The Pied Piper of the TV screen is gonna make it simple

Did you see those crazy liberals on CNN last night? What about the ones on MSNBC? Fox? ABC? CBS? NBC? No? How come?

because there aren't any

Yea. The "liberal" media. If the media is so liberal, why are there 0(zero) nationally syndicated liberal talk radio shows? There are dozens of ultra right wing ones, and a few moderate ones. No liberal ones though. There are plenty of conservatives on the national news broadcasts and cable. And a fair number of moderates. No liberals. There are dozens and dozens of conservative national Op-Ed columnists, and fewer than a dozen liberals. The top papers in the country are overwhelmingly conservative or moderate (NYT, WSJ, WaPo, LAT, etc).

Some links of interest. Note that even the moderates at places like WaPo are starting to admit the rightward tilt of the media (up until very recently, the "liberal media" was most often touted as fact by such "liberal" media as the NYT and WaPo along with the solidly conservative and proud of it WSJ):

• The most biased name in news
• The illiberal media
• The Myth of the Liberal Media
• CNN
• Examing the Liberal Media claim
• The rightward drift
• Naked Emperor
• The Swarm of the Right
• Make them accountable
• Western Herald
• The Media Bias Myth
• The myth of the conservative media -note, this one is interesting in that he posits the theory that media is biased towards power, but refuses to discuss who has that power.
• Liberal media, or liberal public?

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Don't Go Away Mad

Understatement of the year award: Man sets car ablaze, drives it into ex-girlfriend's home

"She had apparently dumped him," says a cop. "It's safe to say he was upset."

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Man, you think you're funny

Government employees often have no sense of humor. Leaving the meeting today someone was saying "Well, the regulations blah blah blah blah blah blah ".

My response? "Regulations are over-rated."

She didn't laugh.

Oh well.

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Won't you be my neighbor?

It's not a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Back in high school, I had just about the coolest teacher ever for English. Fred Handsfield. He was a big fan of Mr Rogers. He had an autographed picture on his desk. The class that was in session when the show came on got to watch part of it. Aside from that he was a brilliant teacher, able to motivate even recalcitrant kids such as myself.

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quote unquote

Added two quotes off /. to the fortune file.

I'm just a social drinker, but I smoke crack like a motherfucker...

Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs.

Which reminds me of the Simpsons episode where they are at a film festival and Homer is voting for the one with a football to the groin in it. I'm one of those people that goes into cataclysmic spasms of laughter at clips of people falling down or getting hit in the head with a basketball or what have you on those "funniest home videos" shows. My wife finds this very strange. Hey, one of the smartest people I've ever known is a die hard fan of Ernest movies, so I don't feel bad.

Updated: yes, the title is a song reference.

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Words have no meaning

I am always entertained by people who misuse words (I'm sure I do it as well, but I'm entertained when I observe other people do it.). Granted, there is some eloquence to "When we bring these desperate processes together". And remember, "Invention being the mother of necessity.". No, these are not Bushisms. They come from this morning's meeting. Where we also learned that one of the requirements is that a senior person (we're not sure who) will need to be able to look at any application and find out the status, because sometimes a Senator or Representative will call up screaming about "What's holding up the loan application for xxxx? I want to do a ribbon cutting next year before the election, speed it up!".

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If you only buy one CD this year, or ever again, this is it:

A triple CD of Jello for less than a single CD of Britney Spears. And the content is much more compelling. I'm listening to it today and weirding out the hardcore rightists in the office. It's just one of those things that makes a day wonderful ;)

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You think I give a damn about a Grammy?

Wow. Whoever is producing the Grammy Awards this year need to be fired. Now. Don't wait for the show to end, get rid of him NOW. I understand the time constraints and the desire to cram in as many performances as possible inevitably leads to everyone doing the 7" version of their song (for those of you who don't get that reference, there once was a time when artists would release a shortened version of an album track on a 7" single). However, I think the budget still has room for, say, a competent sound engineer. You don't need bob Rock or anything, but get someone who isn't actually deaf. The mix on tonights show has been so incredibly bad I've had to leave the room several times. On at least two performances so far (John Mayer and the Dixie Chicks) someone warming backstage got into the mix both onstage and to broadcast (the Dixie Chicks all suddenly looked very confused and looked offstage to where the other artists were waiting). Even on artists where the engineer didn't punch in musicians backstage warming up, the mix has been terrible. Faith Hill sounded awful and looked like she couldn't hear her monitors. I have seen her before, I know she sings much better than that normally. Everyone has sounded horrible, the eq has been awful, the compression non existant. I even felt bad for Vanessa Carlton (who I expected would sound horrible, but I didn't think she would sound as bad as she did). Ugh. It's coming off like a low-rent Grammy wannabe production.

Added: Robin Williams just kicked out more funny jokes in 30 seconds than occured in the entire rest of the history of the Grammy Awards combined. The audience only got about half of them, if that.

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We love to see you smile

Odd odd odd. Coming home from the gym today, we drove past a McDonalds. Outside the restaurant (and I use the term loosely) there were several fire trucks. And a crisis response unit. And a Department of Public Safety Critical Response unit. Behind a car in the parking lot were several people in HAZMAT suits, removing bags from the trunk of said car. And, strolling through the parking lot, apparently oblivious to the news crews, police, and other assorted unusual presences, strolled the living personification of Beavis and Butthead. In spite of it being 34 degrees and chilly, they were wearing just jeans and concert t-shirts. And they were determined to get their Big Mac, regardless of what else was going on in this insane world. The light changed, we continued home, curious to know what had occured. St. Louis being not particularly wired, there is nothing on any of the news sites. The evening news may (or may not) cover the story, as they did have camera crews there. The local news websites will probably have the story posted by sometime in March. I think the official motto is "St Louis Online News Resources: Last weeks' news next week".

I saw a bumper sticker that said "Abortionists are terrorists." This is factually inaccurate. Terrorism is: The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons. Funny, sounds like what the anti-abortion activists themselves do. The FBI tends to agree.

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I heard it through the grapevine.

We had a status meeting today. Some items of note:

• We have a new org chart. The practical effect of which (well, the only practical effect I actually care about) is that I'll be doing more development work. This is a good thing.
• It appears that we may be able to talk to someone who knows someone that talked to somebody about the information we need. That will help a lot.
• Our solution to the lack of solid deliverables: Deliver what we've done by the due date and declare victory. It worked last time, so why not?
• We are actively looking for two developers. After a pause, C2 says "I know a guy..." pause. R says "Good for you." Laughter ensues, the meeting is over.

Some random thoughts I ran across in my notebook:

• Always be wary when the client hands you a database model written in crayon
• I like any insult that involves footnotes and cross references to Nietzche and Keynes.
• I like people who ask "do you know anything about project X?" No. "Oh, OK" and then proceed to tell me all about some obscure detail of the project and ask for my advice on something I clearly know nothing about.

And last, but least, a quote for the day.

"We thought, 'How hard could it be to build an OS?' and scheduled 18 months to build NT. But we had forgotten about some of the important stuff--user mode, networking, and so on." - Mark Lucovsky, Windows Server Architect

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I'm a dancin' fool

In our advanced step class tonight, the instructor had us doing some fairly complex things. At one point she said "Show me a little style!" At which point many people in the class started moving like they were in a dance class and, as she said, displaying great style. My style is largely limited to not falling over.

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The CIA says he's a guilty man, will we see the likes of him again?

It is becoming more and more apparent that one of the critical components of peace in the Middle East is to dismantle The CIA. Of course, that might also help in the drug war as well. So really a win all around.

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Are we too tired to try and understand?

I am very disconcerted when I find myself in agreement with Chris Matthews. He makes excellent points about many of the things wrong with our current foreign policy (hard line right on Israel, war on Iraq, US bases in the middle east, etc etc). Brilliant interview. I may actually start respecting him now.

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We love the winter, it brings us closer together

We got more snow than expected this weekend, and the roads were bad enough yesterday that we opted to stay in rather than run errands. That's OK, we got a lot done around the house instead. It was nice on the walk from the metro station to the office, mostly untrampled snow. Very peaceful

Yes, it's a fed holiday and I'm at work. I find I can get a lot more work done with fewer people here. The people who come in on off days tend to be in to do work and only stick around long enough to get that work done, as opposed to during the week when everyone is in for 8 and if they have nothing to do they have no problem sitting and talking at you even when you're quite obviously busy. I hate that. CuteMatt and I are doing the first deployment of the workorder 5 module (OK, I'll be honest, I have no idea what is on which workorder anymore, so this could be from workorder 23 for all I know. It's a new module, this is the first time it's going on the server.) and I'm planning on finishing up the prototype screens for workorder 7. If time permits, I'm going to start in on the Struts book I picked up this weekend.

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War: what is it good for

It's good for defense contractor profits, oil company profits, and that's pretty much it.

Instead of War, why not continue the inspections, as the inspectors themselves (vocal critics of Iraq) are suggesting. The fact that the entire rest of the world, aside from our vassal states, are opposed to this should be a fairly strong indicator that it's not the best idea our "leadership" has ever had. Even many conservative pundits are questioning the logic (to say nothing of the "evidence" presented by Powell). Notice that arch-conservative Wall Street is well aware what a bad idea this is and is opposed to it. The coalition of left, moderate, and right organizations, and the fact that the more someone knows about the middle east the more likely they are to be opposed to the war regardless of their political ideology, is yet another factor that reaffirms my belief that this is simply not the right war.

There is an independent media here in the Loop. Get with it.

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Time keeps on slipping

It's been a very very busy several days. I spent half of the last few days out at Goodfellow working on prototype and workflow for the dollar side of the application. Very very boring. We got a lot done, but any meeting that lasts four hours is boring. That's all there is to it. I've seen a lot more of North City than ever before. There are some sad looking areas up there. Tears your heart out to think that some people have no choice but to live there. There is something seriously wrong with this world.

Which brings me to "Are you Hot?" or whatever the hell the latest "reality" show from ABC is called. Mae turned to me yesterday when that commercial came on and said "Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if the world was blown to hell." At this point I suppose semantics are the least of the critiques available, but can we please stop calling Survivor/Joe Millionaire/Temptation Island/American Idol/etc etc "reality shows"? They aren't reality. They are game shows, plain and simple. People compete for fame and prizes. It's a game show. Get over it.

While returning from 7-11 with my gourmet lunch, I set off the metal detector. I placed my hot dog on the counter, walked through again, it didn't go off. I still ate the hot dog.

We now have our IP Phones going. I went to phone training yesterday. Hopefully I will now get a certificate stating that I am qualified to use a phone.

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I don't care what you say

New reviews:
The Streets - Original Pirate Material

Everclear - Slow Motion Daydream

The Bears - Car Caught Fire

Dan the Automator - Wanna buy a monkey?

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The country was founded on the principle that the primary role of government is to protect property

The weekend was less productive than I'd hoped. Ah well. We did have dinner with some friends, and it was excellent. Of course, next time I have to cook, which may end that friendship. I did track down some Jam and acoustic Everclear tracks that are keeping me going through my lack of sleep, thankfully.

Had an interesting talk with some coworkers on refactoring our application(s) on a solid generic architecture (which we would design) and thus making it easier to add modules on and extend the base. Some good ideas came of it and we definitely all seem to have the same vision. This could be cool.

I'm reading the latest edition of People's History and am once again consumed with distaste for the way corporate protectionism has been enforced throughout our history. I want to rant but lack the eloquence to express myself fully.

 Vintage aroma's and vintage ideals Old men greying to a dying countrys needs Waiting for a knighthood to while away the hours Listen and learn now it's time to kill your betters Museums are dead take a new art stance Paint mass suicide on the aspiration diktat Hospital closure kill more than car bombs ever will But it saves money because people are expendable You cold shoulder insurgents yet love arms dealers Everybody's taking drugs because it makes governing easier Museums are dead take a new art stance Paint mass suicide on the aspiration diktat Sell out the past and learn to obey You spit out and douse a molotov cocktail Revolution soon dies sold out for a pay rise China, Russia, England, all washed up in power abuse Terrorism is an excuse that the ruling class use Wipe out aristocracy now kill, kill, kill, kill, kill England makes judgements of old school propaganda The only threat to heads is silenced by dumb pleasure Museums are dead take a new art stance Paint mass suicide on the aspiration diktat 

-Manic Street Preachers "New Art Riot"

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DAMMIT

Opened my backpack to grab my handspring for a meeting, and lo and behold the glass face is cracked to hell. Sigh. I wonder how much this will cost to replace...

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Here comes the sun

I enjoy getting here very early in the morning. I don't enjoy getting up early, but it's a nice drive in at 5am, and it's peaceful when I get here. And I get a great parking spot. So far I haven't done Metro when I've come in this early, largely because the reason I come in this early is so I can leave at noon for Dr appointments and so it makes more sense to drive on those days. It's very tranquil. And maybe the lack of anyone else here will allow me to kick out a whole lot of the prototype/workflow model that's suddenly been dropped in my lap. Overdue and underdone. Just the way I like to take them on ;)

WSAD 5.0 is one serious resource hog. 1.7Ghz CPU, 512M RAM, on a very resource friendly OS, and it still takes about 1.13 to start the app. And working in design view is sluggish. I guess I'm used to the response time of vi. I now have a Cisco 7960 IP Phone on my desk, which has a fairly verbose settings menu (never let geeks have access to those sorts of things). Now that we have the IP addresses of all our coworkers phones, we're trying to figure out how to DOS them. This is the phone on which we will have a training class. Do people really need to be trained on these things? I haven't seen such hand-holding in a tech device since Microsoft Bob. It took M3 and I all of 30 seconds to master these - and phone systems have never been a strong point of mine.

Hopefully, this will be a calm weekend and I can actually process all the snippets I've got going on. Several new songs that I haven't had time to work on, essays I want to finish, organizational issues, DIY home things, and so much more.

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Will Amazon.com be around when Grandma’s gone?

From the meeting

There will be new phones installed this week. Everyone is required to attend a 45 minute class on how to use these phones. (too many smartass responses to record).

If you have anything on the network that shouldn't be (personal, non-work, 'adult educational') remove it yesterday or sooner. (many questions about what qualifies as "on the network" and what about MP3's on your HD).

The above is precipitated by ****drumroll**** eBay! Apparently, two government employees were in a bidding war on eBay over some item and the loser decided to report misuse of government property (surfing eBay is not an approved activity). It's a little vague as to how the loser got out of getting in trouble as well, but the winner was reportedly fired(1) and now they are cracking down on assorted non-approved activities, the gist of which is keep things off the network and don't be stupid in surfing. I would've thought those sorts of concepts would be obvious, but I appear to be wrong.

1 - there are two ways to get fired from a government gig: falsify paperwork or misuse equipment. That's pretty much it.

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The sun's coming up.

Ah, health care. I'm now paying more than I was under our old plan, for fewer benefits. So basically I just got a pay cut. Makes me feel real good. If they would be honest and just come out and tell us what was going on I'd be less upset. But the "oh look, you have a choice of two plans" and "gee, we don't have details on what the benefits are with either plan even though we started working on this months ago, just sign up for one of them and you'll be fine" is bullshit. I behave in a professional manner, I expect my employer to do the same.

When coming in to work extra early (e.g. before the sun is up), I find Tom Waits to be the best driving music.

 Well my time went so quickly, I went lickety-splickly out to my old '55 As I drove away slowly, feeling so holy, God knows, I was feeling alive. Now the sun's coming up, I'm riding with Lady Luck, freeway cars and trucks, Stars beginning to fade, and I lead the parade Just a-wishing I'd stayed a little longer, Oh, Lord, let me tell you that the feeling's getting stronger. 

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Everything counts in large amounts

Today's reminder: spaces matter in LDAP. Thank you.

Also note, that if you don't have any access to the production server, it's hard to fix things.

C (laughing):I've only had sex with my wife twice and we have two kids
R: Yea, my husband says that. I just tell him to stop taking credit for another man's work

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Ground control to Major Tom

Jan 28, 1986. I was, I believe, in French class. I didn't understand the weight of the tragedy. This time I do. I am deeply sorry for those who were lost and for their loved ones. Many people far more learned than I have been talking about how this may endanger the space program, I leave the defense of what I view as our most important research organization to those more knowledgable than myself. There have been mentions of the push to privatize the space program as having had a severe negative impact on safety and security, and that was cited by many NASA employees as a significant contributer in 1986 as well. If privatization is having any negative impact of any sort on the space program it must stop immediately. Turning over public interest programs to for profit institutions will always lead to destruction of the public interest.

Many of the more militant atheists/agnostics/etc I've encountered are going ballistic when anyone says anything about praying for the lost and their loved ones. This is absurd. A gesture made to alleviate the suffering of those who've just lost a loved one is always appropriate.

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Always feeling torn and slow

Someday I hope for a good night's sleep. Someday. Hmmm, I need to throw some more logic at PABlog (if curMonth entries == 0: show lastMonth). I think I need to change the hierarchy to use month values rather than names.

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