Category Archives: Rants

Especially when I have so much work to do. We're still painting our 1st floor of our house and we have three rooms left. I have one hell of a head cold with Aches, head aches and Stuffy Sinuses. Attempting to sleep does not help…

To make life more entertaining, I was supposed to go to get blood drawn for a Physical and I couldn't since I couldn't concentrate enough to drive. Now I have to reschedule that and take more time off from work.

Painting the house is coming along slowly. Our living room and dinnete area is nearly complete. Now we have two more rooms and we're all done. The painting isn't so hard but plastering the cracks is. This house was built in the early fifty's and the walls are a combination of Plaster over mortar over wood slats. So, you get small cracks in odd places which is easy to seal with Spackling compound (in this case DAP DryDex Spackling) and some drywall joint tape (also by DAP) and sand smooth when dry. 

BTW: In My opinion, Home Depot really needs to fix their web site. Searching for something on it is next to impossible and I can't find ANY reference to the two DAP products on it using the search. It was as bad as attempting to find these things in the store.

Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Move Along" by The All-American Rejects from the "Move Along " Album.
 

When I'm online, I browse several News sites such as CNN. Going there today I see: "Homeland Security accepts fake ID"

"No real Story" I thought until I open the link and see:

"A man using a fake identification card was able to enter the Homeland Security Department headquarters in Washington, he said, even though the United States government considers the type of Mexican-issued card he used invalid."

It's moments like that makes me worry. This was the DHS Headquarters! Don't they Train their own Security Guards??

I wonder if they will charge that Retired New York City policeman with a crime? I Hope not, but this administration tends to go after the messenger rather than fix the problem.

Music I'm listening to right Now:
Nothing at the moment. 

Heard the President on the News this morning for the Today show. It was during his photo Op in a Dune Buggy .  Among other things He seems to think that the Economy is doing fine. 

He must have a different idea of what "Fine" is then I do. The Consumer Price Index is up , Gasoline prices are out of control, and the Stock market has taken a Dive  for three days this week. Both Congress and the President have made the usual noise about "Price Gouging". I just paid over $52 dollars to fill a 17 gallon tank. Oil corporations are making record profits (After they cook the books no less!) and the politicians do nothing.

Normally, when a President presides over such an unhappy population (Think he can go below 25% Approval rating?) , his party is in big trouble come midterm elections. 

Here is what I think will happen:

• The GOP will again attempt make "National Security" the Buzzword of the midterm elections. The so called "Liberal Media" will help paint the Democrats as "Weak" on National Security by repeating the same thing. (Face it: Both Parties take the same stand on "National Security")
• The GOP will go on to "Defend" Marriage with this B/S "Marriage Amendment". For a party that once claimed to "Keep out of the Bedroom" they sure like to get in it.
• The GOP will continue to make "Tax Breaks" for rich people. In the last 5 Years, My Tax burden has been pretty much the same. In fact, I can't think of anyone I know who has personally benefited from these so called "Tax Breaks". I must not know the right people.
• The GOP will continue to Balk at the Presidents Agenda since he's approaching the point where he will be the most unpopular President in the last 50 years.
• The President will not make many campaign appearances due to his popularity.

The Democrats could possible take back the House and the Senate, but I'm confidant that they will screw it up. I hope they do take the Senate and House, but I'm not betting on it. At the least, it would make the President nervous which has it's own entertainment value. People think that the President would be impeached, but I doubt it. If he was Impeached, Vice President "Shoot First" Cheney would become President (ignoring the joke about him running the White House anyway).

The House and Senate seem to bark at all the right times, but their bite is somewhat lacking. They all Bark about how bad it is to spy on US Citizens in the 50 States, but do Nothing when it comes time to exercise any over site. One of the strengths of our form of Government is checks and Balances. Under this administration, there doesn't seem to be any.

IMO, This current class in the Senate and House are scared that they will look weak on "National Security". Sen. Arlen Spector is, IMO, the worst one. He's really good at making statements questioning the NSA Domestic Surveillance program, not so good at follow up on it. 

Music I'm listening to now:
"My Own Worst Enemy" by Lit from "A Place in the Sun " album.

Once again, I'm running into something fairly easy, but I'm not sure quite how to do it. I'm retiring one of my older servers (It makes really ominous noises) on account that if I shut it down, I'm reasonably sure it won't come back up.

I've configured all the software I need on it and simply want to assign another ip address to a Network Interface that already has one. No problem, aliasing it was not a problem. The problem: configuring the firewall to allow traffic to that interface. Traffic is hitting the eth1 IP that is destined for the eth1:0 ip. It's probably a simple FW change, but I'm so not seeing it. The frustrating thing is: I've done this exact config on so many other systems professionally. Nuts.

Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Da Da Da I Don't Love You You Don't Love Me Aha Ah" by "The Trio" from their "Da Da Da" Album (Sample on Amazon)

Quick Update: Ipod on shuffle followed with "Fa Fa" by Guster from their "Lost and Gone Forever" Album.
Very Odd.

Lately I’ve been inundated with Way too much Trackback SPAM. I need to figure a way to make it harder for the SPAMERS to do that. The Usual Plugins have limited effect so I’m just turning it off. If anyone wants to have a TB to me, leave a comment.

On a related note Comment SPAM seems to have been completely knocked out by the SCODE plugin. It was a pain to configure GD on Fedora Linux (issues Totally NOT related to SCODE), but well worth it. I’m building a new server so I’ll document the step by step procedure to get GD installed to a point that SCODE (And anything else) can use it. If you have MT and get comment SPAM I can’t recommend SCODE enough.

Image of a can of Hormel Spam which, IMO, tastes good with Scrambled Eggs and white rice.

The long and short of it: Internet Explorer wants this tidbit of code to be OUTSIDE the <div> boundries…
<sigh> Move this little snippet outside of all <div> boundries and it works ok.
Nuts. I need to do a little research and see if the API will allow me to insert this little Snippet into the bottom portion of the HTML code…

<script>
<!–
//<![CDATA[
var icon = new GIcon();
icon.image = "http://www.google.com/mapfiles/marker.png";
icon.shadow = "http://www.google.com/mapfiles/shadow50.png";
icon.iconSize = new GSize(20, 34);
icon.shadowSize = new GSize(37, 34);
icon.iconAnchor = new GPoint(6, 20);
icon.infoWindowAnchor = new GPoint(5, 1);

var map = new GMap(document.getElementById("map001"));
map.setMapType(G_MAP_TYPE);
// map.addControl(new GLargeMapControl());
map.addControl(new GLargeMapControl());
map.addControl(new GMapTypeControl());
map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint(-73.987707, 40.741805), 2);
var point = map.getCenterLatLng();
var marker = new GMarker(point, icon);
map.addOverlay(marker);
var WINDOW_HTML = ‘<div style="width: 12em; style: font-size: small">11 Madison Avenue Nice Place</div>’;
GEvent.addListener(marker, ‘click’, function() {
marker.openInfoWindowHtml(WINDOW_HTML);
});

//]]>
–>
</script>