Sand Addiction

This online java game is so simple, yet so addictive:

Sand Java Game

Make sure to play around with all the different things like cera, fire, oil, plant. I could play around with this thing for hours.

Presidential Power

Legal or not, the warrantless wiretapping on the part of the President, begs the question, "What are the limits of Presidential power in the U.S.?"

At this point, I really just don't know. Seriously. If the President has no oversight whatsoever in this area, he can put surveillance on ANYONE for absolutely no reason at all and for as long as he wants.

I've heard some people argue that they have nothing to hide so it doesn't matter to them. Is this the kind of argument we have for this? Am I still living in the USA? Is this a bad dream? Having nothing to hide has nothing at all to do with privacy rights. This is like having everyone's medical records publicly available just because a few vocal people have nothing they are embarrassed about. What about the principle of the matter? This is against the very spirit of our country, about personal freedoms, right to privacy, and the very idea that the government should stay out.

Surely, this has to be setting off alarms, even to the most staunch conservative supporters.

I think this underlines what is wrong with politics in America these days. It is no longer about believing in the principles that the party stands for. It is now about standing behind the party no matter the decisions of that party, principles be damned.

Being conserative used to stand for less spending, less government involvement in private lives, and all-around LESS government. This doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

Be Thankful... Kind Of

Alright, well I know you are supposed to be thankful for the gifts you receive at Christmas, right? My family gets together every Christmas. Instead of giving gifts to every last person in our families, (20+ people), we draw names like countless other families across the world. Basically, every person in your family gives one gift to the extended family and receives one gift from the extended family. There is a $20 limit.

I told my girlfriend beforehand, that the gifts really didn't matter to me. The whole family gets together and that's good enough for me. Whatever I get would be fine, even if it were coal.

I thought.

Don't get me wrong. The gift I received would make any survivalist proud. Too bad I'm not a survivalist. Yes, indeed the gift I received was a...

Wind-up radio/flashlight.

Now I know the first thought might be some rugged heavy-duty job with stainless steel crank and a built-in subwoofer and a mag-light style illumination device. Nope. 5-inches tall. Plastic. Flashlight barely illuminates anything. This thing is just plain cheap. And thoughtless. I can't wrap my brain around the thought that they were shopping, saw this thing, and thought "hmmm, Tyler would like this."

No, that did not happen. More like, "we don't care what we buy him, and he doesn't care anyway, so we aren't going to put any energy or thought into this gift." Nice.

I keep thinking that hey, I'll put it in my car and if I'm ever stuck in a snowbank somewhere for 4 days at least I'll have my wind-up radio. Then when they call the search off on the radio, I'd be able to hear it first-hand.

Edited 02/01/2006: Added this pic of the radio. It is actually 6" x 4":

CNN.com Video Headlines | WATCH

Is anyone else put off by the way CNN.com does streaming video? I'm not talking about codecs or popup windows or even ads. I'm talking about the headline itself. Here is an example from today:

Teen son of Colts coach found dead | WATCH

All sorts of awful things come up in the headlines and CNN decides to put WATCH at the end for you to click on to WATCH the video. But what does that headline say to you? Watch the teen son of Colts coach dead?

Here are some others:

Surviving a plane crash | WATCH
Annan loses his cool | WATCH
Rape suspect escapes in Miami | WATCH
Tumor cut from teen's face | WATCH
Targeting breast cancer | WATCH

Extreme Ironing

Tears of joy flowed freely as I lauged my way through these galleries...

http://www.extremeironing.com/index.php

Think of it this way: Extreme sports topped off by an ironing board and iron. So sweet! Credit goes to an anonymous poster in a previous post.

Free - What Does It Mean?

Is getting a cupcake on your pillow for checking in to a hotel 'free'? Is getting buying one hamburger and getting another one 'free' really 'free'? Is going to college on an athletic scholarship getting a 'free' education?!?!?

When I Was A Kid... Cold Farting

When I was a kid, I was afraid to fart outside when it was cold. I was afraid people would see the steam rising from my butt.

Foxy Brown Is Deaf

I hate to jump to conclusions, but I just can't help myself on this one...

Foxy Brown is deaf.

Hmmm. If I remember correctly, the same thing happened to Rush Limbaugh. Surely it wasn't the OxyContin?

Tell us Foxy? Is it OxyContin? Vicodin?

Spongebob Squarepants Lyrics

Are you ready kids?
Aye Aye captain!
I can't hear you!
Aye aye captain!
ohhhhh who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
spongebob squarepants
absorbent and yellow and porous is he
spongebob squarepants
if nautical nonsense be something you wish
spongebob squarepants
then drop on the deck and float like a fish
spongebob squarepants
ready
spongebob squarepants
spongebob squarepants
spongebob squarepants
spongeboooooob squarepaaaants
aaahahhahahahahhaaaahhahhaaa

Irregardless

I hate that word. How the hell can you have a double-negative in one word and think it is acceptable? I don't care if it's in the dictionary. Let's break this down:

Regardless - without regard, right?
Irregardless - without without regard, meaning WITH regard, right?

So if you say "Irregardless, we are doing this our way", what you are really saying is "With regard, we are doing this our way".

Stupid.

Confessions Of A Linux Newb Pt. I

I wasn't blogging when I did this, so this is a retelling. Yes, I know the formatting sucks, but oh well...

While going through this experience of getting Linux running, I thought it might be interesting to Linux veterans. What is it like trying Linux for the first time these days? What kinds of problems and thought processes do newbs go through when doing this for the first time. This thread is a log of all the things that a typical new Linux user might or might not encounter in the trenches. These are my experiences and my thoughts. Honest. Ignorant. Etc. Also, this might be one of the longest posts. And there will be more because guess what, I'm not done yet. On with the show... "First of all you have to make sure that the Samba server is running; and of course that all your network connections are active and functional" What the hell does that mean? A quick glance at the clock and I see it's after 1 AM and I have work in the morning. Time to hang it up for the night. Till tomorrow, samba. That was last night. Rewind two weeks...I had been toying around with the idea of trying out Linux for quite a while now but I didn't have an excuse to throw away Windows 2000 Server and all things it was doing for me. Quite a while back, I purchased Cox Business Services broadband Internet with the idea I would use the static IP addresses and host my own webpages, and pages for my friends, all from home. At that time, I commenced cobbling a server together from a P4 2.4, a Granite Bay chipset motherboard, an old video card, etc. I put two hard drives in the machine, one for the OS and one for data.I did all things you do if you want to host web pages from home. Got a free DNS service, bought a few domains, cheap router with NAT, etc, etc. This machine ended up doing several things for me. It was file serving, webserving, print serving, and providing directory security. Running great.That is, until THE power outage.The OS hard drive died that day, two weeks ago. I of course had all my data on my data drive, so the only thing I lost was a hard drive and labor.

================================
Monday - 11/07/2005
The plan is to buy a SATA hard drive (80GB), replace the PATA drive (80GB) in my XP workstation (via ghost), pull the PATA data drive (60GB) from my server and ghost that data onto the 80GB PATA from my workstation, then use teh 60GB PATA drive as the OS drive in the Linux server....did you get that? Good.What a royal pain in the ass. Is this worth it to increase the space on my data drive by 20GB and slightly improve the hard drive performance on my workstation? These and other questions about the universe remain to be answered. Anyway, mission accomplished. At 1AM. Work in the morning.

================================
Tuesday - 11/08/2005
I did some research in the past and it looked like Debian was my distro of choice, but I never pulled the trigger. When I talked to my coworkers during the day, they kept going on and on about Fedora core 4. So, after work, using my XP workstation, I proceeded to download all 4 FC4 ISO's. Well, I could see this was going to take all night, so I decided to sit down to some Firefly goodness courtesy of Netflix. An aside: I admit it. I'm one of the guilty that caused the axe to fall on this show. I didn't watch it while it was on TV and now, after several recommendations, I'm watching it and loving it and hating it all at the same time. Loving it because it is by far the best written sci-fi I've seen and hating it because I know it is gone.

================================
Wednesday - 11/09/2005
All the ISO's for FC4 are downloaded and now I've burned them to CD. I have to admit, this is a pain in the ass. Yes, Linux is free, but still, 4 CD's and it took me all night to get them??? My first thought is that they say Windows is bloated. Seems hard to justify that statement when Windows comes on 1 CD and FC4 comes on 4. Oh well. So I got started. They say you should gather real details on your hardware. They also say Linux is 'soooo' much better at detection now. I skipped the detail gathering. Put in the first CD. Boots to CD, asks me about some settings that I can't particularly remember at this point. It asks me about some video settings for my ancient Trident video card and about my Dell 1800FP LCD monitor. Without thinking, I set the video to 1280 x 1024 (native for the LCD and ages ahead of the video card). The screen goes to a small 'x' in the center for just a split second, then goes completely white. I think "OK, I'm new to this, so we'll wait." I waited. And waited. And....Finally I try the proven course of CTRL-ALT-DEL after 15 minutes of waiting. Well obviously it wasn't locked up because the white screen goes away and, according to what the screen says, it is unloading everything it has loaded and exits the setup.???I try again. 30 minutes later I have the same result. O....K....Back to my XP workstation, I start researching Debian again. I start downloading all 12 or so Debian 3.1 ISO's.12.... 12 CDs... and Windows is bloated?!?!Oh wait. Here is one that says it is just the core with a download component. What does that mean? I search around for a while looking for a definitive explanation. Nothing. Lots of talk about packages, dependencies, and lots of other things I know nothing about. And especially nothing definitive about what this lone ISO does. I give it a shot since it is only 1 CD and only a couple hundred meg. I download it, burn it to CD and commence my third attempt at installing Linux. Boots to CD...Debian spash screen. That's nice. It starts going through some setup, exactly what I don't know. It also asks me about some video settings (I think?), time zones, clocks, GMT, and then it asks how I'm going to get packages. Well I assume packages are like updates for Windows, kind of like service packs. It gives me the option of downloading direct, which I select, and then asks how I'm going to download. I select FTP and it gives me a list of FTP mirrors to select from. I select the second one on the list, FTP.DEBIAN.ORG (I think).I start perusing the Linux Wiki (thank you whoever you peoples are!) and learn immediately about apt-get. I also learned that I want GNOME. So after doing several apt-get's for assorted things and dozing off at 1 AM (Again!), I have GNOME installed but, dammit, if it won't start. I set the video for 1280 x 1024 again, without thinking. I restart, but every time gdm fails to start and I look at the error output. It mentions the video card but I cannot for the life of me get it.OK. It's 2 AM in the morning. Once again, I have to work in the morning. Nice. Going to bed.
================================
Thursday - 11/10/2005
I spoke to my coworkers who seemed mildly disappointed that FC4 wouldn't work and that I went with Debian. I explained that I actually got Debian loaded, but I couldn't get GNOME to start. They convince me that it must be the video card, but what about the video card, we don't know. They convince me to removed Debian and try FC4 one more time. I agree.I get home after work and, instead of removing Debian, I try to reconfigure the settings, but I can't figure it out. Lots of searching on Google and nary a crumb. Tried using the Debian documentation and couldn't find anything I was looking for. At this point, I am so sick of this whole thing, I decide to give it a rest for awhile.

================================
Saturday - 11/12/2005
Let's give this another shot. Search a bunch more. Get more frustrated. Quit for the night.

================================
Sunday - 11/13/2005
Post to the Linux forum. Basically, "help this newb figure out how to reconfigure the video settings." Second post to the thread does the trick. Yay! Reset video to 640 x 480 only because I don't know what this video card can do. Restart the server...like angels singing from on high, GNOME starts. What do you mean 'root' can't log in here? GRRRRR. So does that mean I can't make configuration changes via the GNOME desktop? OK, so how do get GNOME to NOT start up automatically so that I can continue my apt-get processes to get more programs, etc? Anyway... one more itty bitty milestone accomplished. Done for the day.

================================
Monday - 11/14/2005
Mounting. Reminds me of when I heard 'query' for the first time in junior high. I know. Immature.I found the Root Terminal in GNOME, so it seems I can still apt-get if I want to. And I WILL want to.So I have to mount this drive in order to get access to the data. It's an NTFS drive. After more research on how mounting works, I try several combinations of mount commands in the root terminal. None work. I try all sorts of goodies, but no matter what I do I can't figure it out. Time for Monday Night Football so to hell with this.

================================
Tuesday - 11/15/2005
Explained current Linux tribulations to the coworkers. I essentially got a 'good luck' from them. Oh well, they never claimed to be Linux experts.Home from work, I decide I am going to just pull the data drive out, put it in my XP workstation, copy the data to my workstation drive and put the data drive BACK in the server, partition and format it to ext3. This will remove all doubt as to why it is or isn't working.This takes an hour or so.I do some research... again. But I still can't get this thing to go. I create a directory, data1, but I didn't create it in the mnt folder like many examples show. Instead I create it right in the filesystem. Finally, after formatting the drive, and figuring a few more things out, I get the drive to mount. Yippee.One problem. It's an 80GB drive and it shows 69GB free. Oh hell. I'm so tired of this roller coaster ride. But I'm happy at the same time. It's like climbing a tall peak complete with every crevasse and checkpoint. I'm winded, but I'm catching my breath.Oh yeah, and it also won't be mounted if I reboot. I have to make an entry in fstab to ensure that it mounts every time it boots. Problem is, I can't get fstab to open with the text editor. After several double-clicks, I get nothing. Five minutes later, I get gedit unexpected errors.More research...Apparently there is a gedit bug in fam (whatever that means). I need to remove so-and-so file and replace it with this-and-that file. I root terminal out. get-apt install this-and-that file. Nope. so-and-so file is the most recent file and I can't install this-and-that file. Well, it's a bug so I am going to remove so-and-so file. get-apt remove so-and-so file. A list of dependent packages or files is listed totalling 244MB. Do you want to remove? Y/N....Ummm... NO! I don't want to remove 244MB of dependent packages!Exit out of root terminal and restart the server. Whaddya know, Text Editor starts up fine. New problem. I can't modify fstab unless I am in root. I can't be in GNOME unless I am NOT in root. Conundrum.More research...Oh I see. I can go to root terminal and I can gedit /etc/fstab. I do so and make the entry after doing all my mounting (heheheh) again. Reboot the server and... tada!!!... the mount is still there. Yay. Alright. Now I need to make the data drive (data1) available to my XP workstations.More research...Samba is the answer. So says Google. get-apt install samba. Downloads. It asks me for workgroup or domain information. I comply. Now I'm back to a command prompt. Now what? Well, how do I configure Samba?More research...Configuring Samba tutorial says "First of all you have to make sure that the Samba server is running; and of course that all your network connections are active and functional". Oh hell. I don't have time. Again. It's late and I'm tired and I'm 2 weeks into getting a Linux server up and running.This is leagues more difficult the first time around than Win2k Server. Till my next entry into... Confessions of a Linux Newb.

Cheerleaders - Worthless

Cheerleaders are worthless. Admit it. They hold no value whatsoever. I was watching a show the other night where they described themselves as 'ambassadors to the community'. *blink* *blink*

Huh?

Hello World

Feel free to be unimpressed.