To Emma,

I'll see your cat wig, and raise you a...

DOG WIG.


UPDATE:
An anonymous friend comments that the wig's haircut might look a bit like his dad's haircut. YOU BE THE JUDGE.

more lasers

I just wanted to write this down so that I won't forget.

They have plans for an amplifier for a 1.5 MW average power FEL laser in infrared (1.045, 1.625, 2.141 micrometer) wavelengths. The peak power was 1 GW, 1kA current, 81 MeV kinetic energy of the electron beam. (for naval reasons)

See Defense Tech Briefs December 2007.

No more treaties

The Lakota have decided to leave the United States.

I am sure that we do not want any bloodshed.

I am also fairly certain that we are not going to support a complete break off.

It should be interesting to watch, and hopefully it turns out so that both parties are happy.

When you take a step back and look at it, a nation-state only exists because people say that it does. Once everyone else agrees that you exist, then you do. I am thinking that these people will not be successful, but who knows. Kosovo is also something to watch that is a completely different situation, but also deals with new nations.

Hello world

I was thinking, figuring out how to load and store csv's in a new language are my "hello world".

Over the next few days I'll figure it out for lisp. (and post it)

I have some code for the updated battery monitor for wmii. It shows the percentage left, the estimated time left, and if it is discharging.


Commenters (if you exist)
what is the right way to make an acronym plural? csvs? CSVs? csv's?

Lead Systems Integrators

LSI's in trouble...

So, Congress finally listened to me and decided to try and stop any new LSIs past 2010. Also, any LSI things that aren't in low rate initial production would be renegotiated.

Its like if you paid someone to tell you what you should buy, and also paid that same person to make you the things you were told to buy. Do you think that would end well for you?

Outside my office

So we got this email today:

Campus Community,

I wanted to inform you of recent criminal activity on the Georgia Tech campus.
On Saturday at approximately 4:30 p.m. a female student was the victim of an
armed robbery. The victim was walking to her car on Cherry Street between the
Guggenheim Building and the Engineering Science Building. The perpetrators were
in a blue, 4-door Honda Accord that was reported stolen near the Love Building
earlier in the day. The vehicle, which has since been recovered, is also
reported to have been involved in another incident in the Atlanta area. No arrests
have been made.

The suspect was described as a dark-skinned black male, approximately 5'5" and
in his early 20s. He has a slim build, dark brown eyes and an afro-style
haircut. He was wearing a dark colored, zip-up, hooded sweatshirt. There is no
description of the second suspect because he did not get out of the car.

Please notify the Georgia Tech Police Department at 404-894-2500 if you have any
information about criminal activity on campus. Individuals may also submit crime
tips anonymously through the GTPD Web site: www.police.gatech.edu.

Today's incident is another reminder that everyone should remain vigilant, be
aware of their surroundings and take every precaution to prevent becoming a
victim. For more information about crime prevention, visit the GTPD Web site.

John Stein
Dean of Students

Too bad certain precautions are illegal on campus. The same person about 100ft to the south would have more options. Probably wouldn't have helped in this case (rifle/shotgun to the face... probably want to comply...), but its something to ponder.

Good thing finals hadn't started, the girl might have just said "You can't scare me with that gun, I have one of the four horsemen for calculus... "

It seems that crime has gone up since we expanded into centennial park. Could be that I am paying more attention. It probably is more related to the economy than the expansion of the university.

Squirrel Armor

So i found this.

they are going to need it.

COIN Aircraft... someone finally figures it out...

I have been saying this for about 2 years. We need a low speed turboprop COIN type aircraft that is cheap and rugged. It needs to be easy to manufacture and exportable. The technologies need to be simple.

The Airforce is buying some of those type of aircraft the the Iraqi Military.

An F-35 can not do COIN.

Winds shifting on Iran (I hope)

Today this article came out.

"Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005," states the unclassified summary of the secret report, released Monday.

Is the important part. Hopefully this is a softening of the government's position. For a while, it looked like we were going to try and use Iran's nuclear activities to justify war.

It is also good that people are realizing that not everything needs to be classified.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell decided last month that the key judgments of NIEs should as a rule not be declassified and released. The intelligence officials said an exception was made in this case because the last assessment of Iran's nuclear program in 2005 has been influential in public debate about U.S. policy toward Iran, and needed to be updated to reflect the latest findings.

These matters need to stay in public debate so that the reasons for going to war are known and the public is not told "its in your best interests based on data I can't tell you, so just quiet down and go spend money on a credit card"

They also learned from the mistake with Iraq,

This national intelligence estimate was originally due in the spring of 2007 but was delayed because the agencies wanted more confidence their findings were accurate, given the problems with a 2002 intelligence estimate of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.

which is promising.

a recent long term thinko

so.. I was making a table in latex today, and i realized something...

YOU DON'T HAVE TO PUT ALL OF THE DATA IN ONE CELL!

before, i was having a lot of trouble to get really long cells to word wrap and look right.

... why not just use two rows but make it look like one row? ... !!

you have to word wrap by hand, but you basically do that when you resize cells anyway.

China - Japan Part 2.

So you get your ships in each others ports.. what happens next.

This is what happens next. A regional free trade zone is in the works, and protection of intellectual property rights (which China makes a living exploiting).

This article also mentions the start of an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol. I believe that once Asia gets all together behind this new one, we (the United States) will join in.

Christmas Wish

Everyone should work together, and setup/buy me one of these.

A windoze virus aquarium!

China - Japan

Awesome.

I think that it is great that the Chinese are working to have better relations with Japan.

If only they weren't douche's over thanksgiving with the USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63). I think it was a power struggle mix-up, but it could be them being an asshat.

We have had a few of our ships over there in the past year or so, and they have had a few here also. Thats good news for both sides.

The desirable

I go to a website, shirt.woot. I often see a shirt that I want, but it is sold out as I check around 8 am, and the shirts come out at 1 am.

When the shirt isn't sold out I don't want it.

Is this because the good shirts sell out, or because the fact that it sold out makes me think it was cool?

Box Office Hit

This weekend I saw the number one movie in America. That right. Enchanted. (Using my mind clouding techniques, I didn't pay my own way)

The movie taught fiscal irresponsibility:
The Princess needs new clothes for the ball... what to do? Grab Daddy's credit card, which is "for emergencies, and this is DEFINITELY an emergency. "

It had creepy animals:

Try singing, dancing, cleaning cockroaches.

The Prince taught how to interact with people:

"{something to put down the common man}, peasant"

I was impressed with the opening scene zoom sequence where it zooms from a wide angle view into the princess's window. I was convinced that it was CG made to look like drawn animation. I couldn't find too much information, supposedly the opening sequence was all hand drawn. It looked like in Futurama where they have the 3D models of the object and blend it with hand drawn. The shadows/highlights on the character's also looked CG-ish. Maybe they switched to photoshop, who knows?

The animation style was good ol' Disney, and they matched up the characters with their cartoon counterparts.

Decent mix of the fairytale stuff (true love's kiss can keep zombies at bay), with reality :

Giselle: Nobody has been very nice to me.
Robert: Yeah, well, welcome to New York.
Giselle: Thank you.

So, who wants to see Hitman? Mike says that Beowulf is good in 3D too...

The french are at it again...

LInk

When your Police are attacked in this manner, then you stop having control of your country. The French need to wake up and take back control of certain areas. We have outrage over accidents of this nature, where the situation is unknown. Guess what though, we don't riot and beat the police chief's face. (I suppose we have rioted... to something similar before, but not lately as far as I can tell (lately = last 5-10 years)).

Thanksgiving

Happy Turkey day everybody!

I hope everyone has a good time and gets stuffed.

If you want to revisit how thanksgiving fights the communists, this link will help.

In socialist Venezuela, there aren't groceries in the store.

"Combined with price controls that keep farmers from profitably producing some basic foods, climbing incomes of the poorest Venezuelans have stripped supermarket aisles bare of items like milk and egg"

So they wouldn't get thanksgiving if they wanted to...

So on this uniquely North American holiday (seems the Canucks do it right with a three day weekend(although, you can argue that we take a 4-5 day weekend...)), give thanks that you get to give thanks (in addition to all the other stuff).

200th post!

that is all.

Random Cool things

I was working on my special topics project, and was messing around with the code for the segmented ring portion.

Normally, it looks like this:

I removed one line of code, that put it in polar coordinates.
I got this:


I wasn't really paying atention, and I thought it was kind of cool that I already wrote most of a treemap algorithm (you have to squish the layers together).
Its basically the 'slice and dice' type of tree map, I was hoping to implement the squarified type.

At first I was worried about the area being wrong, but the height is one, so the horizontal distance represents the value (total scaled to 2*pi because I hadn't renormalized from polar).

Reading Level

So yeah. I better tone things down a bit to get more readers.

Movie plot weapon

You heard it here first kids,

High powered microwave weapon ... FROM SPACE.

Use it to start fires on the ground of a country that has been giving us too much lip.

Let's see here.

a match is what, about 1BTU?

via google, to metric is:
1055.05585 Joules

lets check that
1 gram of cellulose releases 1.5cal/mg in burning, since flame spreads,
6279 J/g would be more than enough to ignite 1 gram of wood.
Once a small patch is ignited, it should spread.

on the low end of density of something like oak (0.6g/cc) that means 3767.4 J/cc.
spreading that out to a 1mm thick slice, thats what, 10cm^2 area that needs the 3767 J.

lets double it to 7534.8 J required due to losses from the delivery of the energy over time.

A LEO satellite orbits the earth every 90 min.
Lets say it is visible, um, 1/9th of the time. 10 min. (the ISS is visible here ~5 min)
so lets give you 1 minute of time to deliver the required energy.

7534.8/60 = 125.58 watts
for things of this nature. but, the energy doesn't have to "return" so the R_r^2 squared term is removed. further simplifying, lets just say that P_r = P_t*o*a
0 = (5% absorbed*)
a = power in/power delivered = 0.1

so P_r = P_t * 0.005

sweet. P_t needs to be ~ 25116 watts

thats 25.116 kw. The Boeing 702 satellite bus can provide 25kw.

* from "An experiment with microwave radiation to determine absorption
coefficients and defects of wood - Physics Education,Number 6,Volume 28"
It is really low, it seems... if i was serious i would look to see what frequency wood absorbs the most. scotts says that it CAN happen...



I'm going to claim that it is possible to start a fire from space with a satellite using electromagnetic radiation.

Who's with me?

Pumpkin Carving Pics

We all carved pumpkins last weekend, so I thought I would share some photoz.

I designed the pattern for and carved the F-35 one.

Animation

Enjoy:

If it doesn't play, just click it.

Update: Congress Watcher

So, listening to a commenter, here are two photos of the data, before and after.

As you can see, the thomas way shows 3 bills in the screen, the Joe way shows 8. You lose information, but I don't care about that information. (until I click the link on the right)
Last major action is nice, but meh. I would rather it be like fark, a headline and a link to more information. Also, when you click on the bill link in the thomas version, it doesn't take you directly to the bill. So I fixed that too.

The Thomas Way:


The Joe way:

My version is not as good looking, so if anyone wants to make it snazzy then ask me about it. I don't know that it is worth it. With this, I wanted RAW DATA and not some dressed up CSS-XML-AJAX-laden-takes-forever-to-load-and-serve page.

Oh, and it also renders very well in w3m. thomas won't.

Congress Watcher

I often go to Thomas to see what congress is up to. I typically go to the yesterday in congress and read through the bill summaries.

I don't like the interface.

So I made a new one.

It consists of a bit of python code that parses the yesterday in congress page. The output from that is run on my server using PHP. I would be interested in finding out a better way to do this if anyone thinks it was a sloppy kludge.

The php code (congresswatcher.php)

And the python code (congresswatcher.py):

#!/usr/bin/python

#####                                                                  ######
# Usage: ./congress_watcher.py <number of days ago> > congress_watcher.html #
# Use zero days to get yesterday's congress                                 #
#####                                                                  ######

import urllib2 #for website grabbing/reading
import re #for regexp stuff
import csv # for exporting the data
import time # for the sleep()

import datetime #for datetime... duh!
import sys # for the arguements

daysago = sys.argv[1]

timez = datetime.datetime.today() - datetime.timedelta(int(daysago))

yestz = timez - datetime.timedelta(1)

todaydate = ''

todaydate += str(timez.year)
todaydate += '0'*(timez.month < 10) + str(timez.month)

todaydate += '0'*(timez.day < 10) + str(timez.day)

yestdate = ''
yestdate += str(yestz.year)
yestdate += '0'*(yestz.month < 10) + str(yestz.month)

yestdate += '0'*(yestz.day < 10) + str(yestz.day)

base_website = 'http://thomas.loc.gov/'
base_website += 'cgi-bin/bdquery?&Db=d110&querybd=@OR(@FIELD(FLD961+'

base_website += yestdate
base_website += ')+@FIELD(FLD010+'
base_website += yestdate
base_website += ')+@FIELD(FLD961+'

base_website += todaydate
base_website += ')+@FIELD(FLD010+'
base_website += todaydate
base_website += '))'

try:
 website = urllib2.urlopen(base_website)

except urllib2.HTTPError, e:
 print 'Cannot retrieve URL: HTTP Error Code', e.code

except urllib2.URLError, e:
 print 'Cannot retrieve URL: ' + e.reason[1]

website_html = website.read()

#output the header stuff for the html
print '<html>'

print '<body>'
print '<h1>Congress Watcher</h1><br><br>'

#check if they actually had congress
lazy = ''
lazy = re.findall(r'<hr><B>No formal action was',website_html)

if (len(lazy)>0):
 print 'No Congress yesterday'
 print '</body>'

 print '</html>'
 exit

dataz = re.findall(r'</A>:  ["A-Z a-z,-.0-9()]+', website_html)

numz = re.findall(r'>[A-z. 0-9]+</A>:', website_html)

basebill = 'http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:'

print '<table>'

for ii in range(len(dataz)):

   numz[ii] = numz[ii][1:] #remove the '>'

   numz[ii] = numz[ii][:-6] #remove the ' </A>: '

   dataz[ii] = dataz[ii][7:]

   billlink = '<a href="' + basebill + numz[ii] + ':">'

   billlink += numz[ii] + '</a>'

   print '<tr><td>' + billlink + '</td>'

   print '<td>' + dataz[ii] + '</td>' + '</tr>'

   print '<tr><td><br></td></tr>'
   print

print '</table>'
print '</body>'
print '</head>'

Finally! They got the Browns!

The news

I have been following this story for a very long time. At least six months, I think.
Nice to see a peaceful resolution, and they got their come-uppins with out a big shootout with the federales.

Boat pieces and assembly

Tonight we(Sara and I) cut out the boat and put it together with zip ties.
The next step is to get some epoxy and fibreglass to make all of the edges.
Then paint + finish. Finally, use in water. I need to make oars and get oarlocks.

Here are two excited boat builders!

Sneaky Congress

110th CONGRESS 1st Session

H. J. RES. 43

---

JOINT RESOLUTION

Increasing the statutory limit on the public debt.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limita-

tion contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $9,815,000,000,000.

Passed the House of Representatives May 17, 2007.

so um... we can spend more money! yay! ... i mean... wtf? We need to think about how you cant ring up debt forever.

links that I felt like blogging about

Interwebs is good for Burma

The internet can be good and bad in political situations. The possibility of doctoring images (see Hezbollah for blatant examples that were published in AP an Reuters) is very high. I think that it is great that people can publish information. You have to be weary of who/what sources you trust, but it is great that the governments can not silence the people.

To end with some humor? I used to do this when I was growing up, and I am no worse for it! Rubbing alcohol and tennis balls leads to an interesting game of 'hot potato'.

Boat drawing

I made the boat plans in qcad last weekend.

Here is a pic. The white line is the 4*8 piece of plywood. The grid is 1ft, and the dots at tenths of feet.


I couldn't find a plotter that could print out to 48 inches, so I am going to have to manually plot the points onto the plywood. It would cost me 16$ to print it out on two sheets of 2*8 ft. (the wood was priced at ~11$...)

I'll find a camera and post the model that I made out of index card material to make sure that it fits together. The curve on the side pieces is not drawn in, because I don't know what shape it will be. I'll use the other pieces to make the frame, then just scribe a line on the side pieces where material needs to be removed.

That actually brought up a good point. I may have to use a hand saw to do that cut, as it will be working on the boat after is it sort of put together.

The little red lines on the side pieces show where it should contact the back (or front) of the boat. The piece on the far left is in the middle to keep the sides apart and add to structural stability. I still don't know exactly what I am going to be doing with that piece.

I should label the pieces with a,b,c or something so that I can call them something other than 'the piece on the far left' or 'the side piece'.

Getting started running again and boat teaser.

So I decided to figure out a running loop neat where I live that is close to the 1.6-1.7 mile range that we ran at GMU.

On Thursday I ran a 1.4 mi version, it was decent, so I am just going to add to it and try and get back into doing it at least 4 days a week.

One sheet skiff CAD plans are coming soon, all I had before was a gif. I am redoing them in dxf so that I can share it and print it at different scales easily.

I still need to figure out how to actually build it, I could probably get the pieces cut out within two weeks.

Sampling of Bills

H.R.3488 : To require mobile phones containing digital cameras to make a sound when a photograph is taken. <---WTF?

S.RES.288 : A resolution designating September 2007 as "National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month".

S.RES.292 : A resolution designating the week beginning September 9, 2007, as "National Assisted Living Week".

S.RES.309 : A resolution commending the Appalachian State University Mountaineers of Boone, North Carolina, for pulling off one of the greatest upsets in college football history. <---- My fav

Interesting statistic

I found myself reading "Assessment Guidelines for Counter Terrorism"-R. Hall and ran (rather quickly) into the following quote:

Historically, the risk of death from terrorism has been small relative to many other causes. The single largest cause of death in the United States – heart disease – produces as many fatalities in an average two-day period as all major acts of terrorism produced against the United States in the 1983 – 2005 period. Homicides in the United States produce a comparable number of deaths in a 3-month period.

I am a strong supporter of fighting terrorism, but judging from those numbers, we should be investing in ways to combat heart disease.

And so it begins

The robots are finally armed.

Practice your kneeling, for the robot overloads approach.

ha. Its interesting that it took that long to get them into the theater. Hopefully they help out. I don't know if they will do more harm that good. If a foreign country parachuted a group of robots onto your town, would you welcome them more than soldiers? I assume the kids will think it is cool, I wonder what everyone else will do.

I have become a man.

I compiled my ownz window manager today. It is one of those 'elitest' window managers that you configure by changing the source code and recompiling. dwm.

And, due to my laptop being out of commission for a while (thanks Dana!)... I have to play with it here(my desktop). I am probably getting a usb keyboard to last me a bit, then ordering a replacement one for the laptop soon (maybe tomorrow, but it will have Canadian keys, I can just replace those with the ones that I have)

So, anyway, I compiled and ran/installed dwm on my windoze box to play with it. I'll see how it goes. I was using wmii on the laptop, and really liked it. This dwm is supposed to be its little brother. I didn't know how to start an xterm.... guess what? The source was right there, and bam-o! alt-shift-enter. The key bindings were conveniently in the config.h file, so thats an easy thing to figure out. Supposedly less than 2000 lines of source code. I'll play with it more ... !@#$. In about a week as I will be moving out this weekend. No more desktop for me. (no more playing past tonight.. and it is already late)

In case anyone on the intertubes was wondering what I did, I had a working version of cygwin installed, with the X server (Xwin) working. I downloaded the recent snapshot of dwm, un gzipped, untar, you know the drill. 'make clean install' just like the readme said.

The only thing else to do was modify a bat file (startxwin.bat) in the /usr/X11R6/bin directory. I changed the line

"%RUN% XWin -multiwindow -clipboard -silent-dup-error" to be
"%RUN% Xwin -rootless -clipboard"

Then I did not have it start the xterm (stick a "REM" in front of that)

Add "%RUN% %CYGWIN_ROOT%\usr\local\bin\dwm"
done.

Oh yeah, and a shout out to Adam, my Commenter of the Week.

Congrefs and their messing around...

Dysphagia: a medical term defined as "difficulty swallowing."

H.CON.RES.195 : Expressing the sense of the Congress that a National Dysphagia Awareness Month should be established.
Sponsor: Rep Wamp, Zach [TN-3] (introduced 7/27/2007)
Cosponsors (None)
Committees: House Oversight and Government Reform
Latest Major Action: 7/27/2007 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

Expressing the sense of the Congress that a National Dysphagia Awareness Month should be established.

Whereas dysphagia, or difficulty with swallowing, is a medical dysfunction that affects as many as 15,000,000 Americans;

Whereas the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that 1,000,000 people in the United States annually are diagnosed with dysphagia;

Whereas the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has estimated that 60,000 Americans die annually from complications associated with dysphagia;

Whereas based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mortality data, this is more than the total number of Americans dying from all forms of liver disease, kidney disease, and HIV/AIDS combined--and nearly as many as those dying from diabetes, the number 6 killer of Americans;

Whereas the most common complication arising from dysphagia is aspiration pneumonia--caused by food or saliva entering the windpipe and into the lungs;

Whereas one in 17 people will develop some form of dysphagia in their lifetime, including 50 to 75 percent of stroke patients and 60 to 75 percent of patients who undergo radiation therapy for head and neck cancer;

Whereas as many as half of all Americans over 60 will experience dysphagia at some point;

Whereas complications due to dysphagia increase health care costs by resultant hospital readmissions, emergency room visits, extended hospital stays, the necessity for long-term institutional care, and the need for expensive respiratory and nutritional support;

Whereas the cost of managing a patient with a feeding tube, which for many has been the primary treatment option for this condition, is reported to average over $31,000 per patient per year;

Whereas the total annual cost to Medicare just for enteral feeding supplies for outpatients was more than $670,000,000 in 2003, nearly 6 percent of the total Medicare budget for that year;

Whereas including the monies spent in hospitals, the total cost of dysphagia to the health care system is well over $1,000,000,000 annually;

Whereas the condition of dysphagia is a vastly underreported condition and not widely understood by the general public; and

Whereas observing June 2008 as National Dysphagia Awareness Month would raise public awareness about dysphagia and the need for early detection and treatment: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of the Congress that a National Dysphagia Awareness Month should be established.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I mean, not being able to swallow sucks. But do we really need a month for it? Could picking what to call each month be pushed to some smaller committee? Could you solve this with an awareness campaign that doesn't tie it to a month?

When will congress start working, and stop messing around? I am slightly proud of them this year, I think they are starting to pass the budget before the financial year starts. This should be mandatory, and they should lock them in the room with no food and water during September if they can't agree on the budget.

I hope the karma police don't come by and make it difficult to swallow...

Last week's Fish Market

Last week I bought a tuna steak and a red snapper filet.

I marinated the tuna steak in lime juice with salt and pepper. Perfectly seared, it was amazing. I ate it with a light salad with a vinaigrette, so it was basically just a hunk of tuna. Very good meal.

In another meal, I made the red snapper. I cut it up into chunks (that skin is strong stuff!). I chopped up an onion and caramelized it with some olive oil. While it was cooking I chopped up a green pepper and added that into the onions. Next came some lime juice, I think it was 1.5-2 limes. One chopped tomato, some water, ketchup, salt, black pepper, crushed red pepper, and a bit of texas pete went in next.

I added the red snapper, and let it cook for a while. As it was cooking, I was making some "spanish rice" from a packet. I broke both things into two portions and made one lunch for later. The other plate is shown:



it was amazing.

oh yeah. I was originally going to write a great post about the food from a different slant. Basically, it boiled down to the nike slogan "just do it". Many people are afraid of cooking, afraid that they will screw up the recipe or something. You can't really do that bad. Just throw random stuff into a pot, simmer, and bam. FOOD.

Binary Drivers... my experience

So, I was trying to get my laptop into a usable form for school. I figured that being able to "hibernate" would be very useful as I could see myself having to close up very quickly and not want to close all of my programs.

I ran into a problem. The nvidia binary drivers did not work with hibernate. I had installed the drivers to get acceptable 3D performance for a folight simulator. In the end, I didn't have a port for a joystick so I really didn't have anything that tied me to the binary drivers.

Quick uninstall of the binary drivers from nividia, and bam. Hibernate works. For some reason I have to bring down the wireless and bring it back up to get internet again, but I can make a script to handle that for me.

So, not knowing too much about all of the arguements between letting in "tainted" drivers into the kernel, I don't like the binary only ones. They make it so hibernate doesn't work. (easily, I saw a how-to online, but it looked like a pain in the ass and I would probably have to redo it if I upgrade)

On Interoperability...

Interoperability is an interesting beast.

In the Apache, one of the two crewmen flies wearing helmet-mounted night vision goggles to see things thermals do not, including, for example, wires and tracers. The second crewman flies with thermals and the 30mm chain gun slaved to his head-up display. When the sky "lit" up with tracers, the aviator with goggles could see them, but the aviator who had immediate control of the gun could not. Therefore, to add to their problems, one crewman had to talk the other on to the source of fire to suppress it.
-On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom

Who would have thought that a system was not interoperable with itself?
and

Because US forces are very effective at destroying air defense radars that radiate and missile/gun systems, the Iraqis avoided using these as cornerstones in their network. Rather than using radar, the Iraqis appear to have relied on ground observers who reported on cellular phones and low-power radios. Finally, flickering the city lights warned the shooters to be prepared to engage. Rather than relying on easily targetable missile or gun systems, the Iraqis' main weapon systems were the small arms widely distributed among the general population.
-On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom

Finally, an example of the types of behaviour that you can get out of a distributed system. Distinctions need to be made between interoperability and integration.Technology alone can not save us.

quick update: prompted by Adam

Quick update:

- I think I have a shin splint in my right leg due to the 5k I ran last Sunday. I did meet my goal of running the 5k in under 31 minutes (around 29:45).

-I need to learn how to read. I saw an invitation on a blog to a talk about nuclear proliferation in Washington,DC for Wed. Little did I realize that I only read the blog once a week, and it was for last Wed. The venue was fairly cool, and we did end up eating there. I got to walk through the non-tourist part of DC, so that was interesting.

-Still customizing wmii. I think I have my status bar the way I like it.

-Blog post about my recent cooking w/fish bought at the fish market is forthcoming.

-PEIX's CFO randomly retired after 6 wks. Earnings is around Aug 8th (as far as I can tell). That seems ominous.

-Taking part in a "Earnings Challenge" with my roommates. I'll announce the rules on the stock newsgroup.

-I still haven't shaved since the weekend.

Network centric warefare stream of conciousness

me: AN ANALYSIS OF DEGRADED COMMUNICATIONS IN THE
ARMY’S FUTURE FORCE
me: is the paper i am reading
me: do you wants cpu timing attack?
me wants to send file C:\downloads\to install\Cheat07Security.pdf.
andykerr1 received C:\downloads\to install\Cheat07Security.pdf.
andykerr1 is away at 12:56:35 PM.
me: man, this paper is good good! the communications one
andykerr1 returned at 12:57:05 PM.
me: finally, someone gets what i been saying
me: lol
andykerr1: heh, what have you been saying?
me: that you have to be very VERY careful with network centric warfare
me: its not the uber-thing that the "power to the EDGE!" guys say it is
me: power to the edge!
me: !!
me: lol
me: i need to finish that paper/book
me: ha, when does a paper become a book?
me: at 200 pages?
andykerr1: 100 pages.
me: maybe i missed the second in power to the edge
me: ha, then this thesis is not a paper, its a book
me: lol
me: anyway, i have been ranting the past few weeks about how it might not be smart to transform into a network centric force,
me: if the performance of the force is dependent on the network
me: like, its better to have a force that is capable without the network, with slightly lower performance with the network,
me: rather than a force that requires the network to function, so if you dont have it, you dont have anything
me: .. basically, single points of failure in military (or any) systems are bad
me: and they are doing too much with NCW toward it being required for the effectiveness.
me: SO! its bad
me: its like, what if our group of friends, we all didnt have cell phones for a week?
me: how effective would our hanging out be?
me: where would you be without the interwebs?
andykerr1: but there would have to be multiple points of failure for the network to be disabled severely. without cell phones we'd all use AIM.
me: ok, emp
me: i mean, the point is, its something to consider,
me: rather than not
me: you can design it so that faults dont occur,
me: but the effectiveness changes..
me: even in that example,
me: aim is not the same
me: you cant use it ont eh move
me: we can't swarm a restaurant like we do now
me: where you head out before you ave targeting data
me: in multiple cars to get to the objective (food)
me: (together getting food = objective)
me: the point is that they are making the system's performance dependent on the swarming type concepts like that
me: eh, it actually got me thinking about the most successful predator systems (organisms)
me: as far as,
me: there is a push now to make every part a separate system, like, sensors (eyes), processing (brain), and engagement (claws or teeth?) .. so like it would be a floating eyeball talking to brain talking to teeth, to eat something... but i don't know of any successful organisms like that... like, abstracting out, a wolfpack... they are all basically the same system,, they still use a network (howls) and coordinate actions
me: so, are there pack structures in the wild that use the sensor - processor - engage concept?
me: or is that a bad idea, and should everything be a hunter-killer, and not hunter and killer.

Update: Glasgow

Badass.

I hope thats true.

Alex McIlveen, 45, kicked the man, whose body was in flames, so hard that he tore a tendon in his foot.

That would be my reaction also.

WWYD? Man on fire

So, what would you do? Imagine some asshat drives through the doors of your local airport. He gets out a can of gas and light himself on fire. He tries to do the ninja thing while on fire until he collapses...

"I watched the guy burning. He still tried to attack a policeman. I was convinced he was trying to detonate something. "He was on fire and he was still desperately trying to get into the boot. There were another two explosions. "People all around were in tears and shouting and screaming at the man to lie down. An off-duty cop was hosing him down with a fire extinguisher and other people were shouting, 'let him burn.' "He wasn't interested in being saved - he wanted to die and take all of us with him."

I think I would be in the camp with the fire extinguisher. Just so I could kick him in the nuts and then light him on fire again.

Read the whole thing.

What would you do?

New Shaving Gear: A first use

I bought a double edges razor recently, some nice shaving soap (for lather), and a boars hair brush.

I tested it all out today. Contrary to the betting pool, I did not get all cut up, nor require stitches or plastic surgery. The shave is not as close as I was expecting. I am going to blame inexperiance right now. I could feel when the blade would cut through a hair, it was like I was chopping through
the Amazon with a machete. (all razors can't handle my steel-like hairs)

The shave was fairly nice. Sometime next week I am going to test the reaction of a lady to the new method. (Sara, I volunteered you for that job... ) I'll get pics next week of the equipment.

Maybe I have to step it up a notch and get a blade that I have to sharpen and hone myself.

Adam and Todd weekend

This weekend was a lot of fun.

Todd and Adam came in on Thursday night. We went to a pizza place and got to bed because I still had work on Friday.

They went and toured the capital. I was stuck at work. I found out that we had a whole other set of interns that we didn't know anything about. One of the interns where I work invited us all to a bar for a happy-hour deal. We (Andrew, Charles, and I) met Todd and Adam at the bar around 6. It was a pretty fun night, the people were our age. I never thought I would see flip-cup in a bar, but that's how it turned out. We all had a good time and no one decided to do anything stupid (that means Adam wasn't extremely plastered....)

On Saturday we first stopped at the National Firearms Museum. It wasn't really that great and could have been done much better. It seemed like they just took a bunch of guns and stuck them in cases. No history, no "this is how the mechanism works", just "hmm, pretty looking gun" or "wow, that looks dumb", or "What a pain in the ass to have to carry that".

Next, we took the metro into DC. We went to the Holocaust museum but did not get a chance to go through it. We walked to the Capital Building and Adam got some good pics. We went to the International Spy Museum, but since you buy a ticket for a certain entrance time, we went into the Smithsonian American Art Museum. I definitely want to go back to that.

The Spy Museum was pretty interesting. It is amazing when you see all of the plans and things that they have used. The really interesting part to me was the way that things got so much smaller. They had pin-hole cameras that you could buy, I can't even imagine what the spy agencies are using if civilians can get what they used during the Cold War.

Afterwards we went to Gordon Biersch. We were supposed to wait about 30-35 minutes, but Charles is a GB passport member. Once we figured out that we could get bumped to the front of the line, we were seated in about 2 minutes. The deal is that you pay $20 to become a member, and they give you a $20 gift certificate. You get points, and it works out that you get about 10% of what you spend back. I didn't eat there because Todd and I were going to make "deer" dip.

We ended up with Deer Dip, Mission Impossible III, and a fun night. Adam and I got a chance to play two games of Chess. I had an interesting thought about how in chess an OODA loop type advantage doesn't really apply. I think that if we had played with those clocks I might have done better. Adam beat me easily in both games. Playing chess should be good for me, so I think that I am going to try and play some more so I can learn to stop messing around and being rash.

I am going to try and get the buildroot stuff setup for the waysmalls, I need to start doing development on that platform.

Weekend update

This weekend, I didn't do as much, but I also didn't have an off Friday.

I went to TT Reynolds, a local bar with some of the people staying at the same place. Pretty good time, when Todd/Adam/Dana come, I'll probably take them there. We played dominoes (yes, really). Another group of people with us were playing card drinking games. They had a live band on around 9. Decent, but I was near the speakers so my ears were having fun.

On Satuday we went to The National Air and Space Museum: STEVEN F. UDVAR-HAZY CENTER. It was really cool, only cost parking. We saw the IMAX show about a fighter pilot at Red Flag. Ate a 8 dollar McDonalds meal (get food before you go!). Afterwards, we went to Damon's Grill, it was pretty good.

On Sunday, we went to the mall and Whole Foods. Whole Foods is pretty neat, I am going to go back if the hummus I bought was any good. At the mall, we went to the wrong parking lot, and thought that Andrew's car got stolen... Luckily, we also looked around to see if we were even in the right place.

I might be going to a BBQ, I'll update this if it was any good, it looks like it is going to rain.

live blogging comcast (AGAIN!)

So, Comcast sent me a bill again... ! WHAT THE !@#$


6:24 calling ...

turns out they make you listen to silence if the operators are busy.

real person
6:32

name: crap, i forgot to get it.


Helpful guy. "Everything is taken care of"

Really nice guy. I started out mad, but he was very helpful. He moved the cut off date back, turns out I got sent a bill automatically or something. So I'll keep watching this, and get the modem turned in.


ended call 6:39

Not too bad. Much better than the retard last time that told me I couldn't read the bill when she couldn't read the screen.

Art...

So in that art museum that we went to, there was this wall that had four framed pieces of paper. the paper was some decent colored paper, like a beefier solid color wrapping paper.

The "art" part of it was that they were creased twice, and the paper wasn't lying flat.

He must have known where to fold um, he obviously didn't hold um.

Wine Festival

Short one, I promise.

Andrew and I went to the wine festival today. It was a pretty good time. I am not yet skilled in being a wino, I had to turn away wine. At one point the person handing it out was like "Hey decepticon, No winez for you?", and I was like "nah, waiting till you get to the reds... " .. then we left the booth before he got to them. I didn't have much to eat before hand, and it was a fairly hot day. We got lunch when I couldn't take the red wine described as "firm". It tasted as pure tannin.

In the line, to get in I started choking. It was really weird, like an allergic reaction or something. I am not sure what caused it, I really needed some water (or wine!) but I still hadn't bought a ticket so I was screwed.

Lunch was good but expensive. I got introduced to something called crab dip (I didn't have any, but next time I will). I need to get my crabful while I am in a place that actually has crabs. (not of the STD kind.... I know what you are thinking Nic...)

I preferred the sweet fruity wines, and actually ended up buying three bottles from a winery called Horton. I didn't get drunk, or really buzzed. I definitely got dehydrated though, next time I am going to drink alot before I go, and have water on me. I was neat to be able to try all of the wines that each place produced. There were many young people, I was expecting all old ladies that would be giggly and loud (there were a few of those, but not too many).

All in all a good time. It would have been cooler with more people that I knew and a "home base". We really needed a blanket to sit on in the field where we could enjoy a bottle of wine instead of waiting for a little bit of each type of wine. More food in my belly is also recommended, I could not take some of the wines as they were a bit strong (not in the alcoholic sense) for my palate.

Off-Friday #1

Yesterday was my first "off-friday". We work 9 hour days mon-thurs, then 8 hours on one friday, and zero on the next friday. Repeat every two weeks.

Charles went back to Atlanta, so Andrew and I went into DC to do some tourist-ing. We went to a bunch of Smithsonian museums. The first one was a art one, it was a circular building. Most of the art was pretty crappy, so we didn't stay too long. Next, we went to lunch in a small bakery type place. I think it was called au de pain. or something, I remember the frenchness and the word "pain", turns out that means bread. Probably bread store or something. Update: It was "Au Bon Pain" (I found a receipt.) It means "with the good bread" as translated by google. We went to the National Archives but the line was very long. From there we walked across the street to the Natural History Museum. Standard natural history stuff (Hope diamond, I wasn't as impressed as a certain female that I know... ), it was cool that you didn't have to pay to get in. I didn't feel like I had to see everything, I could leave stuff for later.

We got some ice cream and headed to the air and space museum. VERY COOL. I am glad that they left the nozzle crumpled on the spaceshipone. Neat to see Soviet vs American MRBM systems. The soviet one was HUGE (comparatively. but i also think it carried three warheads vs our one.. so it might not have been fair...) .. turns out that the SS-20 did carry three warheads later in its life (started with one). They also had the Apollo-Soyuz mock up. It seems that the museum was important in showing how the governments began to work together in the cold war. Most of the information about how advanced our planes are is severely dated. Its not that bad though, the F-14 hasn't been out of service that long. It was closing, so we missed out on many exhibits, which works out, as I am going back a few times this summer with different people.

Next we went to the National Archives. Pretty cool. Congrefs! (yeah, thats how they spelled it!)
That was neat to learn. They had a bunch of stuff about the Presidents up to Clinton (can't make fun of a current Prez). We saw a Manga Carta, Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and BIll of rights. The originals are very damaged, and hard to read. I thought that it was really smart of them to make a copper plate and make prints from it. It is neat that the signatures were captured as they were. I am glad that they reprinted a copy from the original copper plate in the bi-centennial, as you could read it.

We walked to the Washington Memorial. Pretty cool, though I didn't know that they did that much restoration to it. The WWII memorial was very well done. I enjoyed it. It should serve as an example to what memorials should look like. Next, we saw the Lincoln memorial. Also done very well. Next was the Vietnam memorial. That one I did not like. I didn't think it was appropriate and seemed to be more about poking Americans in the side about the mistake that they made. Mistakes could have been made, we just shouldn't take them out on the wrong people.

We decided to swing by the White House. Stood at that fence you see in the movies, looking over the fountain into the front. I fleshed out one of my summer goals while I was there.

Next we went to Chinatown, and decided that the restaurant that looked like you descended into a basement was a good idea. It had tanks of the fish you could eat on the way in. Pretty good food though, I was very hungry. The table next to us had a dude that we affectionately called "jackass". He talked extremely loudly about topics that he didn't know much about such as why people have sex and some form of Chinese taoism. He started off by saying, "I haven't been out much and haven't had too many people to hang out with". We soon found out why. He wasn't that bad, but it did provide ample dinner entertainment. We finally got on the metro and headed home.

On the way home to interesting things happened. I found someone's cellphone. When we got to the last station, I called a number on the phone, no response. So I called another one, and left a message telling them to tell their friend that owns the phone where they could pick it up. Last I saw, it was in the lost and found. Hopefully they get it, I would hate to lose my phone. The other thing was that we had some in-transit entertainment. We sat in the back, and ended up behind a tinted window. A girl was traveling, but did not know where she was going. This dude offered to help, and turns out they were born in the same town, knew people from the same place, etc, coincidences all abound. We never got a chance to see him ask for her number, I personally though he would have gotten it before we got off, he probably got it while helping her with finding her ride.

Side-note: my calculations may be incorrect, but I believe that my last day of work is an off Friday :-).

Squeaky Shoes #1 (i hope!)

Ugh. I may have squeaky shoes. I think that most of the squeak was worked out by walking around DC on Friday. We will see.

The plan is that if they still squeak, I am going to get some shoe goo, cut the rubber to get in between the parts that I think are squeaking, and then fill the space with glue...

Updates to follow if they still squeak.

First week and Memorial Day

So the first week was not that bad. We had a long commute and took a ferry across the Potomac. The second day we let ourselves get up later, and added about an hour to the commute, so we went back to really early wake ups.

Andrew's parents were awesome. They treated us like sons and acted as if we were returning from college like Andrew. Definitely spoiled, great meals, good conversation. I learned how much fun watching your neighbor can be though a dinner window. It ended up being fairly dramatic, the guy would bring beers home every day, his "cube". Then one day his car broke down, and his wife had to get him... no cube. Another time it seemed like he was in trouble... again, no cube.

On the Friday, we went into DC for some beers and met some of Charles' friends. Before that we had had some appetizers and beer at TGIF.

On Memorial Day weekend, we went to see the new Pirates movie and dinner at Longhorn. It was a fun time, but I slept a ton afterwards due to all of the early morning wake ups. Went to bed at like 8 on a Saturday.

On Sunday we saw the battlefield at Antietam. It was very interesting, and you could see how the land shaped the battle. 23,000 killed, wounded, or missing in one day. I looked up the real numbers and 3,650 died. Can you imagine that? Here we are, with a vastly larger population, acting as if 3,000 over three years is the end of the world. I am not saying that 3,000 is a small number, so that we should not care, but we need to remember the magnitude of real war. Look back on how many casualties other wars took.

It is interesting how the battle played out. It was not only a contest of technology or numbers, as we often model battles. I would not have liked to be one fo the 400 or so Georgians that were stuck in a ditch and held back a much larger force. It was sort of like a natural WWII trench and was a major force multiplier. At another place, the Union had to cross a 10-12 ft wide bridge (maybe a bit more.. it was small, ok?). The other side was a hill that they had dug into and had natural high ground advantage. The Union funneled their forces across the bridge and had a very tough time. I can see how the South must have been pretty happy, as they had the Union at a choke point, and held high ground that had been improved.

Side note: The Dafur government was like "no gum arabic for you!" after we imposed sanctions. Alot of our food contains the gum, like coke. He is even pictured showing a coke bottle. Its interesting that he believes that we will choose coke over the death of hundreds of thousands. What does that say about the perception of the United States in some areas? (yeah, I read the article, we probably wouldn't have to make the choice, but think about the choice.)

I found it interesting that Robert E. Lee was given the choice to fight for the Union. He decided that he could not bare to bare arms against VA.

"I shall never bear arms against the Union, but it may be necessary for me to carry a musket in the defense of my native state, Virginia, in which case I shall not prove recreant to my duty."

I don't think that people today have that kind of love for their state over the union.

On Monday we moved in. Very inefficient line, but they seem to take care of everything if slowly. Cards to scan yourself into everything but the bathroom were handed out. We got parking tickets when we shouldn't have, and they are already voided. Contrast this with tech, where I just got a notice about a ticket on Mar 11th. Interesting fact: I DO NOT OWN A CAR.

Work was pretty good, I got a lot of random new employee training, and we finished that on the first day. I had a computer and a desk on the first day (surprise!). Nothing else really of note, still doing the stuff I have been doing. Sucks a bit because it was mostly just a change of location with higher pay.

Drive to MD

Some comments about the drive from Atlanta to Poolsville, MD.

Gas prices ranged from 2.89 to 3.19

If you are from New Jersey and your license plate is KVW 6OV (zero or O, not sure), you are a douche.

My most favoritest driver on the road was a black sorority girl from Charlotte, NC. DP132 I salute you. I do believe that following your crazy driving lead to hours of saved time.

I started at 9:40 am and ended at 7:13 including breaks and meals. I traveled 658 ish miles. Thats what, about 9.55 hours? Decent time if I do say so myself.

Pretty uneventful, who would have thought that VA was so big? People in SC/NC don't follow the speed limits at all. People in VA go about 10 over, max. Its interesting how it is almost like a light switch. I don't believe VA about speed being tracked by aircraft, the best theory that I have heard is that they use cessnas that time how long it takes you to pass two known markers, and radio the cops. In VA, the highways are built with many small hills that have cops hidden in caves on the side. (or just the other side of the hill), so watch out. VA definitely DOES NOT have GMTI.

live blogging a call with comcast...

Start 6:41

"This call may be monitored or recorded for quality service"

just got told i hit the wrong number to disconnect....

recalling, 6:43

real person 6:44

done 6:55

story follows...


So, first I called, and my finger must have slipped, cuz the person said I had the wrong department, even though I was in billing.

So I called back. The person in billing told me the wrong key presses, but! guess what I can listen, and picked the right place to go.

So the girl picks up, rattles her name (decided not to post it... ). I had found the right place. She tells me that the next time they can come by is June 25th to disconnect. I was like... WTF. JUNE 25th!. Thats almost a month from now. Next year, I bet it will take two months to disconnect. At least they aren't silly enough to try and get me to pay for it. I was clear about that.

Previously, I had paid until 6/10/07. They send out a bill that makes you pay for the next month of service before you get it. Much to my surprise, I am promptly notified that I owe 29.57 on my bill for the period until 6/10/07. She keep acting like I was retarded and couldn't read the bill. I got out my credit card statement, the comcast statement, and explained that based on when I received the bill and when I paid, the bill was paid in full. Turns out, either she messed up (just censored myself!) or it is company policy. End result, I am owed $2.11.

The only rub is that I have to make sure they get their cable modem back, or I have to pay for it. I do believe that I don't actually have to give it back, as I don't pay rent on it and never signed an agreement that said I rented it. It came from a previous house owner. I wouldn't mind letting them take it though. I'll get my agents in the ATL to help me with that on JUNE 25TH.

More posts to follow. I have a post about the trip up here, the first week, Memorial Day weekend, and probably this weekend (it will be that long until I write them... )

COMMENT! my comment jar is empty :-(

Zombies and Microsoft

Zombies on a plane! you heard it here first!

Microsoft is being a dick again. Today I got this:


I have owned this computer since August 2002. WHAT. THE. !@#$.

I bought Office, so I am not worried, but it is wrong that something like this would pop up 5 years into ownership.

lazy, lazy Josh

Oh yeah. Josh never updates his blog. So the link to his blog has been removed and replaced with a link to Emma's blog. Check it out.

Garden Update

So, I haven't been giving garden updates lately because most of my garden disappeared. My radishes and other stuff in the big pots were stolen. The theory I like to repeat so that I believe it is that the pots were taken because they were near the trash and someone thought I wanted to get rid of them. (that way I am less pissed off I suppose?)

Anyway, on to good news. The radishes should be ready to harvest soon. I only have three radishes. The biggest one is growing above ground.

You can see one of the other radishes and two small carrots. The beans are also doing well, I might transplant one of them to another pot. I think I am going to go with the cheap buckets as pots now, they have less chance of being stolen, and are big enough for most things. The bigger bean plant had some yellowing at the end of the leaves, I don't think I was watering them enough. RAIN! is coming, or so they say, so they should be taken care of.

I need to decide what I am going to do with the bean plants. Beans are neat to grow because they grow quickly and they get decent sized. The flowers are cool (none yet) and the beans are tasty. I still don't know if I like radishes. Supposedly you can eat the leaves. I bought pesticides, but have not had to use them. The other pot is doing ok.
The only things to note in this bucket are the two carrot plants (biggest one on the bottom), the three tomato plants (of the cherry variety), and the radish. I am surprised that the tomato plants have not grown bigger yet. I might have over crowded them? I don't see how they could know that though, they are very small... maybe they have big roots?

My soil might be too compacted? I was thinking about finding some earth worms and throwing them in.