Saturday, July 31, 2004
Air Conditioning
It’s a Good Thing.
Now we need a TV for the bedroom to make the AC in there even more useful.
Of course, we got the AC for Deb. For her comfort during the third trimester. Me? I don’t need it. *wink wink* Yeah, so, I think I’m off to the nice, chilly bedroom now. Even though it’s, you know, perfectly comfy here at the computer. Probably no more than, say, 85 degrees. That’s nothing. Why, when I was a kid, I used to walk 40 miles each way to school, uphill both ways, in both blizzards and 100 degree temperatures. Sometimes in the same week. (Hey, I have to practice to tell my daughter how much rougher I had it...)
In So Deep It’s Almost Over His Head
James has a pictorial roundup of the various Kerry salute comparisons. Great way to see them all in one place.
One thing struck me there that hadn’t before. As I commented on that post, if I saw the picture of Kerry and didn’t know he was saluting, I might have thought he was gesturing as he said something like:
“I’ve had it up to HERE with that Willy Wonka!”
100 Or So Things?
This especially entertaining 100 things has made me think perhaps I should revise and link from the new blog my own list of 111 things about me.
Doggies!
Mickey has a new Carnival of the Dogs this week. Very nice.
You could say that Mickey isn’t very dogged about badgering people to participate, or going out seeking entries, so please help her out here. I know cats are not the only critters beloved in the blogosphere. Dogs have their place too. So please please please, get the word out, and submit entries liberally. Even if you’re conservative. I have personally seen at least four excellent potential entries for CotD in the past week.
You can always check Mickey’s Musings for more info and updates as to what is happening. If you have or see a post to submit, e-mail the URL to mickeym -at- comcast.net.
I liked ‘Herbert Hoover Is the Anti-Christ’
Jeff Soyer has been working on a World War II project to portray how it might have been portrayed in the newspapers of today. Well, it’s up! He is still seeking more input, but it looks amazing so far. You should definitely check it out.
Friday, July 30, 2004
*does happy dance*
Jay’s been having trouble getting into the sleep center to get the titration done for the CPAP machine that we’re counting on to make both of us sleep a lot easier. Just got an e-mail from him saying that they had a cancellation and he can go tonight! Woo-hoo!
You think we’re fun now, just wait ‘til we’re sleeping at night!
Playing catch-up.
There’s an update-y sort of thing at the baby blog.
Catching up.
I hate it when I sneeze and leak a bit. TMI, I know, but the funny parts of pregnancy all are.
Saw my primary doc yesterday, which was entertaining as always. He’s started inching my meds up, which ought to make for a fun week or so. I had the suspicion that my bp had crept out of range when I suddenly started feeling wonderful. In spite of nearly six months on the drugs, when my bp is properly controlled I feel somewhere between lazy and exhausted. I only feel good (read:like my old self, who I am still mourning) when it’s too high. So I got some of the housework I’m behind on done earlier this week, and now I’m prepared to spiral into beta blocker hell once more.
Next time I see him, I need to ask about the meds and breastfeeding. I really hope that even if I have to take something, it’s a low dose...I can’t imagine taking care of a newborn while feeling this...looking for a word...drugged.
BTW, for those of you who I just want to hug for trying to help, I’m not showing signs of preeclampsia. BP tends to creep up in the third trimester anyway, especially in hypertensives, and when mine creeps up, it creeps out of the zone where it makes the docs happy. And I’m perfectly willing to take their word for it, since the little one seems to being doing fantastic and suffering no repercussions from it. I’ll take the drugged feeling if it makes a fat healthy baby.
As far as the fat bit goes, when I saw my midwife last week I asked about the accuracy of ultrasound for size, and she gave me a sort of funny smile and told me that, well, more than 90th percentile is more than 90th percentile. While I couldn’t be more thrilled that she’s healthy and happy and big, I’m really wondering about this whole getting her out of my body thing. Pray for my girlie bits that she shows up promptly…
Actually, we’re very much hoping that she shows up promptly, since there’s a chance they’ll induce at 39-40 weeks with the bp. I’d love to go into labor on my own. I’d really like to keep the drug cocktail minimal, and I figure I have the best chance of that if she shows up unassisted. The bp issue makes this likely to be a very medical birth, and I’m ok with that. We both need to be safe. But the less they have to interfere, the better, obviously. So we’re sending her 38 week vibes and hoping she’ll pick up on them.
Besides, I’m looking forward to doing something useful with this stuff that’s leaking from my boobs.
If he wants to be the skipper…
maybe it would be a good thing not to imitate Gilligan...
And for the last time, no, the Navy does *not* salute like that. Heh.
We Are Guest, We Are Guests…
Deb and I will be among those guestblogging for Lawren, as best we can, over at Martinis, Persistence, and a Smile, while she takes a much needed vacation following the bar exam. You should alway keep an eye on her blog, but now it might be fun just to watch the mayhem of heroic efforts of the guests. Will her blog still be focused mainly on pop culture when she returns? That question and more will be answered before your very eyes.
Re: Andy’s antics
Point taken; however, it is logical for folks to resent a guy who seemed to share the same set of values re: defense but seems now to have decided that his personal life is more important than the war. Hell, even if that was his position all along and we missed it, why should we be any less offended by his stance than he is by the FMA? We nasty oppressive Republican types have feelings too, you know. *grin*
A question
I’ve been trying to figure this out, so I’m asking y’all to explain this to me: what is the big deal with embryonic stem cell research? I’m not asking this of those who oppose it, but rather those who think that Bush screwed up and the government should be funding it. Why is it so important that the funding come from the government?
I don’t get it.
Carnival of the Capitalists Reminder
I’ve been a slacker lately, but this week I will actually put up my weekly Thursday/Friday reminder of Carnival of the Capitalists. The August 2nd edition will be at Business Evolutionist, where Jon is taking your entries via capitalists -at- elhide -dot- com until Sunday evening. Submit a recent business or economics post that you would like more readers to see.
I Got Nothin’
The antics last night are covered so well, on so many blogs, I hardly need to mention them. However, you could do worse than to go here for some thoughts and a huge link roundup by James Joyner. Why duplicate such a fine effort?
Superfriends
This is far funnier than any bunny suit pictures.
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Instacomment
Glenn had comments open on this post, but while I was typing, he turned commenting off. Argh! So here was what I said:
I didn’t see the whole thing, but one of the most striking things I thought was how bored so many people in the audience looked when the camera caught them.
When he talked about healthcare, I called him a communist, though I’m sure he couldn’t hear me through the TV.
He was animated, for him, but looked… sweat-sheened, sunken-eyed, oddly gestured. Perhaps for supporters delivery didn’t matter any more than content.
Oh, one funny point was when he referred to “when I was a prosecutor” and I initially thought I heard “prostitute.” He didn’t mumble it that badly, either; more one of those ear glitches.
Not included in the comment, this snippet of conversation after Deb started watching too. Kerry said something about us all being in the same boat…
Deb: “If we’re all in the same boat...”
Me: “A swift boat?”
Deb: “...what if it gets torpedoed!”
Me: “Then Kerry can have another purple heart.”
Unclear on the Concept (#32 in a continuing series)
So I was wandering around the ‘sphere today and wound up in an unfamiliar neighborhood where I encountered a most peculiar conclusion (and since have lost the link, alas, but that may be a good thing, really). A woman was complaining that she has thus far been unable to get her very sick six year old daughter in to see the sort of specialist that would seem indicated for the sort of illness from which said daughter suffers. In a related post, it becomes clear that the problem is one with her health plan, which doesn’t want to cover such a visit, among other things. She uses her situation as an example of why we need a nationalized health care plan.
Want to guess the punchline?
The cruel bastards denying her coverage are not Blue Cross, or Kaiser, or any other major corporate health insurer. They aren’t even a crummy minor corporate insurer. Nope.
They’re the state of Oregon’s version of medicaid.
*bangs head against wall*
To Think We Knew Him When…
Looks like Sean Hackbarth has hit the big time, with a nice link on CNN for his “who’s hotter” post on the Bush twins versus the Kerry daughters.
Mouch or Taggart?
I had a strange thought drift my way in the shower this morning. That happens a lot.
It suddenly struck me that perhaps what bothers me so about John Kerry is that the Democrats have nominated a Wesley Mouch. The zero sum, the unlikely nothingness, at the intersection of power. He lacks the substance, principle, or charisma of some other Democrats. Perhaps the mistake of nominating notbush is getting a notanyone.
Then I had another thought, naturally. Perhaps he is more of a James Taggart? Not the same form of nobody, but a vapid choice nonetheless.
What do you think? Is John Kerry a Wesley Mouch, a James Taggart, or something else I have overlooked? I’d like to see a more principled, or at least more capable of leadership, nominee from the Democrats, just in case he does become President.
Update:
Included this post in today’s Beltway Traffic Jam.
Assholes in the Mist Smoke
Acidman’s right. This kind of shit has got to stop. It’s not only stupid, small, and whiny, but it’s going to be damned dangerous if it gets carried too far. Hell, I think it already has gone too far.
Full disclosure: I personally have a really strong love/hate relationship with secondhand smoke. I love it because to me it smells damned good. That smell was the backdrop to a lot of good years of my life, and I get fucking nostalgic every time I walk by somebody smoking.
I hate it because I used to be the person smoking, and I miss the hell out of it, and on my weaker days I want to ban it from the world just so I don’t have to smell that glorious tempting shit anymore. I now understand why so many people who quit smoking become such irredeemable assholes about it. It’s damned hard to deny yourself when you have to see it and smell it.
But you know what? It was my decision to quit, just like it was my decision to start, and if it bothers me that fucking much, I can avoid it.
Yeah, that’s right. You know what I did when I had crazy-ass neighbors whose smoke (among other things) came into my apartment? I shut the fucking window.
I suppose that’s the problem. A body can’t get rich shutting windows. And a good bullshit crusade is so satisfying.
Asshole.
More Linkage
PoliBlog™ has another bite-size toast edition up for your timely DNC week enjoyment.
Meanwhile, New England Republican has five good questions for John Edwards.
(Meant to have these up earlier, but got sidetracked by a web site design meeting.)
More Julia
Here are some more pictures of my new grandniece, Julia. Click the thumbnails for bigger versions.
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Blogging Kerry and the Dems
Once again, in general, you simply want to go to Rob Sama and Katie for some great coverage of and commentary on the primetime convention proceedings for the evening.
Rob has fun with Al Sharpton, who sounds to have undone a lot of the respect he gained (at least from some of us, in a peripheral sort of way) during his spirited primary campaign.
Katie also watched Al Sharpton, as she put it, “so you don’t have to.” Much appreciated. Al made her want Obama back for an encore.
Then she covered some stuff on C-SPAN, providing a wealth of snippets and commentary; almost like little fisklets.
Then the Edwards Clan comes onto her radar. She shoots… she scores! Currently the commentary is to be continued, which is why I’m encouraging you to read the whole thing, rinse and repeat. I just love this:
Now here comes John. It’s like Vice President Ken Doll.
Want more? Eric has been posting various brief commentaries, and he is always worth regular visits in the first place.
James was not impressed with Al Sharpton’s speech, consumed via radio, either. Or the strange audience reaction. He found Edwards to be better, but oddly time warped.
Ketchup? Isn’t that what you use when staging a filmed reenactment of a purple heart winning injury? Just asking. Sean also suggests that the real action is outside the Fleet Center.
Steven Taylor follows the career of young padawan Edwards with great interest here, here, here, and here. Will there be a pony for my daughter when she’s old enough to want one?
Lest I forget, Steven also did a supplement of bite-size toast so it wouldn’t get stale during the convention, in the lengthy stretch between his Pre-DNC Toast-O-Meter and the anticipated post-DNC edition.
Last but not least, for this edition of Jay goes uncharacteristically crazy with links, Chan did an unusual amount of fine blogging tonight. The sandbox left is disturbing. To me those kids walking in the bar chanting would be about as revolting as the street-dancing Palestinians celebrating 9/11. I was surprised - well, maybe not, but at least unaware - at how dismal Kerry’s record is on civil liberties. Finally, a couple reasons why Kerry should not be President.
Update:
Checking back right after I posted this, I see Katie completed the Edwards post in particularly entertaining style. Katie rocks.
I also see that Sama did his post on Edwards, which is also particularly nice. I like his commentary on raising minimum wage. Sounds like Edwards is trying to tell us loopholes are a dangerous thing, and without them North Korea and Iran would be civilized, pleasant nations. Perhaps even preferred vacation spots? Sounds like Edwards was unexpectedly tiresome as a speaker. That’s not good for the ticket. Cool.
Echoes of Slashdot
Wow! See What You Share on P2P has been linked by Slashdot and is currently the top post there. His traffic has gone crazy, and since we’re getting an echo from his blogroll, so has ours.
In keeping with my previous post for others, welcome Slashdot readers! As I said in the other post:
We hope you’ll come back now and then. It’s a bit eclectic. Sometimes political, right and libertarian leaning. Sometimes personal. Sometimes technical. Sometimes, well, whatever strikes our fancy. Enjoy!
Here is what the echo actually looks like. Here’s the day so for at SWYS:
Here’s our day so far, similar in pattern:
I should note that this one is his best find to date, and I heartily approve. Oooh yeah.
Insidious Technical Crud
A while back I mentioned a laptop that will not respond to ctrl-alt-del at the login prompt screen for XP Pro. I still haven’t solved that, or nuked it by wiping and reinstalling the machine, which is pending.
You hit ctrl-alt-del and the screen just sort of blinks at you. In safe mode, it works. Ditto for the login prompt in command prompt safe mode. I was getting a funky RPC (remote procedure call) error at some point after logging in when in either safe mode I mentioned, but that seems to be gone after much futzing around, killing potential sources of trouble. I never needed to use shutdown -a or whatever the command is to abort the RPC shutdown.
The problem began when the user, who is on DSL now and is insane to have AOL of any kind installed, apart from AIM, installed an AOL upgrade.
Quick! Any thoughts before I whip out the magic fdisk WMD?
I have not been back to Google for the problem recently. The things I found that seemed promising either turned out not to be applicable, or not to work at all. I may check that again, in addition to booting from the XP CD and attempting a recovery.
On a slightly different note, I fought with malware on another laptop, this one borrowed by the same user. The time I devoted would have been enough to fdisk and reinstall, and I ended up not being able to defeat the CoolWebSearch variant that afflicted it.
As it turns out, the guy who bravely and generously made cwshredder has given up on doing any further updates, so there exist CW variants that cannot be removed short of heroic, highly technical efforts, some of which I did not go so far as to try. Or by fdisking. Or, as one site described, replacing the registry with an old backup.
The fascinating thing was Ad-Aware kept finding it, in the form of one file and five registry entries, and removing it. After rebooting, it would be back, despite all the ordinary means for something to return at startup being absent. I tried removing the file in command prompt safe mode. I tried replacing it with an innocuous file of the same name. Going through info on the web regarding many variants of CW, I was finding nothing there to fit. The one I did not end up pursuing before I had to go home was the winsock variant, which sounded nasty.
Another fascinating thing was what I found after Ad-Aware cleaned up. You delve into these things enough and you can tell when there are files that don’t belong, that could have been placed there as part of malware, or spawned to create new instances and make it harder to kill. Ad-Aware doesn’t necessarily see those, active or not. I wiped out dozens of DLL, EXE and DAT files in the windows and system32 directories that were bogus. What I look for is those extensions, with a recent file date, crazy file names, and multiple with the same date and size. It’s a dead giveaway when you turn on the computer on, say, July 20, only for a little while to work on the malware problem. Then on the 26th you see a bunch of files with names like uim6x9mt.dll, dated the 20th, with identical sizes. No doubt a binary comparison would find them identical. Purged many of those, to no avail.
Since it was not my place to reinstall the borrowed laptop (and I didn’t have any of the accompanying software), I returned it to the user and cautioned him to use Firefox, which I installed, instead of IE. Doing so kind of defeats the purpose of CW, even if it remains on the system. I left it for the owner of the machine to be made aware of the problem and act on it as he saw fit.
This stuff is really getting out of hand.
At Least It Falls Short of Chronocide
BusinessPundit has a great post up from yesterday on time abuse; procrastination and the like. I confessed to my failings in the comments, which have gotten quite interesting. The most recent commenter notes, in his second point:
Many of us here in the I.T. field are like me. We like to understand things, solve problems, and explain mysteries. Unfortunately there is often extra work to do after the understanding is done. At that point we tend to move on to new, exciting problems. This just takes will power to overcome.
That made me say “yup yup yup, that’s me.” Then I observed, to Deb, that was also my former partner, except he tended not to get to the basic level of completion before moving on. Oops.
Update:
I was quite pleased with myself for “coining” the word chronocide for the title. To see if I really had, I followed up by Googling, rather than being NY Times-like in my assumptions. So much for my cleverness; 1370 hits.
Yeah, well…
Michael Williams has another perspective on Kerry in a bunny clean suit.
He does have a point, but it’s just so much fun to pick on the guy.
A punch in the gut. And that’s not a bad thing.
Every weeknight at 2330 our local FOX affilliate plays The Simpsons in syndication. Tonight they played an episode that I had quite thoroughly forgotten about: The City of New York Vs. Homer Simpson. This is the episode where Homer is trying to retrieve his car after Barney left it illegally parked between the Twin Towers.
I am damned proud to say that they aired the thing, and without cuts. Pretending that 9/11 didn’t happen by trying to weirdly deny the existence of the towers is a sick and futile endeavor. I won’t pretend that it’s easy to watch Homer race up and down the towers looking for a bathroom, or that my eyes didn’t fill with tears when the guys were leaning out of the windows of the towers yelling at each other--the images that these things now evoke are too strong for that--but it’s a healthy sort of pain. There are some things it is far too dangerous *not* to feel.
In some ways, it’s even stranger to read the episode guide linked above and see things like this:
There are restrooms in the World Trade Center Mall plaza below the complex; there’s no need to go to the top and pay admission. Also, there is no observation deck in the other tower, and anyone can’t just ride the elevator up to the top.
Present tense.
Anyway, it was another one of those moments that forces things back into perspective. Maybe if we could get Teddy Kennedy sober enough to sit upright in front of a TV…
Naw. It’d never work. Nice thought, though.
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Convention Blogging Wrapup
Just go read Katie. All of it.
Obama. Both Katie and her Mom on Ron Reagan. Teresa, a bad speaker in any language. News guys on Teresa. And more, including fun links to other blogs.
Then go catch Sama’s final convention post of the night, on Teresa. He sums it up with:
Really, this speech was such a rambling mess, it was embarrassing to listen to.
That’s about it for what I’ll try to look at and point out tonight. It seems you can get a rather decent look at the primetime of DNC action, and fun opinions, simply by reading Rob Sama, Katie and Eric. We’re pleased, since it means not having to watch it ourselves.
Traffic Bulges, Introductions and Welcomes
Today we’ve had an absurd number of hits, for having not been ‘lanched by one of the more traditional traffic generators. For some reason, much of the traffic has come from See What You Share on P2P, a new and unique blog that features us at the very top of their blogroll.
When I first noticed this, I was baffled. There were no referrers in their Site Meter from obvious biggies. In fact, most were “unknown.” Yet coming in at several hundred per hour. Later, Glenn linked them, adding an Instalanche, but the main source remained a mystery.
Well, it appears to have been from CNET News.com, here and here. It appears there were others from gaming boards and the like fueling the deluge.
Quite cool. The point of See What You Share on P2P is to bring attention to the security and privacy lapses P2P can, in many cases unwittingly, incur. Well, attention they got. It’s most impressive.
If you didn’t already check the blog out via Glenn Reynolds or elsewhere, you may want to do so. If you are one of the hundreds of visitors checking out Accidental Verbosity via See What You Share’s blogroll, welcome! We hope you’ll come back now and then. It’s a bit eclectic. Sometimes political, right and libertarian leaning. Sometimes personal. Sometimes technical. Sometimes, well, whatever strikes our fancy. Enjoy!
Update:
Ah, looks like ZDNet linked it too. Via Craig, here.