Matt may be pushing some SQL work my way
Posted on 2005-06-29 at 08:03
That'd be cool. I could use the side work, for sure. It'd be easy enough to do some work in the mornings for his company then go on to work at my current local client. The extra money would be a boon.
I want my zombie dingoes
Posted on 2005-06-29 at 08:02
Scientists at the prestigious Safar Centre have succeeded in bringing a dead dog back to life. So. Very. Cool.
System Soap Opera
Posted on 2005-06-29 at 08:01
When last we'd left our troubled hero, he'd been having some problems with his last system so he purchased a new one from Monarch Computers.
The Monarch system came and our handsome protagonist promptly installed Ubuntu Linux thereon. Though the install worked, the networking card did not. Undefeatably, he pressed onward, trying a different distribution of Linux on the new box. This time, Fedora Core 3 proved the better distro for the network card.
Alas, Fedora Core 3 was not up to the task of handling our hero's spiffy new video card, since it was so cool and new as to be considered alien technology. Though such a setback would discourage a lesser man to the point of suicide or mowing the lawn, it was not so with our man.
Fighting the valiant fight, he downloaded and installed Fedora Core 4. This proved a better choice. The video card, while still considered alien and cool to the newer distro, was better accepted. The network card still worked. The system was not Ubuntu (our hero's linux distro of choice) but it was usable for a short time while he fought his Ubuntu foes.
Knowing that the blog must go on, he opened the text editor and added the very entry upon which your eyes are now tranfixed and to which you current sit agog.
But all is not as well as it seems. Our hero's newest distro, Fedora Core 4, has proved itself better than Fedora Core 3, but the resolution on the system is still unacceptably hovering around 1024x768 instead of the required 1280x1024. What will out hero do? How will he rescue this system from lameness? Who will bother to have read this far? Tune in next blog to find out....
A random religious note: Kuan Yin
Posted on 2005-06-20 at 08:01
Kuan Yin ("She who hears our prayers") is the Chinese goddess of mercy, adapted into Buddhism in the form of one of her many transformations, Avalokitesvara. Also referred to as "great mercy and pity", "Salvation from woe", and "The self-existent one with a thousand arms and eyes". Some scholars of world religions have suggested that the Virgin Mary is a Western adaptation of Kuan Yin; there are marked similiarities but it would be difficult to establish a defensible historical connection. A connection between Kuan Yin and the shared human needs of mankind in general, however, is obvious but of little value to authentic scholarship.
"She", until some time in the twelfth century, was a "he"; but this kind of switch is not unusual in Eastern iconography. She is most often represented as a handsome, gracious woman dressed in mostly white, flowing or otherwise beautifully draped, hooded garments. However gracious, she also communicates enormous "power"---sometimes in subtle, more often in obvious (multiple heads, hands, weapons, etc.) ways. In this image she holds the vase with the "holy water" of life and mercy, which she abundantly disperses upon the faithful in response to prayer. She often rides a lion or tiger which suggest her absolute dominion over the powers of nature. That is, if she can dominate the most powerful of beasts, she can control any force of nature. There are literally thousands of forms of this goddess and more being created even today.
Creating a dynasty
Posted on 2005-06-16 at 08:01
I don't care which side of the political fence you are on, this is simply wrong! In short, it's a proposal in congress that seeks to repeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution. In case you are unclear about what the 22nd Amendment is....
U.S. Constitution: Twenty-Second Amendment - Presidential Tenure
Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Section 2. This Article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.
I've already written my congress-critters with my opinion on the subject. I think it's worth your time to do the same. You can't complain that they never do the Wil of the People if the people never make their will known.
Macromedia Flash and x86_64
Posted on 2005-06-15 at 08:02
Macromedia should be ashamed. They have not yet compiled an x86_64 bit version of their popular Flash player. Why? Because 64 bit Windows just got released. Nevermind that 64 bit Linux has been out for a loooong time and forget that Macromedia claims (falsely given the evidence) to be a friend to the Free Software community. They are not. I cannot believe they cannot spend the trivial time it would take to recompile their own source code for a 64 bit platform. Ridiculous.
Social Engineering
Posted on 2005-06-15 at 08:01
Sometimes the most interesting and effective hacks have nothing to do with a keyboard or mouse. This one got found out, but probably not before the hacker made some moolah. Simple and effective. I like its evil elegance.
Indiscriminate Object Fabrication
Posted on 2005-06-14 at 08:02
It's the way of the future. I look forward to a day when we all have CNC fabricators on our desks and to get a new desk all we have to do is get the binary schematic for the design and set our machines to fabricating. The elimination of scarcity will forever change the landscape of humankind. Think it's too sci-fi? Well it ain't.
I'm a freak...
Posted on 2005-06-14 at 08:01
...but if you're reading this blog, you already knew that. Here's why I'm a freak today. We bought these new cordless phones to replace some dying phones around the house and all I can think is "keep that air poison away from me, man!" Must repeat to myself, "Cordless phones do not cause cancer...".
Blind Tom Wiggins (1849-1908)
Posted on 2005-06-11 at 08:01
"What was he? Whence came he, and wherefore?"
Another installment of funny
Posted on 2005-06-10 at 08:03
Just went to the VWC RelSt website
Posted on 2005-06-10 at 08:02
They had some quizes on all the big world religions. I smoked em! Is that the best you can do, Dr. Wansink?!? Challenge me, old man, that I may take your crown!
Today's slogan
Posted on 2005-06-10 at 08:01
UFO's are the new Air Force.
Who you be?
Posted on 2005-06-08 at 08:01
The world according to my website logs:
- I average 22 visitors per day for an average of 4.72 MB of bandwidth per day on average.
- My paper on Milton's Satan is the most popular page (after the index page, at least).
- I've had visitors from 50 different countries and 47 different US states.
- Outside the US, China is my number one fan (accounting for 1.53%, or 317, of my visitors).
- Of the states, apparently my number one fan is Georgia. Why? I dunno. I'd have thought it was Virginia, but that's only number 4 on the list.
- The top search phrases that bring people to my site are "Milton's Satan", "Greyhawk Map", "Yaldaboath", and "Flickering Eyelid". Interestingly, though, "Dungeon's and Dragons Satan's Game" is pretty high on the list as well. LOL!
- IE still accounts for the bulk of my traffic (Around 45% or so), but Firefox is 10.93% of it, and the rest is made of of variations on Mozilla, Opera, and some download utilities.
- Linux accounts for 8.08% of my traffic, while the Mac accounts for 2.44%. SunOS and FreeBSD are represented as well, but the vast majority of my traffic is from Windows-based boxen.
Moon
Posted on 2005-06-07 at 08:02
Gliding o'er a simple line
and floating toward her home
The fair faced Luna, aquiline,
Has wandered thus alone.
Breathing life in every man,
from savage to savant.
With each wax and with each wan,
thy visage we avaunt.
To legend, lore and mytheme all
thy globed form gave birth.
And yet each night that form doth fall
below the lowly earth.
Joshua, in vaunted tower,
did bid thy bulk be still.
And shaken by thy mystic power
"the mariner hath his will."
In Thoth, thy son, was time thus reined.
And through thy cycling walk
was future's fortune therein gained
---Urania's tongueless talk.
Yet man now seeks to bind,
through mathematics grand,
thy ellipse path as traced behind
thy transcendental hand.
Kepler and Copernicus
have seized thy conic course
and through the beaded abacus
have bound thy boundless force
The sacred tales of midnight dance,
which science did supplant,
gave thee a giant's countenance
yet now thou seemst an ant.
Perhaps 'tis true that Thor should run
from circling blades that sciences spin,
They've deadened Luna---her form undone---
to deconstruct the myths within.
In days of yore thy wizard's spell
would earth's clear waters reprimand,
enjoining tides to sink and swell
and march unto thy stern command.
Neptune, too, then bent his ear
to hear thy waves crash louder;
The foam and strand, afar and near,
crushing rock to powder.
Lifting high my telescope
and watching as you sink,
I howl a simple hymn of hope
that man might stop to think.
For should he mull and ponder long
about these things he's done,
then he, like me, might raise a song
to lift thee o'er the sun.
For unlike us who'll fade away,
as nature runs her race,
thy corpus yet will always stay
to grant the tides their pace.
-Tom Caudron
-Inspired by my apathy toward humanity (it was a bad semester of college!)
Showcasing my apathy
Posted on 2005-06-07 at 08:01
I've added another poem to my poetry section. This one was written a while back, when I was in college and I was not pleased with humanity...I was also on an archiac language kick. Anyway, I wrote it, so there it is.
Positive Suicide Notes
Posted on 2005-06-06 at 08:01
When people commit suicide, their notes are always sad and depressing. If I were ever to write a suicide note, it'd be funny like "I wanted to kill the sexiest man alive"
Johnny Linuxseed
Posted on 2005-06-02 at 08:02
I added Meghan to the list of Linux converts this past weekend. Her system is now running Ubuntu 5.04. She is pleased. I am pleased. You should be pleased too. :)
New computer!
Posted on 2005-06-02 at 08:01
I ordered a new system. AMD 64 bit 3700 CPU, 2 GB RAM, 75GB 10kRPM SATA HDD, Nvidia 6800 Extreme. Oh happy day!
Project Blue Book Archive
Posted on 2005-06-01 at 08:01
The Project Blue Book Archive is something I may have linked to before but, in case I've not yet mentioned it, I will now. It's a project that Will is heading that posts the declassified Project Blue Book documents to a searchable web site. Highly recommended if you have any interest in reading what the government has to say about UFOs.