November 2010 Archives

i'm usually a big fan of religious-nonsense movies, like "The Prophecy", and "The Exorcist" and even "The Matrix", but jesus, "stigmata" is an enormous pile of crap.

today i wanted to listen to some music. i have lots of ways to listen to music at my house: the radio, cds, squeeze server, itunes, airtunes, and probably some i forgot. today i wanted airtunes (aka itunes driving my stereo via airport).

so i went to my mac, mounted the smb share where my music is stored, and dragged one album into itunes. itunes hung for 10 minutes before i killed it. rinse, repeat.

the google reveals that itunes 10 basically broke smb support. lots of people with music on smb shares of various flavors (free NAS solutions, windows, linux, etc) had the same problem and there was no known fix.

one suggested workaround was to use nfs. the only reason i was using smb in the first place was because nfs didn't work well a couple versions of macos ago. (okay, i guess that post implies that i went with nfs, but shortly thereafter i switched back to smb because nfs stopped working, probably as a result of an upgrate.)

so now i'm using nfs. it's still slower than it ought to be but it seems to work.

there will come a day when i just can't keep up with this crap. maybe i've created the problem for myself by not using integrated end-to-end solutions. after all, i guess if my setup was 100% Apple Magic (tm), I wouldn't have "compatibility" problems. that is, assuming that apple tests their own NAS solutions better than they tested the dozens of NAS solutions they broke.

but i know better. some day i'll be too old to fiddle around with stuff like samba servers and freebsd, and if i still have money and electricity, i'll be 100% apple or whatever, and it still won't fucking work, and i'll be hosed. welcome to the future.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/11/when_saudi_king_abdullah_sits.html

Because if you try to check into a posh room on their VIP floor, you will find that they are all taken: Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has block-booked every single room.

since that sort of service is available to every american, i can see why the king would come here for medicine!

The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot

but it is "catch up on what i missed over thanksgiving" day, and apparently the most intentionally stupid posts come from him. case in point:

first of all, the title:

King From Country Democrats Want to Model US Health Care System After Has Successful Operation... in New York

what? i finally got what that was supposed to say, but it took me a good while. is it english? i guess.

more importantly, the same stupid, flaccid, intentional misunderstanding typical of right-wing bloggers:

One of the world's richest men who could have chosen any health system decided to be treated in the country the World Health Organization ranked 37th best?

how hard is it to understand the difference between maximum, mean, and median?

if you're the world's richest man, and can afford any doctor in the world, it may just so happen that the doctor you want lives in the US. if you're not the world's richest man, and you happen to live in the us, your health care sucks.

healthcare in the US is comprised of multiple parallel systems, one system for the ultra rich, where jane fonda, john mccain, and saudi kings get their liver transplants, and the other systems that the rest of us are stuck with, which could use some work. king abdullah doesn't have to worry about blue shield dropping his coverage over a preexisting condition, but outside of the world of the super wealthy, that's a real concern for us real people.

the disingenuous and the republicans pretend that all of us have access to the top tier, which is simply a lie. we don't have access to that healthcare any more than we have access to private jets.

In response to the thwarted plot, Mayor Sam Adams has floated the idea of cooperating more fully with federal law enforcement agencies. In 2005, the Portland City Council passed an ordinance that put conditions on the city's continued participation in the F.B.I. Joint Terrorism Task Force out of concern for the civil liberties of residents.

What?

In response to the thwarted plot, they want to change all their liberty-protecting laws? why, for god's sake? why? they thwarted the plot, with the current laws!

of course authoritarian hacks like DP are sneering at Portland's attempts to stave off the police state, but the fact remains: even with the current laws, the attack was averted, and the "plotter" is in custody. the system worked! why change it?

the deeper issue (now that I am aware of 2005 ordinance) is whether this attack plot was retaliation by the FBI against portland. there's speculation that the whole "plot" was trumped up FBI entrapment, and it certainly wouldn't be the first time the FBI groomed a loner only to "foil" his "plot" with spectacular publicity. but could the feds have chosen portland as the location for this entrapment, as a scare/retaliation against freedom loving oregonians?

it doesn't seem especially far fetched to me.

dd-wrt, sigh.

by default, it puts the admin webpage on the Internet-facing interface.

WHAT?

i'm lucky to have noticed that. it also has no fewer than three totally contradicting installation instructions, and the ones that I followed (which worked) referenced files that didn't exist: i got it to work by guessing which files i was supposed to use.

still, it looks nice. if it handles comcast's latest asshattery better than the stock firmware, i'll be happy. we'll know in a couple of days...

may be the best movie i've seen this year.

an incredible work, and a brief viewing of the special features explains, to a great degree, my affinity.

SPOILERS

the dude what wrote it wrote some of the greatest ever star trek episodes, and the lions share of the actors have played great roles in various trek franchises.

that indian food wasn't supposed to take effect until tomorrow morning.

we watched some teevee last night, just for the lulz. all of these were recorded on the folk's tivo:

"shit" my dad says
hawaii five-oh (the new one)
sarah palin's alaska

the shatner vehicle was the best of the bunch, because it has shatner. in fact, the other two coulda been spruced up a bit by the casting of shatner, but the producers of those shows unwisely chose to omit the shat. their programs suffer for it.

the shat's show was predictable, one-dimensional, and mostly lame, but as a single-episode-only experience, it was enjoyable. the deliveries were good, the actors quirky, and once in a while a funny joke was made.

hawaii five-oh was an hour-long microsoft ad. no, seriously. i had heard that the show had lamely shilled for bing, but what we saw was way over the top. every 10 minutes or so someone would whip out a microsoft smart phone and one character or another would say "you know, if you just start typing that will autocomplete", or, "you know, you can turn that sideways and it will blah blah blah". the show had some actors in it i guess, but i only paid attention to Jin from LOST, who spoke shockingly great english (which i guess i knew from some of the LOST special features, but it's still shocking to hear him speak without the fake korean accent, or the full-on korean), and of course (but still to my surprise, since i knew nothing about the show), boomer from BSG. i kept shouting "don't trust her, she's a cylon!" but nobody heard me.

The constant assault of microsoft ads in this show kept us ROFL for the length of the episode. Seriously, watch the show sometime and see how many you can spot. some are more subtle, like how the team uses the microsoft touch table thingy. mysteriously, the PCs pictured don't run windows, but rather the traditional TV-OS.

last up was sarah palin's alaska. i don't think we saw the beginning of the episode. literally 5 seconds in I regretted asking to watch the show, as her shrill, grating voice assaulted my ears. the parents' dog seemed to bear it, so i figured i could as well.

the most priceless moment in the show has already been talked about, and sadly i can't find the direct quote on the internets. sarah palin, with absolutely no irony, complains to the camera of her personal reality TV show about how awful it is to have a nosey neighbor all up in her business writing a book on her. she's on a reality tv show, supposedly filming the reality of her day-to-day life, complaining about reporters invading her privacy. heh.

later on she's whining her way up a short 20 foot climb, and says something (again without irony) about how she isn't going to quit half way up. she made it, eventually, after some obvious hoisting by her up-rock belayer, proving apparently that rock climbing is easier to finish than a four-year governorship.

anyhow, it's been widely reported that her audience fell a whopping 40% after that first episode. if your teevee audio sports a highpass filter, i highly recommend watching this show. feel free to quit the show after one episode, that's what everyone else did, and it's certainly in the spirit of the star.

yesterday morning, hops sent me a link to a recipe.

"look at those baked figs!" she said, "i'm going to make that for dinner."

i pointed out that the figs were merely a side dish for the delectable looking duck breasts pictured right next to them. she said she would cook those, too, then. i was skeptical.

at our grocery store, i asked if they had fresh duck. they did not, though they might have a delivery on monday. that wouldn't have worked, so we went to look at the frozen. i was highly skeptical that hops could manage thawing and marinating frozen duck, but it turned out to be a non-issue, as the only frozen duck on hand was whole, and we needed just the breast.

hops asked me if maybe she could substitute chicken. as my jaw gaped in disbelief, she took it to the next level: "do they taste different?"

when my flabbergast left me, which, dear reader, took no small amount of time and effort, i explained as best i could that duck and chicken taste very different, and this was in fact because they are two entirely different animals, and that these facts accounted for the additional fact that they have different names and are sold at different prices.

so hops called up draegers, and they said they had fresh duck breast. at this point i was deeply concerned about the prospects for my dinner.

when we got to draegers, they had the duck breasts, and they were a whopping 17 bucks a pound. the recipe called for 2 breasts tied together, hops wanted to get one, cut it in half, and pretend it was two. i doubled down on my chances of a disastrous dinner and demanded that she get both and follow the recipe. i figured that a cook who didn't know a quack from a b'gawk had no business deviating from a recipe, even if the cost to me in dollars would be high.

we went home and hops got to work preparing the duck. but not before she depressed my hopes even further by exclaiming excitedly that by happy coincidence, our grocery carried the same brand of duck used in the recipe.

"brand?" i asked, skeptical.

"muscovy!" said hops.

"jesus," I said.

i departed to conduct some happy business at our local fish wafflery, which is staffed by people of chinese ancestry. they pointed out that we probably could have gotten fresh, cheaper duck at either of our two local chinese grocery stores. that was, of course, a head-slapper of a moment. yup, chinese people eat lots of duck. duh. well, there's next time. (this led to a discussion about whether chinese people eat lots of duck at home, and my sample size of 2 indicated that they do not, preferring to eat their ducks at restaurant. anyhow, i'm pretty sure the groceries would have fresh duck regardless of this "fact".)

dinner time finally rolled around, and hops was to drizzle balsamic vinegar on the sliced duck. i narrowly avoided having a balsamic reduction copiously poured on my dinner, and in fact, given the poor quality of our vinegar, i declined all drizzles and ate the duck "dry", which is a misnomer, since it was anything but.

overall, the duck came out quite good, a testament i think to the recipe and the attention to detail paid to it by my cook. the figs were also delicious, but i'm a sucker for figs in any form. the duck was not evenly cooked, and in fact was a little undercooked in some parts (this probably being due to the way in which the breasts were stacked: thick to thick, rather than thick to thin), and the skin was not very crispy. but i have leftovers which i look forward to eating, and perhaps when the weather permits we can try this recipe on the grill, where the skin most certainly will crisp.

i just hope we can get the same brand of duck!

why so many? i don't know.

last night sarah palin wrote me a children's book to explain why we need to update our production routers to the latest, untested firmware release. i was not convinced but i could tell that management would buy into it.

FINALLY A GOOD LINE ON BSG

last night upon exiting our dining establishment, spu and i encountered some police officers with a german shepherd police dog.

perhaps later i will blog about the dinner itself, which could be a humorous story if done right. in fact, my whole yesterday is a hi-lariously mundane tale of missed connections, poor planning, unreliable computers, unclear communications, and bad television.

anyhow, later, spu said to me, "the german shepherd looked very confused."

"yeah?" i said.

"he didn't know whether to follow his training and attack the mexican, or follow his genetic impulse and attack the jew."

it must have further confused the poor k-9 officer that both of us are half-breeds.

for the past 15+ years, every time i hover the mouse over a link in my browser, my eyes automatically look to the bottom of the screen to see where the link leads (i got goatse'd too many times back in the early 00's).

well suddenly firefox decides that url display belongs in the url bar at the top, and i'm supposed to rewire what is now an involuntary response? forget it. that may be the final nail in ff's coffin as far as i am concerned.

yeah, and i don't care if that behavior can be "changed back". it's too late.

last night, i attended a very private function with sarah palin speaking. 20 or so guests, most of whom were my family members. after a short speech, palin asked if the audience had any questions. no questions were forthcoming, and she became increasingly agitated at the lack of worship. finally, amidst great tension, i raised my hand and asked, "in the future, do you forsee that all political candidates will have their own reality TV shows, or just most of them?"

sarah palin was not amused.

the world is frequently an awful, depressing, horrid place, and more often than not, the advances of technology are twisted to make the world vastly more horrid than it already is. but occasionally, the tools of mass media are used for good.

the it gets better movement currently underway brightens my day every time.

today we live in a world where adults like those in the video can easily produce such a video, and distribute it on a forum like youtube, where desperate kids in the middle of nowhere, USA, or anywhere, can watch it, easily. it's now ridiculously easy to get out a message like that, and get it directly to the people who need it most. and it's a good message that's been sorely needed for thousands of years.

now we have the tools to make it happen, and that's more than a little mind blowing.

for the first time ever, really, i got involved in local politics. but not my local politics, those of menlo park. and the issue that compelled me to attend a city council meeting 15 miles from home, from 7pm to 10pm (and that was leaving early), was not universal health care, or gay marriage, or war with iran. no, i was there to oppose BevMo.

ultimately, my side lost. at first, i thought the opposition was on very shaky ground. the city lawyer explained that the nature of the council's job last night was to act not as legislators but as a jury, applying the facts to the law. the law stated that the use permit must be granted to bevmo if the services offered were necessary and convenient, and further, that the permit applies to the land, not the occupant, so it was not fair for the council to consider who was moving in, only that the occupant would be selling booze. that, at least, is my understanding of the conditions.

after the opening speeches by the city council's staff, who had found no reason to oppose, the opposition spoke, and brought to light the fact that there are already 17 liquor stores in menlo park, twice as many as neighboring palo alto (which, it was not said, is fer chrissakes a college town!), all of which are within 3 miles of the proposed location, and further, that the census tract (i guess that's a zoning term) in question allowed 3 liquor stores but already had 5.

now, the law said that the use permit may be granted if the shop was necessary (obviously not, if viewed as Yet Another Liquor Store) OR convenient. convenience, one opposer noted, is a slippery slope: it sure would be convenient to have a liquor store on EVERY corner!

the CEO of BevMo was actually there, and spoke, and seemed to be a very poor public speaker. there were passionate people on both sides with varying levels of articulation. one pretty well spoken supporter was in favor simply because bevmo carries more and better specialty sodas than he can get locally. several bevmo employees got up and recited the company line that they "did not consider bevmo to be a liquor store", and a following opposer derisively referred to bevmo as a "glassware vendor".

the public spoke for well over 2 hours. it was noted that more people in menlo park sent in letters of opposition to bevmo than actually voted in the recent election, some 3500 people, which seems to me like more than 20% of residents (3499 resident letters, i told hops, since i am not a resident).

by the end of it, i felt some sympathy for the council, who obviously had a tough choice to make. the opposition position was fundamentally anti-free market and protectionist, and not supported by current case law, while the bevmo position is pretty clearly in opposition to the image which keeps menlo park a destination on the peninsula, not to mention that it was unclear that bevmo would bring either jobs or tax dollars to the city. not to mention, 20 percent of residents supported the (possibly illegal) protectionist stance.

true to my word, i certainly won't be going to menlo park's bevmo, since to get there, i must currently drive by two larger bevmos. last week, i was in burlingame's bevmo, and, failing to find any top-shelf brandies, ended up in menlo park at beltramo's, where there were too many to choose from, even though the shelves were nearly bare from world series indulgence. i suspect that as bevmo's supporters said, beltramo's will do just fine, and the competition will actually make them better. i also suspect that after a couple of years of underpaying some poorly-informed young people and failing to differentiate themselves from the other 14 local purveyors of cheap wines, menlo park bevmo will be out of business.

season 3 might be the one where bsg stops sucking.

i mean, mister throw-the-president-in-the-brig-when-you-dont-like-her-decisions is suddenly all weepy-eyed about democracy, so yeah, the writing still isn't up to the level of "good", but a tormented and insubordinate tigh is at least... interesting.

but they can't build a gun that shoots through 2 inches of ancient stone masonry.

hurf durf.

so far so good:

hops cooked a breakfast with no hog

i enjoyed some wonderful classical music on some very nice headphones

i had a nice bike ride

received excellent news from a friend (he's having an anchor baby! hooray!)

followed by awesome barbecue at catfish and ribs (i had the catfish, and the ribs, and the briskey)

followed by a cannoli at romolo's (look it up), with ice cream

then some gyokuro, which, i must admit, i did not especially enjoy. either i don't like gyokuro, or i just don't like this gyokuro, which i find more likely

then hops and her dad fixed our dining room table. the good part about this is that i was not involved.

i'm enjoying a new tin of tobacco in my favorite pipe, mcconnell's scottish cake in my dal fiume blowfish.

so far so good. i know the day's not over yet, so let's hope i don't have to use my AK.

but i dont know anybody who would get it :(

it's the very special BSG abortion episode. brought to you by the christian coalition.

10 minutes ago i was drilling splicers. i stopped for this?

wait, did she just say "bearing rections?"

i had a pretty good cigar today, a la aurora maduro in torpedo shape. it was also a "ruby", which is a good omen for me, being the name of both a departed dear relative and my preferred programming language. i've had this cigar before, though not in this form factor. eventually i'll get around to trying the connecticut wrapper, upon which i should have insisted today.

in my rather limited experience, the hallmark of a good cigar is that it is enjoyed mainly hours later, in tantalizing hints of savory memory; flashes of real or remembered flavor bringing the mind back to the earlier experience. i do not find this to happen with pipe tobacco. in this sense, it was a great cigar. the company wasn't bad, either.

is it?

as soon as i brought up the new freebsd box, my nightly log email showed that i was being inundated by ssh cracking script kiddies. freebsd provides many options to deal with this, from pf to a dozen ports to tcpwrappers. i wanted to KISS, so i went with tcpwrappers. flawless victory (well, okay, i had to plug in a keyboard and monitor to get it working right, but in total, it took me 5 minutes). whitelisted the 3 machines that need ssh access, and good bye kiddies.

on the way to write this highly entertaining and informative post, i finally made that donation i've been meaning to make. go team!

some might say, "that's what you get for being a shoe hater". yesterday i stubbed my toe, but good. i was futzing with my phone while opening an office door. a heavy office door, that requires a lot of force to open. normally my sequence is open door, extend foot, but because of the distraction of the phone (which had absentmindedly been put in the wrong pocket and therefore required an immediate transfer), i extended foot, then opened door. hard. ow!

i don't think anything is broken but i've got quite the bruise, and it hurts when anything touches it. and because it's bruised, of course i'm stubbing it on everything around the house.

then, when one of my happy programmer brothers or sisters sends me a wink, i can get it. to whit, i know why my car stereo volume goes up to 31. har har har.

it's been about 2 weeks since i've played a video game. the reason is simple: the in-laws are here. even when they're out for a bit, i can't get into the frame of mind that i need to enjoy gaming. that is, i can't immerse myself in the game knowing i'll be interrupted at any moment. and one thing that my mother, hops' parents, and hops herself all have in common: they do not understand that many/most parts of a game are non-repeatable, and when you talk over them, especially to tell me about how you just discovered some wonderful new piece of lint in your belly button, or whatever thing it is that could wait an extra 30 seconds until Link stops talking (ha ha ha, link never talks, but you get the idea), I will miss an important bit of plot development (frequently, in a game where plot developments are few and far between), and I will probably get upset. especially if you interrupt me during a metal gear cutscene (ha ha ha, no really, wake me up when it's over).

besides the interruption of the cutscenes, the talking over important dialogue, and the peering-over-my-shoulder feeling, i just don't really like to game when someone else is in the room. it feels anti-social, and clearly, i have no anti-social tendencies.

Anyhow, so to pass the time I've cleaned out my office closet, laced up and used my new climbing shoes, fixed up my bike a little (but alas, not enough, it seems), finally put the cleats on my new carnacs (even though it seems the cleat receivers have been lost? or did I just not get any? i don't know, they still work well enough), brewed a lot of japanese tea, and returned to pipe smoking.

the return to pipe smoking, in particular, has been a great success. i am tasting the tobacco far more intensely, and appreciating a much larger range of flavors in each smoke. i have several guesses as to why this is so:

1) i no longer drink coffee. i suspect that coffee was deadening my sense of taste.
2) i drink lots of tea and pay very close attention to the flavors. i think this attunes my brainses to paying attention to flavor details. now, i did this before with coffee, but i drank coffee only once a day versus continually throughout the day for tea. i also usually paid close attention when smoking. this point may be moot.
3) i'm only smoking once or twice a week.
4) i took a 3 month break from smoking.
5) i'm smoking out of the same pipe each time, and it happens to be my most high-end pipe.
6) i haven't smoked anything with latakia, only Va, VaPer, and VaOr blends.

as a science-minded person, i'm intensely curious to know why tobaccos seem so much more flavorful of late. as a lazy person, i won't bother to set up an experiment.

the bad news is that california state parks are hosed and we're about to enter a useless era of economic disaster and impeachment proceedings.

the good news is that while cleaning out my office closet, i found my long lost Box o Knives! zombie defense grid is back online!

well, at least i did.

ho
lee
crap

i loves me some sauternes. it's been too long. it's good even if your wife forgot to buy the bleu cheese.

WHY YES I AM A LEFT WING COASTAL ELITST, DAMMIT.