Running is therapy

In light of the recent gutting of the constitution…if I disappear forward all mail to gitmo.

Off and on over the last few months I have had problems with my myth box. It finally gave up the ghost the last night. It shut off and then everytime I would try to boot it it would shut off and emit a shril non stop beep. The soyo site said this could be a bad power supply. I had meant to order something on newegg today, but was too busy to get that accomplished. On the way home, since it was pouring rain and my evening walk was ruined I decided to stop by CircuitCity and Staples and look at what they had in the way of PS’s. CC had 435w PS’s for 60 bucks, Staples had a 400w Antec for 34. I opted for the cheaper one. I also picked up some thermal paste at CC. Came home tore the box down and outfitted it with paste and a new PS. Works like a champ. Up and recording again. Whew…that was scary :)

Condi Rice was on 60 Minutes tonite. I’ll admit seeing her humanized makes it harder to be mad at her. The truth is though, as nice of a person as she might be, she’s wrong. No one should still believe we are safer as a result of being in Iraq. It’s simply not true. And even if we are safer as a result of the Pat-Riot Act and the NSA’s warrentless wiretapping, I would rather we were less safe and still free. She still remains an apologist and part of the reason I have less rights than I had before 9-11, and for that I cannot forgive her.

If you clone a dapper machine (maybe other unices) in vmware workstation 5 you may find that you have no networking on reboot. It’s because the /etc/iftab file was copied over in the clone. Open that file and comment out the ‘eth0: mac_address_here’ line and reboot. Done.

At work I had to get thumbdrives for the sales people. After looking at a bunch and seeing how cheap they were, I decided to buy my own.

Upon recieving it I mounted it up and deleted all the files and directories that came on it. Made a few new directories and filled them with portable applications that will aide in troubleshooting. I also put on a bunch of stuff so that if I get stuck on a windows box somewhere I can at least use putty and firefox…among others.

One thing I thought would be real slick would be to put the linux version of XAMPP on there (possibly the windows one too, and then have them share a docroot). This way I could carry around projects I am working on and pop them on anyone’s PC and then fire up a browser and show it to them. Alas the linux one relies on a bunch of symlinks and hardcoded paths (that expect to find themselves in /opt). So…I have begun the long slow process of porting XAMPP to run on a thumbstick. I don’t know if it will work ultimately, but after having browsed through it all, it seems pretty straight forward. If I get it accomplished, I will release the code here…either as a whole package or at least as a diff with instructions to patch your install.

Since I am sure you are all reading the political ramblings of both of the major parties on the run up to the election, and I know everyone who reads my blog thinks “WWND?” (har har har). I thought I would weigh in on the subject.

The republican catch phrase of the day is “cut and run” harkening back to Regan, and giving Joe Sixpack something to blurt at bars where the decor is made up of dead animal heads tacked to shitty plaques. And the new democrat rant is “redeployment”, which gives young sandle clad collegiates something to blurt in bohemian apartments while drinking cheap beer and listening to house music.

I think they are both idiotic. As good people, and I mean really good people, we need to send more troops to Iraq. We need to quell the violence, restore vital services and give whatever aide it takes to clean up the mess caused by the petulant children who run the country.

Everytime I hear either side say anything that is not purposeful, I seriously want to tell them to SIT DOWN. We are the last super power. I was raised to believe we were the greatest country in the world. That means we DO NOT “stay the course” or “redeploy”. We take our lumps, we put shit right, and we do it with the utmost fairness and pride.

I was reading online news, and of course since September 11th is right around the corner there is a lot of that. 5 years later I am still not really over it. It still makes me uneasy to think about. And because of that it galls me to no end to see people bringing it up to scare Americans into believing thier lies and garnering votes and suspending freedom.

Those that know me, know I hold few things sacrosanct, but using the death of 3000 of my fellow Americans for personal or political gain? Well sir, I can’t cotton to that (and that is a non partisan statement, I don’t really care what you call yourself, doing that makes you a shit in my book).

I really like 60 minutes. I record it every week. I look forward to watching it each week.

But…these people are old. Andy Rooney will die (and from the looks of him, he may have already, he’s 87). It will not be the same without Andy Rooney or Ed Bradley(65) or Steve Kroft(61) or Morley Safer(75) or Mike Wallace(88) or Lesley Stahl(65). None of them are young people (my apologies to Lesley).

With the addition of some younger blood they are surely realizing this and trying to ensure the future of the series…but I can’t imagine another cast. To me it seems like perhaps they ought to consider another show. Something that will take over in the future after most of this cast is dead or too old to speak.

Wufoo is a form builder application. The name is the dumbest thing I ever heard but the software is pretty neato. I created the above form in less than 3 minutes (including signing up for an account). I think this sort of thing could be very useful for small businesses without a dedicated web coder.