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Seattle Post-Intelligencer: AP - U.S.: 'Indian Larry' said killed at bike show
He was a character unlike any other. I am addicted the the chopper shows on Discovery channel, and Indian Larry has always been one of the more interesting guys on the shows..
California man's HIV diagnosis turns out to be wrong
Jim Malone spent years battling depression and losing weight, expecting to die at any time.
If somebody can be mis-diagnosed with AIDS you wonder how often people are mis-diagnosed with other more subjective diagnoses such as Schizophrenia, depression.
If you are able to lose weight psychosomatically because of a label that some doctor gave you, certainly you could be depressed or irrational.
I have screensaver syndrome... Let me explain.
Today I went out to our favorite spot, and harvested huckleberries.. I also made a trip out earlier this week. I noticed after both trips that frequently when I closed my eyes, I had this image flash into my mind of bushes with purple berries hanging off of them about an armslength away.
I remember several years ago I had a job working for a factory here in town that mad "Lids" for computer chips. (Incidentally, I did this dressed as my Sisters' favorite presidential canidate) These where gold-plated square plates with a gold-tin preform that was welded to them. The lid sealed your trusty Pentium 66 chip inside of its little ceramic package. One of the jobs we would do was called "Sides". If you where lucky enough to get this job, you would sit at a microscope all day (or 12 hr Graveyard shift to be more specific) and inspect these lids to make sure that none of the pre-forms where chipped, there where no stains, burrs or other blemishes on them.
After I worked that job, It would take a week or so to get the "golden image" out of my head. I quickly became one of the better robotic-tack-welder operators on my shift, so I rarely had to do this job.
Anyway, My Dad mentioned to me today that when he goes home after picking berries, he has a berry screensaver too. I asked my wife, and she did not have a berry screensaver. What do you figure that is about? Do you have a screensaver in your brain?
For my Christmas list:
MSNBC - H-P's first Linux laptop a winner
I bought one of these today: Sipura SPA-3000
This should allow me to connect my regular phone line to my PBX, and my household phones to both the regular phone line and my VoIP connection.
If I am not mistaken, this may be the only hardware invstment I need to make to get the system up and running the way I want it. (I am nearly certain I am mistaking)
So far, I have been able to get my PBX to answer the Voicepulse number, and I have been able to get a softphone on my computer to be able to use the VoIP connection to dial my land-line. There is an astonishing amount to learn. about asterisk. I have been making a bit of progress every day.
Okay, Now I think I have gone too far...
This week's project. I am building a PBX for my house.
I have no compelling reason to do so aside from the idle computer sitting under my desk, and an interest in learning the technology.
So here is what I did. First, I installed Debian Linux (Unstable) on my computer. Secondly, I installed Asterisk - The Open Source Linux PBX. Finally I subscribed to VoicePulse Connect!
I am now at the painful stage where everything is installed, and almost works, but It still doesn't work. I made progress today. Now when I call my telephone number, I can see my console rejecting the call. That means I am connected, but mis-configured. Gotta go read the instructions again (again).
The end product should be pretty darn cool. I should have a full fledged PBX system with Caller ID, Voicemail, Music on hold, IVR etc available to play with. Voicepulse provides a telephone number for 8 dollars per month, and outgoing telephone calls to the lower 48 cost 3 cents a minute. Incoming calls are free. I pay a little more to Qwest, and I only get one feature (call waiting) Voicepulse didn't have the 509 area code, so I bought a Portland, OR number. Seems that a majority of our friends live there anyway, so it should work out okay. Plus with the Cell phone generation, Long distance doesn't seem to be a huge issue.
My wife is (humoring me) pretty excited!
Sometimes you can call your product exactly what it is, and it will sell like crazy. Yahoo! News - Boudreaux's Butt Paste Sells Itself
We have gone though a few tubes in my household.
5 millon dollars per year with 3 employees is doing pretty good I think!
When Kerry demands Bush stop the Swift boat ads, Isn't he asking Bush to break the law?
MSNBC - Kerry calls on Bush to demand halt to attacks
Any formal ties between the Bush campaign and the veterans group would be against the law. Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth is organized as a non-party, independent political group under section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, and coordination between a 527 group and a presidential campaign is illegal.
Or is it only illegal unless John Kerry says it is okay?
I know very little PERL, but I know that I like Larry Wall.
perl.com: The State of the Onion
I remember reading a Slashdot inteview a few years ago where he explained his faith. (Question 7)
God loving geeks are cool.
I think that there is a very big problem that is created by the massive amount of litigation and finger pointing that takes place in our society today.
It seems that whenever anything bad happens it is somebody's fault, and somebody should have to pay.
This is not really true. Entropy happens. Leave anything alone, and it is eventually going to break down. Accidents happen. A by-product of being alive is the certainty of death.
I think people tend to behave in a manner in which they are rewarded to behave. When the worse you feel, the bigger the settlement you will receive, you have an incentive not to feel good. It may not even be a conscious decision.
We have 3 classes of people in today's society. The victim class, that is paid to be miserable with insurance settlements, Lawsuit settlements, and disability payments. The working people, who work hard for their money, but have to relinquish a substantial portion to pay for the insurance, litigation and government obligations being consumed by the victim class. Finally you have the lawyers and lawyers and politicians who are supported by this whole process.
In the end, nobody wins except the lawyers.
It would be interesting to see a study of how long it takes people to recover from injuries in foreign nations where accidents are looked at as bad luck, and are rarely given financial reparations. I would bet that people recover much faster, and are happier in the long term than they are here.
Kerry is now claiming that Bush is behind the Swift boat vets..
John O'Neill has been hounding Kerry about this stuff for 33 years. Bush did not invent him. When you say things like John Kerry said in 1971, you will make enemies. Especially if they believe you are lying. This kind of lie is not one that people are likely to forgive and forget.
I feel that campaign finance laws need to go. O'Neill has a right to free speech. There should be nothing that John Kerry can do to censor him. If he is lying, call him a liar, Refute his claims. Expose his motives. Sue him for libel. To make a law that prevents him from presenting his opinion in the political arena is the very kind of oppression that the First amendment is intended to prevent.
The Swift boat folks may very well be lying. They have plenty of motive to be angry with Kerry. I think their voice is negative, conspiratorial, and is not too credible. It will antagonize the Swing voters in the same way the Michael Moore and Howard Dean do. But they have the right to say what they have to say.
Kerry says that Bush should renounce these men's opinion. Bush was not in Vietnam. He did not see what John Kerry did or did not do there. He would be out of line calling these guys liars unless he knew that they where liars.
The problem Kerry has is that his campaign has squandered their credibility lying about trivial issues like Bunny Suits. And when they try to make a case regarding a serious issue, nobody has any reason to believe them.
If Abortion is not wrong, you shouldn't be offended by this.
WorldNetDaily: Aborted baby's head left inside woman
If every parent who had an abortion saw something like this, do you figure their hearts would change?
Thanks to Steve H. for the link.
I haven't read all of this story (It is long), but I have read enough to know it is relevant and interesting. A senate staffer had affairs with 6 or so relatively powerful men, and posted about it on her weblog.
Blog Interrupted (washingtonpost.com)
"I feel really bad for the guys," Jessica says. "They didn't deserve this."
She lost her job (And her boyfriends), but scored a book contract, a playboy spread, and 15 minutes of fame.
I suspect that she was fired for blogging about her attitude about her job and her employer, not for telling about her dirty habits. Bashing your employer in a Blog is not a good way to keep your job... Even if you are telling the truth.
The article discusses the morality of the situation quite a bit.
Spent the last week in Oregon. Sorry for the silence.
Forgot how to pump gas while I was there. In Oregon all of the Service stations are full service, and you are not allowed to pump your own gas.
Today I filled up my rental car here in Washinton, and as was driving home, I noticed that my gas cap was dangling by its plastic holder thingy and my was door was open.
This happens to be the 100 entry on fingertoe.com
Had an interesting and eventful vacation. Learned quite a bit. More on that later.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Eyman's gambling initiative makes fall ballot
Looks like gaming machines may soon be commonplace in my neighborhood. "Eyman has said it's a win-win initiative - lower taxes without service cuts" I don't buy it. The state is going to still need the same amount of money. The only question is where are they going to get the money. If they collect the money using gambling, they are going to get the money from losers. The state gains a economic incentive to create more losers.
Gambling creates losers. Gambling addictions ruin lives. Resisting this temptation becomes quite a challenge when instead of having to drive to the nearest reservation, you need to walk a few extra feet in establishments that you frequent.
The 2% that they are setting aside for dealing with problem gambling shows that even the proponents admit this is a problem. I don't think you can spend any amount of money to remove greed from somebody's heart.
Under a traditional tax structure, the state collects money from winners. The state then has a incentive to create more winners.
Gotta love a successful contrarian:
Fast Company | Inside the Mind of Jeff Bezos
If Bezos's personality is decidedly noncorporate, so are some of his ideas about how to run a large organization. One of Bezos's more memorable behind-the-scenes moments came during an off-site retreat, says Risher. "People were saying that groups needed to communicate more. Jeff got up and said, 'No, communication is terrible!' " The pronouncement shocked his managers. But Bezos pursued his idea of a decentralized, disentangled company where small groups can innovate and test their visions independently of everyone else. He came up with the notion of the "two-pizza team": If you can't feed a team with two pizzas, it's too large. That limits a task force to five to seven people, depending on their appetites.
Republicans, searching for votes, look to Amish for support
Perhaps the presidential election will be decided by 5 or 6 Amish votes in Pennsylvania.
There seems to be a lot of media focus on the Amish right now. I predict that there is going be an Amish pop culture fad. High school kids will start dressing Amish. I live in Spokane, so perhaps it is already happening in the 'real cities'
It sounds nutty, but does anyone think it can't happen?
Hopefully at least some of their values will bleed into the rest of culture. Couldn't hurt.
I think it is interesting how many people depend on science for their belief stucture, but the truth provided by science seems to change every few years. Yahoo! News - Solar System May Be Unique After All -- Astronomers
Sceince is pretty good at looking at things right now and trying to understand them. The problem is outside our our solar system, Things are not 'right now' what we observe right now in the sky happened a long time ago.
Speaking of time, I don't think we understand time at all. Every scientific observation is time dependent, and makes the assumption that time flows at the same constant rate that it is flowing right now.
If I remember my high school physics, almost every formula had a 't' in it representing time. If time accelerates, do objects fall faster, slower or the same? We can hypothisize, but the only way to find out is to speed up time and see what happens.
Einstein's theory of relativity suggests that time does not flow at a constant rate. Objects experinence time at different rates based on their speed and mass.
So, when scientists say that the earth has been around for x number of years, based on erosion carbon dating or other techonolgies, This is a guess based on assumptions that time flows at the same rate as it flows right now. Not a safe assumption.
HP unveils its first Linux laptop - Computerworld
"This is the year that Linux overtakes the Mac on the desktop, and maybe my laptop will help accelerate that," Fink said.Industry research firm IDC in Framingham, Mass., said it believes that this has already happened. "Linux captured the No. 2 spot as desktop operating system in 2003," said IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky in a recent interview.
Now how long do you figure it will take to overtaken #1?
So far, my website tweaks
I think moving the comments script was just as effective as the blacklist plugin. I have no blacklist rejections in my activity log.
Still haven't been successful at getting the spellchecker plugin to work. I am sure that those of you who read frequently have noticed. Pays off nicely though if you write a long post and spell Al Qaeda incorrectly all throughout, you get a whole bunch of hits from people who are equally inept spellers.
Just to be a rebel, I think I am going to side with the employer on this one.
local6.com - Problem Solvers - Woman Fired For Eating 'Unclean' Meat
I think employers should be allowed to live by their faith, and hire people with the same values that they have. The law of the land disagrees with this viewpoint.
I believe that it is wrong for the government to force a employer to tolerate something that is repulsive to them for religious reasons.
Catholics are being forced to pay for birth control. I think this is also very wrong.
If I am running a company, do I trust somebody who cannot keep a commitment to his wife and children to keep a commitment to me? Do I have to hire somebody who is untrustworthy? There is not a law against adultery in most states. If I discrimate against somebody openly engaged in this activity, I could be sued for religious discrimination. I believe that discrimination against un-repentant sinners should be allowed. The courts often disagree.
When it comes down to the bottom line, Most of our laws and social norms stem out of biblical teachings of some sort. Workplace rules should be up to the employer. Things will get very hairy if the government starts micromanaging trivial workplace rules.
What happened to the free exercise clause of the first amendment? Basically today, that seems to give people the right to sing and listen to a sermon once a week. If you try to run a company based on 2COR 6:14; you are on very dangerous legal ground. If you ignore that passage, and trust your affairs to agents who do not willing to follow biblical based rules, your company is likely to have a lot of evil problems that the rest of the culture has.
Fun Dilemma eh?
I find it upsetting how governments are actively engaging in encourageing a destructive sin.
Yahoo! News - Addicts Are Overlooked in Gambling Boom
The bible says "Thou shall not covet". I do not see a market for gambling unless people are violating this commandment.
Most of our culture has declined to look at the bible as a foundation for right and wrong. From a libertarian point of veiw, Gambling is not wrong. People have the right to make bad decisions and ruin thier lives, and the lives of their families.
I think that the core problem is that the Government not only took the Libertarian side, but they went way to far. They sold gambling as a good thing. The advertize their lotteries, and encourage people to gamble.
The fruits of a gambling culture are pretty sour. We have people who are addicted to gambling that are betting nearly everything they have, driving their families into financial crisis and often divorce.
People's work ethic is also corrupted. The state is selling it's citizens on the dream of getting rich quick. People are constantly waiting for thier Lotto numbers to come up instead of saving their money for the future.
Most means of aquiring wealth create value. Gambling winnings create no value. They take money from one person, and give it to another. Since no product or service is created. The economy gains nothing. Somebody gets sometihng for nothing, and everybody else gets nothing for something.
The lottery is a regressive tax. Enticing the poorest portions of our society pay massive percentages of their income.
If you gamble please ask yourself why. If you win, it means somebody else loses. Do you really want to take money from poor and desparate people? In effect if you support the gambling industry, that is what you are doing.
it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble.
Apparently some people think the the free exercise clause of the first amendment does not apply to Bob Riley.
FOXNews.com - Politics - Atheist Group Challenges Alabama Governor's Bible Study
Meme Propagation Test
This posting is a community experiment started by Minding the Planet to see how a meme represented by a blog posting spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet; results and commentary will appear there in the future.
Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate—the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.
The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawstw98qwrt189849813907azq4
(this GUID enables anyone to easily search Google for all results of this experiment). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post at Minding the Planet; Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.
INSTRUCTIONS
To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and fill out the info below, substituting your own information in your posting, where appropriate.
(Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers):
1. I found this experiment at URL: http://nathanworld.blogspot.com/2004/08/meme-propagation-test.html
2. I found it via “Newsreader Software�� or “Browsing or Searching the Web�� or “An E-Mail Message��: Browsing or Searching the Web – Bloglines.com
3. I posted this experiment at URL:
http://www.fingertoe.com
4. I posted this on date (day, month, year): 02 August 2004
5. I posted this at time (24 hour time): 9:37:00 PST
6. My posting location is (city, state, country): Spokane, WA
OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):
(7) My blog is hosted by: Dreamhost.com
(8) My age is: 32
(9) My gender is: Male
(10) My occupation is: Tech support, Software entrepeneur
(11) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: Bloglines
(12) I use the following software to post to my blog: Movable Type
(13) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 06/15/2002
(14) My web browser is: Firefox
(15) My operating system is: Linux