September 2006 Archives
Myself: So, how are things going?
Me: Fine.
Myself: Just fine?
Me: Good...
Myself: Good?
Me: Yeah, good.
Myself: What's wrong?
Me: Nothing.
Myself: You can't talk about it, eh?
Me: Not really.
Myself: Why not?
Me: It wouldn't be "appropriate."
Myself: Oh...that thing again?
Me: Yeah.
Myself: Ugh...that sucks.
Me: It could be worse.
Myself: Sure, you could have a red hot poker in your eye.
Me: See...
Myself: Yeah, that really makes up for it...
Me: Not really, but I'll get by. It will blow over. Things will change.
Myself: Kinda stupid that you're writing about this in a public forum.
Me: Yeah, googlebot might narc on me. He's my number one reader.
Myself: You should know better.
Me: I do know better, that's why this is so vague.
Myself: Sure, if by "vague" you mean "only people who have absolutely no clue about anything you do wont know what you're talking about."
Me: Touché.
Myself: Don't go all Frenchy on me.
Me: Whatever. Don't we have any TV to watch?
Myself: Bones is still "recording." Wink wink.
Me: Riiiight. Oh well, time to get some shut-eye.
Myself: BRILLIANT!
Me: BRILLIANT!
This is my father's obituary from what I'm guessing is The Enterprise Record.
Richard Berry
ANDERSON -- Graveside services for Richard Lee Berry of Anderson, a victim of Monday's U.S. Plywood Novoply fire, will be conducted at 2 p.m. Thursday in the Anderson District Cemetery.
Ed Petersen will officiate. McDonald's Anderson Chapel is in charge of arrangements.
A native of California, Berry was born in Fresno Nov. 23, 1946. He was a resident of Shasta County for 20 years. He was 29.
Berry had been a Plywood employee for eight years. He was an Army veteran of Vietnam.
He leaves his wife, Mary of Anderson; one son, Patrick of Anderson; his father, Ernest of Summit City; his mother, Geraldine of Fresno; one brother, David of George Air Force Base in Victorville.
This article if from The San Francisco Chronicle and is reproduced in it's entirety without permission. It was originally published Wed., March 24, 1976.
Factory Blast Near Redding Kill 4 -- Smog Device Blamed
Redding
A dust explosion and fire killed four men and injured 11 others in a particle board factory near here early yesterday. A company spokesman blames it on a new air pollution control system.
"If we just had the old system, this wouldn't have happened, in my opinion," said Ed Shaw, operations manager for the U.S. Plywood Corp. "This wouldn't have happened three or four years ago."
The blaze destroyed most of the firm's Novoply plant; and company officials estimated damage at $9 million.
Shaw said sparks from a "rather minor" fire in a drier were sucked into the air pollution control system, designed to suck dust through pneumatic tubes into air bags.
An explosion in the air bag house was so powerful, Shaw said, it pushed burning material down the vacuum tubes to the forming line, where boards are formed from wood chips and glue.
All four bodies of the victims of the blast were found near the forming line, he said.
Three of the injured were flown to the St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco, where their condition was described as "very critical." Others were taken to a Chico burn center.
Although four bodies were recovered, no positive identifications had been made late yesterday. The Shasta county sheriff's office, however, identified four missing workmen as Alex Daskovitch, Barry Richard [sic], Bob Fraser and Jim Brock.
In addition to the 11 injured workmen, Rudy Zoellmer, 40, assistant chief f the Cascade Fire District, was hospitalized with a leg injury from falling debris.
The explosion and fire occurred at 12:58 a.m. while 50 workers were in the factory. One fireman said it was a "fantastic explosion," flames engulfing 30,000 square feet in 15 seconds.
Shaw said the blast will idle a force of 120 hourly workers and 23 supervisors.
An adjacent lumber mill and plywood plant were not damaged.
Our Correspondent
The worker incorrectly named as "Barry Richard" was Richard Berry, my father.
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make your own south park character
I would look like this:
Wherein I do battle with php-xslt and win.
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EFF turns turns the FOIA cannon on government surveillance
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sweet syndication plugin for rails
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roles, auth, rails -- redux
So, this weekend we went "camping" and by "camping" I mean we drove to a state park and setup a tent to sleep in. There were coolers filled with beer and annoying hippies who apparently couldn't afford to go to Burning Man so they decided to have a drum circle at 2 in the F-ing morning right next to our tent. Thanks a lot you stinking god damned hippies. I hope you have nightmares of Nixon kicking your puppy and/or kitten.
But never fear, there are pictures. Hooray! Pictures!
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confluence (the wiki) in higher ed
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yahoo shares some security todos
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rails session fu
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get rid of crusty sessions
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wherein I enter my "blue" phase
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how about that economy?
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there is a line...don't cross it
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new rails web server...must investigate
Cory and I will probably always disagree on this issue because he is taking an absolute position. Truth be told we are generally both on the same side, which is that DRM isn't that awesome for consumers. Cory typically takes the stance that DRM is bad. Period. End of discussion. We can stop talking now. It's a stand on principle and it's not a bad stand.
I'm just not as good at taking such rigorous stands on topics that I generally file under "entertainment." Now, Cory would rightly argue that his stance on DRM goes way beyond entertainment. He has the vision to not only see that but to take the stance. DRM is bad. Period. End of discussion.
In trying to persuade others to draw that same line in the sand he will often make an example out of iTunes. People generally don't see iTunes as a big, bad DRM monster. Cory can point out all the ways DRM in iTunes screws you, the consumer, over. Cory can try and move iTunes off the middle-ground and onto the "DRM is bad" side of the line. The end game being if enough people draw that line and put iTunes on the other side they will stop buying products with DRM from Apple. Apple will be forced to go to the content owners and beg them to be able to see the content with no DRM. The bells will ring, a new day will dawn and consumers will be free once again.
To me the iTunes issue is a bit fuzzier. Apple is the one selling the products with DRM...but they are not selling their own content. They are a middle man who got a license with certain terms. I'd be willing to bet that the first condition is "You slap some DRM on that crap before you push it out to the suckers our valued consumers." Now the argument becomes that Apple must fight for Cory's stance and try to sell DRM-free products by getting a different license from the content owners.
"Yeah, uh...we'd like to sell these tracks with no DRM because it's bad for consumers. Please? Pretty please? We know that you don't really care about these people and just want to extract every last dime of their expendable income, but they would really like to get music they don't have to buy multiple times and all that. Why are you laughing?"
Even that issue gets fuzzy because most people would point out, rightly, that Apple likes the DRM because it keeps people from using non-Apple hardware, and hardware (read: iPods) is where they are making a ton of money. Point conceded. (Disclosure: I own a small chunk of AAPL so I understand this point quite well)
So, now we get to the Bob Dylan issue which was Cory's latest volley. The crux of the issue was that 4 tracks from the iTunes store came as video files which cannot be converted (read: stripped of DRM) with the "burn and re-rip" trick. Cory mentioned that the CD, which is DRM-free, came with all the tracks and a bonus DVD with the videos. You see, you could rip the entire CD and get all the tracks with no DRM. Screw the man!
But today we learn that Amazon's listing was incorrect. Cory even says this is an important error. But what is so important about it? Well, the videos which are essentially 4 tracks of the album) are only on the DVD. The DVD is protected by DRM (the awesomely unbeatable CSS). No matter what store you go to, you get screwed with DRM. Now any place you can buy the CD is almost as bad as iTunes. The CD is still better because you can still rip the audio tracks to pristine DRM-free tracks that you can play on any device that your little heart desires.
Again, it's not like this error destroys Cory's argument against iTunes. He still has a line in the sand which says "DRM BAD!" so it doesn't really change much from his perspective on iTunes except that the people who sell plastic discs with bits encoded on them are doing things that are worse for consumers. Ironic considering these are the people they depend on for money...
I think it's a risky strategy on Cory's side. This was a failed attack in the war to push iTunes off the middle-ground. To some people this may strengthen the idea that iTunes is an acceptable middle-ground. It's very hard to sell absolute positions to the masses. Hell, I understand his position quite well and I still buy tunes and TV shows from the iTunes store.
This week work was...hectic, to say the least. Monday afternoon a system that I've been having trouble with for some time crashed again. Most of the important information was off the server, but one important piece remained. The resolution was in the hands of a vendor. Unfortunately for me, both hardware and software vendors were out to get me. Well, I'm sure they didn't care one way or another, but to me it certainly felt personal.
During this debacle I get the final word that I have my very own "department" at work. What's changed? Not a single thing. Same job. Same pay. Same everything. But now, I have a box on an org chart to protect. I am an official part of the giant state bureaucracy that makes sure things don't happen too quickly. I made the mistake of telling my family and friends, which led to a number of jokes mostly at my expense or at the expense of the idea of government.
I doubt I need to repeat this, but I'm an unapologetic "big government" progressive liberal. I think, even in these dark times, that it is the duty of government to accomplish thing that are larger than the individual. Higher education is certain above and beyond most individuals. Government is not some abstract concept, it is composed of people. These people are typically trying to do their best. Yes, I will acknowledge that some are just there to pick up a paycheck (which makes government different from private enterprise how exactly?) but at my job most people are there because they feel they are making a difference. They feel that what they do contributes to something larger. Something that is larger than the individual. Something that is larger than the sum of it's parts. These are the "good guys" and they are people that I'm incredibly proud to be associated with.
But back to the "debacle" (because really, it's all about me, me, me) ...it was literally one of those incidents that makes you question if your job is worth the perceived mental pain. I had composed a long and detailed e-mail to my boss asking to be removed from the project. After I finished it, I deleted it. It was just one of those things that I had to "say" in order to get to a place where I could get back into a mindset of solving the problem at hand. And solve the problem I did. The system in question is back online on new hardware and things are relatively smooth.
We all need to let off steam. I do it by composing e-mails that never get sent. I get an amazing amount of satisfaction by typing what I'm feeling. That nobody else ever sees it? Well, that's not important. Sometimes I don't know if I'm a "team player" or a "sucker."
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stop the inhannity!
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rails classes
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cal is a mad man
