Ouch!

The last few days have been the most eventful in a very long time.

On Wednesday, I had my second interview with a new company, one whose products I was genuinely interested in and that I wanted to work for.

Thursday morning I got an e-mail with the title "Offer Letter"

I was full of apprehension as I opened the e-mail, all my soul eager to see the salary. The salary they offered would be the last deciding factor in determining if I was really done with my then current employer or if I still had looking to do.

The salary was slightly less than I already made

I considered three factors:
1. The offered salary was going to be renegotiated at three months and again at six months

2. The company I was working for was on a countdown to tech positions being out sourced.

3. I was looking at a far healthier office environment than the one I was leaving.

So I e-mailed in my acceptance and followed up with a phone call.

Later in the day, I got a call confirming my start date.

By late morning the company I'd been working for for the last six years also gave me the rest of Thursday and all of Friday off as a wedding gift.

On Friday, I went back to the office to hand in my two weeks notice and clear out a few personal effects. The idea was to get married that weekend, go on a honeymoon and come back to one last week at FinancialCampus before starting my new job.

Then disaster struck.

While on my way home from dropping off my letter of resignation, I was rear ended while stopped at a stop light.

At least I'm told that
s what happened. What I remember is leaving the office, getting in my car, and waking up in the hospital.

I spent most of Saturday in the hospital, before being released in time for the wedding Sunday.

I got married this past Sunday n a haze of painkillers. I'm told people were impressed that I managed to make it at all, and understood my distant, dazed expression and actions.

The honeymoon was, of course, canceled. I'm very glad we had trip insurance, otherwise we wouldn't have had a prayer of getting the money back.

It's frustrating that concerns over my injuries are taking up more of my mind than the fact that I'm now a married man. Instead of spending every moment thinking about how lucky I am to have such a wonderful woman as my bride, I'm full of concerns for my back and chest. The fact that I can't roll over in bed at night is taking up more of my thoughts than anything else. I haven't even managed a decent cough, as it hurts too much.

Through all of this, my Wife has demonstrated again and again what a wonderful human being she is. She's been taking care of all the arrangements I couldn't. She's developed a sixth sense telling her what I can and can't handle in my present condition. She's taking care of my without babying me, helping me without making me feel helpless.

I genuinely feel like I'm doing everything I can for myself, with her helping me just where i need it.

She's also been sure to metaphorically kick my arse when necessary, to make sure I actually do the things I can and don't let her do what I can.

I love her.

I contacted FinancialCampus on Monday, and after a brief conversation was informed that, while I would remain on the payroll for the full duration of my two weeks notice, they did not want me to come in unless it was to clear out any personal items I had left behind.

All told, I'm happy with the arrangement. I get to have two weeks to recover while still on my old salary. Dipite the stress and frustrations o my old position, I find myself leaving on good terms. I'm moving on and starting a new life, wishing them well.

After a brief e-mail exchange with my new employer, I was told to spend the intervening time getting better, my requests for some product related reading material being rebuffed with an admonishment to concentrate on getting well. I guess I'll have to content myself with reading their web site. :)

All told, I've had a nice, quiet exit from my old job, and have a lot of reasons to feel good about my new one.

My body has been in better shape of course. My chest still hurts too much to even cough properly, even with the pain meds and muscle relaxant. I have to sleep on my back, which I hate doing, and even then just shifting my position a little can give me nausea inducing shots of pain.

I have to replace my car and get a lens replaced in my glasses. Fortunately I had a spare pair of glasses and my new job is one I can get to via train, so aside from getting to gaming I don't NEED a car at the moment, even though I will need one soon.

Which gets me to a question. Any recommendations on an inexpensive, reliable commuter vehicle with good safety ratings and gas mileage?

2004-12-16 00:38:43
ChromeIndustry
Hey, go for the MINI, 20$ new, my buddy has one and it handles well, is relatively safe and has great gas... otherwise a toyota

Watch your screen and listen closely.

MUST READ FIRST !!!!

Watch your screen and listen closely. (If you're at work, use headphones!)

This is a car advert from somewhere in Europe. When they finished filming the ad the people who made it noticed something moving along the side of the car, like a ghostly white mist. The ad was never put on TV because the unexplained ghostly phenomenon frightened the production team out of their wits.

Watch it and about halfway look and you will see the white mist crossing in front of the car then following it along the road......Spooky!

IntraLearn "Encrption.txt (sic)"

IntraLearn users:

You have been f***ed.

Any doubt?

Below is the text of Encrption.txt, which can be found in the cgi-bin directory of any IntraLearn port. (May have been removed in post 3.5 installs)
---------------------Encrption.txt----------------------------
Two files namely

reports/create_order.cfm
reports/repogen1.cfm

has been encrypted prior to version 2.3 and the source code is not available for the same. When encryting Intralearn, make sure to remove these two files before running cfencode.

Syntax for cfencode

cfencode directorypath/*.cfm /r /v "1"
---------------------Encrption.txt----------------------------

You see, Cold Fusion lets you encrypt your CFM files so your users can't view the source code. This prevents your clients from making unauthorized changes to the product.

IntraLearn lost the source code part of their product, then left the above text file stating as much on their distribution CDs.

The funny thing is (Aside from the fact that they can't spell "encryption") is that the cfdecrypt utility was around a couple years before IntraLearn hit version 2.6. They never bothered to do a google search.

A quick note to anyone looking for cfdecrypt. As of this writing, the first hit is for a web interface to the utility. There is a compiled, command line Windows binary available.

I wish I'd noticed the file ages ago. I could have e-mailed them the decrypted files back when they would have been useful.

Let your mind wander over the implications of a company losing source code to files they continue to distribute. Feel free to take into account the detail that their QA didn't catch the fact that they left an admission of this error in their distribution files.

Let's all hope the last person to work on those files wasn't building any back doors.

Fortunately, the back doors I found after decrypting their source no longer functioned. I don't know if they explicitly removed them, or if other changes to the code happened to break them.

And if you're from IntraLearn, don't worry, I'm not going to post the user names and passwords you hard coded into your "product."

Borg Duck

Shame on you

Boston.com / News / World / Americans accused of running private jail appear before Afghan judge, say they have Pentagon links

Note to self, private citizens should NOT open jails.

Dance Jesus, DANCE!!!

Now that http://hampsterdance.com/ is not the kitchy fun it used to be, I present the Dancing Jesus!

The Jesus Dance

My Wife will like this one

Mac News: Commentary: Are Mac Users Smarter Than PC Users?

Are Mac Users Smarter Than PC Users?

By Paul Murphy
www.LinuxInsider.com,
Part of the ECT News Network
07/15/04 7:45 AM PT

I doubt it's possible to get a definitive answer, but as long as you don't take any of it too seriously you can have a lot of fun playing with proxies such as the average user's ability to read and write his or her native language.

My wife has a Dilbert cartoon on her office door in which one of the characters says: "If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how." She's a Mac user and they were worse even before they all became Unix users too.

Or maybe not. But finding out whether the average Mac user really is smarter than the rest of us isn't so easy. Part of the problem is that even if you matched the admissions test results for a graduate school with individual PC or Mac preferences to discover a strong positive correlation, people would argue that the Mac users are exceptional for other reasons, that the tests don't measure anything relevant, and that it's unethical to do this in the first place.
In fact, it's pretty clear that this topic is sufficiently emotionally loaded that you'd get shouted down by one side or another no matter how you did the research; and that's too bad because a clear answer one way or the other would be interesting.

I doubt it's possible to get a definitive answer, but as long as you don't take any of it too seriously you can have a lot of fun playing with proxies such as the average user's ability to read and write his or her native language. This isn't necessarily a reasonable measure of intelligence (mainly because intelligence has yet to be defined) but almost everyone agrees that a native English speaker's ability to write correct English correlates closely with that person's ability to think clearly.

Measuring Written English

In other words, if we knew that Mac users, as a group, were significantly better users of written English than PC users, then we'd have a presumptive basis for ranking the probable "smartness" of two people about whom we only know that one uses a Mac and the other a PC.
So how can we do that? As it happens, Unix has been useful for text processing and analysis virtually from the beginning. In fact, the very first Unics application offered text processing support for the patent application process at Bell Labs -- in 1971 on a PDP-11 with 8 KB of RAM and a 500-KB disk.

By coincidence, Interleaf, the first GUI-based Document-processing package, was the first major commercial package available on Sun -- in 1983, well before Microsoft "invented" Windows and well ahead of the first significant third-party applications for the Apple Lisa.

During the 12 years between those two applications, text processing and related research became one of the hallmarks of academic Unix use. By the early eighties therefore most Unix releases, whether BSD- or AT&T-derived, came with the AT&T writers workbench -- a collection of useful text processing utilities.

One of those was a thing called style. Style is somewhat out of style these days but is on many Linux "bonus" CDs and downloadable from gnu.org as part of the diction package.

Style produces readability metrics on text. Forget for the moment what the ratings mean and look at the numbers. For comparison, here's what style says about the first 1,000 words in what is arguably the finest novel ever published in English: The Golden Bowl readability grades:

Kincaid: 18.2
ARI: 22.2
Coleman-Liau: 9.8
Flesch Index: 46.7
Fog Index: 21.7
Lix: 64.4 = higher than school year 11
SMOG-Grading: 13.5

Of course, that's Henry James at the top of his form.

Slashdot and Other Style

For a more realistic and interesting baseline, I collected about 2,800 lines of Slashdot discussion contributions and ran style against them to get the following ratings summary along with a lot of detail data omitted here:

Kincaid: 7.7
ARI: 8.0
Coleman-Liau: 9.7
Flesch Index: 72.4
Fog Index: 10.7
Lix: 37.1 = school year 5
SMOG-Grading: 9.8

Notice that these results apply to comments from Slashdotters, not to the text on which they're commenting. Look at the source articles and you get very different results because, of course, most are professionally written or edited -- although there is an interesting oddity in that ratings for files made up by pasting together stories posted by "Michael" are consistently at least one school year higher than comparable accumulations made from postings (other than press releases) by "Cowboyneal."

Comments put in discussion groups aren't usually professional productions like news articles. You'd expect those to rate considerably higher; and they do. Here, for example, is the summary from running it against five articles taken from today's online edition of The Christian Science Monitor:

Kincaid: 10.4
ARI: 12.5
Coleman-Liau: 12.9
Flesch Index: 59.5
Fog Index: 13.3
Lix: 48.8 = school year 9
SMOG-Grading: 11.6

Lots of smart people have put effort into arguing that these readability scores are either meaningless or meaningful, a choice that apparently depends rather more on the writer's agenda than research. Most of the more credible would probably agree, however, that higher rankings are mainly useful as a rough guide to the writer's expectations about his or her audience but lower rankings do correlate directly with the writer's education in English and indirectly with intelligence.

So what happens if we treat the Slashdotters, a mixed bunch if there ever was one, as a median and then compare the ratings shown above with results from "pure play" Mac and PC communities?

The PC Community

I tried running style against text collected from various PC sites. The very lowest ratings came from text collected from an MSN forum host, but I only got about 600 lines because the forums suffer the Wintel design disease of requiring you to click for each new text contribution and I get bored easily.

Kincaid: 2.9
ARI: 1.9
Coleman-Liau: 8.0
Flesch Index: 89.5
Fog Index: 6.0
Lix: 21.5 = below school year 5
SMOG-Grading: 7.1

The highest PC-oriented ratings came from a sample of about 2,500 lines taken from reader comments hosted by PC Magazine:

Kincaid: 5.9
ARI: 5.9
Coleman-Liau: 9.0
Flesch Index: 79.3
Fog Index: 9.0
Lix: 32.2 = below school year 5
SMOG-Grading: 8.8

Notice that both sets score well below the level of Slashdot's contributors.

And the Mac Users?

So do Mac users differ? You bet. Here's the ratings summary based on about 3,000 lines of text taken from reader comments hosted by the Macintouch site:

Kincaid: 8.9
ARI: 9.4
Coleman-Liau: 10.0
Flesch Index: 67.8
Fog Index: 12.0
Lix: 40.5 = school year 6
SMOG-Grading: 10.7

Not only were these ratings significantly higher than those given Slashdot's contributors, and thus better than those given text from the PC sites, but the vocabulary was larger too. Without collapsing words to their root forms, but after removing punctuation (including capitalization) and numbers, the Macintouch stuff had 870 unique words to only 517 for the combined PC sites.

Overall, the results are pretty clear: Mac users might not actually be smarter than PC users, but they certainly use better English and a larger vocabulary to express more complex thinking.
Paul Murphy, a LinuxInsider columnist, wrote and published The Unix Guide to Defenestration. Murphy is a 20-year veteran of the IT consulting industry, specializing in Unix and Unix-related management issues.

Make your own Soap

Soap Recipes

And the very funny Bacon Fat version

If you never hear from me again...

Well, things are pretty much par for the course here at work.

The ceiling is threatening to collapse.

I need to start keeping a digital camera at work for situations like this.

The IT department is in the basement. Above us is the filing department and customer service. Their ground level room used to be two separate areas with a rather sturdy wall between them.

A couple years ago, the wall was taken down in order to create a single, large room for an open office plan. In place of the wall (Which may have been load bearing, the contractors who tore it down couldn't tell) they left a foot wide strip of drywall, the jagged end of which was finished with some moulding. This meant there was a strip of what used to be wall running along the ceiling from one end of the room to the other. No support beams were installed, and they would have been expensive and broken up the room.

This 30 some foot strip of wall remnant (anyone know the proper term for this?) is now sagging, threatening to buckle and collapse. It's also straining the wall sections that it connects to. There are a number of cracks all along the plaster.

This sagging was first noticed today, and the center of this edging is now a good foot lower than the ends. The sag is distorting the hanging ceiling, and raining a dust of drywall on the staff.

Now here is why I'm not happy with this.

My desk is in the basement, directly under the sagging section of wall. There is debate about the composition of this chunk of construction. If it's largely moulding and drywall, then it's theorized that a collapse would create a mess in the room above, perhaps leaving a hole in the exterior wall or damaging the stairwell. This does not distress me much, as I can get out the back door unless the collapse seriously damages the rest of the building.

If this chunk of building has some substantial planks of wood, then the collapse could create what amounts to a massive spear piercing the floor into the basement below. This would result in one or more shafts of wood and drywall plunging through the floor and into my work area.

Did I mention my desk is right under this bending and bowing part of the building?

Naturally, if I hear so much as a creak form above, I'm running out the back door as fast as I can.

On a side note, I would like to state that I prefer not to be kept on life support if there is no hope of recovery.

Which reminds me, I need to go over that organ donor stuff if I get home alive tonight. My eyes are too messed up to be of any use, but my other internal organs could be recycled.

Censorship kills pregnant woman and Sunday School Group

Censorship's Trial Balloons - What happens when wartime news gets censored? By Liam Callanan

During World War II, over 1,000 hydrogen filled balloons reached the US mainland, carrying assorted explosive charges. The balloons floated so far inland that some of them reached Suburban Detroit.

Due to US Military censorship of the press, only one story about this was published, and even today most Americans never knew it happened. As a matter of fact the History textbook I used in high school stated that Japanese forces and bombs never reached US soil.

One reason this is troubling is the fact that one of the bombs killed a group of children.

May 5, [1945] the Rev. Archie Mitchell and his pregnant wife, Elsie, took a group of children from his church on an outing to Oregon's Gearhart Mountain. Mitchell let the kids out of the car before he went off to park. His wife got out, too, to supervise. Mitchell found a spot up the road and pulled over. As he was getting out, he saw his charges clustered around a large white object on the forest floor. One of the kids tugged at it.

The bomb exploded, killing all the children and Mrs. Mitchell. They were the only fatalities on the U.S. mainland due to enemy action during World War II

In other words, had these people known about the bombs, they would have known to avoid them. Not knowing what it was resulted in one foolish woman letting a group of children (and herself) get blown to bits.

Study Links Homophobia with Homosexual Arousal

New Study Links Homophobia with Homosexual Arousal

And all this time I've been saying the study was done at the U of M. My bad.

New Study Links Homophobia with Homosexual Arousal


August 1996 Press Release

WASHINGTON -- Psychoanalytic theory holds that homophobia -- the fear, anxiety, anger, discomfort and aversion that some ostensibly heterosexual people hold for gay individuals -- is the result of repressed homosexual urges that the person is either unaware of or denies. A study appearing in the August 1996 issue of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA), provides new empirical evidence that is consistent with that theory.

Researchers at the University of Georgia conducted an experiment involving 35 homophobic men and 29 nonhomophobic men as measured by the Index of Homophobia scale. All the participants selected for the study described themselves as exclusively heterosexual both in terms of sexual arousal and experience.

Each participant was exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual and lesbian videotapes (but not necessarily in that order). Their degree of sexual arousal was measured by penile plethysmography, which precisely measures and records male tumescence.

Men in both groups were aroused by about the same degree by the video depicting heterosexual sexual behavior and by the video showing two women engaged in sexual behavior. The only significant difference in degree of arousal between the two groups occurred when they viewed the video depicting male homosexual sex: 'The homophobic men showed a significant increase in penile circumference to the male homosexual video, but the control [nonhomophobic] men did not.'

Broken down further, the measurements showed that while 66% of the nonhomophobic group showed no significant tumescence while watching the male homosexual video, only 20% of the homophobic men showed little or no evidence of arousal. Similarly, while 24% of the nonhomophobic men showed definite tumescence while watching the homosexual video, 54% of the homophobic men did.

When asked to give their own subjective assessment of the degree to which they were aroused by watching each of the three videos, men in both groups gave answers that tracked fairly closely with the results of the objective physiological measurement, with one exception: the homophobic men significantly underestimated their degree of arousal by the male homosexual video.

Do these findings mean, then, that homophobia in men is a reaction to repressed homosexual urges, as psychoanalysis theorizes? While their findings are consistent with that theory, the authors note that there is another, competing theoretical explanation: anxiety. According to this theory, viewing the male homosexual videotape may have caused negative emotions (such as anxiety) in the homophobic men, but not in the nonhomophobic men. As the authors note, 'anxiety has been shown to enhance arousal and erection,' and so it is also possible that 'a response to homosexual stimuli [in these men] is a function of the threat condition rather than sexual arousal per se. These competing notions can and should be evaluated by future research.'

Article: 'Is Homophobia Associated With Homosexual Arousal?' by Henry E. Adams, Ph.D., Lester W. Wright, Jr., Ph.D. and Bethany A. Lohr, University of Georgia, in Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 105, No. 3, pp 440-445.

The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington,DC, is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 142,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 49 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 58 state and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting human welfare.

Baby Spam

I think it's crass.

I arrived at work this morning and opened my e-mail. As usual, there was some random clap-trap from corporate. Corporate is a couple thousand miles away, and they still see fit to e-mail us emergency exit maps and other site specific details that no one here gives a damn about.

Today was a little different.

Today we received a SPAM from one of the corporate sales drones asking for help in adopting a child. In addition to the e-mail, she sent an attached Word Document, both of which I've included below.

Notice that I've edited out the personal details. I'm including this for entertainment purposes. I'm pissed off that people I don't know are, for all intents and purposes, SPAMing me for help in adopting a child.

This smacks of desperation, and while I respect the frustration of those who want children and can't conceive on their own, it's inappropriate to SPAM people. Company e-mail is not a venue for baby hunting.

I see nothing wrong with asking your friends and family to help. The material below would be appropriate for a blog, newspaper ad or any other of a number of outlets. The search itself is not the issue, it's sending it to a bunch of people you don't know that pisses me off.

By the way, I've cropped the photos and resized them. The original Word Doc had all the scanned photos in the full 8.5x14 size stright from the wife's scanner, at an obscene resolution.

The E-Mail:

Hello my friends at <CompanyName>, I am reaching out to you after hours in order to minimize the disruption of your day. The reason for this email is personal, but I need your help. My husband, <HusbandName>, and I would like to adopt an infant and we are embarking on a search. We ask you to read the attached letter and keep us in mind if you know of a woman/girl with the desire to give up her, soon to be born, child, for adoption.

If you know of someone, please give her our letter. We also ask that you forward our letter to your U.S. based family and friends as well as churches, schools, doctors and anyone else you think my know of a mother giving up her newborn child, and ask them to, in turn, send this out to their network. And so on.... If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us or respond to this email.

We greatly appreciate your assistance in spreading our story.

Warm regards,

<AttachmentName>

<BrideName>

<CompanyName> - Senior Account Manager

<Second Line of Title>



xxx-xxx-xxxx (office)

xxx-xxx-xxxx (cell)

<e-mail>

<Corporate URL>

---

The Attachment

Dear Birthmother,

We are XXXXX and XXXXX. We would like to offer a baby a warm and loving home however we are unable to conceive a child of our own. We would love to adopt a baby to start a family and to have the wonderful experience of parenting because we have a great deal of love to share. We have been married for over three years now but have been in a loving relationship for over 10 years. We are both successful career people with Michel working as an investment banker for a financial organization and Laura working in sales for an education organization.

We both come from a very close family environment with each of us having four siblings. We know the value of family so we look forward to raising our child/children in the company of caring aunts and uncles and the fun of 11 cousins. We also continue to enjoy the company of loving parents who are looking forward to the day that we bring a new child into our growing family.

Our home is a four bedroom home and already contains a child’s room complete with murals on the walls and hand painted furniture. Our home is located on a nature preserve so we see an abundance of wildlife through our many windows. You can actually see our home, inside and out, at the following link: http://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We have a very fun neighborhood consisting of 39 families which we are happy to call friends. Our neighborhood is a wonderful place to raise children in that we have over 30 children under the age of 6 living in our neighborhood with more on the way. We live on a cul-de-sac so there is very little traffic. To make this place even better, we are also part of one of the best school districts in the state of Wisconsin.

Vacations are a part of our life including the time share we own in Florida which we look forward to sharing as a family. We also enjoy a great deal of activities together such as Hiking, Kayaking, Traveling, reading, fishing, gardening and cooking…actually Michel does most of the cooking and Laura helps. In addition, Michel also enjoys long distance biking, teaching Spinning classes at the YMCA and watching all types of sporting events and Laura enjoys Yoga and serves as Volunteer Director for various Wisconsin Special Olympics events.

We plan to raise our child in the Christian faith. Since we are both from large families, we hope to eventually bring more than one child into our lives so that our children can feel the happiness and support that siblings can bring into a life.

This is not an easy decision for you and we respect your choice. We know that adoption can be an incredible experience for all involved. Please contact us if you want to talk and thank you for listening.

Medical and legal expenses paid. Please call us anytime at xxx-xxx-xxxx or email us at xxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.com.

Warm regards,

xxxxxx & xxxxxx

pluck-comics

I've been using Plucker to add web content to my Palm Pilot, and have enjoyed the comics-plucker app that is included with the source code download.

I've found it's pretty easy to add new ones comics.

The Venus Envy sample is a working template for adding Keenspace comics to the list. At some point I may go so far as to ass Keenspace support and submit a patch!

Append the following lines to the end of the file other.comics.list to add the corresponding comics:

comic_list.append({
'name': 'kevinandkell',
'page': 'http://kevinandkell.com/',
'expr': "kk\d+\.gif",
'suff': '.gif',
'base': 'http://kevinandkell.com/2004/strips/',
'title': 'Kevin and Kell'})

comic_list.append({
'name': 'venusenvy',
'page': 'http://venusenvy.keenspace.com/',
'expr': "\d+\.jpg",
'suff': '.jpg',
'base': 'http://venusenvy.keenspace.com/comics/',
'refr': 'http://venusenvy.keenspace.com/comics/',
'title': 'VenusEnvy'})

comic_list.append({
'name': 'somethingpositive',
'page': 'http://somethingpositive.net',
'expr': "sp\d+\.gif",
'suff': '.gif',
'base': 'http://somethingpositive.net/arch/',
'title': 'SomethingPositive'})

Damn Blog SPAM

Damn Blog SPAM

Some jerk is posting comments to my BLOG, linking to porn sites.

It's really annoying and I have better things to do with my time than continually delete this crap.

Kindly stop.

Whoever it is appears to be using a Proxy server. One post came from 210.204.103.1. A lookup on the IP reveals the following:

person: Enkyung Shin
descr: Tunpo Elementary School
descr: 388 Tunpo-ri Tunpo-myun Asan-city
descr: CHUNGNAM
descr: 336-870
country: KR
phone: +82-41-532-0497
fax-no: +82-41-532-0497
e-mail: egshin@hitel.net
nic-hdl: ES107-KR
mnt-by: MNT-KRNIC-AP
remarks: This information has been partially mirrored by APNIC from
remarks: KRNIC. To obtain more specific information, please use the
remarks: KRNIC whois server at whois.krnic.net.
changed: hostmaster@nic.or.kr 20040426
source: KRNIC

The second IP, 212.192.163.20 resolves as:
person: Serge P Kovalyov
address: Akademgorodok Internet Project
address: Network Coordination Center
address: Lavrentyev 6
address: 630090 Novosibirsk
address: Russia
phone: +7 3832 34 22 64
fax-no: +7 3832 35 21 63
fax-no: +7 3832 34 22 64
e-mail: kovalyov@nsc.ru
e-mail: kovalyov@inp.nsk.su
nic-hdl: SPK1-RIPE
changed: belov@nsc.ru 19980605
source: RIPE

Naturally, I won't post the URLs in question, as that would give them the advertising they desire. I will however post details on who supposedly owns the URLs.

So far, only one of them returns valid whois data:

Creation Date: 21-Oct-2003
Expiration Date: 21-Oct-2004

Domain servers in listed order:
ns1.mature-sex-live.com
ns2.mature-sex-live.com

Registrant:
Administrative Contact:
Technical Contact:
Billing Contact:
Setevoi Ilya Paketovich
Setevoi Ilya Paketovich (webkiller@nm.ru)
Hata nomer 5 na nashei ulice
Rodnoe Selo
null,11129
CD
Tel. +93.383020234

The Rapture

I was raised in a Conservative Christian home, and until my Junior year of High school, I was a Pro-Life, Conservative, Creationist, Republican. By the time my Freshman year of college was over, I'd become politically moderate in most regards, and am now very frustrated with the religious fanaticism I saw first hand through most of my youth.

To the credit of my parents, they were not among those who wanted the world to end or thought the Rapture would happen on the stroke of midnight at the beginning of 2000.

But they sent me to private schools where such views were expressed.

I still remember a teacher laughing at and ridiculing me because I questioned The Rapture and it's plausibility. It was one of the most frustrating moments of my life, and the moment I realized that there were people for whom logic and the facts would never get in the way of their preconceived notions.

The article I'm linking to below is an excellent summary of the Rapture focused ideas that I find so abhorrent.

There are plenty of Bible verses that make it clear that the idea of "The Rapture" is nonsense, but I won't go into it here.

Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power

US Christian fundamentalists are driving Bush's Middle East policy

Bush White House checked with rapture Christians before latest Israel move

The Village Voice: Features: The Jesus Landing Pad by Rick Perlstein

And Fark.com's Discussion on this mess.

This is a pretty good summary of why I'm not voting for Bush in the next election. As far as he's concerned, the extreme religious right is the embodiment of what is correct n the world. He's incapable of seeing alternate viewpoints.

An ethnocentric religious fanatic is not the person I want in charge of the country when at war with Islamic nations. He's turning this into the next round of crusades. He wants a holy war, and he's blundering along without any real understanding, or even an attempt to gain an understanding of the views and attitudes of the people we're fighting.

All he's accomplished is strengthening the very organizations and movements he claims to be trying to destroy, and it will continue as long as he's president. He is operating from the mind set of a Crusader trying to take back the Holy Land. He wants to set the world alight with a Holy War, and in my mind is no better than those screaming for the death of "The Great White Satan."

Full Article

It t was an e-mail we weren't meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that "the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level"—this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we're not supposed to know the National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.

But now we know.

"Everything that you're discussing is information you're not supposed to have," barked Pentecostal minister Robert G. Upton when asked about the off-the-record briefing his delegation received on March 25. Details of that meeting appear in a confidential memo signed by Upton and obtained by the Voice.

The e-mailed meeting summary reveals NSC Near East and North African Affairs director Elliott Abrams sitting down with the Apostolic Congress and massaging their theological concerns. Claiming to be "the Christian Voice in the Nation's Capital," the members vociferously oppose the idea of a Palestinian state. They fear an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza might enable just that, and they object on the grounds that all of Old Testament Israel belongs to the Jews. Until Israel is intact and David's temple rebuilt, they believe, Christ won't come back to earth.

Abrams attempted to assuage their concerns by stating that "the Gaza Strip had no significant Biblical influence such as Joseph's tomb or Rachel's tomb and therefore is a piece of land that can be sacrificed for the cause of peace."

Three weeks after the confab, President George W. Bush reversed long-standing U.S. policy, endorsing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank in exchange for Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

In an interview with the Voice, Upton denied having written the document, though it was sent out from an e-mail account of one of his staffers and bears the organization's seal, which is nearly identical to the Great Seal of the United States. Its idiosyncratic grammar and punctuation tics also closely match those of texts on the Apostolic Congress's website, and Upton verified key details it recounted, including the number of participants in the meeting ("45 ministers including wives") and its conclusion "with a heart-moving send-off of the President in his Presidential helicopter."

Upton refused to confirm further details.

Affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church, the Apostolic Congress is part of an important and disciplined political constituency courted by recent Republican administrations. As a subset of the broader Christian Zionist movement, it has a lengthy history of opposition to any proposal that will not result in what it calls a "one-state solution" in Israel.

The White House's association with the congress, which has just posted a new staffer in Israel who may be running afoul of Israel's strict anti-missionary laws, also raises diplomatic concerns.

The staffer, Kim Hadassah Johnson, wrote in a report obtained by the Voice, "We are establishing the Meet the Need Fund in Israel—'MNFI.' . . . The fund will be an Interest Free Loan Fund that will enable us to loan funds to new believers (others upon application) who need assistance. They will have the opportunity to repay the loan (although it will not be mandatory)." When that language was read to Moshe Fox, minister for public and interreligious affairs at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, he responded, "It sounds against the law which prohibits any kind of money or material [inducement] to make people convert to another religion. That's what it sounds like." (Fox's judgment was e-mailed to Johnson, who did not return a request for comment.)

The Apostolic Congress dates its origins to 1981, when, according to its website, "Brother Stan Wachtstetter was able to open the door to Apostolic Christians into the White House." Apostolics, a sect of Pentecostals, claim legitimacy as the heirs of the original church because they, as the 12 apostles supposedly did, baptize converts in the name of Jesus, not in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Ronald Reagan bore theological affinities with such Christians because of his belief that the world would end in a fiery Armageddon. Reagan himself referenced this belief explicitly a half-dozen times during his presidency.

While the language of apocalyptic Christianity is absent from George W. Bush's speeches, he has proven eager to work with apocalyptics—a point of pride for Upton. "We're in constant contact with the White House," he boasts. "I'm briefed at least once a week via telephone briefings. . . . I was there about two weeks ago . . . At that time we met with the president."

Last spring, after President Bush announced his Road Map plan for peace in the Middle East, the Apostolic Congress co-sponsored an effort with the Jewish group Americans for a Safe Israel that placed billboards in 23 cities with a quotation from Genesis ("Unto thy offspring will I give this land") and the message, "Pray that President Bush Honors God's Covenant with Israel. Call the White House with this message." It then provided the White House phone number and the Apostolic Congress's Web address.

In the interview with the Voice, Pastor Upton claimed personal responsibility for directing 50,000 postcards to the White House opposing the Road Map, which aims to create a Palestinian state. "I'm in total disagreement with any form of Palestinian state," Upton said. "Within a two-week period, getting 50,000 postcards saying the exact same thing from places all over the country, that resonated with the White House. That really caused [President Bush] to backpedal on the Road Map."

When I sought to confirm Upton's account of the meeting with the White House, I was directed to National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones, whose initial response upon being read a list of the names of White House staffers present was a curt, "You know half the people you just mentioned are Jewish?"

When asked for comment on top White House staffers meeting with representatives of an organization that may be breaking Israeli law, Jones responded, "Why would the White House comment on that?"

When asked whose job it is in the administration to study the Bible to discern what parts of Israel were or weren't acceptable sacrifices for peace, Jones said that his previous statements had been off-the-record.

When Pastor Upton was asked to explain why the group's website describes the Apostolic Congress as "the Christian Voice in the nation's capital," instead of simply a Christian voice in the nation's capital, he responded, "There has been a real lack of leadership in having someone emerge as a Christian voice, someone who doesn't speak for the right, someone who doesn't speak for the left, but someone who speaks for the people, and someone who speaks from a theocratical perspective."

When his words were repeated back to him to make sure he had said a "theocratical" perspective, not a "theological" perspective, he said, "Exactly. Exactly. We want to know what God would have us say or what God would have us do in every issue."

The Middle East was not the only issue discussed at the March 25 meeting. James Wilkinson, deputy national security advisor for communications, spoke first and is characterized as stating that the 9-11 Commission "is portraying those who have given their all to protect this nation as 'weak on terrorism,' " that "99 percent of all the men and women protecting us in this fight against terrorism are career citizens," and offered the example of Frances Town-send, deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, "who sacrificed Christmas to do a 'security video' conference."

Tim Goeglein, deputy director of public liaison and the White House's point man with evangelical Christians, moderated, and he also spoke on the issue of same-sex marriage. According to the memo, he asked the rhetorical questions: "What will happen to our country if that actually happens? What do those pushing such hope to gain?" His answer: "They want to change America." How so? He quoted the research of Hoover Institute senior fellow Stanley Kurtz, who holds that since gay marriage was legalized in Scandinavia, marriage itself has virtually ceased to exist. (In fact, since Sweden instituted a registered-partnership law for same-sex couples in the mid '90s, there has been no overall change in the marriage and divorce rates there.)

It is Matt Schlapp, White House political director and Karl Rove's chief lieutenant, who was paraphrased as stating "that the Presidents Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level."

Also present at the meeting was Kristen Silverberg, deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy. (None of the participants responded to interview requests.)

The meeting was closed by Goeglein, who was asked, "What can we do to assist in this fight for these issues and our nations [sic] foundation and values?" and who reportedly responded, "Pray, pray, pray, pray."

The Apostolic Congress's representative in Israel, Kim Johnson, is ethnically Jewish, keeps kosher, and holds herself to the sumptuary standards of Orthodox Jewish women, so as to better blend in to her surroundings.

In one letter home obtained by the Voice she notes that many of the Apostolic Christians she works with in Israel are Filipino women "married to Jewish men—who on occasion accompany their wives to meetings. We are planning to start a fellowship with this select group where we can meet for dinners and get to know one another. Please Pray for the timing and formation of such." Elsewhere she talks of a discussion with someone "on the pitfalls and aggravations of Christians who missionize Jews." She works often among the Jewish poor—the kind of people who might be interested in interest-free loans—and is thrilled to "meet the outcasts of this Land—how wonderful because they are in the in-casts for His Kingdom."

An ecstatic figure who from her own reports appears to operate at the edge of sanity ("Two of the three nights in my apartment I have been attacked by a hair raising spirit of fear," she writes, noting the sublet contained a Harry Potter book; "at this time I am associating it with witchcraft"), Johnson has also met with Knesset member Gila Gamliel. (Gamliel did not respond to interview requests.) She also boasted of an imminent meeting with a "Knesset leader."

"At this point and for all future mails it is important for me to note that this country has very stiff anti-missionary laws," she warns the followers back home. [D]iscretion is required in all mails. This is particularly important to understand when people write mails or ask about organization efforts regarding such."

Her boss, Pastor Upton, displays a photograph on the Apostolic Congress website of a meeting between himself and Beny Elon, Prime Minister Sharon's tourism minister, famous in Israel for his advocacy of the expulsion of Palestinians from Israeli-controlled lands.

His spokesman in the U.S., Ronn Torassian, affirmed that "Minister Elon knows Mr. Upton well," but when asked whether he is aware that Mr. Upton's staffer may be breaking Israel's anti-missionary laws, snapped: "It's not something he's interested in discussing with The Village Voice."

In addition to its work in Israel, the Apostolic Congress is part of the increasingly Christian public face of pro-Israel activities in the United States. Don Wagner, author of the book Anxious for Armageddon, has been studying Christian Zionism for 15 years, and believes that the current hard-line pro-Israel movement in the U.S. is "predominantly gentile." Often, devotees work in concert with Jewish groups like Americans for a Safe Israel, or AFSI, which set up a mostly Christian Committee for a One-State Solution as the sponsor of last year's billboard campaign. The committee's board included, in addition to Upton, such evangelical luminaries as Gary Bauer and E.E. "Ed" McAteer of the Religious Roundtable.

AFSI's executive director, Helen Freedman, confirms the increasingly Christian cast of her coalition. "We have many good Jews, of course," she says, "but they're in the minority." She adds, "The liberal Jew is unable to believe the Arab when he says his goal is to Islamize the West. . . . But I believe it. And evangelical Christians believe it."

Of Jews who might otherwise support her group's view of Jews' divine right to Israel, she laments, "They're embarrassed about quoting the Bible, about referring to the Covenant, about talking about the Promised Land."

Pastor Upton is not embarrassed, and Helen Freedman is proud of her association with him. She is wistful when asked if she, like Upton, has been able to finagle a meeting with the president. "Pastor Upton is the head of a whole Apostolic Congress," she laments. "It's a nationwide group of evangelicals."

Upton has something Freedman covets: a voting bloc.

She laughs off concerns that, for Christian Zionists, actual Jews living in Israel serve as mere props for their end-time scenario: "We have a different conception of what [the end of the world] will be like . . . Whoever is right will rejoice, and whoever was wrong will say, 'Whoops!' "

She's not worried, either, about evangelical anti-Semitism: "I don't think it exists," she says. She does say, however, that it would concern her if she learned the Apostolic Congress had a representative in Israel trying to win converts: "If we discovered that people were trying to convert Jews to Christianity, we would be very upset."

Kim Johnson doesn't call it converting Jews to Christianity. She calls it "Circumcision of the Heart"—a spiritual circumcision Jews must undergo because, she writes in paraphrase of Jeremiah, chapter 9, "God will destroy all the uncircumcised nations along with the House of Israel, because the House of Israel is uncircumcised in the heart . . . [I]t is through the Gospel . . . that men's hearts are circumcised."

Apostolics believe that only 144,000 Jews who have not, prior to the Second Coming of Christ, acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah will be saved in the end times. Though even for those who do not believe in this literal interpretation of the Bible—or for anyone who lives in Israel, or who cares about Israel, or whose security might be affected by a widespread conflagration in the Middle East, which is everyone—the scriptural prophecies of the Christian Zionists should be the least of their worries.

Instead, we should be worried about self-fulfilling prophecies. "Biblically," stated one South Carolina minister in support of the anti-Road Map billboard campaign, "there's always going to be a war."

Don Wagner, an evangelical, worries that in the Republican Party, people who believe this "are dominating the discourse now, in an election year." He calls the attempt to yoke Scripture to current events "a modern heresy, with cultish proportions.

"I mean, it's appalling," he rails on. "And it also shows how marginalized mainstream Christian thinking, and the majority of evangelical thought, have become."

It demonstrates, he says, "the absolute convergence of the neoconservatives with the Christian Zionists and the pro-Israel lobby, driving U.S. Mideast policy."

The problem is not that George W. Bush is discussing policy with people who press right-wing solutions to achieve peace in the Middle East, or with devout Christians. It is that he is discussing policy with Christians who might not care about peace at all—at least until the rapture.

The Jewish pro-Israel lobby, in the interests of peace for those living in the present, might want to consider a disengagement.

XP is Evil!

Gates: Hardware, Not Software, Will Be Free
Just a rant I posted. XP and it's stability issues have convinced me that it's time to do hard research into a full Linux desktop at work. Microsoft has to go from my desktop. I can't take the constant application crashes anymore.

Linux and Windows 2000 spoiled me. I'm used to stability damn it!

Wizard's Bane by Rick Cook

This is the first Baen Free Library review, which I promised in this post.

I wrote something of a very thumbnail review of "The Wiz Biz" in this BLOG entry and would like to go a little further here.

The First two books in Rick Cook's "Wizardry" series are Wizard's Bane and The Wizardry Compiled. They are currently in print in the omnibus book The Wiz Biz.

Suffice it to say, if you buy The Wiz Biz you have both the books I'm going to review here.

The third and fourth books in the series have also been made available in an omnibus.

Book 1: Wizard's Bane	Omnibus 1: Wiz Biz
Book 2: Wizardry Compiled
Book 3: Wizardry Cursed	Omnibus 2: Cursed and Consulted
Book 4: Wizardry Consulted
Book 5: The Wizardry Quested

Wizard's Bane

Story Summary

The first book in the series introduces us to the principal characters. First there's Wiz Zumwalt himself, a California computer programmer who gets magically transported to a world where magic is real. He never intended to make the trip, and didn't have much say in the matter. Unfortunately for him, the wizard who brings him over is killed within a few seconds of his unwilling arrival.

Unable to safely send The Wiz back, Bal-Simba, head wizard for the "Good Guys" tasks a Hedge Witch named Moira with getting The Wiz to safety. In this case, safety is a region where magic just doesn't exist, a dead zone where he would, theoretically, be safe.

Moria isn't happy about this task, and blames the Wiz for the death of the Wizard who snatched him from his own world.

The romantic tension between them follows a standard "hate each other before falling in love" path. During their journey, The Wiz learns more about this new world, realizing that Magic operates in a manner similar to computer programming. While he learns, his body also changes, as the rigors of travel harden his muscles and allow him to grow acclimated to the discomfort of life in the wild.

Early on, he learns about the stalemate between the forces of good and evil, and how any powerful use of magic by either side resulted in swift attacks and bloodshed. It's this cold war that gets the Wizard who kidnaped The Wiz killed, and makes it impossible to send him back without the Wizard who weaves the spell getting himself killed in the process.

Eventually, things come to a head, and The Wiz has to use his newfound magical skills to rescue Moria from the clutches of the most powerful dark Wizard in the world.

What I thought

The overall story is somewhat predictable, but the twists and touches are a delight. I could have done without the Moonlighting esque feel to Wiz and Moria's early interactions. There are plenty of inside jokes that might take a few minutes of head scratching to get, but just about all of them are laugh out loud hilarious.

The general idea could have gone wrong in so many ways, and while the book lacks a certain polish compared to great works of literature, the writing is well above the average for paperback Sci Fi writing. The main characters are interesting and well described, even if the background characters are a bit cliche.

The book is also very irreverent, being as much a parody of the Fantasy genre as it is an example of it. The cliche based characters are done in such a way as to highlight the most entertaining points of the character.

Favorite Moment

After Moria has been kidnaped, The Wiz creates a spell that will search the entire world for her. Instead of a single, massive entity that scours the land over the course of years (The traditional method of doing such things), he has millions of smaller creatures wink in and out of existence all over the world. A search that any other wizard would need years to complete is done in a matter of minutes.

Classic computer science, but the thing I found most amusing was that the form The Wiz chose for this search spell is that of R2D2, and the great moment came when the familiar droid appeared in the inner chamber of the head villain, swirled it's head around, beeped and winked out of existence. Read the book for the fiend's humorous reaction.

Least Favorite Moment

The major work being parodied is of course, the Lord of the Rings, and this gets a bit tiring at times. Through most of the book, the parody is woven into the fabric of the story in such a way as to not be a distraction. there are, however, scenes where the parody is stretched in such a way as to break the suspension of disbelief. Most of these involve sequences clearly based on the Fellowship of the Ring's journey through the mines or Moria.

Overall Recommendation

This is a light hearted book that pokes fun at Fantasy writing and the people who love it. It's an excellent book for both fans and critics of Fantasy writing. Those who hate Fantasy will enjoy seeing it ripped to shreds, and those who love it will get a kick at a well done parody.

Besides, it's available for free. Who can beat that?

Reviews of books avaliable in the "Baen Free Library"

As the Internet grows, more and more authors are making their work available for free on the Internet. The general idea is that people will enjoy the free content enough to buy the book / CD / Movie / Whatever from the artist(s), thus allowing them to make a comfortable living.

Baen, a publisher of Science Fiction and Fantasy books, has taken to putting many of it's offerings online for free. Many books are part of a longer series. Baen also offers e-books which can be purchased. For example, the first two volumes of Rick Cook's Wizardry series are available for free, while subsequent volumes can be purchased as either paperbacks or e-books.

I'd like to find out what people have thought about the other books available in the Baen Free Library. If you've read them online, in an e-book, dead tree or any other format, please post your thoughts and reviews.

A Must Read for Computer and Fantasy Geeks

Rick Cook

The idea is simple, a computer programmer is thrust into a world where magic is real, and behaves a lot like a computer program.

The idea sounded like a bad D&D campaign when I first heard it, but on the recommendation of slashdot.org, I dropped my $6.50 for the paperback and gave it a shot.

I was very pleased with the results. While the development of things between the lead character and his love interest were predictable, the overall story was fun and well written. Full of interesting ideas, actual character development and plenty of Geek friendly jokes I enjoyed it from beginning to end.

I also liked the fact that the lead character didn't simply become an uber magician who couldn't be stopped. As a matter of fact, he needs quite a bit of help from more experienced minds, and in the end he makes his share of serious, even fatal mistakes.

I recommend the series, and thanks to the publisher www.baen.com making several titles available for free online, I can send around the link with impunity, so others can try the books for free.

I love the Internet. (Computers on the other hand, I could do without)

Oh Good Grief

News

The county that was the site of the Scopes ``Monkey Trial'' over the teaching of evolution is asking lawmakers to amend state law so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature.

The Rhea County commissioners approved the request 8-0 Tuesday.

I have to say I'm glad this is only happening at the county level. I think I'd have a fit if it was an entire state that was trying to pull this stunt.

"Crimes against nature."

I can't wait to see the first trial. Hopefully, all they'd have to do is show a video of two male monkeys going at it to demonstrate that it's not a "Crime against nature."

It's things like this that erode my faith in the human race and it's ability to grow and mature. There will always be segments of the society that want to cling to old ideas. I hear the "Flat Earth" society is still quite active.

My company has recently enabled the content filtering on a Sonicwall firewall, and we have been less than impressed.

It categorized my personal domain, www.matthewmiller.net as "Pornography" as well as the web-mail interface for said site. Because of the category it picked, our webmaster is unable to add the site to our white list. They've also blacklisted portions of our Financial CE sites as "Pornography."


This means I am no longer able to use the webmail interface for testing code that sends e-mail to clients.

I'm more than a little miffed at this turn of events, and very frustrated that Sonicwall.com does not seem to have any resources for reporting an improperly blocked URL.

I tried to look up some more details on this problem, and have found a few Sonicwall critical sites listed as "Adult/Mature" or "Pornography." It wouldn't be the first time I'd heard of a site being blocked by a filter because it was critical of that filter. I find myself wondering what else Sonicwall blocks, and what their criteria is for black listing sites.

My personal domain is not on any of the Real Time black holes, and I'm not aware of any content on the site that could be considered pornographic. There really isn't much I can do about it at this point. Our network admin has submitted a support request to Sonicwall, and we're waiting to hear back.

It's very frustrating to have been branded a certain way for my content, yet have no recourse for resolving the issue.

I'm asking everyone and anyone who has had their site unfairly blocked by Sonicwall's content filters to post here, telling the URL of their site and why they feel the site shouldn't be blocked.

EDIT: The following comments were posted to this entry on my old, defunct MT Blog:

2005-09-03 16:56:25
Nolon
Panera bread is using this crap. Blocked Fark.com. It's idiotic. As well all know if you can't look at porn Fark lets you know.

2005-08-11 16:51:39
Big Dirty
bigdirty.blog-city.com
It's completely irrelevant to anything, yet it was blocked as "pornography"

2004-07-13 23:21:59
Michael Droste
http://www.trumpetlessons.com
my site has also been blocked trumpetlessons.com! I also emailed sonicwall and have NOT received a response.

Friends don't let friends wank and drive

OK, this is just silly.

I've had friends who masturbated while driving. (All female, never met a guy who admitted to doing such a thing while driving.)

I've had friends who changed their cloths while driving.

I even had one friend who changed her kid's diaper while driving and talking on a cell phone.

I've eaten while driving, and talked on my cell phone wile driving (Generally using the hands free set.)

But watching a porno while behind the wheel???

That's just plain silly.

CNN.com - Driver pulled over for watching porn - Feb. 20, 2004

Driver pulled over for watching porn

ALBANY, New York (Reuters) --Andre Gainey found out the hard way that in the state of New York it's illegal to drive while watching porn.

Police said the 35-year old man from Clifton Park, New York, was watching a adult movie called "Chocolate Foam" on Tuesday night while driving his Mercedes Benz in the town of Schenectady when he was spotted by an officer at a stop light.

Police spokesman Pete Frizoni said detectives pulled Gainey over when they saw the movie playing on screens embedded in the car's headrests. When they confronted him, they saw another screen in the passenger-side visor was facing Gainey, allowing him to watch the movie while driving.

The case is thought to be the first of its kind in New York, said Joe Pichi, a spokesman for the for the state's Department of Motor Vehicles.

"Our biggest problem is illegal cell phone use while driving," Pichi said. "Drivers should be driving."

This is just down the street from me!

It looks like I have yet another reason not to go anywhere near Saint E's when I'm in need of medical care.

Drunk surgeons. Not surgeons who get drunk on their own time, not ones who come in hung over, but ones that show up to work drunk.

Twice!

TheBostonChannel.com - News - Doctor Suspended After Drinking Allegation

MS Kills Car

Crashed Computer Traps Thai Politician

This is a very good reason NOT to let your computer run Microsoft software. MS crashes, the whole car is reduced to a paperweight.

And of course this happened in a car that was bullet proofed for a pampered politician, so just smashing the window was out of the question.

missingkids.com

Diets of the Past

Cribbed from http://www.lileks.com

1965 It’s the latest diet, ladies: Karo Syrup and Mazola. I’m not kidding. They’re not kidding. No one’s kidding. You were supposed to mix Karo Syrup, Mazola, some dextrose and evaporated milk. And that’s all you got for the day. No cottage cheese, no melba toast. That’s IT. The lady is not wearing a dress made out of newspapers - that’s from the wet ink on the facing page. By some peculiar coincidence, this diet came from CORN PRODUCTS company, which made . . . well, you figure it out.

Polygamy. and Gay Rights, is there a connection?

A friend wrote Ironically, one of the main arguments they're pushing is that this would open the door to polygamy...

To which I replied:

I've been wondering, how would one implement Polly marriages in 21st century America? Who would have what custody rights over kids? Think of all the database that would have to be completely rewritten to accommodate multiple spouses!

Caps on how many spouses you can put on a company's health plan?

The logistics hurt my mind.

I think Polly unions aren't likely to become legal just because of the practicality of implementation. Gay Marriages are incredibly simple by comparison. I've nothing against either, but the amount of work involved in making Polly marriages happen legally will keep it from becoming a reality until such tome as 80% of the population is clamoring for it and making it a litmus test issue for political support.

Perhaps in a generation or two.

That said, I want to see gay marriages in the near future, if for no other reason than I know a couple lesbian couples who would be wonderful examples of good marriages in general if they got hitched.

In my opinion, anyone who seriously raises the threat of Polly marriages as an argument against gay marriages is hoisting a straw man and using it as a scare tactic. It's not a real progression, and I doubt most people who support gay marriages also support polly relationships. The argument irks me in a number of ways.

Part of me suspects such an argument was concocted by a conservative who couldn't wrap their minds around the idea that people really could be "gay" and not still want to have sex with the opposite sex. I can just see a Pat Robertson type mulling over the idea and concluding that gays must have their same sex partner for "perversion" and an opposite sex lover for "real" sex.

Aside form the fact that I don't consider gay marriages to polly marriages a real or possible progression, the argument that such a transition would be "logical" is an insult to those who are gay and not bi. It smacks of a condescending parent patting a child's head and saying "There there, we know you're not REALLY gay son, sooner or later you'll find a nice girl you like and settle down."

Of course, this is all from someone who has not been a part of the gay rights movement in any way, so I'm pretty tout of touch with the communities involved. Most of what I've been saying is based on my own beliefs and views, and I freely confess that my experiences are drawn from a relatively small scope. I could be way off base, and I'd appreciate anyone who knows more telling me if I'm wrong.

I've yet to see any evidence that people who are not 100% heterosexual are any different than the rest of society, and I see no reason for them to be discriminated against and kept out of the legal and religious institutions that the rest of society cherishes.

Security Through Obscuri--- Never Mind

Well, Windows source code has been leaked. It's "littered with profanity" and the leaked code represents "15% of the total source code for the operating system."

I hope this will result the end of Microsoft touting the tight control they have over their source code as a reason to buy Windows.

Because, well, it isn't true anymore.

I knew there was a reason I wore my comfy Tux fleece today. :)

On the prospect of same sex weddings

To Whom it may concern,

I am a Heterosexual male. I am engaged to be married to a Heterosexual female. I am a moderate politically, and consider myself Christian religiously. I was raised in a home that was conservative, both politically and religiously.

I am in favor of legalizing gay marriage.

I do not find the concept offensive to my beliefs, and even if it did grind against my personal moral code, it is not my right, nor is it the right of our government, to deny marriage to same sex couples.

This is a nation of differences, founded on the concept of freedom of religion and the freedom of belief.

Forcing the conservative idea of "Marriage is one man and one woman" onto the entire nation is little different than forcing all restaurants to serve only kosher food, or requiring women to cover their faces in public. It is a belief founded on the conservative views of a number of religions, but not necessarily the majority of Americans.

Gay marriage neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

I know there are many people who are violently disgusted by the sight of two men holding hands. I am equally offended by people who hold up signs claiming that gays are going to Hell, but I, as an American do not try to stop them. It is their right to state their beliefs, no matter how offensive I find them.

It is their right to live their life the way they want, and that applies to heterosexuals and homosexuals alike.

IE patch breaks Exchange Webmail

We (The company where I work) have learned that there are issues with the 2-10-2004 Critical update patch from Microsoft. If you install it on an Exchange 2000 server, it interferes with the web mail interface. Specifically, clicking on a message results in a 404 error if you're using Internet Explorer as your web browser.

Netscape and Mozilla seem to work fine, so the bug seems to be in the code Microsoft uses to add functions to IE users that are not available in other browsers.

This happens when the patch is installed on the server, and it doesn't seem to matter if the client has the patch installed.

Gang rape in Japan now against the law (It wasn't before)

Mainichi Interactive - Top News

Japan set to criminalize gang rape

The first major revision to Japan's criminal penalties in almost 100 years is set to include jail terms for gang rapists, according to the Justice Ministry.

The planned revision to the Penal Code, introduced in 1907, has been prompted by demands from crime victims for more serious punishments.

Following a headline-making case of gang rape committed by students from prestigious Waseda University, the Justice Ministry has called for criminalization of gang rape for the first time in Japan.

Under the revision program tabled to an expert panel for discussion, the ministry plans to institute at least four years imprisonment for gang rape.

The proposal apparently also includes increasing maximum prison terms for serious crimes such as murder, rape committed alone, assault causing injury, and molestation.The maximum term for an individual who commits more than two of these crimes is set to be increased from 20 years to 30 years.

Thanks to the improvement in identification procedures using state-of-the art technology, the ministry also plans to give law enforcers to more time than now to charge criminals.

The ministry plans to submit a bill for the revision program to the Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Law after the expert panel issues an opinion report.(Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, Feb. 11, 2004)

This is interesting for a lot of reasons. Read the whole article, and you'll find penalties for "molestation" are being toughened in addition to criminalizing gang rape.

For those who don't know, there is a very disturbing sub culture of men who will feel up, harass and just about rape women on the big city subways of Japan. I don't know how wide spread this is, but stopping the practice has been hindered by a lack of laws against the practice, and the difficulty in catching some anonymous hands violating a woman who is facing the other way, and unable to turn around due to the confines of the train.

I've heard of books on how to molest women that are popular in Japan, and proponents of the activity who go on talk shows to advocate their actions.

All in all, it's a pretty depressing situation for women in Japan. Hopefully this will be a significant step to fight sexual violence against women.

Chainsaw + breasts = OUCH!

IOL : Actress's breasts sliced in chainsaw mishap

Actress's breasts sliced in chainsaw mishap

February 11 2004 at 01:21PM

Berlin - A German actress was taken to hospital after an artist injured her breasts while trying to cut open her bra with a chainsaw during a rehearsal for a stage show, she told a newspaper on Wednesday.

"It was the worst moment of my life. I thought, Sibylle, you're going to die," the actress, former porn star Sibylle Rauch, told Bild newspaper.

The chainsaw operator, performance artist Marko Koenig, said Rauch was lying down during the rehearsal on Monday and suddenly bent forward just as he was applying the saw to her bra.

"I couldn't pull back the chainsaw quickly enough and cut her breast and stomach. It was terrible," he told Bild.

The hospital in Karlsruhe, south-west Germany, where Rauch was treated, declined to give details of her injuries. "We are not authorised to comment on our patients," a spokesperson said.

To add insult to injury, the former porn star in question had a very nice rack.

The end of Cheap Oil and the devastation to follow

So, there are people who say the world is running out of oil, and that the oil will become more and more expensive to mine. The ultimate results would be dire. We would lose pretty much all of the productivity and production capability we've gained since the 1700's. Food production would be crippled by the loss of inexpensive oil, and thousands, millions, billions could die.

And I get to be part of the generation that would see it happen. Great.

In the context of a contracting oil supply Bush's "War on Terror" becomes more a war for survival to give the US control of the scant Oil reserves left in the world.

It's all pretty depressing, as it means my kids (when I have some) would stand a good chance of starving to death, or be killed off in a global war.

Alternate fuel sources are not rolled out to the scale where they would be necessary to sustain us through the collapse of oil, and it may already be too late to ramp up and install the necessary infrastructure.

And of course, the Baby Boomers who have helped ignore the problem for so long will be dying off from old age when the worst happens. Gen X, Y and "Why Me" aren't much better, as we're a bunch of whiners fostering the culture of victimization, and we aren't doing much more to develop alternate fuel sources and agricultural methods.

Naturally, there are plenty of people who think the whole idea is for the tinfoil hat crowd.

Welcome to the end of the world friends.

BOO!

Oooh, I'm so frightened!

Converted from a Powerpoint presentation that was circulating around the office, and scaring the Hell out of some of the more cowardly staff.

NeverWinter Nights (NWN) Patch 1.23.6734

This essay is listed under "Internet Culture" on my web site because this isn't a review of Boiware's NeverWinter Nights, but a review of an unusual decision they made in distributing patch number 1.23.6734. Let me quote the readme:

Patch details:
Neverwinter Nights Game
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
- We have removed SecureROM disk checking.

Let me explain why that last line is significant.

NeverWinter Nights requires the "Play Disk" be inserted in CD ROM Drive in order to play the game. SecureROM was the copy protection system used to ensure someone didn't just burn a copy of the CD and use that instead.

This had two consequences.

You couldn't play the game using a backup CD. I found this to be an issue because my Play Disk was getting badly scratched, and I found out a batch of the first run disks had a tendancy to crack and require replacement. Boiware had an official response of replacing the CDs.

You couldn't play under Linux and Wine. NWN has had active Linux players since day one. This is because a Linux client has been promised, and by and large, it's fairly easy to get the Windows executable up and running under Linux using WINE. Sadly, SecureROM prevented the game from running under Linux, as Linux and Wine did not provide the access SecureROM needed to validate the game disk.

There have been tech issues created by the copy protection.

Removing SecureROM accomplishes several things.

Allows Linux players to play NWN using Wine. This should reduce the number of whiny "When will the Linux client be out" e-mails bioware must get on a daily basis.

Allows players to use backup CDS. The first day after installing the patch I spent an hour playing with a backup CD. The original CDS now rest comfortably in the box, awaiting the day when I need to reinstall for one reason or another.

Ends the cycle of unauthorized patches. Web sites that specialize in "No CD" patches and the like have been releasing updated cracks for each and every NWN release. I suspect that continually rewriting the SecureROM detection code for every patch was one of the reasons the higher ups at NWN decided to end the cycle.

Shows an unprecedented level of faith and trust in the customers. To the best of my knowledge no company that was using CD COpy protection has subsequently released a patch that disabled it. It's unheard of, and it was a refreshing change of pace in the days the RIAA trying to cripple America's technology infrastructure for the purpose of maintaining control of music distribution.

Personally, I applaud boiware for releasing this patch, and hope other companies follow suit.

You can view some discussion threads on this patch in the Boiware tech support forums.

Chemical Contamination Endangers East Coast

The Massachusetts Water supply has been found to contain dihydrogen monoxide.

This acid can cause corrosion in a variety of substances, irreversibly damaging wood, paint, metal and most structural components.

Prolonged human exposure can cause loss of skin oils, discomfort, encourage bacterial infection and in some extreme cases, death.

In pure form, it is clear, odorless and tasteless.

Numerous organisms, many harmful to humans, thrive on this chemical.

This chemical also damages electrical components and destroys paper products.

Thousands of deaths a year can be attributed both directly and indirectly to dihydrogen monoxide. One recent, and spectacular death, involved an unfortunate man who handled electrical components that had come into contact with dihydrogen monoxide. While electrocution was the direct cause of death, the electrical device would have posed no threat if the dihydrogen monoxide had not destroyed the device's insulation.

Presence of dihydrogen monoxide in the lungs prevents the absorption of Oxygen, and results in death.

There has even been one case reported where excessive quantities of dihydrogen monoxide caused electrolytes to be flushed from the body, resulting in death. This however, appears to be a suicide.

Dihydrogen monoxide intake can be correlated with an increased need to urinate as the chemical is flushed from the body.

Recent studies have revealed that most Americans have large deposits of dihydrogen monoxide in their bodies.

Withdrawal from dihydrogen monoxide intake is generally fatal.

It's production and distribution is legal and unregulated aside from rudimentary purity laws.

Please take the appropriate precautions.

Chemical Contamination Endangers East Coast

The Massachusetts Water supply has been found to contain dihydrogen monoxide.

This acid can cause corrosion in a variety of substances, irreversibly damaging wood, paint, metal and most structural components.

Prolonged human exposure can cause loss of skin oils, discomfort, encourage bacterial infection and in some extreme cases, death.

In pure form, it is clear, odorless and tasteless.

Numerous organisms, many harmful to humans, thrive on this chemical.

This chemical also damages electrical components and destroys paper products.

Thousands of deaths a year can be attributed both directly and indirectly to dihydrogen monoxide. One recent, and spectacular death, involved an unfortunate man who handled electrical components that had come into contact with dihydrogen monoxide. While electrocution was the direct cause of death, the electrical device would have posed no threat if the dihydrogen monoxide had not destroyed the device's insulation.

Presence of dihydrogen monoxide in the lungs prevents the absorption of Oxygen, and results in death.

There has even been one case reported where excessive quantities of dihydrogen monoxide caused electrolytes to be flushed from the body, resulting in death. This however, appears to be a suicide.

Dihydrogen monoxide intake can be correlated with an increased need to urinate as the chemical is flushed from the body.

Recent studies have revealed that most Americans have large deposits of dihydrogen monoxide in their bodies.

Withdrawal from dihydrogen monoxide intake is generally fatal.

It's production and distribution is legal and unregulated aside from rudimentary purity laws.

Please take the appropriate precautions.

When Matthew is Evil Overlord

Someday, I plan to become the Evil Overlord of the Earth. When I achieve this goal I will implement my plan for Thinning the Herd.

I got the phrase "Thinning the Herd" from a nature documentary I saw on PBS years and years ago. I watched a lion take down a sick deer, and began to draw parallels with human reproduction. Now, before people start screaming and panicking I want to make a few points clear. I am not advocating any kind of active "cleansing" process. Imagine for a moment that all the lions in the area are put in a massive pit. All the deer, (They understand English for the purposes of this illustration) are then told, "All the lions are over there. If you go there they will eat you." In present day society we waste time and energy watching those deer, grabbing them and dragging them away from the lions every time one of the dumber ones wander towards certain death. We even penalize others for failing to keep those deer away from the lions!

My idea would be simple: Let the dumb deer wander into death, thus removing themselves from the gene pool. The end result: Smarter deer.

Let's be blunt. There are a whole slew of stupid and destructive people in the world. They reproduce and raise children who are as lacking in basic intelligence and/or morality as they. What can be done?

Someday, I will be the Evil Overlord of the Earth. I won't bore you with the details of how this will come to be, or the specifics of how you can become part of my new world order. Right now, I'll just out line what I will do, so you can decide early on if you plan to oppose me or join me. Such things need to be settled now, before someone starts killing people for a cause they'll later rebel against.

Now, there will be two primary goals of my administration. I will allow the bottom feeders of civilization to eliminate themselves from the gene pool, and I will dispose of the undesirable elements of society through a series of laws and regulations focused on the judicious use of punishments that fit the crime.

The main premise of "Thinning the Herd" is that some people are just too stupid to be allowed to reproduce. This stupidity has nothing to do with race, religion or geographic location. Unfortunately, there are a number of safety guards our society has put in place that allows these people to stay alive and continue to reproduce. "Thinning the Herd" consists of removing these safeguard, thus adding a little chlorine to the gene pool.

So far only one person has submitted ideas for possible laws. I've posted her full list of submissions. I've added a couple of them to this page. As a general rule, if part of the law is a link, it will take you to either a full list of that submitter's laws, or the submitter's homepage, which every they prefer.

How to Thin the Herd

The Law	The Rational
Stupid warning labels will be removed from all products	If you use Windex to clean your contact lenses, you deserve to suffer. If you inhale White-Out, you deserve to die, and if you're stupid enough to put your mouth on a compressed air canister and open the valve, you are clearly not someone who should not reproduce.
A set of laws will be passed protecting manufactures from what I like to call "Injuries or fatalities resulting from a foolhardy use of the product."	Some years ago, a man bought an RV. The salesman explained the concept of "Cruise Control" to the man, a new feature at the time. The man bought the RV, and left the dealership. One day he was driving down the highway and put the RV on Cruise Control, left the driver's seat, and went into the RV's kitchenette to make a sandwich. In a few minutes the RV crashed and rolled over. The man successfully sued the dealership for failing to adequately explain the difference between "Cruise Control" on a car, and "Automatic Pilot" on an airplane. He won a settlement worth Millions of US Dollars. There are thousands of equally moronic court cases taking place every year, AND THEY MUST STOP.
All previous lawsuits will be considered relevant during civil actions.	There are people who make their living by suing others. In some cases, they work for a few weeks, "get injured" and then sue their employer for thousands or millions of dollars. Under present law, it usually doesn't matter how many of these cases you've filed. You can be suing your 200th employer under false pretenses, but the judge will never consider it. When I rule, litigation happy freeloaders will be kicked out of court, thus denying them their source of income.

Below are a list of crimes, and the corresponding penalties they will incur. These are the punishments for adults. I'm still constructing a solid policy on juvenile crime. Sometimes, the most severe penalties do not take place until the third offense. I wait until the third offense for two reasons:

1. You get a chance to truly reform.
2. It is possible for someone to be framed or convicted of a crime they did not commit.

Keep in mind, these sentences are what people will actually serve. These are the MINIMUM SENTENCES criminals can receive. Any judge who gives a lighter sentence will be beheaded.

Crimes and Punishments

The Crime	The Consequences
Pedophile, First Offense	10 years in prison plus 10 Years probation during which they can not be within 200 yards of anyone under the age of 18. Must register with local police department for duration of probation
Pedophile, Second Offense	Chemical Castration. 20 years of regular injections that remove the ability to achieve an erection. Must register as sex offender for rest of life. Public beatings every 2 months for duration of probation
Pedophile, Third Offense	Castration. Not the chemical kind. We use a chopping block and specialized guillotine. No anesthetic. The point is to make an example. DON'T TOUCH LITTLE KIDS!!!!!!!!
Premeditated Murder, First Offense	20 years in prison minimum. No chance of parole until the 20 years are up.
Premeditated Murder, Second Offense	Life in prison. Let them rot as an example to others.
Premeditated Murder, Third Offense	"Off with his head!" I plan to use the guillotine for executions. Why? Because it is actually the most humane way to execute someone. Electrocution, Lethal Injection and the Gas Chamber all take time, inflict great pain and cause general suffering. Removal of one's head results in pretty much instantaneous death. The French developed the thing as a humanitarian advancement, because previous methods of beheading often required nine or more strokes with an ax!
Double Homicide, First Offense	Life in prison. Let them rot as an example to others.
Double Homicide, Second Offense	"Off with his head!"
Three or More Victims in a Murder, First Offense.	"Off with his head!"
Stalking, First Offense	Restraining Order. 1 year minimum duration, distance set by stalking victim. NO less than 100 yards, no more than 2 miles. Victim will have the option of forcing the stalker to well a cow bell at all times.
Stalking, Second Offense	Restraining Order. Lifetime duration. Distance set by victim, minimum 1 mile, maximum 20 miles. Restraining order can only be lifted by victim.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT, First convicted offense	Ten years working as an employee of Leona Helmsley.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT, Second Offense	Ten years in prison with a large (at least 250 pounds), muscular bisexual cellmate.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT, Third Offense	Chemical castration.
KNOWINGLY PURSUING FALSE CHARGES OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT	Ten years in prison as cellmate of convicted sexual harasser. (Contraceptive measures mandatory, of course -- wouldn't want 'em to start breeding.)

This is only a preliminary list. I'm still working on additions. My big problem is that I'll see or hear something on TV, Radio, Slashdot CNN etc that gives me an idea of something that needs to be done, but by the time I sit down at my computer I've forgotten the new law! Any additions to my list will be eagerly accepted, and if I like them, added to this page with your name listed as a contributor. Just post your recommendation in the comments below.

Please read Peter's Evil Overlord List to see where I drew my inspiration for this nonsense.

Suggested punishments

From: "Robin M. Weare"
To: "Matthew Miller"
Subject: Suggested punishments
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 1999 18:46:03 -0800

I'm tempted to take issue with a couple of your punishments, but instead,
here's a few additions regarding offenses that really get under my hide...

1. SEXUAL HARASSMENT: First convicted offense, ten years working as an
employee of Leona Helmsley. Second offense, ten years in prison with a
large (at least 250 pounds), muscular bisexual cellmate. Third convicted
offense, chemical castration.

2. KNOWINGLY PURSUING FALSE CHARGES OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT: ten years in
prison as cellmate of convicted sexual harasser. (Contraceptive measures
mandatory, of course -- wouldn't want 'em to start breeding.)

3. DELIBERATELY STARTING USENET THREAD SUCH AS "IS SOCIALISM NAZIISM?"
OR "SOCIALISM = NAZIISM": First convicted offense: automatic death
penalty. This is a particular pet peeve of mine, and enacting this will
help to both clean up Usenet and the human gene pool. I offered free
space on my home page for any candidate that would adopt this as part
of his platform during the last election, but no one bit.

4. TROLLING OR SPAMMING USENET NEWSGROUPS, PARTICULARLY MEMBERSHIP
IN KNOWN TROLLING GROUPS SUCH AS THE ARMY OF MEOW OR THE HELL FLAME
WARS GANGS: First offense, public flogging, with ten blows for each
repetition of the offense (each newsgroup spammed counts as another
repetition). Second offense, twenty blows for each, spaced over
monthly sessions as necessary. Third offense, amputation of fingers
to prevent use of keyboard. For actual membership in a troll gang,
amputation of fingers on first offense, along with amputation of
tongue to ensure that speech-recognition software cannot be used
either, with a death penalty for the second offense.


Robin