Dude, You’re Getting a Mac

(8:57:18 AM) peasejay: You are getting a mac just to be a jerk. I KNOW THIS.
(8:57:24 AM) landolf10000: what?
(8:58:12 AM) peasejay: You are going to start making grand anti mac proclamations as a mac owner.
(8:58:16 AM) landolf10000: you mean so i have more firsthand knowledge of the platform so i can make more observations like ‘building the computer into the monitor is really fucking stupid?’
(8:58:26 AM) peasejay: YES
(8:58:29 AM) peasejay: EXACTLY
(8:58:35 AM) landolf10000: ok, then maybe i am.

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Fox in Socks

last night Alex was sick so we didn’t really read as normal, but his latest previous book selection was Fox in Socks, by Dr. Seuss.

Alex has picked this book about five times this month. Damn you, Dr. Seuss, you clever bastard, I still can’t read it through without screwing things up at least once. I think Alex enjoys daddy’s failure to read through the book without tripping over his tongue like Jack Box saying “chipolotole”. I know I would were I in his footie pajamas.

Small nitpicks: the fleas flying through the freezing cheese trees could stand an illustration, and I’ve drawn better roses than Dr. Seuss managed here. Other than that, an outstanding effort. Four and a half Pochaccos.

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Thomas Breaks a Promise

last night’s bedtime book: Thomas Breaks a Promise, of uncredited authorship, illustrated by Richard Courtney. Here at the house, we have Thomas and the Treasure, a DVD that we ripped off from the library; we have this book; and we have a few Thomas trains that grandma got for Alex. He really loves all this stuff, and I can see why; the addition of friendly faces to the convenient blank canvas of the front of a steam engine is an awesome merchandising idea. Alex digs trains in general, and trains with faces–watch out now!

Despite being one of Alex’s favourite books, this one is all the pablum you’d expect from a children’s book written by a branding committee. The most interesting aspect of the Thomas material that Alex has is front and center here, though, as Sir Topham Hatt elicits the promise that Thomas makes (possible spoiler: and then breaks in the book’s climax). If you aren’t familiar with the Thomas stories, from the stuff I’ve seen Hatt is The Man on the island of Sodor’s railways, keeping the trains in line and running on time. The thing about Hatt I find fascinating is that he appears to be a total dickhead. In his really difficult job of keeping things running on a small island with an amazing retinue of trains at his disposal, he curtly issues orders, happily passes out harsh words and punishments for infractions, and rarely has a kind word for anyone. Sometimes I wonder if the Hatt character (and others in children’s media that I’ve been exposed to, like Mister Websley from Leap Frog’s Letter Factory series) is written the way he is to program kids subconsciously to put up with this shit when they join the work force.

Anyway, Richard Courtney’s artwork here is superficially impressive, but keep an eye on the trains–things like noses and eyes wander in placement from one page to another. I think he knew he was slumming to take this job on.

Drawbacks aside, at least the book doesn’t hop the tracks into a total marketing meltdown with come-ons to buy the seventeenth engine in the Sodor line or something. It’s just an uninspiring, vanilla book, and we give those two Pochaccos around here.

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Mary Engelbreit’s Mother Goose

last night’s bedtime book: Mary Engelbreit’s Mother Goose, by Mary Engelbreit. The subtitle of this book is “One Hundred Best-Loved Verses” but I’m pretty sure there aren’t 100 people worldwide who love some of these nursery rhymes; once you get past the old stand-bys like “Humpty Dumpty” nursery rhymes quickly degenerate into uselessness in my experience.

Nobody’s hiring Engelbreit for her taste in nursery rhymes, though–they want the pictures. You’ll find some neat work with patterns and textures among the gingerbread in this volume, but the most striking thing about Engelbreit’s work is her very shaky grasp of perspective and the vanishing point. For that, and the idea that a compendium of nursery rhymes was a necessary or desirable thing, I have one and a half Pochaccos.

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Paddington at the Zoo

last night’s bedtime book: Paddington at the Zoo, by Michael Bond. This book gets off to a rollicking start by having the zookeeper threaten to ban Paddington from entry because there are no pets allowed; R W Alley’s illustration of Paddington giving the fellow a hard stare is humorous. This entry in the Paddington series also features the most sophisticated two-sentence description of penguins I’ve ever read, and it is the only story in the series that has a villain–a cad who would steal a marmalade sandwich from a cute stuffed bear doesn’t deserve to live.

Of course, you don’t have to take such a hard line when you’re explaining the book to your kid. I’m going to wait until Alex is three before I give him that summary of the action.

Paddington at the Zoo has all the positives of Paddington at the Palace with none of the drawbacks. This is another solid children’s book in the Paddington canon (Alex has the Paddington Suitcase, which we got in China). I’ll read anything Alex chooses from his bookshelf so far, but I’m always secretly happy when Alex picks any of them.

Four Pochaccos.

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The Monster at the End of This Book

last night’s bedtime book: The Monster at the End of This Book, by Jon Stone. I don’t know whether I had this book myself as a yout, or if I just ran across it as an older child in some younger kid’s book collection, but I was immediately familiar with it when Alex first chose it as his bedtime story though I don’t remember reading it before. Starring lovable, furry old Grover of Sesame Street fame and a mysterious monster at the end of the book, your kid will enjoy the Grover illustrations and you’ll enjoy some of the funnier-for-adults stuff that Grover says.

There’s not a lot of substance here, but still, it’s a solid choice. Three Pochaccos.

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Paddington at the Palace

last night’s bedtime book: Paddington at the Palace, by Michael Bond. Let’s get the good out of the way first: the Paddington books are excellent children’s books. R.W. Alley’s illustrations in this series are excellent. Paddington the Bear is a cute character without being cloying or manufactured, and there’s at least one funny thing for adults in each of them I’ve read. For example, Paddington being mistaken for a busby is a good gag whether you’re 2 or 32, especially compared to what passes for humour in the average children’s book.

Now for the bad points of the book. The action in the volume turns when a mysterious figure within the palace notices Paddington’s failure to see the changing of the guard because he was stuck behind everyone in the crowd. An assistant is dispatched to open the grounds to Paddington in what is obviously a case of special treatment. Really, the only reason Paddington is allowed the access he gets is because someone notices he’s a cute little bear; there’s no value in that as a lesson.

But here’s the bigger issue: as might be anticipated this book is about a visit to Buckingham Palace, and I am sorry to report that neither main character is properly dismissive of the legitimacy of the monarchy. As I’m sure you’ll agree, the royals are wastes of perfectly good internal organs who ought to return all their earthly possessions to the people and get real jobs. It’s not as bad as ooh-ing and aah-ing at the Vatican would be, given the horrible and asinine predilections of the Catholic church, but come on–Prince Harry wore a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party. These people are assholes, soup to nuts. As a possible mitigating factor, it might be too early for the target audience of this book to grasp the derision with which the figureheads of British state should be regarded.

Frankly, given this book’s shortcomings, it is my least favourite Paddington story in the seven books Alex has. As a reflection of the strengths of the series, though, it still rates three and a half Pochaccos (on the JesusH rating scale of zero to five Pochaccos).

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The Sailor Dog

last night’s bedtime book: The Sailor Dog, by Margaret Wise Brown, of Goodnight Moon (and Mister Dog) fame. The hero of this book is Scuppers, the Sailor Dog, who spends the book sailing, wishing to sail, sailing, shipwrecked, sailing, provisioning, and sailing again. Scuppers is sailing at least half the length of the book. His single-minded pursuit of what he plainly considers his life’s work is an excellent reminder for all of us who tend to spend too much of our precious time doing random bullshit we don’t want to be doing.

This is a better book than Mister Dog, even without considering the 88 word sentence near the end that is a fun challenge for those of us who are reading the material out loud to read in one breath. However, Garth Williams’ illustrations aren’t as clever or refined overall as they are in Mister Dog, and every time I read the book I’m unhappy that the Sailor Dog finds a chimney’s worth of red bricks on the island he shipwrecks on.

On the last page of the book, Brown wrote a song for Sailor Dog, which I came up with a simple tune for sometime in the first dozen times I read the book to Alex. Now when he chooses this book I always ask him if he wants me to sing the song, and he always says no. I’m sure he’s not saying anything about my singing voice.

Two and a half Pochaccos (on the JesusH rating scale of zero to five Pochaccos).

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Mister Dog

last night’s bedtime book: Mister Dog, by Margaret Wise Brown, of Goodnight Moon fame. “Once upon a time there was a funny dog named Crispin’s Crispian. He was named Crispin’s Crispian because he belonged to himself.” The book starts with that premise and makes less and less sense as what passes for a story develops. Brown had apparently begun the long slide into full-blown dementia before she wrote this.

There’s a great picture of a rabbit smoking Mister Dog’s corncob pipe, though.

An amazon reviewer mentions that they began reading this book to their son when he was about 5. Your kid should be reading this book by himself in about ten seconds by the time they’re five, people. Get with it.

Two Pochaccos, mostly for Garth Williams’ illustrations.

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Reshuffle the Deck, America -or- The Healthcare Speech Obama Should Deliver

It has been painful watching the healthcare reform movement die a slow death through the battle of attrition in the Senate, but the most frustrating part has been watching senators of all persuasions run roughshod and hijacking the process to try to further their own political gains. Adding to my frustration is the fact that President Obama, the guy who spearheaded this entire thing, has appeared mostly powerless to intervene in the proceedings.

It’s understandable that Obama wanted to give the Senate a chance to resolve this for themselves, but now that it appears that they can’t (or won’t), I think the time is right for Obama to re-insert himself into the proceedings with the following simple message:

America, are you as frustrated as I am about the lack of progress the Senate has made developing a meaningful health care reform bill that reflects your values? If so, here’s what I suggest we do: when the 2010 senate elections roll around, I want you to vote every single incumbent Senator that is up for reelection out of office and elect someone new to fill their seat.

I don’t care what health care policy your current Senator supports or their political party or if you replace them with a Democrat or a Republican or an Independent, just vote for someone new who’s willing to come to the table to actually pass a reform bill in whatever form you believe is most prudent. You like single payer healthcare? Vote for the single payer healthcare guy. Tort reform and interstate competition? Vote for that guy.

Bottom line, let’s reshuffle the deck America, because, what we have here? This is some BULLSHIT. Seriously, fuck all these guys.

Sure, such a move is probably fraught with all sorts of political peril, but so was bringing up healthcare reform in the first place. And who knows? Maybe if Obama is able to redirect the full ire of a frustrated public directly onto the Senators who are causing the impasse, they might suddenly discover a newfound sense of decisiveness and spirit of compromise?

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CFL Oddnesss

Submitted to the collective wisdom of the JesusH readers, most of whom are much better at the home improvement/electrical circuitry stuff than I am.

We have a weird problem in the second room of our two bedroom condo (the “baby’s room”, as it’s recently been branded) - the electrical outlets will not operate lamps that have CFLs in them. I can sense that you have follow-up questions, but it really is that simple. Take a lamp, put in an incandescent bulb, and plug it into one of the outlets in the room, and it will work (as will other devices, such as my laptop, radios, etc). Take that same lamp and put in a CFL, and… nothing. Take that same lamp, leave the CFL in, and move it to any outlet in any other room in the house and voila - eerie flourescent light.

Some basic Google searches turn up nothing that would seem to explain this. Though I’m a budget conscious, Inconvenient Truth-watching liberal, I’m willing to just use incandescents if there’s a good, innocuous explanation for why this would be so. However, I’m more concerned that it may indicate a problem that could cause other problems like damaging electronics.

Any theories or suggestions?

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Yours, in Prospective Friendship

We actually have even more in common than this, but I didn’t mention all the beauty contests I’ve won on account of I didn’t want to sound conceited.

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So You’d Like to Buy a New Computer?

I originally posted this as a note on facebook, but then I thought that jesush could use the content. The computer I link to is no longer available, but deals of its ilk–fairly powerful refurbed machines–show up on a woot site at least once a month lately.

Some of my friends have been in the market for a new computer.

I recommend you go get a Gateway Media Center PC with Intel Core 2 Quad Processor right now. Here is a solid post outlining the reasons why. Then go visit 23″ LCD Computer Monitor, Logitech Wireless Keyboard/Mouse and buy that too.

When you get the computer screw around with it for as much as you can for a week. If something breaks, return it. If nothing has broken by then, your machine should essentially match the reliability of a brand-new machine over its life. For $650 you have a very future-proofed machine with premium monitor and wireless keyboard/mouse. Delete all the stupid crap the manufacturer puts on the system, install avg free for antivirus, upgrade to windows 7 (this machine may qualify for a free license–I’m not clear on that) when available, and don’t do anything dumb like run Microsoft communication products and you’re golden. If you decide you want to game, the upgrade path to gaming rig is a better power supply and a recent video card. Both are simple to install and have many reasonably-priced options to choose from at any time.

If you are a Linux Bigot, you are my spiritual brother (or sister) but I think it’s time to admit the configuration and operation of a Linux machine for desktop use is not an efficient use of the average person’s time.

The Windows UI is better, and it’s also much more widely known. There’s a ton of built-in familiarity with the Windows interface in the market and those people shouldn’t learn how another OS works if they don’t have the native interest to do so. They’ll be wasting their time deciphering the differences in behaviour from what they’ve been conditioned to expect with Windows when they’re not scouring the net for drivers.

As far as I can tell, Linux is not an efficient use of my time either. I am a computer geek who uses Unix and Linux most of the time at the day job. I recently had to re-install the latest build of Ubuntu five times on a machine before it ran stably. I would expect a more sensible computer user would have considered the value of their time and decided to stop wasting hours and drop a hundred bucks on a Windows license by that point.

There’s a lot of good free or cheap software on Windows these days. I don’t have a penny of Microsoft product on this machine other than the OS.

Alternately, you could spend a lot more and buy a mac.

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Overdrafted

As if I needed an additional reason to detest financial institutions: Overspending on Debit Cards Is a Boon for Banks [New York Times, h/t @kingkaufman]

“Everyone should know how much they have in their account and manage their funds well to avoid those fees,” said Scott Talbott, chief lobbyist at the Financial Services Roundtable, an advocacy group for large financial institutions.

Hey, Scott, how about you just fuck off with that nonsense? You’re providing to users a service that most of them probably don’t want by default. You’re obviously making a ton of money on loaning someone five bucks to buy lunch when they miscalculated and slightly overdrafted with that very reasonable $34 overdraft charge or you wouldn’t be complaining about the government turning their eyes on debit card legislation similar to recent credit card law overhaul.

Banking industry mouthpieces in the article warn that there are institutions which make more in overdraft fees than they do in profit, and that any such institution would be in danger of going under. Good! That means there are banks that either don’t make most of their money ripping their depositors off or aren’t afraid of making their overdraft policies palatable enough to be described up front so they’re not concerned with everyone opting out, and I’d like those banks to win please. I’ll no more mourn the loss of a bad bank than I did the telemarketers who lost their jobs after the Do Not Call registry was created. Get employment with an outfit that’s actually making the world a better place, people.

Banks also warn that they might have to do something like start charging for “free” checking accounts to make up for the lost income. No problem! Checking accounts are a legitimate service provided, not a scam, and charging for them is reasonable. It’s also more honest than running your business with usurious short-term loans, paid in large part by the segment of your customers least able to afford it.

Later in the article:

“If you think about when you swipe your card at, let’s say, Starbucks or at the Safeway or the Giant, there is no real sort of interaction there,” said Mr. Talbott. “It’s just approved or disapproved. So how logically would that work? Would a screen come up? Would someone at the bank call the checkout clerk and say, ‘That customer is overdrawn?’ Logistically that would be very difficult to implement.”

Oh come on. Ballistic Terminal Services provides a quick overview of how credit and debit card processing works. Here is an excerpt:

2. The processor will then pass that information onto the bank that issued the credit card. The issuing bank will then check the validity of the card and see if the requested amount is available. If it is the bank will set aside the amount of the purchase for the merchant.

3. The card issuing bank will send back either an approval number or a decline message back to the processor.

4. In approximately 12-15 seconds the information will be sent back to the credit card terminal which, if the transaction was approved will print a receipt for the customer to sign.

and here’s how the process would work with a notification step:

2. The processor will then pass that information onto the bank that issued the credit card. The issuing bank will then check the validity of the card and see if the requested amount is available. If it is the bank will set aside the amount of the purchase for the merchant. If the card is valid but the requested amount is unavailable, the bank may choose to extend an overdraft offer to the cardholder rather than denying the transaction.

3. If overdraft offer is generated, the fee amount and total transaction fee will be sent back to the credit card terminal in approximately 12-15 seconds. The user has the option of accepting the offer by pressing “Yes” or “Accept” or similar. The processor will then pass that information onto the bank that issued the credit card.

4. The card issuing bank will send back either an approval number or a decline message back to the processor.

5. In approximately 12-15 seconds the information will be sent back to the credit card terminal which, if the transaction was approved will print a receipt for the customer to sign.

Was that so hard? I’ve never seen a credit/debit card terminal anywhere that accepts debit payments that didn’t at least look software-upgradeable–push out a software update and send out a bunch of individual pieces of paper describing the very simple and easily-understood change. You can even print this post and use it if you like. (And for the terminals that can’t be made to work this way, buy better stuff next time.) And by the way, I’m sure phone number portability was a technical pain in the ass too, and once we all decided it would make our life better and demanded it, it happened quite quickly and easily.

At Bank of America, you can’t even opt-out of overdraft protection unless you’re granted an “exception”. That’s just another in the series of reasons I’m really glad I don’t bank at Bank of America any more. There’s simply no good reason to not allow someone to opt out of such a practice by calling unless you’re just intent on ripping them off.

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Baby, Part Deux

I recently discovered we hadn’t told everyone we thought we’d told, so: things are working out so well on the kid front we decided to have another one. Here’s an ultrasound of him looking right at you.

It’s a boy. His working title is Arquimedez (as in Arquimedez Pozo, the most awesomely named player in baseball history), but I doubt that’s going to stick.

They’re doing some crazy things with ultrasounds lately. We had a really good tech working the machine last time we were in the hospital and she made some 3D scans for us. In this one Arquimedez is a little shy and is hiding his eyes.

Here’s a sharper one, where he’s rubbing one eye. He might have got some trail dust in it.

Michelle just had an amniocentesis, on account of you can never be too careful these days, and we got the test results back today. Everything is straight normal and healthy, which made this a very good day.

The due date for the youngster is Nov 21.

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Barbecue Time

The days are getting nice and warm and long and we’ve been doing a lot of barbecuing the last month or so. It had been a while, so last weekend I got out the grill cleaner, 409, rags, and shop vac and cleaned my barbecue.

Holy cow, what a difference! Steaks before were an adventure. When I had the fire all the way up, I couldn’t close the lid for more than a few seconds without getting flareups and charring things. On Sunday, I brushed them with some olive oil to avoid sticking and still left them long enough to get those pretty grill marks and some texture on the surface, while remaining nice and pink inside. (If you like your steak well done, you might as well start ordering hamburger and saving yourself some money. That’s like actually using steak sauce on steak, for Christ’s sake. What a horrible misallocation of resources.)

I give barbecuing with a clean grill Five Pochaccos.

(image from Evolution of BBQ shirt at shirt.woot. I’ve been buying a lot of woot shirts lately.)

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The Price is Right

I was on the elliptical today and someone had The Price is Right running on the TV. Which reminds me, when did Drew Carey decide to turn into a John Candy cosplayer?

Anyway, as I started they were doing one of the product bidding things, where the four possible contestants submit bids for an item and the person who is closest without going over gets to play a pricing game onstage. Product is ping-pong table. One contestant bids. Then contestant two bids $600. Then Contestant Three bids $599.

“Now that’s about the dumbest fucking bid you can make,” I think to myself, and I begin to weep for America.

The next product–an electric fireplace (snazzy!) comes up. Contestant Three bids $1999 this time, and the next bidder bids $2000. “Not her fault this time, but she’s an idiot so she deserved that,” I says to myself.

But wait, John Candy says, we have an exact match! The electric fireplace runs $1999. Contestant Three gets the fireplace, and $500 cash for hitting the price exactly. Then she goes on to win a car.

In retrospect, it’s obvious that Contestant Three intentionally avoided winning the ping-pong table because it wasn’t luxe enough for her, and she’s a hell of a lot better at The Price is Right than I am.

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Subaru Forester: Graveyard

This commercial pisses me the hell off.

Let me get this straight: you need to get rid of a car, so you and your douchebag buddy Larry spend TWO DAYS driving to some formerly scenic hill to abandon it? This is not to mention the TWO MORE DAYS of driving you both need to do to get back home. So between you and Larry, your maudlin, estrogen-soaked emo jaunt cost 8 TOTAL MAN DAYS of human effort? Christ.

Seriously, did you make Larry take vacation to be a part of this adventure? Time that he could have spent with his family? You sir, are a complete asshole. Your Subaru is glad to be rid of you.

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Oh Boy

I’m really pretty confident we’re on the right track with this bailout nonsense now.

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California Budget Crisis

All those fancy propositions (except the funny one that kept lawmakers from getting raises if the state’s in a budget deficit) failed to pass yesterday, even though I didn’t get my no votes to my polling place until right after it closed. My bad.

From the article:

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa predicted that the city’s budget could take a hit — but he vowed a fight: “I’m going to do everything I can to protect the city coffers.”

This is why we have these problems–because people say “hey, cut their services, not my services.” Antonio, you cunt, look at Los Angeles’ budget and cut what you can. Everyone else in California, do the same thing. Budgetary governance doesn’t need to be this hard.

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Wanda Sykes Limbaugh OUTRAGE OMFG!!!2!?

There has been an amusing backlash against Wanda Sykes and Barack Obama for her standup routine at the Correspondents Dinner on Saturday. You know, where she said she hoped Limbaugh’s kidneys would fail. Obama then laughed at this, which is essentially the same thing as him giving tacit approval for wanting Limbaugh murdered! FOR SHAME.

I don’t understand why we aren’t hearing backlash against the suggestion (at 4:00 in the attached video) that Obama shouldn’t go out for burgers with with Biden in case he gets assassinated and Biden gets killed in the crossfire (”Who thought that was a good idea, Nancy Pelosi?”). Obama laughed at this as well, signaling his tacit approval for someone to assassinate him at a burger joint. FOR SHA… wait, what?

It was a stand up comic giving a comedy routine, jackasses. Laughter sometimes ensues.

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Home Improvement

There’s a room directly above the garage that would be perfect for my office*–I’m safely away from the rest of the family unit back in a corner and I can rant on the phone or turn the music up loud without disturbing anyone–except that the only way to get to this room is to go through another bedroom. That’s not a problem now, but we can’t put anyone in the connecting bedroom without my potentially clomping through their room to get to the office while they’re asleep or otherwise engaged, and that just won’t work.

I want to do something to the house to enable me to directly access the prospective office. I talked to pop about this and we came up with what may or may not be a good idea: incorporate a dinky spiral staircase into the landing of the current staircase to allow me to cut past the bedroom and get straight to the office.

Here’s the layout (click the picture for a larger version). I want to get from the landing to the other side of the 87″ wall. At the top of the picture, you can just barely see the door that leads to the room above the garage I’d like to use for an office. The 34″ is the amount of wall above the floor on the other side of the wall, so that could just be cut out. According to my math, that leaves 53″ that I’ve got to climb in pretty compact fashion.

The 14″ at the bottom of the image refers to a modification pop suggested, which is raising the landing by a couple of steps in order to get some more depth to it so there’s more room for the spiral staircase–or whatever other solution we come up with–in the corner of the landing, and less vertical space to climb. These are standard interior steps with a 7″ rise so two of them would raise the landing 14″, leaving 39″ of vertical distance to the door. (If the 14″ is to scale in the image, that’s totally by accident.)

Here’s an example of a short spiral staircase I found on the internets:

Obviously I could ghetto this thing out and just hang a rope ladder over the wall, but I think putting an actual spiral staircase in here would have a pretty compact footprint, only require about four steps, and might look cool to boot.

Any ideas?

*well, the room also needs a window or two and some other stuff. But the location is perfect if I can get access worked out.

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Tidbits from the Tech Corner

• Let’s say you have a mysql install whose data you want to relocate somewhere else. I’ve done all that garbage with mysqldump-ing everything, but I seem to always have problems with column names being illegal or some such. Today I just copied the data directory with

  cd [old data dir]
  tar -zcf mysqldatabases.tar.gz data
  mkdir -p [new data dir]
  cd [new data dir]
  tar -zxvf [old data dir]/mysqldatabases.tar.gz

  (be careful with those permissions, but tar will preserve them on the data directory so you probably won’t have to do anything.) This worked, and only took a couple of minutes, and I didn’t have to dick with giant .sql files. (source)

• I had to take a bunch of Postscript files and concatenate them yesterday. Of course, Unix makes this easy and profitable.
  

  cat *.ps > all.ps

  Took all Postscript files in the working directory and built a single file out of them. This might be useful with some video formats as well–this source recommends usage with .mpg files.

• I’ve talked about the GIMP before, but I was about ready to bin it after using it at work over the last couple of months. The damn thing kept crashing. Luckily, I didn’t have a modern image editing tool on my computer at home and when I needed to do some graphics work there, I decided to give the GIMP one last try. The current version is very slick and feature-ful. I’ve done some fun things with it, and once I had such a good experience at home I upgraded to the latest version at work and have been happy there too.

  There are a ton of tips and tricks for the GIMP within easy reach of a Google search. A couple I’ve used recently are putting a nice coloured border around text and creating a neon sign effect with text. Here’s how the latter turned out:

  

  And as always, GIMP is free.

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Quiznos “Toasty Torpedo”

I haven’t seen this on the television, but I saw a reference to a homoerotic Quiznos commercial on the internets, so I totally had to take a look. Because if you know nothing else about me, know that I loves me some homoeroticism.

Awesome. Quiznos will probably get burned down by confused protestors, but still… awesome.

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AIG and bonuses

So you may have heard that pitchfork-wielding mobs are heading AIG’s way over “retention bonuses”. It’s gotten a little time on the news and in Congress lately.

Here’s the problem: when I (or most people) hear the word “bonus”, we think back to the definition of the term:

something in addition to what is expected or strictly due: as a: money or an equivalent given in addition to an employee’s usual compensation

Now I understand that people not in the credit-default-swap department of douchebaggery at AIG might have been doing amazing jobs. I know that some of them were working for a buck plus this “bonus” that’s about to be taxed by 90%. But really, if this had been called “salary” or “compensation”, this wouldn’t have resonated like it has.

The idea that a bonus can be contractually obligated to be paid is horseflop. If there’s a contractual obligation to pay it, it’s guaranteed compensation, and if it’s guaranteed compensation, don’t call it a bonus or people who understand the term as it’s actually defined might get pissed off.

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I’m sick and tired of five-oh running up on my block

Have you noticed an increase in police activity lately? I don’t mean serving and protecting… I mean the type of activity that doesn’t really accomplish anything to improve law and order. I’m getting the feeling that the tight local and state budgets are translating into the government asking the cops to shake-down their citizens. Pasadena’s finest have been staking out the Fish Taco District lately, pulling people over for rolling stops and jay-walking.

A few weeks ago I parked my car at the airport for a few days and came back to a $25 expired tags ticket. No biggie - I hadn’t got around to taking the plate frame off so I could get the tag on. I was surprised to get ticketed in a parking garage, but I guess the city owns those lots. I remember expired tags being a fix-it ticket, but there were no instructions on the ticket for how to get it corrected, so I figured I’d wait for the version that comes in the mail. I got that three weeks later as a “notice of delinquency” and a notice that if it wasn’t paid in another two weeks the fine would go up to $66 - that’s an increase of 164% if I don’t pay within two weeks of receiving the official notice in the mail! There are no instructions for getting it corrected, and a perusal of the Parking Violations Bureau website turns up nothing about fix-it tickets.

Seriously, what the heck? This kind of thing bugs me a lot more than a straight tax increase because it’s a) intellectually dishonest and b) it’s actually a form of regressive tax. People who can’t afford to pay immediately pay two-and-a-half times as much!

If there are any law enforcement types that frequent this blog, I’d be interested to hear whether the city pressures the police to increase their revenue-activities in times of economic stress.

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The Metaphor Gap

Obama has signaled a willingness to speak directly with Iran about its nuclear program and hostility toward Israel, a key U.S. ally. At his inauguration last month, the president said his administration would reach out to rival states, declaring “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

“They say we have stretched a hand toward Iran. … If a hand is stretched covered with a velvet glove but it is cast iron inside, that makes no sense,” Khamenei said.

Obama responded “The cast iron inside our velvet gloved outstretched hand is necessary to reinforce our foundered flesh, which was singed by the fires of many past intolerances between our peoples. If the Iranian people would only unclench their fist and uncap the restorative balm of friendship, we’re sure that that would help rejuvenate our flesh to the extent that medical science (tempered always by the wise restraint of universally held religious principles) would allow us to remove the cast iron inside our velvet glove, leaving us with with only a velvet glove over mostly healed cyborg outstretched hand of reborn mutual understanding, albeit with a loose bandage of cautious prudence, to be changed daily through the liberal application of continued diplomacy. I ask the Iranian people: what about that does not make sense? What about that is unappealing to your people?”

(via The Huffpo, sort of)

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The Miracle of Modern Technology

I joined Facebook the other day and have been working on getting used to its eccentricities. I haven’t decided if the entire concept is genius or completely inane, and was struck this afternoon by how much this thread sums up this dichotomy perfectly.

Something about the entire continuity struck me as really funny when completely expanded.

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The Perilous Quest for Attention

I don’t want to dwell on this since the entire episode is catty and ridiculous, but I found myself thinking that it’s sort of weird that I had never heard of alleged conservative radio personality Laura Ingraham before she called Meghan McCain “the flavor of the month in left-wing media land because [she is] a Republican bashing the GOP”.

I mean, I’m just saying…

(via The HuffPo)

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Loud ‘N Clear )))

What can you do when it’s hard to hear, but you don’t want to miss hearing a word?

This is Dre’s current favourite commercial. Commentary will doubtlessly be provided in the comments.

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