Anyone want to buy the

Anyone want to buy the farm? John's selling his beloved homestead, act now, and get chickens free!

I'd buy it under the following conditions:

1. I got a tech job at ISU, paying at least $45K/year, and that job did not suck.
2. I could get cable modem/DSL/high speed wireless service there (not satellite, too much latency!).

But, since I'm doubting either one of those is going to happen any time soon, he'll have to find another sucker. :)

I have a shiny new

I have a shiny new iMac sitting on my desk now at work. Too bad I don't get to keep it. It's a tricked-out machine, with a 17" LCD, 1Ghz CPU, 512MB RAM, SuperDrive, Bluetooth, AppleCare, the works! It's a sexy little machine, I didn't know how I'd react to the wide aspect ratio display, but I like it, a lot.

However, the mouse is an abomination. I tried to use it, after half an hour I yanked it out of the keyboard and dug up a Microsoft mouse. I don't know what retarded designer at Apple thinks that piece of crap mouse is something that anyone would enjoy using for an extended period of time, but they should be fired, then beaten with all unused mice that people have sitting in drawers, because they can't tolerate them.

That said, I love the machine, it's going to the end-user soon, I'm just whipping up some documentation, and doing some testing on it first. SPSS 11 loads s-l-o-w-l-y on it, but everything else is quite snappy.

Woo hoo! J Dylan is

Woo hoo! J Dylan is going with me to Vegas in March.

Holy cow! I just noticed

Holy cow! I just noticed that John has gone beardless. This freaks me out, I don't recognize him in that picture at all. I'm guessing he did it in an attempt to hide from the faculty he has to support at ISU, that, or his beard was infested with some type of insect.

That picture has probably been up for days, the things you miss when you use an RSS aggregator!

Woo hoo! J Dylan is

Woo hoo! J Dylan is going to Vegas with me, well, not really. He'll be there at the same time as me, but I'm flying from Minneapolis on the 15th, and he's flying from Omaha a few days later. Also, he's flying in a Fokker plane to get there. I just like saying Fokker.

I'm playing around with the

I'm playing around with the newly released 3Degrees beta today. It's kind of fun being able to easily share music with your friends during your workday, you have a common soundtrack for your lives now. I hope the next feature they add is webcam support.

I'm going to Vegas! I'll

I'm going to Vegas! I'll be in Las Vegas from March 16-25th. Who wants to go with me? :)

Is it impolite to stare

Is it impolite to stare at the chest of a passing female? What if she's wearing a shirt that says "Emmerson's Giant Melons", and they aren't that big?

I agree with John about

I agree with John about the hilarity of this cartoon. My wife sometimes asks me about my day, though she's rapidly learning that she shouldn't, her eyes glaze over before I've gotten half a sentence out of my mouth, though mine go something like "One of the Group Policies in the ActiveDirectory had gone awry, causing SPSS to continually reinstall from it's MSI file..." at which point she runs screaming from the room...

Other than an early meeting,

Other than an early meeting, today is being spent at my desk, fixing not one, not two, but THREE inoperative computers. It's easy enough work, doesn't really tax the brain, but I'm starting to get bored and fidgety. I now have over 240 movies in my Netflix queue, and I think I'm running out of quality movies that I haven't seen.

Speaking of DVDs, if anyone knows of a list of widescreen documentary DVDs, I'd love a link to it, or I'm going to have to start my own. Now that I have a widescreen TV, I'm a bigot, and watching 4:3 content instead of 16:9 just doesn't do it for me, unless it's extremely compelling.

I'd post about the extremely interesting peek I got at a major computer manufacturer's next laptop series, but I'm under NDA about it. :)

I haven't really made up

I haven't really made up my mind about Iraq, though apparently everyone else has, and it sickens me. If you say that you want to take more time before launching a military strike on Iraq, you're labeled a sympathizer of dictators, and if you say that you believe military action will be necessary against Iraq, you're murdering innocent children and starting World War III. Is there no middle ground?

So where does that leave me? What's my opinion? I think we will have to resort to eventual military action in Iraq, they don't seem interested in brokering a deal or being honest. BUT there's no great hurry to do it this month, or even this year. We have time, let's use it, there are enough inspectors in Iraq, and enough recon going on to make sure that Saddam doesn't lob a nuke at the U.S. without warning. Saddam is no more dangerous now than he was on September 10, 2001. Let's play the diplomatic game, going to war SHOULD be hard.

With that in mind, here is Robert Byrd's speech (sent to me by my mom) before the U.S. Senate from last week, which is thought provoking, even if you don't agree with him.

A haunting silence
While the White House risks the horrors of war, the Senate is paralyzed, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., said in a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, Feb. 12.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences. On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war.

Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent -- ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.

We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events. Only on the editorial pages of our newspapers is there much substantive discussion of the prudence or imprudence of engaging in this particular war.

And this is no small conflagration we contemplate. This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world.

This nation is about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of preemption -- the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future -- is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self-defense. It appears to be in contravention of international law and the U.N. Charter. And it is being tested at a time of worldwide terrorism, making many countries around the globe wonder if they will soon be on our -- or some other nation's -- hit list. High-level administration figures recently refused to take nuclear weapons off of the table when discussing a possible attack against Iraq. What could be more destabilizing and unwise than this type of uncertainty, particularly in a world where globalism has tied the vital economic and security interests of many nations so closely together? There are huge cracks emerging in our time-honored alliances, and U.S. intentions are suddenly subject to damaging worldwide speculation. Anti-Americanism based on mistrust, misinformation, suspicion, and alarming rhetoric from U.S. leaders is fracturing the once solid alliance against global terrorism which existed after Sept. 11.

Here at home, people are warned of imminent terrorist attacks with little guidance as to when or where such attacks might occur. Family members are being called to active military duty, with no idea of the duration of their stay or what horrors they may face. Communities are being left with less than adequate police and fire protection. Other essential services are also short-staffed. The mood of the nation is grim. The economy is stumbling. Fuel prices are rising and may soon spike higher. This administration, now in power for a little over two years, must be judged on its record. I believe that that record is dismal.

In that scant two years, this administration has squandered a large projected surplus of some $5.6 trillion over the next decade and taken us to projected deficits as far as the eye can see. This administration's domestic policy has put many of our states in dire financial condition, underfunding scores of essential programs for our people. This administration has fostered policies which have slowed economic growth. This administration has ignored urgent matters such as the crisis in healthcare for our elderly. This administration has been slow to provide adequate funding for homeland security. This administration has been reluctant to better protect our long and porous borders.

In foreign policy, this administration has failed to find Osama bin Laden. In fact, just yesterday we heard from him again marshaling his forces and urging them to kill. This administration has split traditional alliances, possibly crippling, for all time, international order-keeping entities like the United Nations and NATO. This administration has called into question the traditional worldwide perception of the United States as well-intentioned peacekeeper. This administration has turned the patient art of diplomacy into threats, labeling, and name calling of the sort that reflects quite poorly on the intelligence and sensitivity of our leaders, and which will have consequences for years to come.

Calling heads of state pygmies, labeling whole countries as evil, denigrating powerful European allies as irrelevant -- these types of crude insensitivities can do our great nation no good. We may have massive military might, but we cannot fight a global war on terrorism alone. We need the cooperation and friendship of our time-honored allies as well as the newer-found friends whom we can attract with our wealth. Our awesome military machine will do us little good if we suffer another devastating attack on our homeland which severely damages our economy. Our military manpower is already stretched thin and we will need the augmenting support of those nations who can supply troop strength, not just sign letters cheering us on.

The war in Afghanistan has cost us $37 billion so far, yet there is evidence that terrorism may already be starting to regain its hold in that region. We have not found bin Laden, and unless we secure the peace in Afghanistan, the dark dens of terrorism may yet again flourish in that remote and devastated land.

Pakistan as well is at risk of destabilizing forces. This administration has not finished the first war against terrorism and yet it is eager to embark on another conflict with perils much greater than those in Afghanistan. Is our attention span that short? Have we not learned that after winning the war one must always secure the peace?

And yet we hear little about the aftermath of war in Iraq. In the absence of plans, speculation abroad is rife. Will we seize Iraq's oil fields, becoming an occupying power which controls the price and supply of that nation's oil for the foreseeable future? To whom do we propose to hand the reigns of power after Saddam Hussein?

Will our war inflame the Muslim world resulting in devastating attacks on Israel? Will Israel retaliate with its own nuclear arsenal? Will the Jordanian and Saudi Arabian governments be toppled by radicals, bolstered by Iran which has much closer ties to terrorism than Iraq?

Could a disruption of the world's oil supply lead to a worldwide recession? Has our senselessly bellicose language and our callous disregard of the interests and opinions of other nations increased the global race to join the nuclear club and made proliferation an even more lucrative practice for nations which need the income?

In only the space of two short years this reckless and arrogant administration has initiated policies which may reap disastrous consequences for years.

One can understand the anger and shock of any president after the savage attacks of Sept. 11. One can appreciate the frustration of having only a shadow to chase and an amorphous, fleeting enemy on which it is nearly impossible to exact retribution.

But to turn one's frustration and anger into the kind of extremely destabilizing and dangerous foreign policy debacle that the world is currently witnessing is inexcusable from any administration charged with the awesome power and responsibility of guiding the destiny of the greatest superpower on the planet. Frankly many of the pronouncements made by this administration are outrageous. There is no other word.

Yet this chamber is hauntingly silent. On what is possibly the eve of horrific infliction of death and destruction on the population of the nation of Iraq -- a population, I might add, of which over 50 percent is under age 15 -- this chamber is silent. On what is possibly only days before we send thousands of our own citizens to face unimagined horrors of chemical and biological warfare -- this chamber is silent. On the eve of what could possibly be a vicious terrorist attack in retaliation for our attack on Iraq, it is business as usual in the United States Senate.

We are truly "sleepwalking through history." In my heart of hearts I pray that this great nation and its good and trusting citizens are not in for a rudest of awakenings.

To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any president who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50 percent children is "in the highest moral traditions of our country." This war is not necessary at this time. Pressure appears to be having a good result in Iraq. Our mistake was to put ourselves in a corner so quickly. Our challenge is to now find a graceful way out of a box of our own making. Perhaps there is still a way if we allow more time.

Villagenews has some additional coverage, and I like this bit:

Reflecting on the Senate's own founders, Byrd asked, "What would Alexander Hamilton say about the silence in this chamber? What would Dr. Samuel Johnson of Connecticut say? What would Benjamin Franklin say about the silence that emanates from this chamber on the great issue of war and peace?''

And I agree with that part a great deal, there should be some record debates going on about this in the Senate. It's important.

As for what I think, I'm not a pacifist who thinks we should never go to war under any circumstances, but we shouldn't piss off half the world to whack Saddam Hussein, he's just not worth it.

Good news from the doctor

Good news from the doctor today. My wife, Holly, was found to have low TSH levels in her last checkup, so they did some more tests. Low TSH levels generally indicate hyperthyroidism, a condition in which one is gaunt, nervous, with their body's clock running too fast. My wife is none of those things, so we were a bit concerned about other possibilities, and problems with her pituitary gland.

After a battery of bloodtests and scans last week, we found out today that she just has subclinical hyperthyroidism. Basically, her thyroid is outputting normal amounts of the T3 and T4 hormones, though her pituitary isn't sending it the right signals to do so. Nothing really wrong with her, no symptoms, and so there's nothing to fix, they just monitor the levels, in case the body's clock speeds up later and full-blown hyperthyroidism takes hold.

I made the same diagnosis while reading through the various pamphlets as we waited for the doctor to appear, I wonder if I can send her HMO a bill? :)

Whoa. Google has bought Pyra.

Whoa. Google has bought Pyra. Pyra is who makes Blogger, the service that I use to publish this weblog. I'm one of the "few paid users" of the service, so I have things like an RSS feed and faster servers at my disposal. I'm excited to see what this will mean for Pyra, hopefully more features for us users!

I've updated my TiVo FAQ

I've updated my TiVo FAQ tonight to reflect recent changes in the World of TiVo. :)

Argh! It was extremely windy

Argh! It was extremely windy here today, and we came home tonight to find that our screen door took such a beating from the wind that the hydraulic hinge came apart, then the door apparently slammed back and forth against the front door, driving the remnants of said hinge into the wood of the front door over and over and over. Now I need TWO new doors on the house. Secretly, I blame the paperboy who comes in the afternoon, but I don't see how I'd ever prove that.

I'm going to give a

I'm going to give a brief testimonial about BadCopy Pro. I tried this application today for the first time, and it works great. I saved Laurel's bacon after the disk containing her one and only copy of her multi-page paper "went bad". It was giving me the usual "Do you want to format this disk?" error, and all hope appeared loss. I found BadCopy via a Google search, tried the free trial version, which said it could recover her data, and $40 later, she had her paper back! Forty bucks might be a lot to recover one individual disk or file, but I have so many bad floppies reported to me that it's a good use of the taxpayers' dollars.

I got the car back

I got the car back this morning, after paying the bill. The mechanic said it was "unsafe" to drive it the way I had been. I guess that makes me a daredevil! Actually, the struts were so far gone that a couple other pieces in the rear suspension had to be replaced too, which is what ran the bill up so far. However, the car is much easier to drive now that it's not bouncing all over the road.

Today was a very blah

Today was a very blah day. The car is fixed, I'm picking it up tomorrow, with a nice $412 repair bill. I had them replace the rear struts while it was in the shop, as my spine couldn't take much more of the current ones. Nothing exciting at work, just the usual stuff. I was feeling very productive, having gotten a user's new computer all ready for delivery only a few hours after it arrived via UPS, so I e-mail the user, expecting them to be thrilled, only to get a vacation auto-reply saying they're gone for the next week or so. Buzzkill.

What a crappy day. I

What a crappy day. I get in the car to go to work, and notice that the idiot light for the battery is glowing at me angrily, so I figure it probably has a bad battery. I drive over to Blain's Farm & Fleet, where they confirm it is a bad battery with their tester, and replace it. Now, while I'm not a car genius, I can replace my own battery, I've done it a few times before, but it was only $6.99 to have them do it, and since it was about 10 degrees outside, I was happy to pay it. However, it took them well over an hour to accomplish this task of automotive magic, and that was after my car was brought into the shop, and the hood popped up. I'm staring at it from inside the customer aquarium that all shops have now, thinking "Hmm, if I run in there with my Leatherman, I can probably have that battery changed out before anyone notices."

After a while, they came out to tell me that they'd accomplished the Herculean feat of battery replacement, but the battery light was still on, and now my alternator was failing their tests, but it looked really new, so it was probably under warranty. This used to be Holly's car, I just started driving it, so I called her and found out that she did have a new alternator installed, back in March by a repair shop on the other side of town. So, I drove the car over there, and gave it to them, and luckily, Holly was at lunch then, so I called her to come get me and take me to work.

So, I eased into work around 1:00 p.m., and shortly the mechanic called to tell me that while the alternator is under warranty, they can't get a new one until Monday, is that okay? And I said "Sure, I don't need my car, I'll just have Holly pick me up after work".

So, I continue with my day, doing the normal things that IT people do, when I notice I can't reach my own web site, actually, I'm reaching the server, but it just displays the default IIS under construction page.

"Well, that's strange, I say", then I start to think about having reconfigured my network a bit last night, but it was working then. Hmm... I decide to connect to my machine at home via Terminal Services, so I can see what's going on. Up pops a Windows 2000 server, which I think is a bit strange, as I thought I forwarded that port to my desktop, rather than my server when I configured the router, but I must be wrong. I go to log into my server, and I can't. Then I notice that the name of my server is something like "IPCAC". WTF? My server is called "TOSERVEMAN" which is a joke only Twilight Zone fans would get.

Great, just great. Have I been hacked? Hmm, I'm current on all patches, and even if I was hacked, why bother to change the name of my machine? And the machine was behind a router, with only ports 80 and 21 open to the outside, and the FTP is configured to refuse everyone but uni.edu and blogger.com addresses. Hmm, time to contact the ISP, after triple checking that I'm hitting the right IP address, and looking over my e-mails from them to make sure that I set my network up correctly.

It turns out some computer genius on my cable provider decided to configure his server with MY static IP address, and my router got booted off the network. He just happened to be running Windows 2000 Server and IIS on the box, which is why I thought it was mine. I e-mailed my ISP, and they cut of his access, but my cable modem was offline, in need of a reboot to restore the proper IP address.

So, there I sit at work, the ONE day when I need a car in the afternoon, so I can run home and reset my router, bringing the web site back to life, and I have no transportation. It's only a little over a mile and a half away, but it was pretty cold out, and I wasn't dressed for a frigid winter hike of that length.

But, I'm home now, service has been restored to my network, and I'm not leaving, all weekend. I'm just going to stay in here where it's warm, watch some DVDs, play some Age of Mythology, mess with my TiVos and my Xbox, and generally avoid stress.

An interesting look at Nevada's

An interesting look at Nevada's tax structure [via Hal]. My parents still live in Nevada, and I knew it had no personal income tax, though I never realized that it was forbidden by the state constitution. It looks like Nevada needs to fix their tax code with the giant deficits they're running up.

If this list of items

If this list of items sounds familiar to you, you probably grew up in a small town. Almost all of them rang true for me, my graduating class had 22 members, and we all did go to the same party afterwards.

My town didn't even have a stop light to reference though, just a flashing light to mark the intersection with highway 18, and a 4-way stop in the middle of town.

As seen on Slashdot: Dell

As seen on Slashdot: Dell to drop floppy. Well, it's about time. I've been trying to wean my users from floppy drives for a while now. All of their machines are equipped with Zips, and all of them bought in the last 18 months have CD-RW drives as well, so there's really no reason to use floppies anymore, other than their mental attachment to them. It may be my imagination, but I swear that floppies are a lot shoddier now than they were back in the olden days. I used to use disks for years, now it seems that any disk I grab from my bin has a 75% chance of having errors on it, even if it's only a few months old and was never abused.

I had an amazingly productive

I had an amazingly productive day today. I organized all thirty of the faculty requests for new machines, estimated their cost, and prioritized them all to determine which to fund, then I spent 3 hours cleaning my filthy office. Why the sudden burst of productivity? I think it's because I had music playing all day. Last night, I was moving some files around, and realized "Hey, you know, I've got a lot of good music on my work machine, I should listen to that more often", so I set up Windows Media Player 9 today, and just threw my entire CD collection (ripped to .wma files on my hard drive) at it, and set it to random play. Having some tunes playing really made me a lot more productive, or at least that's my excuse for when the neighboring faculty will inevitably ask me to knock it off. :)

The arching sky is calling

The arching sky is calling
Spacemen back to their trade.
All hands! Stand by! Free falling!
And the lights below us fade.
Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps the race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet.

We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.

--Robert A. Heinlein

I've been watching CBS this

I've been watching CBS this morning, Dan Rather seems to me to be the most human of the news anchors, never afraid to let some emotion show, while not wallowing in it.

The latest video shows the orbiter as a brilliant shining star, shooting across the early morning Texas sky, it's beautiful, and tragic.

I wonder how the three people on the ISS will get home, I doubt the March shuttle mission will launch on schedule, and while they've got a lot of extra supplies, it could be years before another shuttle launch, if there is ever another one. They have an escape pod vehicle, a russian capsule, but that was really only for an emergency, and of course, it's never been done before.

An instant message from a

An instant message from a friend, a frantic fumble with the T.V. remote, and suddenly, I'm in the fourth grade again, watching the loss of a Space Shuttle.

I'm reminded again of how high the price of progress can be.

Godspeed, Columbia.