The Ratnest

The coast is clear...

2019年08月26日T16:15:00.002-04:00

It's been 4 years since I last posted here. Lots of things have changed, lots haven't.

Let's see if I can do this again.

via GIPHY

Interstellar Tomorrowland

2015年06月13日T01:03:00.001-04:00

Warning, the following may contain spoilers for both Tomorrowland and Interstellar. I'm a little liquored up so that's not a certainty.

Also, due to the aforementioned liquor there may be some opinions expressed that some will find offensive. I'm trying to offend anyone, but opinions being what they are someone is bound to be offended. I'm truly sorry, and I refuse to be bound by anything I write as a guarantee that my opinion may not change in the future.

How's that for a disclaimer?

BRB, I gotta get a refill. It's a good time for the easily offended or spoiler-averse to find another spot on the internet.

So two movies that I've seen recently have been both refreshing and had a profound impact on me. The first was Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. From the first trailer I knew that this was going to be different, or at least different from what we've seen recently.

See, we've all fallen into the trap of the worship of the apocalypse. I admit, I was right there with you, and one of the proudest achievements I own is how often my friends talk about the Cyberpunk 2.02.0. that I ran once upon a time. I captured the atmosphere, and they helped build that universe with me. Let's face it, I grew up reading about how the world would be ruined by the time I was an adult, and the only hopeful science fiction I read was from 20 years before I was born.

Interstellar has a leg in both worlds. The future is very bleak, but there's a small group that still won't give up, that's still trying to make a difference. That determination, stubbornness, and drive towards a goal that's over the horizon an not just the object of making it to another day is what makes it different.

The depiction of a future where a young girl can be an agitator merely for the affront of suggesting that once, during a brief period of history, we managed to land men on the moon, and where that amazing accomplishment can be officially declared a hoax, made me tear up in anger. Because I can see it happening in my lifetime.

"We used to look up and wonder about our place among the stars, now we just look down and think about our place in the dirt."

Tomorrowland was along the same lines, but it started in the present day and looks back. Back at the future we thought we were going to have, filled with the marvels that technology could bring to us. A future of flying cars, robots, jetpacks, and space travel.

Again, there's a scene that entices the heroine to search for the entrance to this future that brought angry tears to my eyes. What did we do wrong? Looking back, it seems like it was all right there, ours for the taking!

Again, the character that's key to the story, an in this case the protagonist, is a young girl. (As a side note, this tells me that there are a lot of fathers who want a better world for their daughters, but I could be wrong about that.)

During a shooltime montage of all the ills and evils of the world, from war, to famine, disease, to climate change she stops the teacher in his tracks and asks "What are we doing about it?"

And here's where you can feel free to begin disliking me. Because I want to know the same thing.

Windmills are great. Geothermal and solar too. There are lots of alternative forms of energy, but pretending that they're a substitute for on-demand fossil fuel energy is a fantasy. The only reliable, consistent replacement has been a pariah for 30 years, and as a result we haven't built a new nuclear power plant in this country in decades.

So we're stuck with fossil fuels, or we can go back to living in mud huts. Here's a clue, folks, we stopped living in mud huts not because we were forced to, but because it basically sucks. Vaccines were developed because the alternative was piles of corpses. And GMO's are better than starvation any day of the week.

But we've turned away from that future. We pretend that we never needed those miracles of research, products of human ingenuity and inventiveness. Why?

The villain of Tomorrowland tells us. Because a future without hope asks nothing of us. If there is no hope then we don't have to put the energy in to make it happen, and we can focus on our small slice of life and bicker about sexual orientation and who gets to marry who.

"What are we doing about it?" If we're stuck with fossil fuels and our options are conserve back to the stone age or fill the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, what are our choices?

Conservation is a lifeboat strategy. It's what you do when you expect the rescue party to show up at any minute and you just have to make that last crust of bread last one more day.

Guess what? Nobody is coming to rescue us. We're it, we're all there is, and if we starve ourselves until we can't move, we'll never get the crops planted to feed ourselves.

Specifically, if carbon production is the issue, and China is already pumping more carbon into the atmosphere than the US, what are we doing about it? Threatening? Making treaties?

There are already successful carbon sequestration technologies that are being resisted and banned, despite the obvious advantages. Why?

When humans move to a place that lacks something they need, they used to find a way to get it. Now we're destroying dams. What happened? Why is a beaver dam, built for a beaver's purposes, more sacrosanct than a human dam, built for human purposes? (With apologies to Robert Heinlein for the paraphrase)

Look. That future is still out there. We just have to want it bad enough to make it happen. The world is already more amazing in some ways than the previous generation could have imagined. WE CAN MAKE IT MORE.

Waking up

2014年02月02日T08:07:00.001-05:00

I just finished my second sleep study, ever.

It was very different than I remember. The wiring was more restrictive. The bed was uncomfortable to the point of being painful. The furnace sounded like a car crash every time it came on.

Granted, that first time I was sleep deprived so I may be making an unfair comparison.

The results are curious. I've been using a pressure of 16/20 mm of water for the last 8 years. That means that with a BiPAP I have a pressure of 16 on the exhale and 20 in inhale, and that's pretty high.

Tonight's pressure peaked at 11. No split pressure, just 11.

What. The. Hell.

It's possible tonight's testing was botched horribly. The pain in my hip gives that option some weight.

There's another possibility. I've had sinus issues my entire life, and my initial great was done using a nasal mask that put pressure in my face right where my airway is smallest. I remember mentioning it to the tech at the time because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to breathe through my nose.

The mask was mounted before I went to sleep as well, and almost uncomfortably tight. I didn't know any better, so I let it go.

Now here's the big difference: About a year ago I decided to try something different. That's unusual in this situation because cpap headgear is expensive and most folk don't want to risk something that might not work. However, I took the leap and switched to nasal pillows from the nasal mask.

And that's what I wore last night.

I won't talk to the doctor for two weeks, but I think that the mask is the single biggest factor.

I'll never dismiss the value that using a BiPAP has brought to me, but the thought that I've been fighting leaks and dry morning eyes for eight years because I was using the wrong mask is angering.

Life with the Chromebook

2013年09月26日T22:56:00.001-04:00

Just recently I purchased a used Acer C-7 Chromebook, and the first thing I did was upgrade the 320GB hard drive with a 32GB SSD.

The upgrade only had one issue: the new drive is slightly bigger than the old one. I made it fit.

The installation of Chrome OS went without a hitch. Everything went exactly as it should have.

The Chromebook itself is... Boring. Seriously.

Everything does exactly what it's supposed to. All the apps imported from my Google Chrome, so there was no more setup than logging in. It powers up, shuts down, hibernates. The touch pad is a little weird, but very versatile once you get used to it.

Battery life is a little disappointing at 4 hours, but I was aware of that when I bought this model. I understand the Samsung does better.

I've only run into one thing that I use on a regular basis that it can't handle. Microsoft Silverlight.

Actually, that's not bad.

I think the Chromebook does exactly what it set out to do: bring the web to the desktop simply and reliably. And as a result I've taken the drastic step of powering my laptop down and putting it on a shelf. Let's see how long it stays off.

Patience

2013年04月20日T15:54:00.001-04:00

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

We're all familiar with that quote, and while it's a pretty decent argument for taking that first step, it doesn't really address the step after that, and the thousands to follow.

I started blogging in 2003, I think. I started on Wordpress and learned a lot playing around with PHP and embeddable code. In October of 2005 I added Google Adsense code.

Blogging is something that you have to want to do, or get paid to do. You have to have the desire to share your opinion or knowledge with other people, and you can't be disappointed when you don't have thousands coming to your site.

Looking at my Adsense stats, I think it's safe to say I've achieved that. As of today I have 95ドル.00 in my account and I've never received a payout, having never hit the 100ドル limit.

I lost interest. What I was saying was mostly for my friends so I constructed a complex internal system where technology related stuff went to Google+, jokes went to Facebook, and more inflammatory stuff went on the blog.

Eventually I stopped posting to the blog, because frankly I didn't care to be inflammatory any more. I had bigger, more personal fish to fry. (I have a theory on activism that I may expand on later) And I've sort of given up on Facebook. The occasional post I miss from friends and acquaintances usually isn't important enough to worry about, and the important ones I hear about anyway. Sorry to be a social media leach y'all.

And now Google is trying to integrate more of their services. My blogger profile is associated with my G+ profile, and posts and comments can cross-post. That makes it harder to "segregate" the parts of my personality, and easier to reach more eyes.

So why is this called "Patience?" Because between Google and I, we've been waiting for 100ドル to change hands for almost 8 years. Google profits were down to only 3ドル.35bn this year, so I'd better get it while I still can.

Dusting and Cleaning

2012年06月24日T09:10:00.004-04:00

It's been about a year since the last time I posted here. A year that's brought a lot of change.

I have some longer stuff in my head that really doesn't fit on G+, although it's nice that there's an automatic share feature now.

There's some tech stuff, and some house stuff, and maybe even some career stuff, but I'm hoping I can organize my thoughts and hone my focus. And maybe share something cool from time to time.

Welcome back, time to move forward.

Ed vs the WOW Router

2012年06月24日T08:58:00.002-04:00

In the ongoing saga of Ed vs the WOW Router, I've learned that necessity is the mother of invention.

Getting access to a network from the outside isn't easy. For obvious reasons, it's not supposed to be. But there are a couple of tricks, and of course, your mileage may vary.

The technical difficulties in this case are that the WOW router can't maintain a static DHCP assignment for my home "server". When the lease runs out, or the system reboots, it gets a new IP address. This means that port redirects are pretty much useless, so standard methods (vpn server, RDP) won't work. Also, the virtual server and port forwarding don't seem to be consistent.

Hosted solutions seem to be the only answer.

LogMeIn seems to be a nice solution, and it works well from a browser outside the network. Once the server application is installed on my server I can connect and RDP through a browser by logging into the site. The service itself is free for non-commercial use, but the Android client is expensive at 29ドル.99.

Teamviewer is another popular choice. Just like LogMeIn, there's a desktop server application, and once everything is configured web access is easy. The Android app is free, but kind of klunky and it doesn't work well at all with a keyboard and mouse on my tablet. It's so bad, in fact, that it might be a deal breaker.

The last option I'm looking at is NeoRouter Mesh. Unlike the others, there's no web component, but it does provide a good vpn option and a portable client. The client will allow you to launch RDP or VNC clients after it's established a vpn connection. The downside is that it's not completely free, at 1ドル per license per month. I'm not sure that over the long term I can justify that.

Stay tuned...

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education: an article by William Deresiewicz about how universities should exist to make minds, not careers | The American Scholar

2011年06月25日T09:17:00.000-04:00

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

One of the great errors of an elite education, then, is that it teaches you to think that measures of intelligence and academic achievement are measures of value in some moral or metaphysical sense. But they’re not. Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people. Their pain does not hurt more. Their souls do not weigh more. If I were religious, I would say, God does not love them more. The political implications should be clear. As John Ruskin told an older elite, grabbing what you can get isn’t any less wicked when you grab it with the power of your brains than with the power of your fists. "Work must always be," Ruskin says, "and captains of work must always be....[But] there is a wide difference between being captains...of work, and taking the profits of it."

Tired of being insulted

2011年06月25日T08:55:00.000-04:00

I've grown tired of being insulted by people who assume that I agree with them.

Tired of being demeaned by people who don't think contrary opinions are only held by "evil" people.

Tired of watching complicated issues being reduced to arguments that fit in a tweet or on a bumper sticker.

New York's recent passing of a Gay Marriage proposal has been causing me to grind my teeth as both sides fire snarky barbs across the internet on Twitter.

Between the Evil Homosexuals and the Evil Christians I don't know if there's anyone left to talk to. Is there any room for a person who thinks that people should be allowed to be happy, to have comparable rights to comfort their loved ones, but who understands the pain of having a sacrament defiled?

Am I evil because I don't think that a 2700 page health care bill with more loopholes than a stitching class is the right way to reform health care? Am I evil because I resent the constant encroachment of government into my choices?

Apparently, because I've been told that I'm evil and heartless for holding that opinion. I'd be open to having my mind changed if every discussion didn't start with my intelligence being demeaned.

Am I a racist because objective facts tell me that there are dangerous places to go? Detroit is considered a "black" city, and has one of the highest crime rates in the nation. If I were black, I don't think I'd hitch my identity to the city until it became a place I could be proud of. Pride should be something you have "because of," not "in spite of."

I'm not specifically religious, nor am I against religion. Nonetheless, because of that I've been accused of hating God. I've also been accused of being anti-atheist. I suppose it's more proof that "with us or against us" is a sentiment held on both sides of the aisle.

And of course the running joke with the one person who understands that is that I'm a "fence sitting libertarian." So at least there's one person I can talk to.

I am who I am, and if I'm a majority of one, so be it. Just don't expect me to sit here and listen to your vile vilification, don't expect me to agree with your demonization of people I don't agree with, and don't assume that because I don't hold your viewpoint I hold the diametrically opposed view.

Screw you and your pigeonhole. If you're not capable of seeing outside your little world of boxes that's not my problem. I'm only atypical from your point of view, and until you can understand that you can not understand me.

It's more important for me to respect myself than to respect your opinion of me.

2011年03月24日T18:01:00.001-04:00

"Rights Are Curtailed for Terror Suspects" - ProfessorBainbridge.com

Good thing we got rid of that George Bush guy.

A film maker walks into Flint

2011年03月15日T09:53:00.001-04:00

T-SHIRT OF THE DAY: “If I had a dollar for every time that capitalism was blamed for problems cause…

Petard, hoisted by

2011年03月07日T13:44:00.001-05:00

The group hopes that Huffington will “do the right thing” and agree to their requests. However, Lasarow wrote that he would be unsurprised if “like the corporate titans of the American Right… Ms Huffington, whom I am certain has a good heart and only the best intentions, were to assume the obvious position: Who needs these people anyway?”

The thing that really amuses me of that even when the problem has nothing to do with the Right, they can't help taking that swipe.

AOL buys Huffington Post for 315ドル million | Geek Gestalt - CNET News

2011年02月07日T03:21:00.000-05:00

Sounds more like AOL is buying Arianna Huffington to run their content. Next to the DailyKOS I can't think of a more partisan site, but time will tell.

AOL buys Huffington Post for 315ドル million | Geek Gestalt - CNET News: "In a shocking post-Super Bowl announcement, AOL said tonight it has agreed to pay 315ドル million for the Huffington Post and form a new media powerhouse by combining the content of both organizations.
The resulting new outfit, which will be headed by HuffPo co-founder Arianna Huffington, will be called Huffington Post Media Group and feature all the content from previous AOL acquisitions including Engadget and TechCrunch."

MORE ON THAT "UNLICENSED ENGINEER" SCANDAL AT THE NORTH CAROLINA DOT: North Carolina Transporation ...

2011年02月07日T01:52:00.000-05:00

Oh, this is good:

MORE ON THAT "UNLICENSED ENGINEER" SCANDAL AT THE NORTH CAROLINA DOT: North Carolina Transporation ...: "
MORE ON THAT "UNLICENSED ENGINEER" SCANDAL AT THE NORTH CAROLINA DOT: North Carolina Transporation Secretary Doubles Down:

Bryant said Lacy was trying to intimidate Cox and his neighbors and suppress their rights to petition government officials.

"No one signed it as an engineer," Bryant said. "They simply put together their feelings and their information. When we can’t do that without fear of potential criminal prosecution, that takes away our rights."

A spokesman for Perdue said the governor, a Democrat, had pledged to take politics out of transportation planning. . . .

Transportation Secretary Gene Conti, a Perdue appointee, said the DOT has used residents’ feedback to change the Falls of Neuse project. He endorsed Lacy’s request for an investigation.

Disgraceful.

It's pretty obvious to me what happened here.

A bunch of talented and intelligent people put together some recommendations in the best format they could manage, and the guy in charge of the DOT engineers, who had no engineering knowledge himself, panicked when he couldn't intelligently answer their questions. "Quick, call the police! Somebody is about to make me look like the tool I am!"

Resistance

2011年02月04日T18:56:00.001-05:00

Throughout my life I've come to a point where I intended to make a modest, or even major advance. In many of those cases something would happen that caused me to pull back, retreat, and conserve my resources.

It occurs to me that I've been going about this the wrong way. I am beginning to think that instead of throttling back I should try pushing forward, and seeing where determination and cunning take me.

I'll let you know how it works out this time.

The Danger of Print

2010年10月11日T11:45:00.000-04:00

The President dodged a, er, book the other day:

Obama has book thrown at him at Philadelphia rally | Mail Online: "This is the astonishing moment a book was apparently hurled at the head of President Barack Obama during a campaign rally in Philadelphia.

The flying missile narrowly missed hitting the President yesterday.

It is not clear what the book was, where it came from in the crowd, or why it was thrown at Mr Obama - who did not appear to notice the danger"

Which is sort of a metaphor for his whole presidency.

Via Instapundit.

Subtle

2010年10月01日T10:17:00.000-04:00

Seriously, if you're going to do this, it should probably be done in private. More sinister that way.

A Teary Emanuel Gets Dead Fish At White House Send-off - Political Punch

My reaction:

Will the Justice Department Be Authorized to Shut Down Internet Sites?

2010年09月30日T14:48:00.000-04:00

That this is even being contemplated chills me to the bone.

Will the Justice Department Be Authorized to Shut Down Internet Sites?: "
On September 20^th, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced legislation — S. 3804, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act — that seeks to give the Department of Justice the power to shut down websites anywhere in the world that are found to infringe on intellectual property rights. This would be accomplished by ordering U.S. domain registrars and registries to stop resolving infringing sites’ domain names. While this bill has the noble-sounding goal of preventing online piracy, handing the federal government authority over the Internet would set a troubling precedent that would imperil Internet freedom in America and across the world.

One disquieting issue is the lack of any requirement that these sites be found to violate the laws of the countries from where they operate. In fact, under this bill sites operating perfectly legally under the laws of their own nations could be shut down by the U.S. Justice Department.

America has been a pretty fair steward of critical internet infrastructure up until now, but we only deserve it as long as we respect the responsibility that power gives us. Pushing edicts across the planet is a lousy way to do that, especially over something as idiotic as copyright infringement.

Unintended Consequences

2010年09月21日T09:11:00.000-04:00

The primary results in Delaware last week have generated some interesting consequences, such as this thoughtful and well written plea for Christians and Wiccans to come together.

Vodkapundit � Come Together: A Plea to Annoy Christians and Witches Alike!: "There’s some common ground here, where both sides could — and should — meet politically, if not spiritually. For that to happen, however, certain Christians (not nearly all of them) would have to drop their insistence that Wicca is equal to Satanism. And certain Wiccans (not nearly all of them, either) would have to abandon their childish liberalism."

I don't think anyone expected O'Donnell to be this polarizing, but there's a definite opportunity here. Could this be the start of a Wiccan right-wing?

Liberals vs Conservatives

2010年09月17日T17:18:00.000-04:00

It's like he has a plasma lance of perspective. How have I not found this guy before now?

Perhaps he's just cynical, but he's smiling anyway.

So...Communism doesn't work?

2010年09月15日T10:40:00.001-04:00

Cuba details plans to lay off 500,000

Sweeping reforms cut workers from payroll to save funds

Andrea Rodriguez and Paul Haven / Associated Press

Havana -- Cuba's communist leaders have already determined what soon-to-be-dismissed workers should do after they get pink slips in sweeping government layoffs, detailing a plan for them to raise rabbits, paint buildings, make bricks, collect garbage and pilot ferries across Havana's bay.

Many of the workers tossed from state jobs into the marketplace could see their new enterprises fail within a year, officials acknowledge.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100915/NATION/9150341/1020/Cuba-details-plans-to-lay-off-500-000#ixzz0zbp0kD8a

From the ground up

2010年09月08日T15:42:00.001-04:00

John Ratzenberger may be best known for playing a knowitall, but don't discount the man because of the part. Here are some interesting disturbing statistics:

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 25 percent of the working population will reach retirement age by 2012, resulting in a potential shortage of nearly 10 million skilled workers. This heightens the price our nation is paying for dismantling so many in-school vocational training programs during the past few decades.
The current shortage already sharply reduces the growth of U.S. gross domestic product, contributing to our overall economic problem. America’s infrastructure is falling apart before our eyes. Municipal water and sewer systems are failing, and more bridges are unsafe to cross. Yet the nationwide shortfall of more than 500,000 welders is causing already-funded repair projects to be canceled or delayed.

Read the whole thing. I eagerly await this documentary.

Via Instapundit.

Gender Based Violence!

2010年09月02日T17:46:00.001-04:00

More proof that men are more violent than women:

According to her complaint, she and fellow pledges were punched, slapped, kicked, slammed into walls, struck with a wooden spoon and a cane, and had books and coins thrown at them during a series of 16 nighttime initiation sessions. Howard recalled one evening when a sorority sister told her to close her eyes. She was then struck on the buttocks with what she later learned was a kitchen pot. The pledges were also frequently struck with a wooden paddle, Howard said, blows that left her with welts on her buttocks.

Oh wait...

Risk Dominates Fun

2010年09月01日T14:11:00.001-04:00

Part of having fun is taking a risk. Unfortunately risks can lead to unpleasant consequences, and when those consequences lead to other people paying for your lack of judgement, they tend to remove the risk.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Elementary school playgrounds in one West Virginia county are losing their swing sets.
Swings are being removed from Cabell County schools in southern West Virginia in part because of lawsuits over injuries.
Cabell County schools safety manager Tim Stewart said Wednesday that a lot of parents are accusing him of being un-American, but he says the cost of maintaining a safe surface is too expensive.
Stewart says a lawsuit in the past year involved a youngster who broke his arm jumping off a swing like Superman. It was settled for 20,000ドル.

I would be so pissed at the kid's parents.

Financially Forward

2010年08月27日T11:28:00.002-04:00

GM is preparing an IPO that promises to be a real circus. I'm not certain at all that it's going to be the miracle that some are hoping for.

That didn't happen in this case, so the company has unfunded pension obligations to the tune of 27ドル billion whose bill is due in 2014. Long term, this puts it at a major competitive disadvantage against its non-unionized overseas rivals: Toyota ( TM - news - people ), Honda ( HMC - news -people ), Volkswagen ( VLKAF.PK - news - people ) and Hyundai.
Investors might overlook this if the company were otherwise sound and on a growth trajectory. That, however, is not the case. Indeed, in its application to the Securities and Exchange Commission--which, guess what, will come through just in time to make an IPO possible before the November elections!--GMadmits that its "disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting are currently not effective." And this "could materially affect our financial condition and ability to carry out our business plan."