During an absolutely magnificent thunderstorm the other night God, in his infinite wisdom, decided to hurl a lightning bolt at my parent's wireless router. Hardly surprising - she was quite the tart that router, willing to drop her firewall at the slyest wink. Security? If it wasn't too much of an inconvenience. Never met an ethernet cable she wasn't willing to plug into her port. She deserved to be smitten (for she so often was).
Anyhoo, ever the dutiful son I attempted to resolve the situation. This is my story...
What should have been an easy job (get new router, plug in cables, go to lunch) turned into a nightmare because my parents, unfortunately, are AOL users. It is my opinion that America Online software is good for one thing: using the free disks as beverage coasters. It is a behemoth, a buggy morass which sweeps in and infects every last nether region of a user's hard drive with an insatiable, malevolent lunacy. There is no escaping the AOL. Once it gets a grimy little foothold the only chance of reprieve is to format and reinstall.
The process of removing the faulty router sent it all of a twitter. "How will I report to the network? How will I get my five minute updates? How dare you!" It manifested it's distress with a persistent pop-up demanding a dial-up connection. When I say persistent I mean per-sis-tent! Clicking cancel resulted in the same pop-up exactly 1 second later. Clicking close resulted in the same pop-up exactly 1 second later. Clicking connect sent it off trying to dial to a non-existent phone line. It would try that two or three times before wising up and demanding some other method of connecting. The only solution was to ignore it, although from time to time it would reassert itself anyways.
Eventually, resigned to the fact that it wasn't getting any love with the dial-up pop-up it started throwing a bunch of scans my way. Virus scan, security scan - made me log in to a couple of services by intimating that something bad would happen to me if I didn't. I was trying to run the install disk that came with the router but AOL had so much going on that everything was proceeding at a snails pace. Eventually it became clear that the only way to move forward was to begin hunting down AOL processes and kill them off one by one, since the program flatly refused to close when I gave it the "exit" command. This resulted in what basically amounted to a thirty minute game of whack-a-mole. Eventually, as the haze cleared, Port Magic (AOL's "all your bases are belong to us" program) "found" the router and attempted to commandeer it, forcing me to put a bullet in the back of it's head. Once AOL was successfully vanquished the router installation software magically revived, finding an internet connection that had eluded it during the dark ages when the crap software ruled it's domain.
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. AOL drives you insane because you have no other option than to enter such a cycle hoping you can slip one past the software and get the desired results, in my case applying knowledge learned from 25 years of goofing around with computers. The only other solution I can think of is to actually read up on AOL, learn the software and this whole alternate reality of computer operation which just seems from my perspective to be sheer madness. I am frankly terrified by the prospect and I think only a "Timothy Leary of computer science" would give the notion an endorsement.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
The Daily Show on Alberto Gonzales
The Daily Show's "continuing coverage" of the Alberto Gonzales hearings. Funny stuff - you will be astounded by Gonzales' logical twists and turns! I guess there really is nothing to do but wait patiently for 2009, because we clearly aren't going to get any justice...
Sick puppy
By now you have probably heard about the Michael Vick indictment. Vick, the quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, has been indicted on charges that he was running a dog-fighting operation from a home he owned in Virginia.
The details regarding the treatment of these animals are brutal, and I won't recount them here. Suffice it to say I was absolutely shocked to read the particulars of this story, and that someone with Vick's financial means would be involved. It smacks of the work of desperate (possibly brain-damaged) men, and the fact that it was committed for such relatively paltry stakes makes it that much more heinous. If you want to read about the details, you can go to this article from Sports Illustrated.
I've had some type of pet for most of my life, and reading about Vick's treatment of the dogs he procured for his side business leaves me saddened and sickened. Granted, he has yet to be convicted on the charges, but it is clear that what happened on that property was the work of a psychopath. So far there are three witnesses linking Vick to the crime.
My tendency is to believe the best of people; that, given a difficult situation, ultimately most individuals will find it within themselves to fight for the greater good. Our history demonstrates this time and time again (although it's probably true that our villains don't get the same amount of press). In the end, for the most part, I'd like to think that decency prevails.
Our world, our very existence, is a thin skin of biological material spread across what is (for the sake of brevity) a relatively tiny ball of rock we call the planet Earth. We are insignificant and yet wholly fascinating at the same time. We continually exceed our biological design, producing art, and architecture, and a culture completely beyond what any one individual is capable. We are unique among all species on our planet. Our growth as a civilization is often advanced by a single member. We have theories that explain our universe. The latest particle accelerators promise to reveal the fundamental particles upon which all other matter in the universe is built. M-Theory, although not widely accepted, proffers an explanation of our universe and the multi-verse on the grandest scale. The human race has evolved, and will continue to evolve. Eventually, we will colonize beyond our planet. The survival of our species depends on it, given that the Andromeda galaxy is on a collision course with our own (several billion years from now).
And ultimately, there's always a Michael Vick, or an OJ Simpson, or a Chris Benoit, to bring us back to earth, to show us that deep down we are all animals, and we can never escape that fundamental aspect of our existence. These guys are an aberration, a pox on our society, and they need to be eradicated. Yeah, eradicated - they are so far removed from all that we find acceptable that I think they should be neutralized from spreading their filth to society at large. I say we throw them all in a big cage and let them tear each other apart. And that we place bets on who is going to win. My money's on OJ, and when it's all said and done we can send him back to pariah-golfer status in Florida and put the rest of them down.
The details regarding the treatment of these animals are brutal, and I won't recount them here. Suffice it to say I was absolutely shocked to read the particulars of this story, and that someone with Vick's financial means would be involved. It smacks of the work of desperate (possibly brain-damaged) men, and the fact that it was committed for such relatively paltry stakes makes it that much more heinous. If you want to read about the details, you can go to this article from Sports Illustrated.
I've had some type of pet for most of my life, and reading about Vick's treatment of the dogs he procured for his side business leaves me saddened and sickened. Granted, he has yet to be convicted on the charges, but it is clear that what happened on that property was the work of a psychopath. So far there are three witnesses linking Vick to the crime.
My tendency is to believe the best of people; that, given a difficult situation, ultimately most individuals will find it within themselves to fight for the greater good. Our history demonstrates this time and time again (although it's probably true that our villains don't get the same amount of press). In the end, for the most part, I'd like to think that decency prevails.
Our world, our very existence, is a thin skin of biological material spread across what is (for the sake of brevity) a relatively tiny ball of rock we call the planet Earth. We are insignificant and yet wholly fascinating at the same time. We continually exceed our biological design, producing art, and architecture, and a culture completely beyond what any one individual is capable. We are unique among all species on our planet. Our growth as a civilization is often advanced by a single member. We have theories that explain our universe. The latest particle accelerators promise to reveal the fundamental particles upon which all other matter in the universe is built. M-Theory, although not widely accepted, proffers an explanation of our universe and the multi-verse on the grandest scale. The human race has evolved, and will continue to evolve. Eventually, we will colonize beyond our planet. The survival of our species depends on it, given that the Andromeda galaxy is on a collision course with our own (several billion years from now).
And ultimately, there's always a Michael Vick, or an OJ Simpson, or a Chris Benoit, to bring us back to earth, to show us that deep down we are all animals, and we can never escape that fundamental aspect of our existence. These guys are an aberration, a pox on our society, and they need to be eradicated. Yeah, eradicated - they are so far removed from all that we find acceptable that I think they should be neutralized from spreading their filth to society at large. I say we throw them all in a big cage and let them tear each other apart. And that we place bets on who is going to win. My money's on OJ, and when it's all said and done we can send him back to pariah-golfer status in Florida and put the rest of them down.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
The continuing debacle in Washington, DC
Congress: P2P networks harm national security
I saw this over on C/Net. P2P networks are peer-to-peer networks, which basically allow people to trade or share files over the Internet. In order for this to happen, you have to install software and then tell that software which files you want to share. The government apparently wants to place restrictions on this type of software because they view it as a potential national security risk.
An easier solution would be not installing the software on computers which have classified information. Problem solved. I find it hard to believe that the people in charge of making legislation regarding technology know so little about it - actually, I don't, which is even sadder. And sadder still, the only way I can possibly attribute the slightest glimmer of intelligence to these people is by assuming they're in bed with the recording and motion picture industries, and this is simply a ploy to assuage piracy concerns. While I don't condone piracy eliminating useful technology simply because one possible use is sharing copyrighted materials is shortsighted to say the least.
C/Net is conducting a single question poll, Is Congress clueless about P2P and national security? You can follow the link and vote if you'd like - when I entered my "yes" vote there was a total of 764 votes, and the results were 97.8% "yes" versus 2.2% "no". The people have spoken!
I saw this over on C/Net. P2P networks are peer-to-peer networks, which basically allow people to trade or share files over the Internet. In order for this to happen, you have to install software and then tell that software which files you want to share. The government apparently wants to place restrictions on this type of software because they view it as a potential national security risk.
An easier solution would be not installing the software on computers which have classified information. Problem solved. I find it hard to believe that the people in charge of making legislation regarding technology know so little about it - actually, I don't, which is even sadder. And sadder still, the only way I can possibly attribute the slightest glimmer of intelligence to these people is by assuming they're in bed with the recording and motion picture industries, and this is simply a ploy to assuage piracy concerns. While I don't condone piracy eliminating useful technology simply because one possible use is sharing copyrighted materials is shortsighted to say the least.
C/Net is conducting a single question poll, Is Congress clueless about P2P and national security? You can follow the link and vote if you'd like - when I entered my "yes" vote there was a total of 764 votes, and the results were 97.8% "yes" versus 2.2% "no". The people have spoken!
Monday, July 23, 2007
Classic!
I came across these browsing around YouTube this afternoon. Steve Austin was the man when we were kids! The intro holds up pretty well, but the actual show itself? You be the judge - this one scared the crap out of me when I was a little kid:
Yeah, not so scary now, eh? The music is kind of groovy though - a little bit more funk going on there in the rhythm section than I remembered. Steve is a "Seventies-Man", so his first impulse is to attempt to communicate with Bigfoot. He ain't no pansy, though, despite the poofy hair and fancy jumpsuit, so when communication fails he rips his arm off! Chuck Norris would be proud!
The sound effects rock - like when they throw each other or a log or something ten feet and it sounds like an incoming artillery shell! I also like the fact that Bigfoot gets a lower-pitched, bassier "ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne" to compliment Steve. Fortunately, Steve and Bigfoot eventually do become friends...
Kudos to David Crosby for doing an excellent job as the menacing, potato-sack shaped Bigfoot...
This next one is awesome: Steve takes out the bad guys with an exploding bionic javelin! At one point the background music becomes so loud and overpowering that it even overwhelms the actors! It quickly segues into a jazzy piano solo as Steve gets his mojo going and gets the job done!
Steve takes on a robot in this last one. Lots of goofy sound effects! Steve wins by punching the robots face off, then impaling him on an i-beam (which for some reason the robot obligingly jumps directly onto)...
Saturday, July 21, 2007
A survey of area fast food, ad nauseam
Okay, I'm back with the fast food reviews. I had put this one off, because the last time I went there I left feeling sick. I didn't want to write a review based on that past experience - I wanted to be in the moment. I've taken a few (well deserved, I think) swipes at Taco Bell, but I went back, ate their food, and here's my review:
First of all, I won't do the Taco Bell extravaganzas - that is, the stuff with sour cream, guacamole, Crisco, saturated pig fat, battery acid, and two other items that make it into the seven layer something or other. I'll scout these places out, but I won't drink the Kool-Aid. Taco Bell has some evil products, dietetically, which I simply refuse to sample, based on personal taste and a generally non-suicidal outlook on life.
There was a time in my life when I frequented "The Bell" on a regular basis - happy times in my life, when I was unbelievably poor, my best friend was a stoner, and I was young and happy and maybe a couple of pounds overweight. Taco Bell complemented my lifestyle, because, as I said, I was young and poor and hanging out with potheads. We could buy a half dozen tacos for about what we could dig out of the seat cushions of our car. Several trips to Southern California and living for years in a town with a large Hispanic population have upped the ante somewhat, and Taco Bell has failed to call my bluff.
So, I ordered a couple of soft tacos. While not terrible I would certainly call them lacking. Lacking flavor, first of all - the flour tortilla is an over-powering mess, sapping any taste from it's interior. There is absolutely nothing gastronomic to be gained from this shell. It sucks any flavor from it's mediocre interior, leaving one with an equivalent mouthful of Wonder Bread. Corn tortillas (which I know you can get with the hard tacos - give them to us on the soft ones) aren't available.
The "meat": please don't call it that. The reality is some kind of paste or sauce, and referring to it as "meat" only emboldens the vegans (and I think we can all agree that doing so would be unfortunate). This is Chef Boyardee-style meat, a suitable substitute only if your mother didn't give a damn. It's cousins are Spam, and army rations, and tripe, and anything that sacrifices substance for style (big time - like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly).
Taco Bell is currently marketing their product as "fourth meal", an additional meal on top of a diet of fat and soda. Their goal, apparently, is to push those of you with eating addictions to the upper stratosphere of loser-dom. Shrewd and immoral marketing, in my opinion.
My soft tacos weren't so bad, although there was a consistency issue. Some had a good amount of the meat paste, some were significantly lettuce, and the amount of cheese varied. I would think, given the mechanical nature of the finished product there would be some across the board uniformity. I think, instead, that these are products assembled by men with little regard to their individual mass, given that those masses are nearly valueless.
The cheese is really horrible, with a thin white veil - it is apparent that it isn't fresh. I'm thinking either several days old or frozen. I think my second guess is more likely, although I wouldn't rule out a combination of the two. The lettuce is similarly "not of this earth", but that is par for the course. It's seen some bad times, but it's not talking...
You do, of course, always have the option of spicing up your meal with the hot sauce Taco Bell so graciously provides. I chose the "Fire" sauce, the hottest of the bunch, which I found to be the equivalent of ketchup on the "wussy to spicy" scale. Maybe my tolerance is too high, but this stuff is basically taco sauce for Queen Elizabeth...
I don't recommend Taco Bell, given that there are so many other similar places that offer something other than a "paste-based" dining experience. I do recommend that if you are an individual living on Mars or the Moon in the near future, once we have colonized, that you stop in for a simulated taste of what we once enjoyed on Earth...
First of all, I won't do the Taco Bell extravaganzas - that is, the stuff with sour cream, guacamole, Crisco, saturated pig fat, battery acid, and two other items that make it into the seven layer something or other. I'll scout these places out, but I won't drink the Kool-Aid. Taco Bell has some evil products, dietetically, which I simply refuse to sample, based on personal taste and a generally non-suicidal outlook on life.
There was a time in my life when I frequented "The Bell" on a regular basis - happy times in my life, when I was unbelievably poor, my best friend was a stoner, and I was young and happy and maybe a couple of pounds overweight. Taco Bell complemented my lifestyle, because, as I said, I was young and poor and hanging out with potheads. We could buy a half dozen tacos for about what we could dig out of the seat cushions of our car. Several trips to Southern California and living for years in a town with a large Hispanic population have upped the ante somewhat, and Taco Bell has failed to call my bluff.
So, I ordered a couple of soft tacos. While not terrible I would certainly call them lacking. Lacking flavor, first of all - the flour tortilla is an over-powering mess, sapping any taste from it's interior. There is absolutely nothing gastronomic to be gained from this shell. It sucks any flavor from it's mediocre interior, leaving one with an equivalent mouthful of Wonder Bread. Corn tortillas (which I know you can get with the hard tacos - give them to us on the soft ones) aren't available.
The "meat": please don't call it that. The reality is some kind of paste or sauce, and referring to it as "meat" only emboldens the vegans (and I think we can all agree that doing so would be unfortunate). This is Chef Boyardee-style meat, a suitable substitute only if your mother didn't give a damn. It's cousins are Spam, and army rations, and tripe, and anything that sacrifices substance for style (big time - like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly).
Taco Bell is currently marketing their product as "fourth meal", an additional meal on top of a diet of fat and soda. Their goal, apparently, is to push those of you with eating addictions to the upper stratosphere of loser-dom. Shrewd and immoral marketing, in my opinion.
My soft tacos weren't so bad, although there was a consistency issue. Some had a good amount of the meat paste, some were significantly lettuce, and the amount of cheese varied. I would think, given the mechanical nature of the finished product there would be some across the board uniformity. I think, instead, that these are products assembled by men with little regard to their individual mass, given that those masses are nearly valueless.
The cheese is really horrible, with a thin white veil - it is apparent that it isn't fresh. I'm thinking either several days old or frozen. I think my second guess is more likely, although I wouldn't rule out a combination of the two. The lettuce is similarly "not of this earth", but that is par for the course. It's seen some bad times, but it's not talking...
You do, of course, always have the option of spicing up your meal with the hot sauce Taco Bell so graciously provides. I chose the "Fire" sauce, the hottest of the bunch, which I found to be the equivalent of ketchup on the "wussy to spicy" scale. Maybe my tolerance is too high, but this stuff is basically taco sauce for Queen Elizabeth...
I don't recommend Taco Bell, given that there are so many other similar places that offer something other than a "paste-based" dining experience. I do recommend that if you are an individual living on Mars or the Moon in the near future, once we have colonized, that you stop in for a simulated taste of what we once enjoyed on Earth...
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
More photos
I'm getting a little obsessed with the camera. It's reached the point where I'm taking pictures every day, and uploading a dozen or so to the Flickr account (which you can access here). I purchased a 10x macro lens, very cheaply, and which I thought would be garbage (given the price), but which has ended up producing some great images, like the one above.
I'm still learning the art, so I apologize if you follow the link over to my photo page and end up disappointed. I'm planning on creating a set to showcase my favorite shots (which I will call something along the lines of "My Favorites") to highlight the photos I really like, and figure others will enjoy as well.
If you don't like my photos, and feel cheated, I'll offer you an alternative: my brother's Flickr page. Very nice stuff and an inspiration for me. Don't like that? Close your eyes and keep them shut...
Moon over my spammy
It seems my current email address has finally been discovered by the spammers. It started as a trickle - one or two a day - but lately I'm getting about a dozen daily. No penis enlargement ads yet, thankfully, because that usually signals the floodgates are open and it's time to get a new email address.
It started as investment recommendations, penny stocks someone was trying to pump. After that came offers for cheap pharmaceuticals (like I'm gonna buy prescription drugs from a bunch of scumbags). Lately the biggest offenders have been these stupid e-greeting cards ("Someone in your family has sent you an online greeting card!") which I can only assume are a phishing scheme.
Outlook does a decent job of picking up most of it but the greeting cards seem to get through. What irritates me the most is that I have a spam email address already - in fact I've had it for ten years now. I use it to fill out any online forms, make online purchases and sign up for online services. The spammers are welcome to write to me at that address, as often as they like, and when I'm really in the mood to read spam (like, never) I can go there and read it. It's a perfect arrangement - everybody should be happy.
Alas, this just isn't good enough for the spammers. They imagine somehow they are going to trick me into considering their crap longer than it takes to click "delete" - that I'm somehow going to think that offer for the penis enlarger is a testimonial from a friend whose name I just can't put to a face at the moment. They think I'm drunk, or stupid, or desperate.
We wouldn't tolerate someone breaking into peoples houses looking for some way to dishonestly liberate us from our money. But this is essentially what the spammers targeting my personal, not-for-spam email address are doing. They most likely got my address by putting spyware on the computer of someone else who has me in their address book for legitimate reasons. Actually, in a way what they are doing is even worse, considering the amount of personal data stored on most peoples computers (unless they break in and access your computer when doing so - that would be worse).
I understand that catching and prosecuting spammers can be difficult. Yet somehow, when some hacker breaks into a big corporations computer system the government marshals the resources to at least pursue the case. So why not simply treat the people perpetrating the spam as hackers? When caught, ban them from even using a computer for fifteen years. Fine them. Send them to jail. And how about a $1000 dollar fine per spam for the "businesses" using spam to advertise? Create a national "do not spam" database and any advertisements sent to an address on the list are subject to the fine.
It wouldn't stop the phishing but I think it's a step in the right direction. Does anyone have a problem with this?
****Update: Got this today - "Try Penis Enlarge Patch and even a horse will be jealous of your penis."
It has begun...
It started as investment recommendations, penny stocks someone was trying to pump. After that came offers for cheap pharmaceuticals (like I'm gonna buy prescription drugs from a bunch of scumbags). Lately the biggest offenders have been these stupid e-greeting cards ("Someone in your family has sent you an online greeting card!") which I can only assume are a phishing scheme.
Outlook does a decent job of picking up most of it but the greeting cards seem to get through. What irritates me the most is that I have a spam email address already - in fact I've had it for ten years now. I use it to fill out any online forms, make online purchases and sign up for online services. The spammers are welcome to write to me at that address, as often as they like, and when I'm really in the mood to read spam (like, never) I can go there and read it. It's a perfect arrangement - everybody should be happy.
Alas, this just isn't good enough for the spammers. They imagine somehow they are going to trick me into considering their crap longer than it takes to click "delete" - that I'm somehow going to think that offer for the penis enlarger is a testimonial from a friend whose name I just can't put to a face at the moment. They think I'm drunk, or stupid, or desperate.
We wouldn't tolerate someone breaking into peoples houses looking for some way to dishonestly liberate us from our money. But this is essentially what the spammers targeting my personal, not-for-spam email address are doing. They most likely got my address by putting spyware on the computer of someone else who has me in their address book for legitimate reasons. Actually, in a way what they are doing is even worse, considering the amount of personal data stored on most peoples computers (unless they break in and access your computer when doing so - that would be worse).
I understand that catching and prosecuting spammers can be difficult. Yet somehow, when some hacker breaks into a big corporations computer system the government marshals the resources to at least pursue the case. So why not simply treat the people perpetrating the spam as hackers? When caught, ban them from even using a computer for fifteen years. Fine them. Send them to jail. And how about a $1000 dollar fine per spam for the "businesses" using spam to advertise? Create a national "do not spam" database and any advertisements sent to an address on the list are subject to the fine.
It wouldn't stop the phishing but I think it's a step in the right direction. Does anyone have a problem with this?
****Update: Got this today - "Try Penis Enlarge Patch and even a horse will be jealous of your penis."
It has begun...
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Clash of the Titans
I'm not posting this because it's funny - it is - but because it's just plain sad. It's sad that this is what passes for news nowadays. This is the cream of the crop at Fox News.
I suppose it's not really fair to single out Fox when you can find this kind of garbage on just about any of the mainstream news channels. I do think Fox is one of the worst but maybe that's my political axe grinding. What really bothers me is that this (Fox, CNN, etc.) is where so many people get the majority of their news.
There's only one solution as I see it: someone needs to start a 24-hour wrestling channel, so the people who are attracted to this stuff are sufficiently distracted, and go back to just not watching the news, because it's boring.
It just might save America...
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