Baby Love

My daughter was born at 2.56PM CST today. Nothing else really matters to me right now.

read more

Cop Story

There is a story on Fox News title "GUNMAN CARJACKS AND KIDNAPS WOMAN". This morning, upon leaving Union Station we saw three cop cars go flying past heading north. Seconds later we saw a crappy purple mid 80's Pontiac fly by going south followed by 3 cop cars. Then 4 more. Then 8 more. Then channel 5 news. The Fox van turned north instead of south, and had to loop around. The car crashed into the bridge to the southeast of Union Station, surrounded by 22 police cars, a van, 6 detectives cars, swat, and federal agents. Keith, who used to be a St Louis cop, recognized some of the detectives as being homicide. I think these two stories might be related.

read more

ProjeKct

The four day weekend ended up being very productive. No, not the birth of my daughter. That, sadly, is yet to happen. I have, however, managed to finally cross of several projects from the todo list and made significant progress on others. I was going over what I accomplished and was ticking off each one "Done" in my head and realized I sounded like Steve Watson.

Some of the more interesting projects will have their pictures taken sometime soon...

read more

Cold Coffee and Cocaine

I go to Starbucks fairly often with several of my coworkers. We are mostly predictable. Not entirely, but mostly. We got a Christmas card yesterday. Since they don't actually know our names, it was addressed to "2 Grande Lattes, Vanilla Latte, Venti Tea".

read more

Everything Old Is New Again

Updated the rss feed tool. Feed is http://www.punitiveart.com/blog/pa.rss. Tool is at ZopeLabs. It now wraps html_quote or standard_text around the appropriate streams to format more nicely.

read more

I stake my claim

Sometimes I actually read spam. Sometimes the subject line just says "this one will be entertaining". Plus, if it's actually labelled something honest, like Press Release, I'm already predisposed to see them as professional. This one was a classic.

[company name] today
announced that the company has signed an exclusive marketing and
distribution agreement for the Glove Box(TM) in Singapore.

Hmmm. What on earth could this be. Doesn't look like porn. I doubt it's high tech. Let's read further.

The SARS outbreak originating in early 2003, and that remains a threat to
the world medical community, significantly impacted the Singapore market.

Huh, OK. A revolutionary new tool to fight a disease with a less than 10% fatality rate.

The patented, revolutionary Glove Box(TM) is the only product that offers
contamination reduction through automated glove dispensing. The prototype
Glove Box(TM) system, a freestanding dispenser of disposable latex gloves,
The patented, revolutionary Glove Box(TM) is the only product that offers
contamination reduction through automated glove dispensing. The prototype
Glove Box(TM) system, a freestanding dispenser of disposable latex gloves,

Maybe it's just me, but I find the whole concept of pushing a latex glove dispenser as "revolutionary" to be comedy of the highest order. It's something I'd expect in a Monty Python skit or something. The fact that they're dead serious just makes it that much funnier.

Hey, what more do you want on a Friday evening.

read more

Silver baby come to me

Dropped a new recipe at ZopeLabs.

Feel free to vote it up ;)

read more

Under cover of the fading clouds

Today much ado is being made about the achievement of the Wright brothers some 100 years ago. Too much of the coverage talks about "spawning the Air Age" and "the first heavier than air craft to fly". Neither of which are true. And frankly, such declarations minimize the real accomplishments of the inventors. Heavier than air craft first flew about 200 years ago. Primitive gliders were around in the 1870's. The pursuit of flight has preoccupied mankind since at least the time of the early Greeks. Serious scientific efforts were going on all over the world throughout the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th.

What Orville and Wilbur did was the first repeatable, controlled, powered, manned heavier than air flight. Each of those descriptors are critical, because they showed that it was possible to develop reliable technology that would allow mankind to fly. Their success was nothing short of phenomenal, and they deserve plenty of recognition, but honor them for what they actually did, as it has much more meaning.

read more

To counteract we gotta take the power back

Just posted a piece about our deteriorating rights at Watchblog.

read more

Up there there is so much room

xoverboard makes one of the most poignant observations about the capture of Saddam that I've seen yet.

I equally enjoyed his comment:

Congratulations to Mr. Saddam Hussein of Tikrit, Iraq, for the newest title-holder of the strangest goddamn thing ever said by anyone, ever:

When offered a glass of water by his interrogators, Saddam replied, “If I drink water I will have to go to the bathroom and how can I use the bathroom when my people are in bondage?”

Also note the following keen observation from the Post:

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more," Azeezaly S. Jaffer, vice president of public affairs and communications for the U.S. Postal Service, said in a statement; Jaffer noted that he had lifted the line from Peter Finch's character in the 1976 flick "Network." This is probably not the best choice Jaffer has ever made as spokesman for the postal service.

read more

Yo Stella, if u think I'm afraid of u

OK, the spelling probably gives that away. Latest version of PABlog, the fine fine blog tool that runs on this site, has been released. You can get it from here or from the Zope site once it's published (probably in the next 24 hours). This version adds support for the zopefied HtmlArea3, which is also the in-browser editor for the very fine bloghorn service. Note that this feature doesn't appear to work on any Mac browser for some odd reason.

Other features of note are the ability to edit and/or delete comments without jumping through hoops in the ZMI. Note also that the problems with comments are all part of the core CMF server, not of PABlog. Plone is still not supported, I have not yet drunk the Kool-Aid. I will, I'm sure, I just haven't yet.

Release notes for those who want more info.

read more

Transmutation, brand new statements

I'd like to offer a caveat to my prior post about logfiles. They are your friend if they provide useful information. "Failed.to.initialize.webapp" is not, in and of itself, useful information. Thank you, IBM. Assorted other log files tend to indicate to a null pointer in the core java.lang.String package. I consider that to be highly unlikely.

UPDATE: I have been notified that I may be in violation of the IBM WebSphere license agreement by publishing comments that are less than laudatory about their products. Bummer. I would like to clarify that I do not mean to impugn the good name of the IBM corporation and that these opinions are solely mine and do not in any way represent the opinions of my employer or our client (the actual licensee, btw).

read more

Old school, like an old fool

Cybr came over last night to play guitar, so I dug up some arrangements I did back in high school of traditional Christmas Carols. Yes, I hate Christmas music. There is a substantive difference between tripe like "Grandma got run over by a reindeer" or "I saw mommy kissing santa claus" and traditional carols like "Silent night" or "What child is this". Of course, there are horrendous renditions of those as well.

There was a point to this. Oh yes, while I was going through all my old sheet music I found dozens of songs I wrote back in high school and college. I tried to play a number of them. I definitely am out of practice, as I couldn't get through most of them. Granted, I had lots more free time back in those days...

read more

Fender jazz, mashed potato, fuzztone

[15:54] griz: mmmm. chocolate fondu fountain
[15:55] rev: Mmmmm
[15:56] griz: building management has apparently decided the way to have cooperative tenants is to feed them sugar
[15:56] griz: we get icecream sandwhiches or candy when we have fire drills
[15:56] griz: and now a fondu fountain for the holiday party in the lobby
[15:57] rev: How... preschool....
[15:57] griz: yeah - bribes - aint it great
[15:58] rev: <-- still laughing too hard to respond properly
[15:58] griz: my god - the hot chocolate is mostly melted chocolate with just enough milk to keep it liquid.
[15:58] rev: mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
[15:58] griz: oh yeah
[15:59] rev: Sugar coma in 15 minutes
[15:59] griz: of course, I'm going to be deep in a sugar coma in about 15 minutes
[15:59] rev: lol
[15:59] griz: Think your own thoughts
[15:59] rev: That's just wrong
[15:59] griz: <-- gets back up off the floor, still laughing
[16:00] griz: well - time to go run a meeting
[16:00] griz: cya
[16:00] rev: Enjoy, take some chocolate with you

I noticed that as I started this entry it was 4.04pm. I am seriously a geek.

read more

I don't mean to be insensitive, but I really hate that shit

Everyone has issues. For some people they are very broad, for others they are very narrow. There are people who will vote party line every time because their issue is allegiance to the party and they are happy to let the party do the thinking for them. There are "single issue" voters, who have a litmus test for candidates (be it gun control, the drug war, abortion, etc etc). When you go into that booth, what are your criteria? What matters to you? What issue or issues make or break your support for a candidate or ballot measure? OK, now that you've got that in your head, answer this question: Why? Why do you put such importance on that issue? Reconsider yourself. Assess your motivations, and determine if you really want to vote that way or not. For a lot of you, this exercise may simply reinforce your opinions. If that is the case, then great, you've validated the logic behind your choices, and that's always good. If it doesn't reinforce your opinions, however, You owe it to yourself to reconsider how you are voting.

read more

Long, like the note I'm sending

You've seen people dressed in various outfits standing by the road promoting Subway or Pizza Hut or what have you. As I was driving home to begin what was to become a long night last night, I saw something that made me look twice. And wish that I had had my camera with me. I saw someone dressed as a moving truck. A big white moving truck. Kind of like the logo here. It was very very strange.

The night was long and stressful but ultimately ended well. So there's that. Mae may enlighten you. Or not.

Lately I've been getting confused in the parking garage, as there is a vehicle identical to mine (same year, make, model, color, trim package). And the idiot parks within a few spaces of me every day (except when he gets there first and I park within a few spaces of him). As it turns out, it's Blecha. Which I find very entertaining.

read more

Religious fanatics are running about

Bishop Raymond Burke, of Wisconsin, was named as the new Archbishop for St Louis. Burke is a hardline conservative who has recently sent letters to state Senators in WI demanding that they hew strictly to the Church position on all issues or risk being booted from the community and insinuated that they would also risk their public offices. I was under the impression that our elected officials were elected to represent all of the people, not just their coreligionists. Shouldn't the IRS be revoking the tax-exempt status of the diocese he represents?

read more

Baby love, my baby love

My coworkers threw a little baby shower party this afternoon, which was very nice. There was lemon cake at the behest of my wife who insisted it's my favorite (I do like lemon quite a bit) but for some reason seems to think I don't really care for chocolate. I don't really care for chocolate cake, but in most other forms I love it.

The highlight of the event was undoubtedly the interpretive dance of the card by Shani. It was sublime and disturbing, ranging from country line dancing to psychotic rocking in a fetal position. And it led to an extended discussion of the proper direction to twirl your hand when you are trying to indicate that someone is insane.

My wife is insistent that I should get a new guitar in order to reward me for all I've been going through. I'm not one to appear ungrateful, but I really haven't gone through that much. She's the one going through all the pain and suffering and hormones and so on and so forth. I'm just along for the ride. And it would make more sense to use that money towards something necessar y rather than something enjoyable but ultimately not all that necessary.

read more

So the room must listen to me

So, if I understand correctly, it is un-American for Democrats to filibuster something that the Republicans want to vote on, but perfectly acceptable for Republicans to filibuster on something that the Democrats want to vote on. Hypocrisy is not a great way to win my vote.

read more

Any kind of pain

We will send a file to finance, who will produce an ADI journal and then manually verify the information and check funds availability. They will then call or email the government lead on our project who will then have the DBA manually update status and date in production. What's wrong with this picture?

Also note that Nestle's makes the very best...

read more