without Nowitzki is like Sacramento without Chris Webber. Losers."
Again, sorry Anna. Looks like it's neither of our years.
I can live with San Antonio winning the NBA championship though. Why? Because they aren't the Lakers. That and they have a group of good guys. Tim Duncan is not only a quality basketball player, but he isn't a punk. Or at least he doesn't get caught in public being a punk and that will have to be good enough. So for the rest of this season it's "Go Spurs" with no exclamation mark, but rather a sigh of resignation.
Looks like Amazon found out how to get UPS to deliver before they ship! I smell a patent coming...
Thomas Friedman op-ed at the NYT:
But we also need to tell ourselves the truth. We constantly complain about the blank checks the Saudis write to buy off their extremists. But who writes the blank checks to the Saudis? We do ? with our gluttonous energy habits, renewed addiction to big cars, and our president who has made "conservation" a dirty word.
Another scathing op-ed from Mr. Globalization. We're addicted to Saudi oil, but we are in denial. Bush has some hard questions to answer. I just hope somebody asks him...
From "I Love Movies!" at bobanddavid.com:
"Note to the Wachowski brothers: Less yappy, more slappy? no nappy."
Way too much. Don't worry, it seems to be the price no matter where you shop for houses. Oh sure, there are probably tons of deal in Gnome Alaska. But I can't move to Gnome! The dogs don't have the fur to live up there.
We've already been sniped on one house so far. But we are in escrow now. All we have to do is survive the inspections, the appraisals, and the mountain of paperwork that needs to be signed. Since I work with lawyers, I feel duty bound to actually read these documents. Okay, I work with lawyers and I could be signing my our life away. But, so what if I read them? It doesn't mean I really, fully, understand all the possible implications of what these documents mean. I even signed a document that explained what the Paperwork Reduction Act (aka US Code Title 44, Chapter 35) was. This of course came after 30 other sheets of paper that I had to sign stating that I understood that I had no privacy and that I wasn't getting ripped off...I think. But not before I signed a piece of paper saying that I understood my privacy rights. Or rather, that they didn't exist any more and that my name, address, and phone number would soon be scribbled on the bathroom stall of every junk mailer that targets new home owners with their sleazy, and non-sleazy, wares.
But I'm not bitter. I'm scared out of my mind!
Although now I finally get to learn the difference between Mission and Ranch style interior decoration. Moving starts on the 12th of July, tentatively pending all the crap from above.
Three new posts in the Therapy archive. All were written in early 2002, when I was at Freestyle, spending most of my time being an unhappy ball of stress.
Company Glue is indirectly about Kim. She held us together for so long and I don't want anybody to forget that. Ever.
Client X is just another client horror story. They are a dime a dozen, I know. But this one is mine.
In Business Logic I try and get inside the head of an MBA, and fail.
Enjoy.
I have a new category called Therapy. My first post is something that I wrote in June of 2002. You may have already seen it, but it never made the transition from Radio along with all of my other posts.
I was just going through the comments at Electrolite on a post about the lack of RSS feeds for some weblogs. A lot of the weblogs that Patrick Hayden wanted feeds for were on Blog*Spot. Then I had an idea. Blog*Spot let's you pay them money to get rid of ads on a weblog, but what if they let you pay for an RSS feed for the site instead?
I thought that surely the people in charge of Blog*Spot had already thought of this, but on the off chance that they hadn't I thought I would send them a quick email. I couldn't find an e-mail address at Blog*Spot, Blogger or Pyra. So, if you happen to know anybody there, and if they hadn't already heard this idea, could you pass it along?
Update: Aaron provided me with enough info to send some feedback. Thanks!
I'm still getting the hang of gnuplot. It's "full featured" to be sure. Which is just another way of saying you really need to RTFM before you start using it.
Yet Another Server Move. Someday I'll find a stable home for the patandkat.com box. I wonder how much a T1 in Chico runs?
AP via SFGate.com: "I've just been thinking about what I want to do, when I want to do it," he said. "I believe deeply in this president, his policies and the man. But there comes a time in public service when you have to decide when it's time to go."
Whoa. I didn't exactly see that one coming. No matter though, who ever replaces him will still be an impenetrable wall as well.
The reviews on The Matrix Reloaded are all over the place. The spectrum is running from hate, to love, to complete and total indifference. Kat and I saw it for the first time last night. I say that it will be my first viewing, but I should point out that it will probably be Kat's last. She didn't dig it, at all. She didn't like it so much she was afraid to say that she didn't like it.
I'm going to see it a second time before I form any solid opinions on it. I spent so much of my first viewing with my jaw on the floor that I feel that I missed so much of the movie. So I guess you can say that I've formed a solid opinion on the action and special effects. ;-)
I know that I had bought into the hype, and that could have been a bad thing. When the first Matrix hit, nobody knew what was coming. It flew under the radar and dropped a big, old laser guided bomb on everybody though. Reloaded didn't have a chance to do that and I feel that people may be holding that against it.
Anyway, that being said, I will have to check it out again and pay a little more attention to some of the finer points of the story.
The word that you seldom hear, restore. You hear about backups all the time. If you read about how to do backups, you read about how important restores are all well. Let's face it, what good are backups if you can't restore them?
Before I did a clean install of OS X on Kat's G4 Cube, I backed up her documents to my laptop. Don't worrry, there is no disaster story coming. But I did forget to restore her documents back after OS X was installed. She was poking around today looking for her resume and couldn't find it. It instantly dawned on me that I forgot that critical step of restoring her files.
After I dumped them back, she went poking around through her old files. You usually always find something interesting. In this case she found a scan of a postcard that she had sent me a long time ago.
Lawrence Lessig is asking for help in finding another sponsor for the Eric Eldred Act.
Please help.
Linux is on the way out, at my house anyway. I no longer need it for NAT. I bought a cheap WAP for that. The problem is my mp3 collection is "stuck" on an ext3 drive. So, and here is where the plan goes just a bit off track...
I buy Kat an iBook. I buy myself a 15GB iPod. I give the 10GB iPod to Kat. I buy a 200GB HDD and a Firewire enclosure. I move all the mp3s over to the new Firewire drive and hook it up to Kat's G4 Cube, which will be replaced by the iBook. The linux box gets Windows installed and given to my mom, who is saddled with an old AMD 350MHz machine which can't even do RealVideo streams.
All that just to get rid of a linux box. It seems a bit...much.
AMENDMENT XXV
Passed by Congress July 6, 1965. Ratified February 10, 1967.
Note: Article II, section 1, of the Constitution was affected by the 25th amendment.
Section 1.
In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
Section 2.
Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
Section 3.
Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
Section 4.
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
So a new version of SmartyPants is out from Daring Fireball. Typography aside, I was having some problems getting it to work with Brad's MT-Textile. I'm not down with OPP (Other People's Perl). MT-Medic to the rescue.
All kinds of bad things were going on. MT-Textile was not seeing that SmartyPants was installed, even though SmartyPants was working through the MT template tags. MTAmazon was also having some errors finding it's config file, even though it's been generating the correct associate tags. That was easy enough to fix though.
The real trouble was why the plug-ins weren't registering with MT as global filters correctly. I still don't know what the real problem was, but I fixed it. I removed every plug-in I had installed. I moved them back in, one at a time, checking with MT-Medic after each one was moved back in. Then everything was fine. Voodoo freakin' magic. I hate voodoo "fixes."
<pberry> A little bit softer now... <pberry> A little bit softer now... <pberry> A little bit softer now... <pberry> A little bit softer now... <pberry> A little bit softer now... <pberry> A little bit louder now... <pberry> A little bit louder now... <pberry> A little bit louder now... <pberry> A little bit louder now... <pberry> A little bit louder now... <pberry> Heyyyyyaaaaaaaayyyyyyaaaaayyyyyaaaaaaa <pberry> Heyyyyyaaaaaaaayyyyyyaaaaayyyyyaaaaaaa <abertsch> SILENCE EART FOOL! <pberry> You know you make me want to SHOUT! <pberry> Wait! Wait! Don't tell me... abertsch has never seen Animal House <abertsch> Obviously. <abertsch> So what follows is, "What does SHOUT have to do with Animal House?" <pberry> Man...the youth of America... * pberry is officially old
What do you mean "never seen Animal House?"
Yeah, yeah...I'm a little late to the game. Sue me.
There is no way I could ever do what Mark did and give people links for shares. The only way I'm going to get my share price up is to submit more entries to boingboing. That being said I do have 3 Top 100 Incoming Links. Which blew my mind.
I'm not sure how most people deal with their "blogroll" or whatever you want to call it. But I read every site in my Das Blogenroller every day using NetNewsWire. I assume that people who go through the trouble to put a link in their list have read that site at least once, and probably read it on at least a semi-regular basis. I know that I have a few regular readers, who are no doubt wondering where the comments have gone. Don't worry, they'll be back soon. I'm trying to make them more like Mark's.
I'm such a fan boy it should make you want to retch. I've retched twice already today. What can I say? It's not bulimia. At least, I don't think it is. He has good ideas, implements them, and then usually shows other people how they can use his good idea. When I put it that way, it doesn't sound so bad does it? Brad Choate is another person who is just like this. He typically gives his ideas to people in the form of MT-plugins.
Good ideas are hard to come by. I work around people who come up with good ideas all the time. I'm hoping that they will rub off on me. Then I'll turn them all in to the FBI. That'll teach 'em.
Yes. That was a joke. Ramble off...
I'm sick of it all. Screw full-on CSS layouts. I blast my stereo in your CSS Zen Garden! They are more trouble than they are worth at this point in the game.
I'm going back to tables for basic layout structure. Why? Because I can't seem to get CSS layouts to work with images. It seems silly I know. But a div will not constrain an image, or rather a div will not expand to the width of its content. A table data cell will expand to the width of its content.
So, there it is.
I am offering 0 of the following files for download:
- Eminem-Lose_Yourself.mp3
- New_Order-Temptation.mp3
- RedHotChiliPeppers-Californication.mp3
Don't worry, there are other "stickers" you can use...
ranchero software has released NetNewsWire 1.0.2 for Mac OS X. It's a must have. Buy it. Buy it now!
Sahara Hotnights from Scandinavia rock pretty hard. EMusic says:
Sizzling and ferocious, the songs on the record represent the pinnacle of the band's blend of timeless punk rock basslines, hard rock guitars, and catchy but tough pop melodies.
The album they are referring to is Jennie Bomb.
People who think that the government will never abuse its power need to remember Senator Joe McCarthy. People who think that McCarthy was right and there were communist spies all around should know that he found none of them with his little dog and pony show. All he did was ruin peoples lives and even drove one man to suicide.
Remember this while the current administration tries to make the "PATRIOT Act" permanent.
Mark Morford from has some interesting perspectives, as per usual, about the San Francisco/Bay Area and how we differ so greatly from, well, the rest of the entire United States for the most part.
But overall, in a nation where innovative, even anarchic ideas about gender and belief and the violent insult that is our sanctimonious oil-drunk warmongering government are not only frowned upon but also openly mocked and threatened and sneered at, San Francisco still reins as the funk epicenter, the winking liberal stronghold, the ecstatic 69 to the nation's droning missionary position.
Ari Fleischer continues to take a ton of heat for the little stunt that President Rove Bush pulled for his victory speech. Good. It's good that he's taking heat for this.
(AP Photo/Donna McWilliam)
That's pretty much how it went all night for the Dallas Mavericks. They got tooled. Only a fourth quarter run against the Kings second string got them anywhere near to a respectable score. The game wasn't as close as the score may have shown. The Kings led by wide margin for most of the game.
Sorry Anna, but it may not be your year.
Charles Kimball was one of the guests on Fresh Air Monday night. He talked about how it might not be such a hot idea to send in the Southern Baptists, of which he is an ordained minister, right after we've taken over and start trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.
Ya think?
That being said he was one of the most well reasoned faith based speakers I've ever heard. We need more people like him.
"Want to help me repossess a car?"
This isn't a phrase you expect to here while on vacation. But this is exactly what Kat and I heard one day while we were in Port Hedland, Western Australia. Saying that it isn't something you are expecting to hear is a bit like saying that Punch Drunk Love isn't your typical Adam Sandler movie. But again, it's what happened. Enough jibba jabba! How did this come to be?
Sometimes there isn't really much one can say about the sidewalk in front out of office...
Pre-order now for June 3 shipping...
Today Ren made the mistake of offering to help do a little "chrome design" for ye olde weblog. Silly dog! I had witnesses too. You're stuck now Ren. As long as this site looks like crap, it's your fault.
;-)
Reuters has the story about how the girl whose father sued to get her out of reciting the pledge because it violated the Constitution is still saying the pledge. The quotes from the school administrators scare me.
Let's ignore, for just a moment, the fact that the 9th Circuit ruled that it did violate the Constituion. David Gordon, superintendent for the Elk Grove school district let loose with this:
Gordon says the pledge, with the words "under God," should stay because of its historic importance.
Because of it's historical importance? Which would be what? That it was inserted by an act of Congress and not in the original? Hope he wasn't a history teacher before he started running things in Elk Grove.
It gets better, or worse depending on your view point.
"She says the pledge, oh yes," David Gordon, superintendent for the Elk Grove school district, said about the daughter. "Her mother is on record as supporting the pledge."
Okay, now you can stop forgetting about the 9th Circuit decision.
What in the world is going on? First it's really lame to drag an 8 year old girl through this mess. Kids are mean enough to each other without giving them ammunition. "She's an atheist, she's going to H-E-double toothpicks!" Second, the edited pledge clearly crosses the line between Church and State. Stop complaining and remember the true values that this nation were built on. Sure we used to be Puritans, but then we wrote a Constitution and a Bill of Rights. Get used to it, a lot of us are going to start taking back the rights that have slowly been slipping away.
"Rip.Mix.Burn" was never not legit.
Go Steve! This is actually a good interview, unlike a lot of fluff ones that seem to go around. Good questions and interesting answers, and well...a little fluff. Oh to be the fly on the walls of 1 Infitine Loop.
I was there for day one of Yahoo! Mail. Of course it wasn't really Yahoo!'s own thing, they had bought Rocket Mail or some other webmail based product. It was a great address to put down in all those annoying webforms that made you put in a valid e-mail address so that they could mercilessly send you solicitations later, not unlike most offline retailers who get your shipping address and do the same thing.
Then there was real spam. The typical, brother/sister/mother/dog triple-X stuff, toner cartridges, home mortgage, et al. All told I racked up about 50-75 messages a day.
I know, it could have been worse. Then Yahoo! added SpamGuard and it sucked. I don't know what they have done to it, but now it seems to work really well. Now I can mark a message that I think is spam. Now, here is the catch, I signed up for a lot of that e-mail, sort of. I gave them my address and it was in the days before privacy policies and the concept of opt-in lists. Even so, I think it would be unfair of me to report these messages as spam. They are legitimate companies trying to make a buck and sure enough at the end of every message they gave me the chance to opt-out, usually with just the click of a url. Most real spammers seem to have dropped that option since it triggers points in SpamAssassin which they likely can't afford.
Now my Yahoo! Mail inbox is under control. The pr0n spam gets caught by SpamGuard and I've gotten off all the lists that I had been put on that I don't want to be on anymore. Did I really sign up for eCoupons? Now I get 2-3 messages a day and I can find the NASA JPL Lab e-mail and Motley Fool Newsletter without having to wade through a stuffed inbox.
Don't. Don't give me that look. Oh boo hoo, Pat can't find the real email in the sea of junk. Use filters you git. Serves you right for giving out a real address. Serves you right for using webmail. Use procmail, mutt, mailx, emacs. I have three other main accounts that I get e-mail at where I use a combination of Apple's Mail.app, procmail, and SpamAssassin. I'm just talking about one account that I let get out of control and how I got it back under control.
Well, there it is.
